VRWorks Enables “Ultra” in EVE: Valkyrie, Now Supported in Unreal Engine 4.16 and Unity 2017.1

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This morning CCP Games released a large patch that enables Ultra graphics mode for EVE: Valkyrie. We are looking forward to benchmarking the performance of the new Ultra setting as it should enrich and enhance the graphics quality and increase immersion. This new level of graphics quality was made possible with the support by NVIDIA VRWorks and GameWorks graphics technologies.

EVE: Valkyrie is a multiplayer dogfighting shooter game set in the EVE Online universe that is designed to use virtual reality headsets. It uses NVIDIA’s Lens Matched Shading rendering technique to improve performance and quality enabling GeForce gamers to enjoy Ultra mode at smooth, consistent framerates.

A lighting model developed by NVIDIA and incorporated by CCP for EVE: Valkyrie uses high-quality, physically-based lighting effects from NVIDIA Volumetric Lighting to add God rays to many scenes and levels, enhancing their appearance.

EVE: Valkyrie also includes a new anti-aliasing technique developed by NVIDIA called Multi-Sample G-Buffer Anti-Aliasing which improves anti-aliasing by further reducing visible aliasing of geometry edges and specular highlights, giving players a superior visual experience.

Ultra mode also enhances cockpit lighting, improving the fidelity of shiny, specular surfaces, increasing the quality of lighting and shadowing in every area and level, improves the fidelity of reflections and shaders, and adds dynamic lights to projectiles.

VRWorks is now supported in Unreal Engine 4.16

NVIDIA released a new VRWorks-enabled branch of Unreal Engine release 4.16 that adds support for NVIDIA VRWorks. With this branch, Unreal developers using the latest release can now easily take advantage of features including Lens Matched Shading (LMS), Single Pass Stereo (SPS), VR SLI, and Multi-res Shading (MRS).

Lens Matched Shading uses NVIDIA Pascal hardware features to improve upon Multi-Res Shading, optimizing rendering and ensuring frame buffer and display pixel rates are matched for optimum performance.

Single Pass Stereo, another Pascal exclusive, reduces geometry bandwidth by close to 50% freeing up precious resources to tackle more complex scenes.

VR SLI lets developers take advantage of multi-GPU systems for peak performance. If you want more information, check out our explanation of VRWorks here.

The VRWorks 4.16 Graphics branch of UE4 is available to anyone with a UE4 Github subscription.

VRWorks now available in Unity 2017.1

NVIDIA VRWorks, including MRS, SPS, LMS, and VR SLI features, is now publicly available for all developers in Unity 2017.1, which is out now. Unity 2017.1 includes new graphics extensions that enables the VRWorks plugin. The VRWorks plugin is available on the Unity Asset Store.

The Oculus Rift is now available for the next 6 weeks at the reduced price of $399.99 including the Touch Controllers and a great game bundle. BabelTechReviews will continue to benchmark VR games and we expect to also take a look at the performance of Eve: Valkyrie using FCAT VR and through the lens HMD benchmarking.

Happy Gaming!