Brainwarp 1.0 (featuring “Smart Smoothing" and "fixed foveated rendering")

TonytotheB · January 23, 2019, 11:50pm

Ok kewl. Thanks boys!

peteo · January 24, 2019, 12:13am

Right right right. This needs to be coded into the game engine.

aesopfabled · January 24, 2019, 12:38am

Unity and unreal just need to have an official foveated rendering plugin for their engines respectively. And the game devs just need to patch their game. Speaking with devs they say the plugin route would be probably not too much of a hassle. Although we all know devs can sort of be these immovable objects.

What I kind of don’t like is them even bothering to tell us at all and just go direct to whoever the beta testers are. Telling us that we can’t help test it lol.

GramboStorm · January 24, 2019, 6:57am

The problem is that it would only be added to the most recent engine so the game would need to be recompiled for that. This might mean it’s a lot more work for the dev than just recompiling their code to use the new function due to engine changes since they originally wrote the code. This often means a lot more code changes and testing to ensure everything still works. Even if there wasn’t much of a change and it compiles OK then a lot of testing is still required to make sure that something else hasn’t broken somewhere else.

fishfingers · January 24, 2019, 8:12am

I agree, but then you get people like Sebastian moaning his stuff is broken and he cant make a great Pimax video https://community.openmr.ai/t/replied-pimax-headsets-do-not-track-after-upgrade/13225

PimaxVR · January 25, 2019, 3:06am

Hi guys,
Some updates for you.

we tested 90Hz/80Hz with Brainwrap 1.0 Beta, it works well.
When turning on this feature, the games rendering >45Hz/40Hz will be acting as 90Hz/80Hz with better rendering quality.
We’re testing 72Hz/64Hz with Brainwrap 1.0 Beta now,
In this case, the games rendering >36Hz/32Hz is expected as 72Hz/64Hz with even better rendering quality.

Another good feature included in Brainwarp 1.0 is also under Beta test now.
fixed foveated rendering
FFR(fixed foveated rendering) is expected to get another 8-15% performance gain.
Currently, Pimax FFR could support RTX20XX series cards, the next step we’re trying on GTX10XX.

Notes: Pimax “Smart Smoothing” and “FFR” feature are generally supporting for almost games(>95%). The games or titles don’t need any changes.

Thanks for all of the above suggestions. Dallas will feedback a table with the status show our reactions on all valuable suggestions from the community.

Douglaster · January 25, 2019, 3:21am

Amazing ! Can’t wait to try it.

aesopfabled · January 25, 2019, 4:23am

@anon74848233

Any news on when it will be open for backers to try?

Also any news on framerates higher than 90? I mean perceived 180fps etc?

thearbiter117 · January 25, 2019, 4:28am

Thats sounding great so far, awesome work!
Im definitely hoping you can get FFR working on GTX10 series.

Oege · January 25, 2019, 5:14am

Great !!! We need it !!! NOW

neal_white_iii · January 25, 2019, 5:19am

This is indeed good news. @Sean.Huang I’m a bit concerned to see 64 Hz mentioned. 72 Hz is great for movies which were filmed at 24 fps (72 = 3*24), but for video we need 60 Hz, not 64.

Thank you for these huge software improvements!

Hyperion · January 25, 2019, 5:23am

Fixed Foveated Rendering is extremely helpful for the huge FoV of the Pimax, because a very large part of the display is being used (or even wasted) on the periphery of the view, due to the angle the eye is looking at the screens.
You can see this effect in the undistorted render output of Pimax footage, where the actual center of the user’s view only occupies a rather small part of the window.

john2910 · January 25, 2019, 5:29am

Thats great news! we hope to see it soon!

cazman321 · January 25, 2019, 5:52am

Thank you! Will there be a 72Hz/64Hz mode without Brainwarp (a setting in PiTool to change refresh rate)?

Aviglakis · January 25, 2019, 5:57am

Would love to see higher performance options. 60 percieved 120 and 90 percieved 180. Or a slider for infinite adjustment. Thanks!

glassy99 · January 25, 2019, 6:02am

Wow, very exciting stuff!!!

aesopfabled · January 25, 2019, 6:17am

Is each eye it’s own reprojection rendering 45 to 90 alternating? So essentially using our understanding of brainwarp, this is like always on reprojection, except it uses the brainwarp eye alternating? Or is this just basically always on reprojection

tristanc · January 25, 2019, 8:07am

The alternation of frames in the eye is for the next version of BrainWarp (2.0) this version is like a reprojection.

colgate1974 · January 25, 2019, 9:38am

@PimaxVR can you confirm that this assumption (regarding alternating eyes) is the case?

TForm4 · January 25, 2019, 9:51am

Will we need better CPU for “Smart Smoothing”? I mean if I have CPU which exactly “fit” to my GPU - not bottleneck it but haven’t “reserve power”. Will it still be enough when I’ll turn on Smart Smoothing? Will Smart Smoothing create additional load on CPU or not?