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Vive to Get Eye-tracking Add-on

nalex66
MVP
MVP
Article on Road to VR.

I thought this was interesting, considering the various discussions that we've had here recently about screen resolution, foveated rendering, and eye tracking.

A third-party hardware developer is releasing an add-on kit for the Vive that integrates eye-tracking. When paired with an Nvidia GPU, it can do foveated rendering to reduce the load on the video card for processing VR scenes. This is something that is functional now, using current technology, and can be used with any VR app without needing any modification.

I think this demonstrates that we'll definitely see higher resolution screens in second-gen VR HMDs without increased GPU horsepower required. If anything, this technology could make high-end VR more accessible than ever--imagine running 8K VR on a GTX 960!

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


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66 REPLIES 66

AQfumes
Adventurer
It's pretty cool technology. No doubt Oculus has their r&d working on similar tech for the future. Vive is always allowing third-party companies to create these add-ons for their head set, but they hardly pay for any additional add-ons to be developed out of their own pockets. 

It it makes me wonder if it's htc's strategy to spend little on their headset for now to grow profit. I mean they could be thinking why invest so much when other companies are already doing it for them and attracting customers for the Vive. 

One downside I can see from that logic is quality control. 

Anonymous
Not applicable
HTC aren't investing a great deal of money on accessories because they don't have it to spare.

Zoomie
Expert Trustee
I tend to agree AQfumes,

Oculus has always maintained tight control of their end-product while Valve and HTC have embraced the home-brew and mod community.  Vive is on the ragged edge with innovative but unproven tech, and Oculus is the refined and polished experience.  The result is that HTC appears to be the one actually driving the tech forward by allowing a robust community of smaller companies to build for their device.  Facebook meanwhile has thrown money at the best people their money can buy.  It'll be interesting to see which strategy pays off in the long term.  To the average person, it will appear that smaller development firms are driving the tech, and the engineers at Oculus are just taking the end result and adding it to their device.  Behind the scenes, they have likely been working on it in parallel and will have a perfect version before it's released to the public.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke

AQfumes
Adventurer
@Zoomie I agree. You wrote it out exactly the way I'm looking at the situation as well. HTC and Valve are letting these third-party companies pretty much improve their product for them and they're saving a bundle and appearing to the average consumer to be leading the way in this technology. 

Oculus on the other hand are investing their own money on the same tech but are waiting until they have it just right and ready for the consumer before they release their intentions with it.

I understand that HTC and Vavle don't have the same deep pockets that Facebook backed Oculus has to invest in new tech, but I tend to think they should have some to spare by now; especially if they're supposedly out selling the Rift 2:1. 

They seem to be holding out on investing much profits back into their own product unless they're forced to and before seeing how much investments through add-ons they can get off other companies first. 

Which would also give cause for Valve pushing to get Oculus to open their exclusive games to be sold on Steam and letting the public smear Oculus for choosing not to do this. They don't want to invest any money on developing games but want to profit off said games to help sell their headset. 

Oculus shouldn't feel ashamed at all for not letting Valve profit off the games they put their money into developing, when clearly Valve doesn't have intentions anytime soon in returning the favor. 

Im glad that HTC and Valve are helping these small tech companies with allowing them to promote their technology on the Vive platform, but it seems in the end HTC/Valve will get the better part of the deal. 

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
You guys are all so off-base... I mean, are you even keeping up with VR innovations? Seriously. In case you haven't heard: Gear VR has a remote now. Game over 😛

DarkTenka
Trustee

snowdog said:


lovethis said:

We might just see 4k screens for CV2 after all.


I don't think so. Even with foveated rendering 2 x 4K screens at 90fps is still going to be out of reach for average graphics cards in the average gamer's PCs for the CV2s from HTC and Oculus to have them. The idea is to get the cost of VR adoption down so that the mainstream market can afford it. We'll certainly see an increase in resolution and FOV but not by that much.

Oculus and Valve want these headsets to be within reach, spec-wise, of the average PC gamer. I posted on the Oculus Reddit thingummybob that the reason why so many gamers out there are anti-VR is because they can't afford the cost of a VR Ready PC, let alone the price of a headset, and are jealous of the people that can.


I wouldnt be so sure about this, especially with Nvidia's VR Works and how they've already implemented a bunch of optimization on the software/driver side such as the single-pass stereo rendering which already cuts required processing by almost half. Everyone has 4K in mind as the goal to reach for VR, I don't think its a matter of "we wont get 4K in the CV2", I think its a matter of "we wont get the CV2 until we can get 4K".

The CV1/Vive1 need a good 2-3 years to settle into an affordable price range for the average user, I think by the time the average PC can handle 4K in VR with single pass stereo and foveated rendering the CV2 will be released implementing all of these things.

Plus.. tech evolves fast, like .. really fast. I wouldn't underestimate it. I think CV2 with 4K is a real possibility.

Paddy234
Protege
This is brilliant news as it means we will get 4k and even 8k resolution much sooner due to this technology. The resolution on the vive and CV1 strains the eyes much too much and hinders the immersion  

Zoomie
Expert Trustee
I haven't been following the development of small screens, but does a manufacturer like Samsung have a sufficiently high PPD screen to support 4k if the GPU's could handle it?  If not, we're going to need development in many areas to fully realize higher resolutions.  

@Atmos73 Yes, Facebook has a habit of buying out competing or innovative tech and rolling it into their own product line.  It works for them just like it has worked for Apple.  On the plus side, at least it doesn't stifle innovation because all these tech startups are hoping they get bought out by one of the giants.  Look at the payday guys like Palmer Luckey received.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke

Anonymous
Not applicable
Well, that that technology exists is known since many years. Nice someone builded a device-add on for the Vive. So we can be certain the Rift 2 will have that as well. And I am sure FB does have ways to implement this technology and planned it most probably since years for its 2. generation.

The Nvidia optimizations are very cool as well. And if it is really so that the single pass stereo rendering will save almost half gpu power.. Really impressive if this should be so.

Not to forget the Asyn.time-warp from Oculus itself to bypass at least some frame drops in busy scenes.

On the other hand I do not know how fast the resolution will grow as indeed it is more important to increase the userbase and have every (media) notebook being able to run VR - seen commercially and for the all-around success of VR.

It is also true that resolutuon is not all. You can see it in Robo-Recall, or the Bulletstorm Demo, or the Ghost in the Shell Demo - if games would all look like that we would not grump that much. A good Artstyle, good Textures (+ several maps), good lightning, good leveldesign, some filtering and we would have great looking games.

People want 4k in the hope of better looking games while actual PCs can`t nearby render the actual games in 2k properly.
People want great looking prof. game titles but that needs a massive userbase. A userbase where you do not even have to have a desktop pc but where a (slightly better) multimedia-notebook should do.

stargate88
Protege
Let's see what we have:
  • 4K displays: checked
  • Optimized graphics drivers: checked
  • Better GPU (1080 ti): checked
  • Eye tracking: checked
  • Wireless video (TPCast): checked
  • Inside out tracking (Acer, Lenovo): checked
  • More confortable HMD: checked
  • CV2: hum...