There’s some exciting news for those who have a VR headset and enjoy SteamVR games, as Valve has just introduced a new auto-resolution feature which intelligently adjusts the resolution to match the power of your graphics card.
The feature is in beta testing right now, but it should be a major boon to those with a lesser GPU, as it will be able to adjust the resolution to keep things running smoothly – which is, of course, a key consideration for VR and avoiding nausea or other unpleasantness that might be caused by choppy frame rates.
This is particularly aimed at those purchasing new headsets with amped-up resolutions like the HTC Vive Pro and various Windows Mixed Reality efforts. It’s expensive enough to buy the headset itself without having to upgrade your GPU to cope, as well – and with the new auto-resolution capability, a lesser graphics card will still be able to manage.
Naturally, you’ll still get a better experience in terms of graphics detail with a faster GPU, although that’s always been the case when it comes to PC gaming. Note that the system won’t down-tune your resolution to a lower level than the native resolution of the first-gen Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
Card sharp
As well as performing down-tuning, if you have a powerful graphics card the auto-resolution feature will crank up the resolution for an even sharper image if possible.
All this adjustment happens behind-the-scenes, so the user needn’t worry about anything, although you can still manually adjust the resolution via SteamVR’s video settings if you wish.
It's worth noting that the automatic adjustment happens once on startup, and isn’t performed for every individual game (or indeed dynamically within a game).
If you’re interested in testing out the new feature, head to SteamVR under Tools in your Steam Library, right-click to get Properties, then choose ‘beta’ from the drop-down menu in the Beta tab.
- Take SteamVR for a whirl on one of these gaming laptops
Via Ubergizmo