When building or upgrading a PC with the aim of making it virtual reality (VR) compatible, one of the foremost considerations is how well it will run VR applications. Futuremark last year introduced VRMark, a benchmarking program aimed specifically at VR. The company is now launching a new benchmarking test to the software called Cyan Room.
Originally released in November 2016, VRMark came with two benchmarking tests at launch. The first, Orange Room, was designed to establish if a PC met the minimal hardware requirements for running the two most popular PC VR systems, the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The Blue Room was a far more demanding test, which could check to see if a high-end PC rig could run VR videogames and applications on the highest settings.
Cyan Room is a Direct X benchmark test, built using the Direct X engine and fully optimised by the Futuremark team for use with VR. The test is primarily aimed at developers, and aims to show how using an API that requires less overhead can still deliver impressive VR experiences even on older or lower-specced PCs. Cyan Room comes with an ‘experience mode’ that aims to show that even if software is running at a relatively low framerate, the experience can suffer only a minimal drop in quality by utilising various techniques to compensate for dropped frames.
VRMark with Cyan Room offers custom settings that lets users change resolution on the fly, and can provide detailed charts to show frame-by-frame performance levels, so different PC set-ups can be compared. The test can be run in a VR headset or on a desktop monitor.
The Cyan Room test will be offered as a free upgrade to users of VRMark Advanced Edition and VRMark Professional Edition, and is due to be released on 22nd November, 2017. Further information can be found on the Futuremark website.
VRFocus will bring you further news on VRMark as it becomes available.