Optimising Underwater Environments for Mobile VR

Abstract

Mobile Virtual Reality (VR) has advanced considerably in the last few years, driven by advances in smartphone technology. There are now a number of commercial offerings available, from smartphone powered headsets to standalone units with full positional tracking. Similarly best practices in VR have matured quickly, facilitating comfortable and immersive VR experiences. There remains however many optimisation challenges when working with these devices, as while the need to render at high frame rates is universal, the hardware is limited by both computational power and battery capacity. There is also often a requirement that apps run smoothly across a wide variety of headsets. In this paper, we describe lessons learned in rendering and optimising underwater environments for mobile VR, based on our experience developing the popular aquatic safari application 'Ocean Rift'. We start by analyzing essential best practices for mobile app development, before describing low-cost techniques for creating immersive underwater environments. While some techniques discussed are universal to modern mobile VR development, we also consider issues that are unique to underwater applications.