Good news for NVIDIA GPU owners today as Pool Nation VR was updated to include support for Multi Res Shading alongside other feature additions and improvements.
Pool Nation VR is a firm Road to VR favourite, with our own Garret Bullard awarding the title a very respectable 4.7/5 in his recent review, stating that the game is “responsive, looks good, and is great simulation of the game we all know and enjoy. If you enjoy pool and have a friend with an HTC Vive this game is a must.”
Now, the developers Cherry Pop Games and Perilous Orbit have released a patch which adds some significant enhancements to the title. Chief among them is the implementation of NVIDIA’s proprietary Multi-res Shading rendering method. According to the patch notes:
“Multi-Res Shading is an innovative rendering technique for VR whereby each part of an image is rendered at a resolution that better matches the pixel density of the lens corrected image. Multi-Res Shading uses Maxwell or later architecture features to render multiple scaled viewports in a single pass, delivering substantial performance improvements in pixel shading. “
Steam users are already reporting significant performance gains allowing them to ramp up super-sampling by 33% or more, which massively increases the quality and clarity of the visuals in the game.
The developers haven’t stopped there either. Darts is now its own fully fledged mini-game, Skreeball has been improved, and a collection of usability improvements have all made this patch along with a change to the layout of the play area. Cryptically, the patch notes ask “Hmmm… I wonder why we’re readying the map with more spaces and machines” which might suggest there are more minigames on the way.
Hopefully these updates will introduce more people to one of the best VR experiences available. If your interest is now piqued, you can buy Pool Nation VR for HTC Vive on Steam right here.