nVidia, who has been making noises on the virtual reality front for a while now, has announced that they’re to launch ‘Gameworks VR’ to “help VR headset and game developers build incredible experiences on GeForce GPUs”.

nVidia has been talking up its commitment to virtual reality for some time now with initiatives such as VR Direct, a suite of features and optimisations designed to target the virtual realty enthusiast. Now, along with announcing a new ‘near’ top of the line GPU, the GTX 980ti, it’s to offer a new initiative to companies developing for VR with ‘Gameworks VR’.

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Gameworks ‘vanilla’ is already pushed by nVidia to developers as a middleware suite, designed to help developers optimise their games for nVidia hardware, including bespoke featureset only supported on their hardware. Gameworks VR looks to be launching as an extension to that program, offering standardised tools, code samples and assistance for those struggling to optimise their VR games for Oculus’ recently release recommended specification.

VR Direct’s features will form an important part of Gameworks VR:

  • NVIDIA Multi-Res Shading (MRS) — An innovative new rendering technique for VR. With NVIDIA MRS, each part of an image is rendered at a resolution that better matches the pixel density of the final displayed VR image. This technology uses the multi-projection architecture of the GeForce GTX 980 Ti GPU to render multiple viewports in a single pass. The result: substantial performance improvements for VR games.
  • VR SLI — Provides increased performance for VR apps. Multiple GPUs can be assigned a specific eye to dramatically accelerate stereo rendering. With the GPU affinity application programming interface, VR SLI allows scaling for PCs with two or more GPUs.
  • Context Priority — Enables control over GPU scheduling to support advanced VR features such as asynchronous time warp. This cuts latency and quickly adjusts images as gamers move their heads, without the need to re-render a new frame.
  • Direct Mode — Delivers plug-and-play compatibility for VR headsets. With Direct Mode, the NVIDIA graphics driver recognizes the headset as a VR display rather than a standard desktop monitor, providing a more seamless user experience.
  • Front Buffer Rendering — Lets the GPU to render directly to the front buffer to reduce latency.
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According to nVidia, key technology stakeholders have had access to Gameworks VR and presumably early release drivers for some time now – CCP Games, Epic Games, HTC, Oculus, and Valve – to name but a few.

We’re looking forward to seeing drivers supporting these new features once they come to pass – not to mention what engine and game developers manage to do with access to this kind of VR specific middleware. We only hope this doesn’t lead to fragmentation in development circles.

For more information on the new SDK, head over to the new Gameworks VR page here.

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Paul James
Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • Curtrock

    I was considering upgrading my NVIDIA GTX card in anticipation of the CV1, however in light of potential upgrades, I think I will wait until we have a firm date for delivery. I don’t want to get stuck with a “last generation” video card, if NVIDIA releases a VR specific upgrade to their GTX series.

  • Sean Concannon OculusOptician

    We were expecting VR Direct to be universal download for all GTX cards and now Nvidia is promoting this Gameworks VR extension that’s only compatible with a specific model? VR is supposed to be a mainstream industry, Nvidia should know better. VR enthusiasts are the smartest people out there, we’re not interested in dictated software features only available on expensive high end GPU’s. If companies like Nvidia decide to start pulling stuff like this it’s only going to take away from the VR industry as a whole. Oculus and Valve need to jump on Nvidia and stay firm about stuff like this.

    • sibbo

      Where does it indicate it is for the 980ti card only? I read it as being across the board driver changes for all nvidia cards or at least the latest gen 960, 970 and 980 cards.

    • MasterElwood

      It’s already confirmed:
      Most features will work on series 5 and up

      ALL features will work on ALL series 9 cards

      So: chill out

  • sp82

    The question is “WHEN?”

  • sp82

    When Oculus will release a runtime that use VR Direct?

  • Sean Concannon OculusOptician

    Some sources say it’s specific to the 980ti as an extension only. Others say it’s compatible with all 9 series cards and another suggests it’s VR Direct simply re-badged to Gameworks VR for the sake of confusion. Thanks Nvidia for being so convoluted.

    • MasterElwood

      Nothing convoluted here. NV made it PERFECTLY clear:

      ONE feature for all series 900 cards
      ALL OTHER features for series 500 and up.

      “GameWorks VR will work on Windows 7 and up, and as far as hardware is concerned, most
      features will work on all GeForce GTX 500-series cards and up. That’s the Fermi, Kepler,
      and Maxwell architectures, if you follow our internal codenames. The only exception there
      is that multi-res shading requires a GTX 900 series card, since it depends on the fast
      geometry shader that only the Maxwell architecture has.”

      https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/vr/GameWorks_VR_2015_Final_handouts.pdf