Easy Allies Podcast #303 - January 28, 2022

I'm gradually catching up to the podcasts again as I'm making my way through the GOTY deliberations too, so I might have missed my moment, but I still wanted to chime in on the PS VR 2 and its foveated rendering (fo-vee-ated). My master thesis happened to be on foveated rendering, specifically leveraging it to perhaps reach realtime ray-traced rendering (that is a complete frame rendered solely through ray tracing for higher quality). I used a kickstarter VR headset (Fove) that contained eye tracking as one of the earliest, if not *the* earliest. There is a very small part in our eyes with the highest density of cones that gives us really good vision. That area is called the "fovea" (hence the term "foveated rendering") and corresponds to only about the size of your thumb nail at arm's length. Outside of that space, the quality of our vision falls off rapidly. Just try looking at a word and reading another 2 lines away. It's roughly a 5° circle in our vision in which we see fine detail (of which the fovea is even only 2°), which seems dramatically bad when you realize we have about 160° vision horizontally and 135° vision vertically, but it's really all we need when we focus on something anyway. For foveated rendering we use that information combined with eye tracking to only render that small area you focus on at maximum quality and decrease the quality gradually towards the periphery. Our peripheral vision is blurry anyway, so why spend the rendering budget on that? That brings down the cost of rendering quite a bit and increases frame rate, which specifically for VR and VR sickness prevention is very important. Interesting to note is that I found that there was already research into foveated rendering for the regular PS VR, although that one did not have eye tracking, so this has been in the works for a while already. It makes sense too, because it helps keep frame rates higher. The higher the screen resolution, the higher the percentage saved performance, so that's a good match with the 4k screens on the PS VR 2, and it is really one of the only ways to feasibly increase screen fidelity in VR going forward. Foveated rendering is here to stay :)

Zkarts

Rebellion is the epitome of...i want to try this but I feel like I need to spend a few hours reading up on HOW to play it first. Damn good once you learn it, but it's a VERY opaque game at first glance.

potato potato also another potato

Thanks for taking my question, you did not disappoint https://drive.google.com/file/d/1csrmxIWl5mV3l7Dugb7szGFH8QD-n3AO/view?usp=sharing

Sean Dupree

There is a 4x strategy game where you can play as the Empire trying to conquer the entire galaxy OR the Rebellion trying the free it - 1998's Star Wars Rebellion, currently $2 on GoG: https://www.gog.com/en/game/star_wars_rebellion

Connor Rosine

If you go to Patreon on desktop, there's a tab titled "My Membership." That has a personalized RSS feed with all the audio files available at your reward level and can be plugged into any app like a normal podcast feed. -Bloodworth

Easy Allies

Best in the biz, baybee.

Hylian Ticipated

Is there a patrons version podcast playlist?

Always a nice thing to put on in the background when I'm feeling sick.

R.F. Switch

oh jeez. I kinda bungled it with the canadian "citizenship" line as that complicates things. Possible incoming corrections I think sorry guys! :(