The NVIDIA Blog

GameWorks VR Beta SDK Helps Developers Take Next Step into Future

Posted: 13 Aug 2015 11:00 AM PDT

Virtual Reality is now more than just Sci-Fi. VR is the next big thing in gaming and entertainment. And as part of our work to advance the state-of-the art in gaming, we're releasing today the beta version of our GameWorks VR software development kit.

GameWorks VR gives game and headset developers better performance, lower latency, and plug-and-play compatibility for VR games and applications through a set of application programming interfaces, libraries, and features.

Since the alpha release of our GameWorks VR SDK in May, we've received a lot of great feedback from developers and have incorporated much of that feedback in this beta release. While the alpha release was limited to select developer partners, the beta release opens up key parts of the SDK to game developers across the globe.

Furthermore, GameWorks VR is now supported in our publicly released 350.60 Game Ready drivers. So, gamers with the latest drivers will now be able to get the benefits of GameWorks VR with supporting applications and headsets.

Our GameWorks VR Beta SDK comes in two flavors.

The SDK for game and application developers includes:

VR SLI: increases performance for virtual reality apps where multiple GPUs can be assigned a specific eye to dramatically accelerate stereo rendering. With the GPU affinity API, VR SLI allows scaling for systems with more than 2 GPUs.

Multi-Res Shading: is an innovative new rendering technique for VR whereby each part of an image is rendered at a resolution that better matches the pixel density of the warped image. Multi-Res Shading uses Maxwell's multi-projection architecture to render multiple scaled viewports in a single pass, delivering substantial performance improvements.

Application developers can simply sign up for our GameWorks Registered Developer Program and download the GameWorks VR SDK for free.

The SDK for headset developers includes:

Context Priority: provides headset developers with control over GPU scheduling to support advanced virtual reality features such as asynchronous time warp, which cuts latency and quickly adjusts images as gamers move their heads, without the need to re-render a new frame.

Direct Mode: the NVIDIA driver treats VR headsets as head mounted displays accessible only to VR applications, rather than a normal Windows monitor that your desktop shows up on, providing better plug and play support and compatibility for the VR headset.

Front Buffer Rendering: enables the GPU to render directly to the front buffer to reduce latency.

If you're a headset developer and you want access to the headset portion of our GameWorks VR technology, register through our GameWorks VR developer page.

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Vulkan, SHIELD to Get Starring Role at 3D Graphics Talk

Posted: 12 Aug 2015 03:00 PM PDT

Our new SHIELD Android TV entertainment device will play a starring role Wednesday during Khronos Group's 3D Graphics API "State of the Union" at the SIGGRAPH graphics conference in Los Angeles.

NVIDIA's Piers Daniell will show Cadscene, a stunning demo that shows an incredibly detailed digital model of a BMW created on CATIA's computer-aided design tools at a meeting sponsored by the Khronos graphics industry consortium.

The demo will rely on Vulkan, a new graphics API that promises to give developers a single standard they can use to unlock the graphics capabilities of modern CPUs and GPUs.

Google's Android mobile OS became the latest to embrace Vulkan, the Khronos Group announced Sunday. Vulkan will become the primary graphics API for Android.

Daniell will demonstrate the technology on both a Windows 10 laptop and SHIELD.

The demo will be part of an update on the Khronos family of 3D APIs, including OpenGL, OpenGL ES and the Vulkan 3D API.

Neil Trevett, Khronos Group president and an NVIDIA vice president of engineering, will kick off the discussion. And NVIDIA Senior Director and OpenGL Chair Barthold Lichtenbelt will speak on the latest OpenGL update.

text — NVIDIA's Piers Daniell will show Cadscene, a stunning new demo that shows an incredibly detailed digital model of a BMW created on Catia's computer-aided design tools at a meeting sponsored by the Khronos graphics industry consortium.

NVIDIA also released driver support for a baker’s dozen of new OpenGL extensions this week, as well as support for OpenGL ES 3.2 for both Windows and Linux. SHIELD support for these standards will come with the next over-the-air update.

The "3D Graphics API State of the Union with Vulkan, OpenGL, and OpenGL ES" will be held Wednesday between 5:30 and 7:30 pm at the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. Live Platinum Ballroom, Salon F-H.

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