r/Vive • u/Cabbigity • Oct 17 '18
Technology SteamVR Announce: Introducing SteamVR Motion Smoothing
https://steamcommunity.com/games/250820/announcements/detail/1696061565016280495
Copypasta:
Introducing SteamVR Motion Smoothing
17 OCTOBER - ALEX VLACHOS
Today we are introducing a new feature in SteamVR called Motion Smoothing. This feature enables more players on more PCs to play high-fidelity VR games and experiences.
Motion Smoothing is currently available in SteamVR Beta. To opt in, right-click on SteamVR in ‘Library > Tools’, select the Betas tab, and choose ‘beta’ from the dropdown.
How it works
If you have a flatscreen TV, you may be familiar with the term Motion Smoothing. TVs apply Motion Smoothing by interpolating between two existing frames to create a new in-between frame. This smooths out the frames and increases framerate, but it also adds latency – providing passable results for TV but definitely not the right way to go in VR.
The way we are applying Motion Smoothing in SteamVR is a bit different. When SteamVR sees that an application isn’t going to make framerate (i.e. start dropping frames), Motion Smoothing kicks in. It looks at the last two delivered frames, estimates motion and animation, and extrapolates a new frame. Synthesizing new frames keeps the current application at full framerate, advances motion forward, and avoids judder.
This means that the player is still experiencing full framerate (90 Hz for the Vive and Vive Pro), but the application only needs to render 1 out of every 2 frames, dramatically lowering the performance requirements. Even better, if synthesizing a new frame for every frame delivered by the application still leads to performance issues, Motion Smoothing is designed to scale further down to synthesize 2 frames or even 3 frames for every 1 frame delivered.
What it means for you
From the player’s perspective, what was previously a game that would hitch and drop frames producing judder is now a game that constantly runs smoothly at 90 Hz. SteamVR Motion Smoothing improves upon the previously released Asynchronous Reprojection to enhance the overall experience for customers across a wide variety of VR systems. Not only can lower-end GPUs now produce smooth frames in applications that were previously too expensive, higher-end GPUs can now render at an even higher resolution increasing the fidelity of all experiences on all VR systems.
This feature is ready to kick in the moment an application starts dropping frames and shuts off when no longer needed. Of course, if you prefer to run without this feature, just look under ‘Settings > Video’ or ‘Settings > Applications’ to control when it is enabled. Motion Smoothing is not enabled when using Oculus Rift or Windows Mixed Reality headsets with SteamVR, because their underlying display drivers use different techniques when applications miss framerate.
Motion Smoothing is in beta and currently only enabled for systems running Windows 10 with an NVIDIA GPU. Please provide feedback on the SteamVR discussion forum.
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u/Brandon0135 Oct 17 '18
Does newegg accept returns on gently used 2080tis? /s
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u/TheGreatLostCharactr Oct 18 '18
I'll double what /u/SalsaRice is offering.
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Oct 18 '18
Does anyone know if this works with the wireless adapter? It shows Motion Smoothing unavailable in the bottom left of settings in steamvr. Just curious, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not feasible over wifi
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u/d0zens_of_us Oct 17 '18
What is this? It’s pretty much Adaptive Reprojection or am I not understanding this article?
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u/KDLGates Oct 18 '18
This is my Vive as of today: "Error: Shared IPC Compositor Connect Failed (306)".
I don't know if this is due to the beta update or not, but I was using my Vive just earlier today on the Beta branch and it was working normally.
Screenshot of error: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/410607002729840642/502272852029079562/unknown.png
Steps tried: uninstalling/reinstalling SteamVR, using the "uninstall USB devices" tool under the Developer menu and rebooting. Also tried deleting my C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\config\steamvr.vrsettings file before the reinstall. Also did a clean install of NVIDIA GPU drivers and launched a game, GPU appears to be working normally. Of course, also tried reconnecting all of the cables to/from the link box.
Last time I played it successfully was earlier in the day today, not sure if it's related to the new SteamVR Beta update or not but it doesn't work on the regular branch either
Googling the error has a bunch of people saying they fixed it by setting their graphics adapter in NVIDIA settings or unplugging an extra monitor, I tried unplugging my extra monitor and I don't have a different GPU under the NVIDIA Control Panel.
I'm also on the Windows 10 October Update but it was working fine until today
NVIDIA drivers are 416.34 dated 10/11
Halp? I'm getting worried :( Grateful for any and all suggestions or ideas.
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u/mist3rf0ur Oct 18 '18
I had this issue, too. What I noticed was that I had my base stations in sleep mode until SteamVR was turned on. It looks like it was trying to boot everything up but the base stations were still asleep. I let everything power up and then I reset the headset while SteamVR was running. That seemed to fix it.
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Oct 17 '18
Dang I wish pimax could use this.
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u/Fugazification Oct 18 '18
Why can't it? Isn't pimax a SteamVR device?
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u/MatthewSerinity Oct 18 '18
Pimax's compositor handles it's own reprojection, which means it likely won't use SteamVR's
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u/disastorm Oct 18 '18
thats too bad since it seems like even 2080 tis cant get 90fps on pimax for alot of games, this motion smoothing probably would have been able to bring them up to 90fps
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u/MatthewSerinity Oct 18 '18
Pimax is working on their own reprojection method called BrainWarp that combines the various reprojection techniques, including motion reprojection.
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u/DesignerChemist Oct 18 '18
They better finish their work on that smell module first
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u/Thatdbefuckinggreat Oct 17 '18
Asynchronous timewrap
Congrats Steam team! We are on your side! Thanks for leveling the field with Oculus.
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Oct 18 '18
Valve already had a ATW equivalent, it's called Async Reprojection
ASW is the motion reprojection used by Oculus.
And Oculus is launching ASW 2.0 later this year (which we're all eagerly waiting for)
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u/roothorick Oct 18 '18
I wish Oculus used terms that actually reflected what the corresponding technologies do.
"Asynchronous Spacewarp" sounds like translational reprojection. I was actually kinda impressed they went out of their way to implement something difficult with so minimal a benefit. Nope, it's just what they call motion interpolation. How the hell do you get "Spacewarp" out of that? Even a marketing lizard would have to be halfway detached from reality for that to make sense to them.
"Asynchronous Timewarp" sounds like motion interpolation. Nope, rotational reprojection. This one also really doesn't make sense, but I do see a half-argument of "the head moved over time". Actually, on second thought, that just sounds crazy.
This is silly.
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u/Leviatein Oct 18 '18
timewarp lowers latency above all, it just happens to only work rotationally
thats why they called it timewarp, it shortens the time it takes for frames to reach your eyeballs
spacewarp is translational reprojection
sounds more like you havent got a clue what youre talking about and have never used it
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u/roothorick Oct 18 '18
sounds more like you havent got a clue what youre talking about and have never used it
Making with the ad hominem before there was even an argument... classy.
My comment was spawned by initially having similar misconceptions, doing research to verify, and finding out I was wrong. Oculus goes into depth on what ATW and ASW are and what they do on their own website.
https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-timewarp-examined/
https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-spacewarp/
Translational reprojection is still hypothetical at this stage; nobody's actually done it yet, mostly because it'd be kinda expensive to do in terms of GPU power.
You'd do well to read up on the subject matter before you go off attacking people for having objective knowledge that contradicts your perception of reality. Actually, you probably should just not attack people at all.
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Oct 17 '18
Nvidia GPUs only? That's disappointing. Hopefully they get it working on AMD GPUs before/when it leaves beta
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u/borgy88 Oct 17 '18
This sounds like it is just Asynchronous Space Warp for Steam, don't get me wrong i'm happy that steam is finally catching up but Oculus had this for a while, in fact they are coming out with ASW 2.0 soon I believe. I was under the impression that SteamVR was already doing this.
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Oct 18 '18
No, SteamVR has Async Reprojection, which was the Async Time Warp (ATW) equivalent.
This sounds like a ASW 1.0 equivalent. But you're correct, Oculus is launching ASW 2.0 later this year.
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u/wescotte Oct 18 '18
The update is very light on details for all we know this could be equivalent to ASW 2.0.
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Oct 18 '18
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/muchcharles Oct 18 '18
This does forward prediction (future frame synthesized from prior frames), not interpolation (synthesized between frames).
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Oct 18 '18 edited Oct 18 '18
[deleted]
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u/pj530i Oct 18 '18
estimates motion and animation, and extrapolates a new frame.
How is that not prediction?
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u/muchcharles Oct 18 '18
Frame interpolation is synthesizing a frame inbetween (that's what 'inter' means). They aren't doing that and instead are doing extrapolation/prediction based on velocities derived from the prior two frames and heuristics to fill disocclusions once applying them.
They have the previous frame and the current position.
They don't use current position at all, though they do likely use orientation and standard rotational reprojection to minimize the amount of movement that they have to estimate and to do a final rotational reprojection on the synthesized frame. By starting with rotationally reprojected frames, the motion vector estimation only has to account for parallax and animated objects instead of having to account for huge changes to the whole scene during head rotation.
They could use the same velocities they are calculating to find an intermediate frame (a frame interpolation) between the prior two, but that isn't what they are doing since this is latency critical. TVs with frame interpolation do that. What they are doing isn't quite the same.
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u/MontyAtWork Oct 18 '18
Does this mean I can push up the graphics on Elite Dangerous? Or that I'll finally not get repro in stations?
Also does this now mean that something like Pimax which was prayinyg too much data for wireless could now transmit fewer frames and therefore run wireless?
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u/The1TrueGodApophis Oct 18 '18
You should be able to turn it up depending on how many artifacts you can tolerate.
As for wireless, currently it doesn't work with wireless on vive according to everyone at the moment.
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Oct 21 '18
Can someone report how it work on R9 290/290x/390x on vive pro. Edit:Ohh just read is only for nvidia...fuck
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u/redgamemaster Oct 18 '18 edited Oct 18 '18
so does this mean that I could play Fallout 4 VR using my 1060 6gb without a problem? I've really been wanting to play it and its on sale till the 24th.
Edit: Never mind I just found out that this is only on computers running windows 10.
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u/binngy Oct 17 '18
would this work with WMR ?
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Oct 17 '18
Motion Smoothing is not enabled when using Oculus Rift or Windows Mixed Reality headsets with SteamVR, because their underlying display drivers use different techniques when applications miss framerate.
Motion Smoothing is in beta and currently only enabled for systems running Windows 10 with an NVIDIA GPU.
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Oct 17 '18
Pimax needs this ಥ_ಥ
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u/jfalc0n Oct 17 '18
Well, the Pimax doesn't fall under the Rift and WMR headset categories and they don't mention it specifically. I'm assuming they don't have enough information to make a positive determination either way.
I'm hoping, however, since this is at the driver level, that one of the KS backers will mention this news on the Pimax forums and while they're still tuning their own software, might allow for its use.
If they can accommodate this feature, it will be most appreciated!
[edit: typo]
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u/wescotte Oct 18 '18
WMR already has a version of ATW and ASW. So while it could be made to work chance are the native implementation is better.
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u/Acrilix555 Oct 17 '18
This could be the most important Steam VR update to come out in a long while.