Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
As we wait not-so-patiently for tonight's possible announcement of new GPUs from both Nvidia and AMD, we'll cover the rumors to this point, and talk possible implications on this week's Close to the Metal.
The post Close to the Metal ep 32: Tonight’s the Night for New GPUs appeared first on Digital Trends.
A teardown from a Chinese website shows that the Nintendo Switch while in mobile mode has access to 25 percent more power. The GPU is underclocked while on the go to preserve battery life.
The post Nintendo Switch has access to extra processing power on the go appeared first on Digital Trends.
A splash page sporting a countdown timer resides on Nvidia's GeForce website linking it to an unannounced GTX 1080 Ti reveal. The card is listed twice in the source code of the site's splash page, confirming rumors.
The post Nvidia’s GeForce website is counting down to the GTX 1080 Ti’s big reveal appeared first on Digital Trends.
Unnamed sources claim Nvidia will officially launch the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card between March 20 and March 23. That indicates the card will be revealed during Nvidia's GeForce GTX Gaming Celebration event at GDC 2017.
The post Nvidia will probably flash its GTX 1080 Ti graphics card at GDC 2017 next week appeared first on Digital Trends.
Nvidia released a new driver for its GeForce graphics cards that is optimized for Sniper Elite 4, Halo Wars 2, and For Honor on the PC. The driver addresses specific issues for Battlefield 1, Second Life, Minecraft, and more.
The post Nvidia’s new GeForce driver is optimized for ‘Halo Wars 2,’ ‘For Honor,’ more appeared first on Digital Trends.
Nvidia released Software Upgrade 5.0 for its Shield tablet, bringing the operating system up to Android 7.0 Nougat. This release adds little features like running apps side by side, direct responses in notifications, and more.
The post Nvidia’s Shield tablet gets Nougat update to support its new controller appeared first on Digital Trends.
NVIDIA’s annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) takes place in May and returning for another year is the VR Content Showcase. With a focus on showcasing the most cutting-edge virtual reality (VR) innovations, the graphic card company has now announced the opening of submissions for the competition.
Open to almost anyone with a good idea for VR, the showcase is an opportunity for 10 startups, universities or individuals to gain global recognition for innovation in the field of VR or augmented reality (AR). During the showcase, 10 selected entrants pitch their idea on stage for five minutes to a panel of judges, followed by three minutes of Q&A. They’ll also receive free booth space in the exhibit hall to demo their technology.
Participation is open to teams from universities, research programs, individuals and startups with less than $1 million USD in capital. The VR Content Showcase is open across enterprise and industry segments, including science, technology, education, art, medicine and more. Technologies must run using an AR or VR headset attached to a computer or workstation with a GPU. Applications must be currently using or have plans to integrate GPU technology such as GameWorks, DesignWorks or VRWorks.
Submissions are open now until Wednesday, 15th March. A total of $30,000 in cash and prizes will be available to winners.
In last year’s competition VR tourism company Realities.io took home the first prize.
“Winning the VR Showcase at GTC was an extra boost forward for Realities.io in many ways! We received valuable feedback from people at the heart of the industry and made many important contacts,” said Daniel Sproll, CXO, realities.io. “It also accelerated many aspects of our business, from fundraising to our photogrammetry processing, thanks to the powerful NVIDIA Quadro GPUs that were part of the prize. If you are looking for a fast-track to get your VR company in front of the right people inside the industry, the GTC VR Showcase is the way to go!”
For further updates on the VR Content Showcase, keep reading VRFocus.
This week on ResearchVR we dig deep into the magic behind VR rendering – where and how can we save performance in extremely demanding virtual reality.
Dominic Eskofier is the head of VR for NVIDIA in Europe and few other regions, and he joined us on this week’s podcast. He started in the games business doing magazines and websites for Computec Media GmbH. While at his next job at Rockstar Games he fell in love with modern VR and opened his own startup – Realities.io. As already mentioned, he is now heading up the VR business for NVIDIA in the EMEAI region.
This week prepare for an episode that you can listen to a number of times and still have something new to learn! Rendering challenges with VR is a topic covering a vast number of subjects. As a matter of fact, it was hard to filter some of them out for this preview, only because each and every one of them felt equally important. Nevertheless, here is a look at some of what we’ve discussed with Dominic.
The KPIs for VR are a little bit tricky because you have to render at 90 FPS, which essentially means you have about 7 times to 8 times the amount of throughput that you have compared to a normal gaming monitor.
If we look at the gaming monitor that runs full HD at 30 FPS, it results in about 60 megapixels pushed through the pipeline each second. If we render for VR, that is two screens with full HD or more, plus both of them at a stable minimum of 90 FPS; we are already at about 450 megapixels per second. As Dominic underlined, that is already 7 to 8 times the calculation requirements of a standard gaming monitor. And this is exactly why we need to search beyond the sheer power of GPUs. And it seems NVIDIA is way ahead of us with their vast arsenal of tricks and powerful improvements across the whole rendering pipeline.
The one surprising feature of NVIDIA’s tools like VR Works is a spatial audio SDK. NVIDIA is a graphics processor-focused company, so why tackle the audio? Well, as Dominic explained to us, audio and visual information are both essentially waves. Therefore, the optics raytracing engine can be just as efficiently used for auditory information simulation.
Learn more in Episode 33 – VR Rendering challenges with Dominic Eskofier from NVIDIA. You can also subscribe this podcast via your favorite app via the subscription button below.
Tagged with: challenges, gpu, nvidia, VR
A number of low-profile graphics cards based on the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti GPUs have been released, but Palit Microsystems has announced what could be the first GTX 1050 Ti card to use a completely passive cooling system.
The post Palit's GeForce GTX 1050 Ti KalmX card uses passive cooling for complete silence appeared first on Digital Trends.
2016 was a busy year for graphic card manufacturer NVIDIA. The company released its series 10 range of products based on its newest Pascal architecture for consumer grade computers, these included the GeForce GTX 1080, GTX 1070 and GTX 1060 cards which VRFocus compared. It didn’t stop there announcing the business class Quadro P6000, along with some impressive specs. Today the Quadro P6000 has been joined by three more virtual reality (VR) ready cards for business use.
Joining the Quadro lineup are the P4000, P5000 and the mid-range topping GP100. Aimed at professionals across industries including entertainment, design, engineering, architecture, medicine and VR, the range is designed to give the optimum visual performance whilst streamlining workflows.
The P4000 suits applications such as large 3D CAD models, advanced DCC and medical imaging, with the P5000 adding complex DCC effects 3D medical imaging recon and seismic exploration as well. Jumping to the P6000 includes photo realistic rendering, even larger CAD models and GPGPU compute functionality, with the GP100 designed for the most demanding rendering applications. Software such as Adobe CC Premier Pro, After Effects, Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max and Nuke will work with any of the aforementioned cards.
While NVIDIA has released the specs for the cards, at present prices are still unavailable. The Quadro range is set to arrive in March 2017, with individual dates yet to be revealed, but a staggered launch is likely just as the company did for the 10 series range.
For the latest NVIDIA news, keep reading VRFocus.
NVIDIA Quadro GP 100 Specifications:
NVIDIA Quadro P4000 Specifications: