Variable Rate Shading

[Vida Marcell]

This is awesome, Leadwerks should support it (or Ultra).

[Josh]

This could be useful. Looks like Vulkan is working it in too:
https://www.khronos.org/blog/khronos-vulkan-working-group-releases-shading-rate-extension-to-increase-rendering-performance-and-quality

[Josh]

I believe this feature actually originated with the idea of fovea tracking in VR. Fun fact: if your entire eye had the same resolution as the center of your vision, your optic nerves would be a foot thick.

[Josh]

So basically technology has rediscovered an optimization path that nature already determined through trial and error.

[Josh]

It actually looks very simple to add this. I think you can just specify a texture to use as a mask, and the GPU will handle the rest:
https://registry.khronos.org/vulkan/specs/1.3-extensions/man/html/VkRenderingFragmentShadingRateAttachmentInfoKHR.html