Timewarp
Timewarp also known as Time warping is a technique in VR that warps the rendered image before sending it to the display to correct for the head movement occurred after the rendering.[1] Timewarp can reduce latency and increase Frame rate.[2] This process takes the already rendered image, modify it with freshly collected positional information from your HMD's sensors, then display it to your screen.
Without Timewarp, your HMD would capture the data about the position of your head, render the image based on this data (correct angel etc.), then display the image when the next scene is due to be on screen. In a 60 fps game, a new scene is displayed once every 16.7 milliseconds. With this process, each image you see is based on the head-tracking data from almost 17 milliseconds ago.
With Timewarp, the first 2 parts of the process is the same. your HMD would capture the data about the position of your head and render the image based on the data. Before this image is displayed, your HMD captures the position of your head again. Using this information, the rendered image is modified to fit the latest data. Finally the modified image is displayed on screen. The resulting image is more recent and more accurately depict the position of your head at the time of display than the image initially rendered. Timewarp only works in very short intervals or the resulting image will look out of place.
Timewarp moves 3D objects with little computational needs by utilizes depth maps aka. Z Buffers already present in the engine.
Timewarp is a feature of Oculus SDK. It was initially released in the version 0.3.1 of the SDK.
