NVIDIA recently took the wraps off of Simultaneous Multi-projection, a new rendering technology built into the company’s latest series of ‘Pascal’ GPUs which is designed to enhance VR rendering performance. Nvidia says the tech is soon to come to Unreal Engine and Unity.

As Nvidia recently explained, ‘Simultaneous Multi-projection’ (hereafter ‘SMP’) allows Pascal-based GPUs to render multiple views from the same origin point with just one geometry pass; rendering multiple views this way previously would have required a pass for each projection, but with SMP up to 16 views can be rendered in a single pass (or up to 32 projections in the case of rendering from two viewpoints for VR).

nvidia-simultaneous-multi-projection-smp
See Also: NVIDIA Explains Pascal’s ‘Lens Matched Shading’ for More Efficient VR Rendering

SMP can be used specifically for VR to achieve what Nvidia calls ‘Lens Matched Shading’. The goal of LMS is to avoid rendering pixels which end up being discarded in the final view sent to the display in the VR headset after the distortion process.

And while Nvidia says SMP can yield “a 3x VR graphics performance improvement over previous generation GPUs”, the gains don’t matter if the tech isn’t built into VR games. So far we’ve only seen SMP built into a few tech demos, but it’s soon to get a potentially huge boost thanks to integration with Unreal Engine and Unity, the two biggest game engines and the primary tools used to create VR content.

unreal-unity-featuredNvidia hasn’t said yet exactly when we’ll see SMP built into these two popular game engines, but the company notes that there’s already VR games being developed with the rendering tech, including Pool Nation VR, Everest VR, Obduction, Adrift, and Raw Data.

SMP is supported by all of Nvidia’s 10-series GPUs, including the newly announced GTX 1060.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • J.C.

    Nice to see this tech finally being integrated, but Unity still hasn’t put out the FIRST “big improvement” update, so THIS….well, I don’t expect to see it happen for a year, minimum.

    It’s unfortunate, but we’re all still waiting for VR. Oh, sure, there’s dozens of VR “games” on Steam and Oculus, but 99% of them are short-form. When the entirety of a game’s content is visible literally in the first 10 seconds, it’s a tech demo, not a game.

    VR has been “coming” for years, and yet no one wanted to bank a game on it, so we’re stuck with trailers for the games that haven’t happened yet. I think my Vive is amazing tech, but there isn’t a single game for it that I could use to recommend it to someone. Not. ONE.

    • Daniel Gochez

      I totally understand your sentiment, as a vive owner for 2 months. Having said that, I do recommend people to get a Vive, even the limited game and demos out there give you sensations that are impossible outside of V.R. Shooters like Raw Data, Space Pirate Trainer, Brookhaven experiment and Battle Dome are definitely fun, if you are not into shooters I could also make a pretty decent list.. There are no “true” AAA games yet, and who knows, we may never get those, but the limited selection is still worth it. And a ton more are still to come.

      • JustNiz

        I suggest that Elite:Dangerous, DCS World and Project Cars are all AAA games. There are probably more if I could be bothered to start looking/thinking about it. Skyrim can be patched to be VR playable, A VR version of Fallout 4 is definitely coming. There were solid reports of Valve working on Left4Dead 3 (VR) as their priority, and I’d be VERY surprised if they didn’t also already have at least one of Half Life 3 (VR) or Portal 3 (VR) getting close too.

        • Chieftexas

          I really don’t understand all of the HL3 VR speculation. Its been how many years, and you think they are going to debut it in VR first? Not to mention the fact that player movement is one of, if not the biggest problems, that VR is facing right now and is especially critical in a fps style game. Portal VR wouldn’t work as we know it either because the second you launch yourself out of a portal at high speed you will be puking your brains out.

          • Raphael

            Not me. VR has never made me spew. I realise that most everyone else spews at the slightest provocation and then craps on endlessly about how awful VR made them feel and how they had to spend months in rehab afterwards.

            All this talk of VR nausea makes me sick.

          • JustNiz

            You’re lucky you don’t get it. If you did you’d know that a bad case can leave you feeling sick/light-headed for even the rest of the day. Not exactly a positive experience. I’m not surprised people go out of their way to avoid it.

          • Raphael

            You need more ice cream in your diet. Stops all VR nausea.

          • JustNiz

            I wish I could believe that :-) I’m already putting on way too many pounds from living just down the street from a DQ :-)

          • JustNiz

            For Portal3 They could just use the same mechanics as the Portal: VR demo, or just have an option to automatically switch the view to 3rd person (nearest security camera or whatever) every time you do anything potentially vomit-inducing.

          • JustNiz

            I think they might finally do HL3 just because there is so much apparent demand for it.

          • Both from my gameplay experience with other’s games, as well as my experience with my own game development, i have to say that moving the player around isn’t a big deal. The forward swoop and teleporting are both effective and comfortable. After about 10 minutes you do it with as little thought as pushing a thumbstick forward on a gamepad. Even being launched around isn’t painful if it only happens once every minute or two.

        • perfectlyreasonabletoo

          Half-Life 3 won’t have VR, they’ve specifically said so at least twice now. The reason is that player movement in HL games is much too fast for VR comfort – you’re moving at around at the speed of a car at times, but on foot. HL3 may never be released at all, they’re not interested in making games with no social/multiplayer component anymore.

          Exact same story for L4D3. You move much too fast and even if you moved at a normal human pace, it’s very uncomfortable to move without actually moving in real life. Not happening.

          Portal 3, same story as before but 100x worse. Infinite falling, launching, etc – no matter how comfortable you are with VR, it would make you vomit.

          Valve isn’t interested in making VR-exclusive “AAA” titles anyway, they’d unfairly raise everyone’s expectations of other VR games so everything made by indies would look like garbage, and then there’d be nobody left to make games for hardware with such low market penetration.

          • JustNiz

            There’s absolutely no reason why they can’t make a different player movement system in HL3 or Portal3 to totally get round those problems. And plenty of sites are reporting news from E3 that L4D3 is already on its way. Personally I would have much preferred Valve spend their time on Portal3 or HL3 instead but whatever.

          • Sebastien Mathieu

            Valve just confirmed that a third of their workforce are assigned on VR, they must be working on something…..

      • Raphael

        I don’t understand his sentiment. I knew exactly what was available and some of the titles that were coming. I had a DK2 for a year before Vive and that didn’t disappoint either. Vive is spectacular and has some truly stunning sims, games and experiences. It proves one thing though that some people have a lot of money and buy stuff without knowing what it is and what to do with it. He should sell it and go back to gaming on a small rectangular window.

        • yag

          “some people have a lot of money and buy stuff without knowing what it is and what to do with it.”
          No shit, I just sold my DK2 on ebay, the buyer didn’t understand why his 950M was not good enough…

          • Raphael

            Lol. That’s hilarious.

      • Sebastien Mathieu

        100% agreed the Vive is awesome… but in either case (rift or vive) we all suffer the same early adopter syndrome: awesome tech, scarce content

    • Adrian Meredith

      Not project cars or elite?

      • Cameron Pickerill

        Elite just isn’t a very good game, and it’s not a “true” VR title either, it just has VR hacked on. Same goes for project cars but I’m not familiar with it’s general quality as a game.

        • Raphael

          Elite is an excellent space sim and has amazing VR support. Makes no difference whether a game has VR added later. As we see with project cars and corsa.. the VR is amazing. Thus your points are inaccurate and pointless.

          • Cameron Pickerill

            Amazing VR support is a stretch. It’s as good with VR as any cockpit game with non-buggy VR integration.

            As for the quality of the game. It’s bad. You don’t have to agree with me due to your personal preference, but it’s a widely held opinion founded in very factual shittiness. After miles of patches and an expansion pack it almost equals one full game, and it’s still lacking many core features I would expect in a multiplayer space sim. Not to mention it’s very content light nature.

          • Raphael

            Ummmm…. it’s not finished yet? To answer your wildly held opinion statement which is nonsensical bollocks because I can make an equally nonsensical statement that there’s a widely held opinion that many people like Elite and discuss it on a daily basis over at frontier. See the truth is that many people hate the game and many people like it.

            Also… what the hell does Nvidia’s SMT have to do with Elite D and Project Cars? Because you have a personal dislike of both games… So you share with us your random and useless opinion which has absolutely nothing to do with the article.

          • Chieftexas

            Dude calm down, the matter is subjective and he’s allowed to have an opinion. And I’m much more inclined to agree with him anyway. Explain to me how a cockpit style game with 0 physical feedback, and a control scheme based on a gamepad represents amazing VR?

          • Raphael

            Cockpit style game with 0 physical feedback? WTF? So you don’t have a body vibration system or buttkicker? Gamepad? Only kids and numpties use those. I use an X52 Pro and voice recognition. Sounds to me like you don’t have the faintest clue how to setup a system for a more realistic experience.

            Would never use a crappy gamepad.

          • JustNiz

            “Makes no difference whether a game has VR added later”. I totally disagree. If Elite had been designed from the ground up for VR then VR controllers could have been supported and would be a really cool feature. Imagine directly interacting with your ships control panel etc. As for pcars, because it wasn’t designed for VR, the motion sickness is so bad that I for one can’t stand it for more than a couple of minutes.

          • Klasodeth

            I don’t think Elite: Dangerous is a good fit for VR controllers. When it comes right down to it, a space sim is all about the flying. Holding a VR controller in mid-air for hours on end to pilot a spacecraft is going to be a lot more fatiguing than using a physical joystick. And if VR controls are limited to operating menus, that’s going to involve a lot of picking up and setting down the VR controllers. I don’t think VR controllers are going to be a good fit for flying or driving games until VR gloves become mainstream. That way the VR controllers don’t interfere with using steering wheels or flight sticks.

          • Raphael

            Right. Elite needs HOTAS and optionally – voice recognition (voice attack + HCS voice pack). It doesn’t need VR controllers. I’m a vive user and love VR controls but I’m smart enough to realise you shouldn’t have VR controllers for every game or sim. There are numpties who’d have us racing in Pcars with VR controllers if they could.

          • Raphael

            Motion sickness? Project Cars? Hilarious. Sell your VR system. You’re not suited to VR.

          • JustNiz

            What an amazingly juvenile response. are you like 8 years old or something?

          • Raphael

            You are the first one I’ve seen crapping on about Pcars and nausea. You claim pcars is known to cause nausea… perhaps in the nausea group you joined but outside of that there is no association between the two. Perhaps your system performs badly but I would say it’s more likely to be you. See the thing that really fecks me off about vr nausea complainers is the way they always blame the game. You rant at developers and post your nausea hysteria on forums. You say a game is known to cause nausea… instead of accepting that just maybe you are the one with the HYPERSENSITIVITY!

          • JustNiz

            Wow not only are you obviously juvenile and a total prick, you’re also ignorant and factually wrong: Here’s a whole subreddit on pcars and motion sickness:

            https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4jxf9b/motion_sickness_in_project_cars/

          • Raphael

            Yawn. So a subreddit exists about you and 10 million others spewing over pcars. Of course the developer’s going to investigate it. What is the percentage of sickness with pcars and VR… that’s the only relevant question. I’ve seen people rant at devs even for hover junkers. A percentage rant at every VR game developer about spewing. Even seen people ranting that Elite Dangerous made them sick.

          • JustNiz

            Pcars is a known vomit comet. If they had designed VR in from the start rather than tacked it on, I’m sure it would have been a much less vomit-inducing experience.

          • Raphael

            It makes no difference whether VR was added later. DCS World and many other games have VR added later and it makes no difference. I’ve spent hours on pcars with no nausea using Vive. If a racing sim gives you nausea then you should sell your VR system.

          • Raphael

            Pcars is known not to make VR users sick unless they have an extreme sensitivity to motion sickness in which case they shouldn’t travel by sea, car, plane or ride coasters. How is it all of my VR owning friends have no issue with project cars? How is it I can race for hours in VR with no nausea? And can you explain the difference it makes designing a racing sim to be VR from the start versus adding it later? As someone who used to code in assembly language your statement that a game needs to be designed for VR from the start is nonsensical.

      • Sch@dows

        The head of studio making Project CARS said on the official forum they are looking into it.
        That doesn’t mean the tech will be implemented (especially with a sequel expected to be released at the end of 2017), just they are evaluating the feasibility (may be incompatible with their engine and their rendering pipeline) and cost of implementing it.

        Like everyone, I expect good news on that matter.

    • Raphael

      “VR has been “coming” for years, and yet no one wanted to bank a game on it, so we’re stuck with trailers for the games that haven’t happened yet. I think my Vive is amazing tech, but there isn’t a single game for it that I could use to recommend it to someone. Not. ONE.” <<< With that statement you shouldn't be using VR. DCS World is mindblowing in VR. Elite D, Pcars, HordeZ, Corsa, Hover Junkers etc etc. DCS World, Elite and Pcars, Corsa are selling VR. People are buying VR just for those sims. You shouldn't have purchased a Vive if you didn't understand or have any interest in the titles it had.

      • victor

        You forgot to mention Warthunder (in sim mode) which is fantastic in VR and it gives you spatial/situational advantage over non-vr players.

        • Raphael

          I still have to try War Thunder. Only spent 15 mins on it.

          • victor

            compared to DCS world, warthunder is better optimized for VR. My 5 year old PC cannot handle DCS world in VR(too much stuttering) whereas warthunder is smooth as butter.

          • Raphael

            Yes, DCS 1.5 stutters a lot. Unplayable on GTX 970 (my previous GPU). I have a 1070 now and there is still stutter around airbases but that is actually because DCS needs more CPU than GPU. My CPU is old now even though it’s overclocked to 4.8ghz. I5 2500k holds me back on DCS. DCS 2.0 runs better and looks better. War Thunder runs very well.

    • Arv

      I suggest you stay away from Steam and buy the likes of Chronos, The Climb and Edge Of Nowhere from the Oculus Store and play them from Steam. It’s also worth buying VorpX too.

      • Raphael

        Yeah… makes perfect sense… if you’re a demented chimp high on crystal meth.

    • Trooper Gooner

      I agree to a point, but Chronos is worth a look from the Rift store with Revive running. I’m around 8 Hours in and it’s a great game. The viewpoint is not what you would associate with a VR game but still adds to it for sure. The Climb is good too, but at 39 quid, that’s pushing it.

      Us early adopters have to give it time. I appreciate these small indies creating what we have on the VIVE so far, but totally understand what you are saying about they’re predominately 20 min jump in jump out games at present.

    • towblerone

      I’d rather play a bunch of tech demos in VR than a bunch of AAA “full games” that are no more than fetch quests, extended walking sections and repetitive combat sandwiched by QTEs and cinematic cut-scenes.

      People have a warped definition of what full games are. That’s not full; that’s artificial padding. 2D games have to pack in all of that artificial content to make up for the fact that they’re not terribly immersive. So you end up with a laundry list of chores to do and those chores combined constitute what too many confuse as a “full game”.

      And as a VR enthusiast it’s disconcerting that we’re holding VR to the standards of 2D games. Think of REAL sports, real games: Hockey, football, baseball, soccer. You understand the goals and how to achieve them very quickly; throw the ball in the hoop. But no one ever says “Yeah, but that’s not a full game.”

      Frankly, if that’s what we call full games, I’m happier heading in the direction that VR will take us, where immersion and shorter experiences will trump bloated, artificial volumes of content.

      • CazCore

        this really resonates with me. games have gotten so far away from REAL gameplay, and i’m really happy that VR (for now) is kind of forcing games to be games again instead of these dull non-game “experiences” full of grinding away at a bunch of mindless UI busywork, and mindless cinematic/story and/or character “progression”

        • towblerone

          If you actually look at a lot of these titles that are referred to as “full games” and blacked out everything but the player character, you’d notice that there’s very little complexity to the player’s actions; only the background changes.

          By the logic of the people arguing for “full games” in VR, none of the original classics would be referred to as complete. All the Atari games, early Nintendo games and a lot of other early 80s arcade stuff would’ve been called tech demos.

          I totally agree with everything you said, by the way. Couldn’t have said it better. Too many modern gamers forget what gameplay actually is.

          • Ali Abdoli

            But we are not in the 80s anymore. We have seen what computers can do and we want that to happen in vr as well rather than short or repetitive tech demos.

          • towblerone

            Doesn’t matter. A good game is a good game. Pac-Man still holds up. Mario Bros. still holds up. Joust still holds up. Those are “full games”. And they possess none of the fat modern “games” do. Cinematic cut-scenes, extended walking sections, recyclable fetch quests don’t constitute a full game; that’s content put in a game by developers to give the illusion of value. People sleepwalk through that content.

            Too many devs are aspiring filmmakers and instead of making actual games, they make movies with short interactive vignettes and call them games.

            Space Pirate Trainer is way more of a game than The Last of Us, to me, as how a game is defined. People have just adopted a warped definition of the word, as passed down by developers and publishers and haven’t even questioned it.

            And VR WILL have deeper, more complex, more substantive content in short order. The headsets JUST CAME OUT and hundreds/thousands of devs all over the world are working their fingers to the bone to quickly evolve VR as a medium.

            When I got my NES in 1986, I didn’t complain when I spent hours and hours going from left to right in Excitebike, Gradius or Super Mario Bros. All of which had very few game mechanics; hop on Goomba, avoid enemy bikes and obstacles, shoot enemy ships and dodge lasers. No one called Duck Hunt a damn demo. It was a full game. Our definition of that term has changed and, in my opinion, not for the better.

            I’ll guarantee that the ratio of actual “play-time” in even these early VR demos relative to time spent played will be greater than a lot of these supposed full games which you spend more time watching than playing.

          • CazCore

            i’m glad to see there is at least one other person out there that feels this way about the state of gaming past and present. nice posts.

            yeah all the old classics would be called mini-games with no real stubstance by today’s gamers. when its the complete opposite for an old school gamer like me.

            people throwing around the word “depth” all the time have no idea what real depth is. and are entertained by the shallowest experiences.

          • towblerone

            Exactly. Conversely, a lot of the things they count as depth are the absence of gameplay, like cutscenes, shallow leveling systems, grinding for loot, all of these things engineered by developers to make gamers think they’re doing more than they are.

          • CazCore

            so true. so true. the MMO mindset has so infected the rest of the industry. it’s all about simple-minded busywork acquisition of numbers and virtual items. pretty much 0 REAL gameplay. it’s so bad that its even a meme on MMO forums for people to consciously say that “fun” is not a good enough reason to play. so proud that they have a VIRTUAL work ethic, and proud that their time has so little meaning to them that they can pour such unhealthy amounts of it into something that has basically 0 challenge for their brain.

          • towblerone

            YES. See, this is a perversion of how gamers define gameplay. It requires no skill, only time.

            I was playing Guild Wars 2 years ago and was about 10 hours in. My warrior was farming wood to make some shoulder pauldrons and I realized I’d been walking back and forth from the forest to the armorer trading in this wood for three hours. It was then that I uninstalled the game and never played again.

            This is why I play so few 2D games anymore. In the last year I’ve played Doom, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Grim Dawn and that’s it. I didn’t finish Grim Dawn. All three were great but I saw everything GD had to offer in 5-6 hours but the game was insisting I repeat the same actions for probably the next 20-30. I’m not doing that. This is why gaming is still relegated to a relatively small consumer base compared to, say, mobile gaming. Too many PC/console games don’t respect your time; the controls are too convoluted; not enough “game” in between all of the cinematic fluff, .etc.

            This is also why I think VR will help bridge that gap between hardcore actual gameplay and long, fulfilling experiences that aren’t dull, linear stories that don’t lead anywhere. You’ll have your wave shooters on one end that you’ll play for maybe an hour and feel fulfilled and on the other end you’ll have meditative experiences that you can go through in 15 minutes and feel fulfilled. You won’t need to marathon anything for 48 hours to feel like you got something out of it.

            I refuse to waste my time like that on “games” anymore.

          • CazCore

            you’re a rare person who can type long messages that i wholly agree with. i’m glad i’m not so alone with my gaming point of view. :)

          • towblerone

            Thanks, man. It’s just annoying when console/PC gamers think they get to define what constitute a digital interactive experience. Not everything is a “video game” but too many gamers have tunnel vision and think that VR was made exclusively for them.

            It’s almost exactly the same way that fans of stage plays complained when the art of cinema was first introduced. They didn’t like it because the art wasn’t presented exactly the same way their plays were so many rejected it. Cinema wasn’t created as yet another form of entertainment for fans of stage theater; it was created to attract a WHOLLY NEW AUDIENCE.

            That’s the goal of VR: not to attract the relatively small market of console gamers but to attract billions outside that bubble with the variety of applications that don’t involve shooting zombies in first-person.

    • Sebastien Mathieu

      Brookhaven experiment is out (full game) still not AAA, but good production values and really fun….

      • DougP

        [realize your comment’s 1.5wk old, ancient in “VR time”]
        Agree Brookhaven exp is top quality.
        More recently was have “Raw Data” which is also top tier production quality.
        Can’t wait for Serious Sam VR as well.

        • Sebastien Mathieu

          yesss played 4-5 hours of raw data I think it’s awesome!!!
          so far the vive remains my champs HMD for VR, my oculus is benched….

  • JustNiz

    Its a shame that this tech needs to be explicitly built into the game rather than being a driver-level improvement, since it prevents existing games from taking advantage of it. Games like Elite:Dangerous would probably have been significantly improved with it.

    • Raphael

      Yes, it’s a shame the same applies to SLI and VR SLI. Relying on game developers to implement has been proven to be very haphazard and more miss than hit. These features need to be completely automatic without requiring devs to code into games.

      • Jad

        Nvidia seems to drop SLI anyway. 2-way only for GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 and the GTX 1060 doesn’t even have a SLI connector anymore.

    • I’m a developer of sorts and know enough to say that implementing SMP any lower than the application would be impossible. Tis about abstraction and how every engine and game has its own way of rendering the game, there’s simply no way to “slot in” this kind of optimisation automatically.

      • JustNiz

        Interesting. I ‘m a developer too (but not ever worked on any gaming 3D graphics, just some basic OpenGL). I would have expected DirectX/the GPU driver to totally abstract the hardware details away (i.e. number of shaders, pipelines etc). I mean all you are doing with SLI is doubling the amount of available hardware resources right? I would have thought it would be totally up to the driver or graphics API to manage how/when they get allocated to do the work assigned. If this is not true, then are you saying that games have to explicitly code for every different supported GPU in the world’s configuration? I mean thats logically the same thing. If not, why not?

        • Joshua Landau

          SMP doesn’t have much to do with SLI.

          SMP is a software feature (albeit requiring specialized hardware) that lets you render to multiple differently aligned “screens” at once. SLI is a technology to let multiple GPUs work together.

        • SLI has the same problems multithreading on the CPU has. Data dependency is the sticker, there’s no way to tell which GPU should do which task by default. A common SLI profile is SLI antialiasing which dedicates one GPU to just AA since its dependencies are rigid.

          I was talking about SMP though, massively different topic :D.

  • Anony Anonymous

    At the end came the news. Already stoned the GTX series 900.

  • snee mgee

    I wonder whether it’s safe to say that VR SLI will be implemented as well.

    • I’m thinking it must be possible and possibly coming since the VR Funhouse application will be using it.

  • Buddydudeguy

    lol everyone and there dog that knows a little Unity is calling them selves “a developer”.