AMD announces LiquidVR aiming to eliminate VR latency

MD, joining a fast expanding list of tech companies interested in pursuing virtual reality, has announced a software development kit for implementing its LiquidVR technology. The company described it as a “set of innovative technologies focused on enabling exceptional VR content development” and hopes that it will address a number of issues associated with VR development, AMD announces LiquidVR aiming to eliminate VR latency

The new initiative, initially in the form of an alpha version SDK, is being handed to a group of select developers as of today, and is essentially a solution to make it easier for various VR headsets to work on various devices. The chipmaker has designed the SDK to simplify the VR experience for both developers and users, more specifically, to improve the user experience in virtual reality.

AMD has put much of its focus on minimising latency, the time between making a physical movement and seeing the action reflected in the virtual world, in order to provide users a fully immersed experience as well as reduce motion sickness. To effectively lessen latency, with hopes of removing it completely, every component, from the software and GPU to the hardware of a VR system needs to be involved.

Headline features of the LiquidVR SDK teased by AMD include a hardware-accelerated ‘timewarp’ to minimise latency and stuttering, affinity multi-GPU to allow devs to better utilise multiple graphics cards, direct-to-display technologies which give users the ability to boot directly to a VR display and latest data latch programming mechanisms for efficient GPU head tracking. Much of these features are linked with the goal of eliminating any latency between movement and visualisation as it re-images the way frames are rendered.

“Content, comfort, and compatibility are the cornerstones of our focus on VR at AMD and we’re taking a big step in all three areas with the introduction of LiquidVR today. With LiquidVR we’re collaborating with the ecosystem to unlock solutions to some of the toughest challenges in VR and giving the keys to developers of VR content so that they can bring exceptional new experiences to life,” said Raja Koduri, corporate vice president, Visual Computing, AMD, in a press release. “AMD will continue to collaborate closely with the VR ecosystem to deliver new LiquidVR technologies that aim to make the virtual world every bit as accurate as the real world.”

AMD announces LiquidVR aiming to eliminate VR latency

AMD announced the initiative at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today. The LiquidVR technologies are aimed at enabling great VR content running on AMD hardware, such as AMD’s microprocessors. The company is working with partners such as Facebook’s Oculus VR, the maker of the Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD wants to create plug-and-play compatibility for a wide range of head-mounted displays, or virtual reality goggles. AMD will release the LiquidVR software development kit in the future to enable developers to create compatible VR content.

The company is one of many players that want to create virtual reality, or lifelike virtual worlds for consumers. AMD wants to create “presence,” or the feeling of being physically present in a virtual world. A key obstacle to presence is addressing motion-to-photon latency, or the time between when a user moves their head and when their eyes see an updated frame reflecting that new position. When there’s a mismatch, VR users get motion sickness.

AMD’s graphics processing units (GPUs) and hardware subsystems are aimed at reducing the latency in the processing pipeline. AMD wants to create smooth, “liquid-like motion” and real-time responsiveness for developers.

“Content, comfort, and compatibility are the cornerstones of our focus on VR at AMD, and we’re taking a big step in all three areas with the introduction of LiquidVR today,” said Raja Koduri, the corporate vice president of visual computing at AMD, in a statement. “With LiquidVR, we’re collaborating with the ecosystem to unlock solutions to some of the toughest challenges in VR and giving the keys to developers of VR content so that they can bring exceptional new experiences to life. AMD will continue to collaborate closely with the VR ecosystem to deliver new LiquidVR technologies that aim to make the virtual world every bit as accurate as the real world.”

Features of the LiquidVR SDK include Async Shaders for smooth head-tracking, Affinity Multi-GPU for scalable rendering, data latch for smooth head-tracking, and direct-to-display for attaching head-mounted displays to computers. All of those technologies are aimed at improving the overall VR experience. The alpha version of the SDK is available today.

Article: AMD announces LiquidVR aiming to eliminate VR latency

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AMD announces LiquidVR aiming to eliminate VR latency