The document discusses optimizations made to the VR game Space Pirate Trainer to improve performance when running on Intel graphics. Through tools like Intel GPA, optimizations were identified including simplifying shaders, removing dynamic lights and post-processing effects, lowering resolution and upscaling, and improving rendering order. These changes resulted in performance increasing from 12 FPS to 60 FPS, allowing the game to run well on mainstream PCs with Intel graphics.

1. Audience
Getting Space Pirate Trainer* to Perform ON
Intel® Graphics
Dirk Van Welden – Founder of I-Illusions
Cristiano Ferreira – Intel Developer Relations Engineer
Seth Schneider – Intel® GPA Product Owner

2. 2
▪ Getting cozy with Space Pirate Trainer*
▪ Why target mainstream VR?
▪ Dive into optimizations found with Intel® GPA
▪ Questions?
Agenda

3. What is Space Pirate
Trainer*?spacepiratetrainer.com

4. 4

5. 5
● Launch title for HTC* Vive, Oculus*
Touch and Microsoft* Mixed
Reality
● Early access title since April 2016
● 1.0 since October 2017
● 150,000+ units sold
● Used worldwide in VR arcades and
as a demo experience
A Few Facts

6. 6
● Rift backer
● Valve / Vive kit
● Here’s a VR demo
“I’m never going to create a VR game”

7. 7
Pre-beta
Evolution
1.0
While keeping min spec of NVIDIA* 970GTX

8. 8
● Initial MSMR port
○ Together with Microsoft*
○ Up & Running in 3 days
○ Same min. spec of 970
● Mainstream audience demo feedback
○ Cool, can I run it on my ultrabook?
○ Affordable HMD <-> Expensive PC/Laptop
● Huge market opportunity, but at the time, limited quality content
Why Mainstream?

9. 9
● Initial mainstream version (Intel® Core™ i5 processor family, Intel®
HD620 Graphics, Intel® NUC)
○ 12 FPS
● No point-lights, no post-effects
○ Almost 30 FPS, ugly
● “I seriously doubt this, but let’s try”
Let’s do it! … But

10. 10
Before and After…
12 FPS
Constant Hitches
Fantastic Visual Quality
60 FPS
No Hitches
Good Visual Quality

11. Tools and Hardware

12. 12
Development Configuration

13. 13
Microsoft* Surface Pro 1796
Todays Configuration
Surface Compatibility: https://goo.gl/YAuQ3X

14. 14
What’s Inside Intel® Graphics Performance
Analyzer (Intel® GPA)? System Analyzer / HUD
Graphics Frame Analyzer
In-game analysis
Single frame analysisTimeline analysis
Graphics Monitor
Launch & config tool
Graphics Trace Analyzer

15. 15
Performance Feature Focused
Hotspot Analysis
Identifies most expensive sets of
events grouped by state and/or
bottleneck
Metrics Analysis
Identifies exact hardware bottleneck
Playback Experiments
Test performance optimizations and
quantify improvements

16. Optimizations Shaders and Materials

17. 17
Shaders – Floor
Before (Standard Shader) After (Lambert Shader)
267 Instructions
47 Instructions
~1.5ms GPU Duration ~0.3ms GPU Duration
(5x Performance Improvement)

18. 18
Shaders – Floor Visual Quality
Before (Standard Shader) After (Lambert Shader)

19. 19
Shaders – Microsoft* Windows Mixed Reality Toolkit
▪ Microsoft* has recreated all of Unity’s* built-in shaders to contain
significantly less math ops
▪ Quick action:
– Download the kit: https://github.com/Microsoft/MixedRealityToolkit-Unity
– When detecting Mainstream WinMR swap materials to the ones
contained in the kit

20. 20
Shaders - Material Batching With Unlit Shaders
…To the Frame Analyzer!

21. 21
Shaders - Material Batching With Unlit Shaders
No Batching or Instancing
# of Draws: 1300
# of Vertices: 1.5M
GPU Duration: 3.5ms
Batching and Instancing
# of Draws: 8
# of Vertices: 2M
GPU Duration: 1.7ms
(2x Performance Improvement)

22. 22
Shader LODs - Droid Lazers

23. Optimizations Lighting and Post Effects

24. 24
Remove Dynamic Lights
• Dynamic Lights need to
render multiple passes for
each light contributing
5ms of frame time!
• Events 83 and 84 are the
base pass, then 123-130
are the additional passes
for each dynamic light

25. 25
Post Processing Stacks - Bloom
…To the Frame Analyzer!
Again!

26. 26
Post Processing Stacks - Bloom
Low Settings
• Ended up using the Mobile Bloom PFX
Stack.
• Consolidated all PFX into one pass
• GPU Duration: 0.6ms
(4x Performance Improvement)
High Settings
• Initially reduced number of passes to 14
• GPU Duration: 2.6ms

27. 27
Post Processing - HDR – Vertical Flip
▪ There is a required vertical flip
step that happens when using
HDR effects
▪ The way to avoid the .3 ms /
frame penalty is to uncheck all
HDR boxes on scene cameras
& to remove image effects that
may require it (usually
tonemapping / bloom / etc).
▪ If using post effects, use the
post effects stack and not
image effects
▪ Removed any effects with a
depth pass (Fog, etc.)

28. 28
Post Processing - Antialiasing

29. 29
Post Processing - TSCMAA
▪ Temporally Stable post effect anti aliasing
techniques like CMAA can provide equivalent
functionality at half the cost
▪ If necessary, use Temporally Stable CMAA
(TSCMAA) – good if rendering at less than
1280x1280 and upscaling.
Performance: 1.5X performance improvement with
TSCMAA over 4x MSAA
4x MSAA
TSCMAA

30. Optimizations CPU Performance and
Power Sharing

31. 31
Raycasting CPU Side Improvement For the Lasers

32. Optimizations General Best Practices

33. 33
Render at a Lower Res & Upscale

34. 34
Render at Low Res & Upscale - Code Sample

35. 35
RenderQueue Order for WinMR
1. Draw VR hands and any
interactibles (weapons, etc.)
2. Draw scene dressings,
dynamic / small static objects
3. Draw Large Set Pieces
(Buildings, Ship, etc.)
4. Draw the floor
5. Draw skybox (usually already
done last if using built-in Unity
skybox)
1
2
3
4
5

36. 36
RenderQueue Order for WinMR
…To the Frame Analyzer!
One more time!

37. 37
Check RenderQueue Order with Intel® GPA

38. 38
How to Change RenderQueue Order in Unity*

39. 39
Skybox Compression
Low Settings
• 1K texture
• GPU Duration: 0.2ms
(5x Performance Improvement)
High Settings
• 2k texture - originally was
uncompressed at 4k
• GPU Duration: 1.1ms

40. Summary

41. 41

42. 42
Results – 4x Faster!
12 FPS on default settings
w/out lights and PFX, about 30 FPS
60 FPS (low) and 35 FPS (High)
Better performance on all platforms!

43. Questions?

44. 44
Helpful Links:
- Perf Recommendations for immersive
headset apps: https://goo.gl/4V4kpr
- Porting Guides: https://goo.gl/QTbWYp
- Enthusiast’s Guide:
https://goo.gl/gKZE2w
- Development Hardware:
https://goo.gl/gNG5oK
Tools:
Download Intel® GPA for
FREE at
software.intel.com/gpa
Tech:
TSCMAA Article and Sample:
https://goo.gl/6FFnKp
Getting Started with WinMR Optimization

45. Legal Disclaimers and Optimization Notices
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The products and services described may contain defects or errors known as errata which may cause deviations from published specifications. Current characterized errata are
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Intel technologies’ features and benefits depend on system configuration and may require enabled hardware, software or service activation. Performance varies depending on system
configuration. No computer system can be absolutely secure. Check with your system manufacturer or retailer or learn more at [intel.com].
Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are
measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult
other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other
products. For more complete information visit www.intel.com/benchmarks.
Optimization Notice: Intel's compilers may or may not optimize to the same degree for non-Intel microprocessors for optimizations that are not unique to Intel microprocessors. These
optimizations include SSE2, SSE3, and SSSE3 instruction sets and other optimizations. Intel does not guarantee the availability, functionality, or effectiveness of any optimization on
microprocessors not manufactured by Intel. Microprocessor-dependent optimizations in this product are intended for use with Intel microprocessors. Certain optimizations not specific to
Intel microarchitecture are reserved for Intel microprocessors. Please refer to the applicable product User and Reference Guides for more information regarding the specific instruction
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Results have been estimated or simulated using internal Intel analysis or architecture simulation or modeling, and provided to you for informational purposes. Any differences in your
system hardware, software or configuration may affect your actual performance.
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