Nvidia releases GameWorks VR and DesignWorks VR SDKs to enhance VR gaming

Nvidia has released version 1.0 of two software development kits (SDKs) called Nvidia GameWorks VR and Nvidia DesignWorks VR which are optimised to work along with Nvidia’s own GeForce and Quadro line of GPUs for VR gaming as well as VR production. Nvidia has been working with Oculus to push forth for VR gaming. We had seen VR gaming occupy a major portion of Nvidia’s booth at this year’s Computex . The idea behind these SDKs is to improve VR experiences, increase gaming performance, reduce latency and accelerating 360-degree broadcasting. In the GameWorks VR which is relevant for game developers, Nvidia’s SDK includes Multi-res shading and VR SLI. Multi-res shading is a rendering technique wherein each image is rendered to the same resolution as you would get on the warped image required by the VR headsets. It makes use of Nvidia Maxwell architecture’s multi-projection capability for rendering. VR SLI as the name implies basically makes use of two graphics cards, each one rendering and providing image for each eye, for faster stereo rendering. Epic Games has announced support for GameWorks VR Multi-res Shading and VR SLI features in an upcoming version of its popular Unreal Engine 4. For professional developers working in markets such as manufacturing, media and entertainment, oil and gas as well as medical imaging; Nvidia has released the DesignWorks SDK which has additional features such as Warp and Blend (new APIs that provide application-independent geometry corrections and intensity adjustments across entire desktops while keeping latency low); Synchronisation (techniques to prevent tearing and image misalignment while creating one image from multiple GPUs); GPU Affinity (performance improvement by managing graphics placements and rendering workload across multiple GPUs) and Direct for Video (enabling VR and AR for head-mounted displays or immersive displays).