Static gaze point rendering

In the human visual system, human vision is divided into two parts: central vision and peripheral vision. Central vision provides precise and detailed visual content, and peripheral vision provides a wide field of view. The difference of visual acuity between the two has led to the Foveated Rendering technology commonly used in the field of VR.

By providing lossless resolution for the center of the field of view and reducing the resolution of the peripheral field of view (outside the focus area of the human eye), gaze rendering can greatly reduce the computational complexity and optimize the rendering effect of VR scenes.

In static gaze rendering (Fixed Foveated Rendering), the focus of the field of view is fixed at the center of the viewport, and the resolution decreases from the center to the periphery.

Schematic diagram of resolution

The PANCAKE Unity SDK provides three rendering levels for the fixation point: FOVEATION _ LEVEL _ LOW, FOVEATION _ LEVEL _ MEDIUM, and FOVEATION _ LEVEL _ HIGH. Different grades have different effects on resolution. The schematic diagram is as follows:


Effect display

The rendering effect of the Low, Med, and High levels of the fixation point is as follows:


Setting the Goggle Point Render Level

  1. In Project Settings, select XR Plug-in Management > OpenXR.
  2. Select SXR.
  3. Clicking on SXR Runtime will bring up the Feature Settings panel.
  4. Set Foveation Level by checking Enable Foveation.


Known issues

If you use the Universal Rendering Pipeline (URP) within a project and turn on static gaze rendering, it will cause static gaze rendering to fail.
· Reason 1: The static gaze point rendering capability is currently tied to the Eye Buffer, due to the introduction of Intermediate Texture by URP. As a result, the image is first rendered to the Intermediate Texture instead of the Eye Buffer, resulting in a static gaze point rendering failure.
Solution: Disables post-processing, HDR, and the Renderer Feature that uses Intermediate Texture.

· Reason 2: In URP 10.10.1, the behavior of the Clear Flags setting for the camera has changed so that the Invalidate setting for Color Attachment is lost when Skybox is selected, causing static gaze point rendering to fail.
Note: This problem may also exist in versions after 10.10.1, subject to actual use.
Solution: ScriptableRenderer Comment out CameraClearFlags.Skybox the section in the GetCameraClearFlag method of so that it also returns ClearFlag.All, as shown in the following figure.