From Single-Frame Rate to Multi-Frame Rate Systems

System response and thus interactivity is strictly tied to the framerate in most virtual reality systems. For complex scenes either thevisual quality needs to be sacrificed (e. g. by using a lower level ofdetail) or the system becomes non-interactive. We suggest that forstandard manipulation tasks in virtual environments parting fromsuch a single-frame rate approach is beneficial.Multi-frame rate rendering uses two (or more) graphics cards torender the interactive parts of the scene on one card and the reston the other. The results are optically or digitally combined ina single image displayed to the user. This approach significantlyimproves the interaction fidelity for medium and large scenes withoutcompromising visual quality. We provide a detailed motivation andan overview of our approach. We argue that modern virtual realitysystem benefit greatly from multi-frame rate rendering