SAN FRANCISCO—Advanced Micro Devices envisions an immersive virtual reality that provides a "full sensory experience" of sights, sounds, and more.


Yep, AMD wants to build the holodeck. And surprise, surprise—the chip maker says it's uniquely qualified to carry VR to the next level. The company on Tuesday introduced its new LiquidVR software development kit, designed to support VR software engines used by the likes of Facebook subsidiary Oculus VR.


AMD, hosting a roundtable at the Game Developers Conference, emphasized the need for scalable central processors and graphics processors to improve VR technology.


"There are a couple of rules for VR," said Raja Koduri, head of visual computing at AMD. "Rule no. 1 is, 'Do not break the presence.' One of the most important aspects of that is reducing the motion-to-photon latency. And VR rule no. 2 is, 'If your CPU and GPU can't keep up, you throw up."



Reducing latency to keep a VR environment aligned with the user's perception of moving through it is crucial, Koduri noted. AMD is tackling this issue in both software and hardware.


The chip maker's LiquidVR SDK is designed to better sync AMD APUs and GPUs with virtual reality software engines like VR 2.0 from Oculus, said Layla Mah, head design engineer at AMD.


Mah detailed the key features in the LiquidVR software development kit, which include the ability to "latch" onto the latest data generated in a VR environment and asynchronous shaders, both of which are head-tracking optimizers which help reduce latency considerably for a more comfortable VR experience.


An example of how AMD addresses the latency issue and removes jutter and stutter is a function called "Time Warp."



"So, it can take 8 or 9 or 10 or 11 milliseconds to render a frame, and then it's already too old by the time it's calculated. So what Time Warp does is shift or move the pixels slightly to align it with what the user should be seeing," Mah said.


LiquidVR also features tools like "affinity multi-GPU" and "direct-to-display," which AMD said further assists a VR engine in reducing latency and pushing media coherently to the binocular displays of many current VR headsets.


Here's the breakdown of what developers are getting with LiquidVR 1.0, per AMD: