In Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality News
August 22, 2023 – Varjo, a provider of professional-grade virtual and mixed reality (VR/MR) hardware and software, has recently announced that is combining its mixed reality (MR) and immersive visuals with NVIDIA Omniverse — NVIDIA’s platform for developing unified 3D workflows and Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD)-based applications. Varjo stated that the combination of its XR technology with the Omniverse platform will unlock high-fidelity photorealism and real-time ray-tracing capabilities for XR developers and users.
According to Varjo, the NVIDIA Omniverse new features and tools, announced earlier this month at SIGGRAPH 2023, will bring various new improvements, including OpenXR support, to virtual and mixed reality developers. Varjo noted that with its human-eye resolution XR headsets and NVIDIA’s Omniverse, developers will be able to fully ray trace complex, full-fidelity mixed reality data sets with millions of polygons, physical materials, and accurate lighting. Individuals and teams will be able to experience the data sets in immersive environments without requiring additional time for data preparation.
Varjo demonstrated some extremely impressive mixed reality ray tracing capabilities using the Omniverse platform in a video highlighting the technology (shown below).
“Real-time ray tracing is the holy grail of 3D visualization,” said Marcus Olsson, Director of Software Partnerships at Varjo. “Graphical and computing demands made it impossible to ray trace true-to-life scenes like these in high-resolution VR until now. With support for NVIDIA Omniverse, mixed reality developers and users will have the ability to render photorealistic scenes in Varjo XR-3 and unlock ray tracing in mixed reality. The rendering pipeline was built to scale well on NVIDIA’s new powerful multi-GPU setups. The combination of Varjo’s human-eye resolution hardware with the Omniverse platform’s ray-tracing capabilities and next-generation GPUs is a game-changer for mixed reality developers in design, engineering, entertainment, and virtual collaboration.”
Varjo added that the latest release of NVIDIA Omniverse will support the retinal resolution Quad View rendering for the Varjo XR-3, the company’s highest-fidelity mixed reality headset with over 60 pixels per degree (PPD) resolution. Varjo further explained that the renderer produces two high-resolution views and two lower-resolution views, which are subsequently combined by the Varjo XR-3 device to provide users with a high level of realism and immersion.
Initially, the Varjo and NVIDIA collaboration was first demonstrated at AWE USA in June 2023. During a presentation with General Motors (GM), Varjo and NVIDIA demonstrated how their mixed reality technology enabled GM’s design team to experience their design work in a very realistic way, helping the team work more smoothly and quickly on design changes.
To learn more about Varjo’s mixed reality technology, including its XR-3 headset, click here. To find out more about NVIDIA Omniverse, click here.
Image / video credit: Varjo / Vimeo
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About the author
Gavril is a knowledgeable contributing author at Auganix. An experienced XR industry news curator, he has been keeping abreast with the latest AR, VR and tech developments for the last four years.