Virtual Reality systems provide many opportunities for scientific research and consumer enjoyment; however, they are more demanding than traditional desktop applications and require a wired connection to desktops in order to enjoy maximum quality. Standalone options that are not connected to computers exist, yet they are powered by mobile GPUs, which provide limited power in comparison to desktop rendering. Alternative approaches to improve performance on mobile devices use server rendering to render frames for a client and treat the client largely as a display device. However, current streaming solutions largely suffer from high end-to-end latency due to processing and networking requirements, as well as underutilization of the client. We propose a networked split-rendering approach to achieve faster end-to-end image presentation rates on the mobile device while preserving image quality. Our proposed solution uses an image-space division of labour between the server-side GPU and the mobile client, and achieves a significantly faster runtime than client-only rendering and than using a thin-client approach, which is mostly reliant on the server.

翻译：虚拟现实系统为科学研究和消费者娱乐提供了诸多机遇；然而，其计算需求远超传统桌面应用，且需通过有线连接至桌面设备方能获得最佳体验。虽然存在无需连接计算机的独立式方案，但这类设备采用移动GPU驱动，其渲染能力相较于桌面设备极为有限。另一种提升移动设备性能的替代方案采用服务器端渲染，由服务器生成帧画面后传输至客户端，将客户端主要作为显示终端使用。然而，当前的流式传输方案因处理延迟、网络传输开销以及客户端算力未充分利用等问题，普遍存在端到端延迟过高的问题。本文提出一种网络化分割渲染方法，在保持图像质量的前提下，提升移动设备端端到端图像呈现速率。该方案通过服务器端GPU与移动客户端之间的图像空间任务分工，实现了相较于纯客户端渲染及主要依赖服务器的轻客户端方案显著更快的运行速度。