There’s more to building the perfect XR experience than choosing the right virtual reality headset or the most effective augmented reality software. As companies are beginning to discover, stepping into a new reality requires an equilibrium to merge between multiple devices, tools, and investments. One of the most essential tools in ensuring you get a truly realistic VR experience, is your GPU.
GeForce, by Nvidia, is one of the most popular names in Graphical Processing Units today. The company products all kinds of GPU products for gaming and other demands. Now, the GeForce RTX VR series promises companies and indivduals alike a system built specifically for low-latency, high-performance virtual reality interactions.
Let’s take a closer look at what you can expect from the latest RTX GPU built by GeForce for the new age of virtual reality, the RTX 3090.
GeForce RTX VR Review: VR Features
The GeForce RTX VR technology available today isn’t just offered on a single device, but on a range of products within the RTX portfolio. While the capabilities you’ll get for things like VR and video streaming will differ depending on which RTX model you choose, most GeForce GPUs deliver an excellent combination of sensational performance, efficiency, and image quality.
For the purpose of VR, all of the top RTX Graphics Processing Units come with a combination of features intended to support better graphics, audio, and program behaviour when exposed to virtual reality. VR enhancements include:
- Enhanced GeForce Software Solutions: All the leading GPU technology produced by GeForce for the age of VR comes with access to state-of-the-art software solutions. Users can capture and share videos and screenshots or even produce livestreams in VR with the GeForce Experience built-in software. There are game-ready drivers built into the hardware, so you get the smoothest experience possible with VR apps. DirectX 12 Ultimate for devices like the RTX 3090 also allow developers to implement amazing graphical effects into VR creations with variable rate shading, ray tracing, and other ultra-realistic solutions.
- Amazing Variable Rate Shading: Among the various enhancements made to the GPU tools from GeForce for VR are the “VRWorks Graphics” capabilities. These include the Variable Rate Shading technique, which responds to the unique needs of VR systems by increasing rendering performance and quality. The technology applies full GPU shading power to the areas of the VR scene you’re interacting with, so it can reserve power in areas that don’t need it. Not only do you get a higher-quality image, but you can enjoy realistic depth without having to use too much power in each app.
- Single Pass Multi-View: The single pass multi-view feature is another excellent investment made by GeForce into the future of VR. The Single Pass solution further improves rendering speeds by drawing an asset once and simultaneously projecting it to both left and right-eye views. This allows developers to double the complexity of their VR applications from a geometric perspective, improving the richness and detail of worlds created for the GeForce VR environment. The multi-view technology implemented into Single Pass simultaneously projects up to four views, for VR headsets with ultra-wide fields of view.
- Ray-traced VR Audio: Ray tracing is a common feature within all NVIDIA GPUs, but for the VR environment, users can now access ray traced audio, as well as ray-tracing in video. The VRWorks Audio technology offered by NVIDIA today creates a complex acoustic image of your virtual environment in real-time, for physically realistic audio that conveys the material, shape, and size properties of your virtual environment. The solution is specifically accelerated on the hardware-based real-time ray tracing technology found in devices like the GeForce RTX 3090 GPU.
GeForce RTX VR Review: An Example of the Hardware
For the purpose of this review, let’s add a little context to the mix by showing you what kind of features you’ll get on a solution enabled for VR by GeForce. Currently, the latest product in the RTX line-up is the amazing RTX 3090 from GeForce. This product combines all the latest innovations in VR technology mentioned above with sensational high-performance tensor cores and streaming multi-processors.
Features of the GeForce RTX 3090 include:
- Enhanced ray-tracing cores
- Tensor cores
- Streaming multiprocessors
- AI performance management
- 24 GB of G6X memory
- SM 2x FP32 Throughput
- 8K HDR streaming support
- Access to features like GeForce Experience and ShadowPlay
- Compatibility with high-level GeForce monitors
- 10496 NVIDIA CUDA cores
- 70 Ghz boost clock
- Game ready drivers
- DirectX Ultimate for developers
- Nvidia Ansel
- Virtual Reality ready
- Nvidia G-Sync for refresh rates up to 260 Hz
When combined with things like impeccable refresh rates of up to 260 Hz, powerful 8K streaming support and AI-enhanced performance management, it’s easy to see how NVIDIA’s updates to the GeForce VR environment can make a real difference to the future of virtual reality. For developers creating content for the new era of extended reality, and forward-thinking innovators exploring these landscapes for the first time, GeForce technology could be a must-have investment.
GeForce is Powering the Future of VR
By investing in more than just hardware and gaming software, GeForce and NVIDIA are helping to set the benchmarks for a new future of VR innovation. The Virtual Reality technologies now embedded within RTX GPUs from GeForce will allow companies to discover what’s possible when they can access unbeatable, blazing-fast graphical performance.
Both the RTX 30 series and the RTX 20 series are enabled with VR enhancements and these devices also feature industry-leading performance, with plug-and-play compatibility for most devices. The RTX 3090 is probably the most feature-rich solution available right now for companies in search of a VR-Ready GPU, but it’s definitely worth checking out some of the others offers in the 20 and 30 series too.
