Single-Pass Stereo Rendering for Android

Single-pass stereo renderingThe process of drawing graphics to the screen (or to a render texture). By default, the main camera in Unity renders its view to the screen. More info
See in Glossary is currently supported on Gear VR and Daydream devices. To enable this feature we use the GL_OVR_multiview2 and GL_OVR_multiview_multisampled_render_to_texture OpenGL|ES extensions*. These extensions require the use of a texture 2D array with 2 slices (one slice per eye). This differs from our PC/PS4 implementation where we just use a double wide 2D texture. Therefore different shaderA small script that contains the mathematical calculations and algorithms for calculating the Color of each pixel rendered, based on the lighting input and the Material configuration. More info
See in Glossary changes are required.

Shader script requirements

You may need to include the additional code listed below to use Single-Pass Stereo Rendering with your custom shaders. This doesn’t apply to surface shadersUnity’s code generation approach that makes it much easier to write lit shaders than using low level vertex/pixel shader programs. More info
See in Glossary or fixed function pipeline shaders which Unity automatically converts, except surface shaders that have custom vertex processing.

Note that these shader script changes are compatible with Multi-Pass stereo rendering, so there will be no side effects in that mode.

First, if you’d like to use unity_StereoEyeIndex in shader stages after the vertex shaderA program that runs on each vertex of a 3D model when the model is being rendered. More info
See in Glossary you must declare UNITY_VERTEX_OUTPUT_STEREO in any shader stage output structs that you have. Here’s an example:

struct v2f {
    float2 uv : TEXCOOR0;
    float4 vertex : SV_POSITION;
    UNITY_VERTEX_OUTPUT_STEREO
};

Next, you must use UNITY_INITIALIZE_VERTEX_OUTPUT_STEREO() in the vertex shader function to initialize the output data:

v2f vert (appdata v)
{
    v2f o;
    UNITY_INITIALIZE_VERTEX_OUTPUT_STEREO(o);
    o.vertex = UnityObjectToClipPos(v.vertex);
    o.uv = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.uv, _MainTex);
    return o;
}

To initialize unity_StereoEyeIndex in subsequent stages you need to add UNITY_SETUP_STEREO_EYE_INDEX_POST_VERTEX() at the beginning like so:

fixed4 frag (v2f i) : SV_Target
{
    UNITY_SETUP_STEREO_EYE_INDEX_POST_VERTEX(i);
    // sample the texture
    fixed4 col = tex2D(_MainTex, i.uv);
    // apply fog
    UNITY_APPLY_FOG(i.fogCoord, col);
    return col;
}

If you are using other shader stages you should also use the UNITY_TRANSFER_VERTEX_OUTPUT_STEREO()macro to transfer the eye index to the subsequent stages.

Finally, we recommend that you use UnityObjectToClipPos(IN.vertex) instead of mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, IN.vertex) to calculate the final position of the object.

Post-Processing Shaders

Post-Processing shaders will need to be updated to deal with the eye textures being a texture 2D array. To help out with this we’ve created the following macro: UNITY_DECLARE_SCREENSPACE_TEXTURE(). This macro should be used to wrap all textures, so that the texture will work in both multi-pass and single-pass modes.

When sampling the texture the following macro should be used:

UNITY_SAMPLE_SCREENSPACE_TEXTURE()

This macro requires that UNITY_SETUP_STEREO_EYE_INDEX_POST_VERTEX() has already been called beforehand when in single-pass mode. We’ve also created similar macros for depth textures and screen space shadow maps. You can see the full list at the bottom of HLSLSupport.cginc.

See the Vertex and fragment shader examples page for more information on shader code.

* These OpenGL|ES extensions are relatively new, so unfortunately there may be graphics related issues due to the drivers on these phones.

• New feature in 5.5

• 2017–06–20 Page published with limited editorial review