The Oculus Rift and its rival, the HTC Vive, are at the forefront of virtual reality gaming technology. The two devices transport users into the games that we’ve often viewed in a 2D space over the past few decades, immersing us into that which we use to escape the daily humdrum of life. However, there is a catch. You needed a pretty powerful PC to seamlessly run virtual reality games.
When it came to money, the Oculus Rift costs around $600 with the HTC Vive going for $800. But the ideal computer rig you needed would raise the total price for running games on either system to about $2000. Thankfully, for users with slightly underpowered systems that couldn’t make the VR-ready cut, Oculus is changing the status quo.
Asynchronous spacewarp is the new technology from Oculus, which has just been launched, that’ll let you run the Rift VR headset on much lower-specced hardware than before. For ideal virtual reality experiences, you would need to run a game at 90 frames per second, something you need a powerful rig to do so. However, by using frame interpolation techniques, asynchronous spacewarp is able to deliver similarly smooth gameplay when you’re running at just 45 frames per second. This nearly halves the CPU/GPU time required to produce nearly the same output from the same content.
The whole update works by having asynchronous spacewarp (ASW) work on top of asynchronous timewarp (ATW). For those of you that are unfamiliar with the term, ATW ensures that the experience tracks the user’s head rotation. This means an image is always displayed in the correct location within the headset.
ASW works in tandem with ATW to cover all visual motion within the virtual reality experience. This includes character movement, camera movement, Touch controller movement, and the player’s own positional movement. If the application falls behind the display’s frame rate, the experience typically remains smooth and enjoyable.
Source: Oculus Blog
