Abrash started publishing books and articles on 3D graphics and assembly language optimization like 30 years ago. This man helped develop the original rendering engine in Quake, which was a huge leap ahead of anything that existed, at the time. Even today, I'm sure he's still one of the foremost experts in realtime 3D graphics.
[quotemsg=18711765,0,1078105]Since it's only the eye's fovea which renders in high resolution to the brain, then it would seem highly illogical to dismiss any system employing or research into foveated rendering as anything but hugely significant.[/quotemsg]He obviously understands the potential, but his point is not to underestimate the challenges in doing it well enough. He's also clearly saying that the brute-force approach isn't an option.
I agree with him - we need like VR contact lenses, or something. The rendering pipeline needs to hack the human visual system at a more fundamental level.
What you'd ideally like to do is render one pixel for each receptor on the retina. If we do that, we can afford to spend a lot more effort rendering each one. The problem is that the eye moves, and there's this deformable lens, in the way. But it's got to be cracked, and I think the refresh rate will need to be closer to 200 Hz.
[quotemsg=18711885,0,2199259]VR is to 2016 as the Atari 2600 was to 1980?[/quotemsg]Not that far back. I'd say more like 8-bit Nintendo or maybe 16-bit (Super Nintendo).