VR / XR Glossary

AC - Assetto Corsa, why I care about VR / XR
adaptive anti-aliasing Radeon’s TAAA alternative
Air Link Meta / Quest alternative to Virtual Desktop for PCVR streaming
Aliasing artifacts from sampling @ < ~ 3x content’s highest frequencies
[ALVR][https://github.com/alvr-org/ALVR] Air Light VR streams PCVR to wireless headsets
anti-aliasing How to turn on anti-aliasing in games
ASW Oculus’ Asynchronous Spacewarp for frame rate jitter reduction
BSB Bigscreen Beyond microOLED pancake lens VR headset
CA Chromatic aberration, axial (longitudinal) and transverse (lateral)
CAS Contrast adaptive sharpening with optional up-scaling;  Nvidia Freestyle
core parking - disable some CPU cores, reducing power and heat
  (Windows 11 often parks 18/20 of i5-13600K 6P + 8E cores)
CSAA Nvidia’s coverage sampling anti-aliasing - enhanced MSAA
DFR dynamic foveated rendering - key for optimizing VR performance
Direct3D - drawing primitives and shading in Windows DirectX graphics and gaming API
  D3DX12 AKA Direct3D 12 is the current version;  most games use 11 or earlier
DLAA Nvidia Deep learning anti-aliasing, similar to DLSS and TAA,
  but image quality focus (full resolution)
DLDSR Deep learning dynamic super resolution
  Nvidia tech for rendering at resolution higher than displayed
DLSS Deep learning super sampling - Nvidia itech for
  reduced resolution rendering, based on TAA, liable to artifacts
DLSS-G AKA DLSS-FG - Nvidia frame generation
DLSSTweaks - force DLAA onto DLSS-supported titles
driver_leap SteamVR driver for emulating controllers by Ultraleap handtracking
DSC Digital Stream Compression - visually lossless on DisplayPort 1.4a, HDMI 2.1
EQAA enhanced quality anti-aliasing - AMD’s CSAA implementation
eyebox small HMD regions for pupils that optimize viewing
eye relief - for HMDs, eye relief tolerance is one eyebox dimension
eye tracking needed for DFR, wanted for social VR
FFR fixed foveated rendering
FoV Field of view, angles from pupil to image edges
FPS First-person shooter (game) or Frames per second (display refresh rate)
frame generation - interpolating or warping intermediate frames
  when rendered frame rate is objectionable
Fred Emmott OpenXR Invited Expert, OpenKneeboard and HTCC developer
FSAA full-scene anti-aliasing AKA SSAA
Freestyle Nividia’s CAS post-processing, supplanted by RTX Dynamic Vibrance
FSR AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution alternative to DLSS
FXAA Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing tries to clean up jaggies after rendering
HelloXR - Magic Leap 2 sample OpenXR application
hello_xr - part of OpenXR™ Software Development Kit (SDK) Sources Project
  “Handy as it’s really basic, logs a lot, and supports pretty much every graphics API.”
  download openxr_loader_windows-1.1.43.zip and extract x64 for Windows 11
  some documentation;  about View, Local, Stage spaces, Blend Mode;  specs
HMD head mounted display AKA headset
HRM Hidden radial mask: don’t render edge pixels not visible in HMD
  reportedly minimal impact in DCS
HTCC - hand tracking OpenXR API layer for MSFS, DCS World, HelloXR
iNFINITE VR Headset FoV database and test utility
iVRy a commercial app for streaming SteamVR to wireless devices
IW3 MIT license 2D image/video to 3D conversion
judder aliasing between render and display frame rates
Leap Motion Controller 2 by Ultraleap
Leapify switches between controllers and Hand Tracking
LSFG Lossless Scaling FrameGen “no substitute for DLSS”
mbucchia XR software engineer Matthieu Bucchianeri
MeganeX superlight 8k 2x 4k microOLED panel pancake lens VR headset,
  highly regarded by MRTV
MRTV MIXED REALITY TV - YouTuber and VR journalist Sebastial Ang’s channel
MSAA multi-sample antialiasing - operates along geometric edges.
  Tom’s Hardware suggests 4x MSAA suffices
NVIDIA App replaces GeForce Experience, eventually NVIDIA Control Panel
OpenComposite replaces openvr_api.dll, often speeding performance
  by forwarding calls to OpenXR runtime, bypassing OpenVR
OpenGL - 2D and 3D graphics API, developed by Silicon Graphics
OpenKneeboard Fred Emmott’s 2D overlay for OpenXR and OpenVR,
  works with SimHub dashboards
OpenVR SteamVR API since 2015
OpenXR alternative to OpenVR for AR/MR/VR/XR API since 2017
OpenXR API Layers on Windows - Best Practices, by Fred Emmott
OpenXR API Layers GUI Fred Emmott’s tool tp inspect / tweak OpenXR API layers
OpenXR D3DX12 - mbucchia’ software enabling OpenXR Vulkan/OpenGL apps
  to work with OpenXR runtimes supporting only Direct3D 12
OpenXR Explorer switch runtimes, inspect properties, but hard-coded list;
  see xr-picker
OpenXR-Runtime-Switcher quickly switch System Default OpenXR Runtime
OVR Lighthouse Manager manage SteamVR base station power
  without HTC Vive or Valve Index
Owl3D for converting 2D video to 3D
OXRMC motion compensation keeps VR views in cockpit
  during large motion platform excursions
OXRTK mbucchia’s OpenXR Toolkit
PCVR Personal Computer Virtual Reality - VR rendering by personal computers
  (vs standalone / wireless headsets)
Pimax Crystal mini-LED aspheric lens headset
Process Lasso GUI to customize software process affinity to CPU cores
pupil swim perception of discrepancies betweeen corrections
  and real lens geometric distortions
QVFR QuadView Foveated Rendering - reducing resolution outside sweet spot
RCHeliguy Mark Kovalcson
rendering generating (binocular) image samples
reprojection - alternative to motion smoothing or frame generation,
  often associated with Windows Mixed Reality
ROV Test FOV & Resolution Snellen text legibility, glare, FoV, distortions AKA testhmd
RTSS RivaTuner Statistics Server, includes FPS limiter, bad for OpenXR
RTX Dynamic Vibrance - Nvidia app SDR to HDR converter
SimHub Windows sim telemetry utility for dashboards, haptics, motion,
  other hardware by plugins
Social VR e.g. VRChat, Somnium Space
Somnium VR1 mini-LED doublet aspheric lens XR headset
SpaceWarp AKA ASW or Application SpaceWarp - Quest frame generation
  extrapolation tech using game engine depth buffer and motion vectors
SMAA Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing, similar to FXAA,
  but less cost-effecting than TAA
SSAA Supersampling antialiasing - visual quality and performance cost > MSAA
SSW Virtual Desktop Synchronous Spacewarp reprojection (frame rate jitter reduction)
stutter inconsistent rendering time, missing some frames at regular display intervals
SteamVR Valve’s VR tools and services, e.g. OpenVR, Lighthouse Tracking
strain visible artifacts, often with polarized light, from optic inhomogeneities,
  often induced by mechanical stresses, AKA Schlieren
sweet spot limited region near HMD lens centers with useful resolution, fewer artifacts
TAA Temporal Anti-Aliasing blends pixels among frames
TAAA Nvidia transparency adaptive anti-aliasing for transparent textures
  in 2 flavors: TrSSAA, TrMSAA
Ultraleap hand tracking cameras and software
Valve Corporation owner of Steam, dominant Windows PC game platform
Virtual Desktop AKA VD, often Guy Godin’s PCVR app;
  a second version links to wireless (standalone) headsets
VDXR OpenXR runtime for Virtual Desktop
vorpX VR support for 250+ DirectX 9-12 first person games
VR VIRTUAL REALITY (link to Steven LaValle’s free book)
VRC VRChat
VRFSG VR Flight Sim Guy - Somnium VR1 beta tester and YouTuber’s channel
VRGOXR vrgineers’ OpenXR runtime AKA VRG runtime
vrperfkit fholger’s VR Performance Toolkit to upscale after rendering,
  fixed foveated rendering option
VRPerfKit_RSF RavenSystem’s vrperfkit fork for dynamic FFR, HRM
vrperfkit fixed foveated rendering with VRS - works for DCS, Assetto Corsa
VRS Nvidia Variable Rate Shading
VRSS Nvidia Variable Rate Supersampling
Vulkan / OpenGL intended OpenGL replacement
  Vulcan is tuned for multiple CPU cores and modern GPUs
WIMFOV - What is my Field of View?
xr-picker cross-platform tool for OpenXR runtime selection;  Fred Emmott recommends