Valve has announced a new beta version of SteamVR that introduces a very interesting tool; “Automatic resolution” (“auto-resolution”). As its name suggests it is responsible for automatically adjusting the resolution, but it does so in a very particular way.
The objective of this tool is to help the user to get the best possible experience with games, and for this, he takes into account the power of the PC graphics card.
This means that if we have a powerful GPU that exceeds the recommended requirements of a game SteamVR’s “auto-resolution” function can raise the resolution even beyond the limits of our virtual reality kit thanks to supersampling.
This means that it will render the game at a higher than maximum resolution of our virtual reality kit and that it will subsequently adjust to its native resolution.
This technique is considered as an advanced form of edge smoothing and allows for cleaner and sharper images, but has a significant impact on performance.
On the other hand, if the application detects that our computer has a “loose” graphics card it will reduce the resolution of the game and may leave it below the native resolution of our virtual reality kit.
This can have quite unpleasant effects since it increases the teeth of the saw and in the surroundings of virtual reality, it causes that the limits that separate pixels of others are visible.
If the final result does not convince us we can resort to a manual adjustment of the resolution, so in any case, we will not have problems of any kind.
This new tool works with all compatible kits; Live, Live Pro, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality systems.
