Mark Kilgard, July 27, 2016

Virtual Reality Features ofNVIDIA GPUs

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Mark Kilgard

Principal System Software Engineer

OpenGL driver implementation & API evolution

Other interests

Programmable shading languages, original Cg GPU shading language

Web, vector graphics & path rendering, GPU rendering for 2D graphics

Also known for creating OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT)

My Background

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GPU Challenges for Virtual Reality Rendering

1. Must render unique view for each eye

Two scene renders per frame

2. Wide field-of-view rendered

More pixels, distributed towards periphery

3. HMD lens magnifies rendered scene

Non-linear inverse lens warp

Allows the HMD lens magnification to provide convincing sense of presence

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Magnification Effect of HMD Lens

Graph paper viewed & magnified through HMD lens

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Head Mounted Display Lens Effect

Barrel Distorted Imageson HMD Screen

Magnified Overlapping Wide Field-of-viewBinocular View

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Focus on Virtual Reality Features of Pascal GPUs

Virtual Reality rendering features in Pascal GPUs

GeForce 1080/1070/1060

NEW Quadro P6000 & P5000

As exposed in standard 3D APIs

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Background: NVIDA GPU Architecture Road Map

Our interest NVIDIA GPU architectures of interest: Pascal

What is Pascal mentioned on last slide?

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Conventional 3D Single-eye Scene

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Conventional 3D Single-eye Scene

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Wide Stereo Views of Same Scene

Left Right

11Left Right

12Right Left

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Left & Right Views AreSimilar but Different

Left and Right eye views have different occlusion

While left & right eye views look similar, must be draw independently

Really only different in a small translation in X

NVIDIA Single Pass Stereo supports generating left & right eye positions

GPU automatically makes left & right eye versions of each primitive

Then renders each view to a different framebuffer slice

Exposed in OpenGL by NV_stereo_view_rendering extension

Exposed for Direct3D 11 by NVAPI SinglePassStereoMode feature

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Image Difference of Two Views

− + 0.5 =

Left eye view Right eye view

Clamped difference image

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Left & Right Views Rendered Efficiently in One Pass

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Lens Matched Shading

Left Right

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Visualizing Lens Matched Shading

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Lens Matched Shading

Left Right

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Visualization of Lens Matched Shading Rendering

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Still Needs Non-linear Warp

Lens Matched Shadingrendering

Warped image suitablefor HMD display

Non-linearimage

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Still Needs Non-linear Warp

Lens Matched Shadingrendering

Warped image suitablefor HMD display

Non-linearimage

BUT substantiallyless pixel motion

and distortionthan conventional

VR re-warping

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Example HMD Post-rendering Warp

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Lens Matched Shadingwith Window Rectangle Testing

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Lens Matched Shadingwith Window Rectangle Testing

Nothing in black corners is shaded or even rasterized

Yellow lines show overlaid 8 inclusive window rectanglesSame 8 window rectangles “shared” by each view’s texture array layer

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Lens Matched Shadingwith Window Rectangle Testing

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What Didn’t Have to be Rendered

17% of left view pixels 17% of right view pixels

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Window Rectangle TestingDuring Rasterization

New multi-vendor OpenGL extension

EXT_window_rectangles

Provides a set of window-space rectangles, 8 for NVIDIA GPUs

Rasterizer either includes or excludes rasterization from rectangles

Discards at speed-of-light

As if free to rasterize to irregular rectangular regions

WindowRectangles

Test

NEWstage

OpenGL’s fragment processing pipeline

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Warped Lens Matched Scene

Warped version of Lens Matched Shading to match HMD lens

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Warped Lens Matched Shading

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Visualizing Warp Window Rectangles

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What Didn’t Have to be Warped

17% of left view pixels 17% of right view pixels

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VR Rendering Pipeline in Images

LMS Right Eye View Warped Right Eye View

LMS Left Eye View Warped Left Eye View

Scene

LMS = Lens Matched Shading

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VR Rendering Pipeline in Images

LMS Right Eye View Warped Right Eye View

LMS Left Eye View Warped Left Eye View

Scene

Displayed within HMD

Single Rendering PassSingle Pass Stereo +

Lens Matched Shading +Window Rectangle Testing

Drawn with Single TriangleFragment Shader WarpingWindow Rectangle Testing

Perception to user is linear rendering

HMD lens “undoes” warping to providea perceived wide field-of-view

Pascal does all thisefficiently in a singlerendering pass!

8 viewports, 1 pass

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Traditional 3D Rendering Pipeline

Transform3D View

DownsampleDisplayFrame

AppProcessing

if multisampled

uses pinhole camera projection,rasterizing to uniform rectilinear pixel grid

monitor directlydisplays uniform rectilinear pixel grid

Rasterize3D View

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Virtual Reality Rendering PipelineRendering Left & Right Eye Views

TransformLeft View

Downsample

DisplayFrame to HMD

AppProcessing

RasterizeLeft View

TransformRight View

DownsampleRasterize

Right View

HMDWarp

HMDWarp

warps uniform rectilinear grid based on HMD’s device profile

TransformRight View

RasterizeRight View

TransformRight View

DownsampleRasterize

Right ViewTransformRight View

HMDWarp

DownsampleRasterize

Right ViewTransformRight View

second view rendering

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Virtual Reality Rendering PipelineWith Lens Matched Shading

TransformLeft View

Downsample

DisplayFrame to HMD

AppProcessing

RasterizeLeft View

TransformRight View

DownsampleRasterize

Right View

HMDWarp

HMDWarp

LensMatchedShading

LensMatchedShading

replicates primitiveto 4 projected quadrants

less pixel resamplingeffort & error operating onLMS rasterized images

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Virtual Reality Rendering PipelineWith Single Pass Stereo

TransformLeft & Right

View

Downsample

DisplayFrame to HMD

AppProcessing

RasterizeLeft View

DownsampleRasterize

Right View

HMDWarp

HMDWarp

one transform instance,outputs left & right position

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Virtual Reality Rendering PipelineSingle Pass Stereo + Lens Matched Shading

Downsample

DisplayFrame to HMD

RasterizeLeft View

DownsampleRasterize

Right View

HMDWarp

HMDWarp

LensMatchedShading

LensMatchedShading

TransformLeft & Right

View

AppProcessing

+Advantages1. Single transform for both views2. Closer match between rendering & lens images3. Fewer overall pixels for similar quality

use window rectangle testingto bound lens region, duringboth rasterization & warp

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Pascal GPU Features for VRUnique to NVIDIA

Pascal renders left & right eye

In single rendering pass

Halves CPU load for rendering

Better concurrent texture locality

OpenGL: NV_stereo_view_rendering

Direct3D: NVAPI SinglePassStereoMode

Better matches rendering to HMD lens

Single pass

Four separately projected quadrants

Less rendering, less resampling error

OpenGL: NV_clip_space_w_scaling

Direct3D: NVAPI ModifiedWSupport

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Other NVIDIA Virtual Reality Initiatives

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More Information

VRWORKS 2.0 Software Development Kit

Available NOW

Pascal OpenGL extensions for Virtual Reality

Specification now public

In official OpenGL.org extension registry

OpenGL Extension Wrangler 2.0 (GLEW) support

Example code in VRWORKS 2.0 SDK

VRWORKS also documents NVAPI usage

For Direct3D 11

Includes Examples code