Gaze-Contingent Foveated Rendering

Gaze & Foveation

Drag anywhere on the display to move the gaze point. Tile height/brightness = local render resolution.

Foveal radius (full-res zone) 6°

Falloff steepness (half-density angle) 12°

Peripheral resolution floor 15%

Live Render Stats

Rendered pixels

–%

GPU shading speedup

–×

Max eccentricity on screen

–°

How it works

Human photoreceptor density drops sharply away from the fovea: cone density near the visual axis is roughly 15× higher than 20° into the periphery (Curcio et al. 1990). Gaze-contingent foveated rendering — used by Meta Quest Pro, PSVR2 and Varjo headsets with eye tracking — exploits this by rendering full detail only where the eye actually looks, at a fraction of the shading cost.

θ(p)   = angle between eye→p and eye→gaze   (retinal eccentricity, degrees)
scale(θ) = 1                                            if θ ≤ θ_fovea
scale(θ) = floor + (1−floor) / (1 + ((θ−θ_fovea)/θ_half)²)   otherwise

pixel fraction  = mean(scale²)   (resolution scales both screen axes)
GPU speedup     = 1 / pixel fraction

Foveal radius — angular size of the always-full-resolution disk around the gaze point, matching the ~5–8° high-acuity foveal region of the human retina.
Falloff steepness — the eccentricity at which density has dropped halfway to the floor; a real Curcio-style cone density curve sits around 10–15°.
Peripheral resolution floor — GPUs never render at exactly 0 resolution; a floor (commonly 10–25% of native) keeps peripheral motion and contrast visible and avoids popping when the eye saccades.
Auto-saccade — replays a sequence of rapid eye jumps (real saccades complete in 20–200 ms) so you can see the foveal disk relocate instantly across the display, the way eye-tracked VR hardware actually drives the effect.

The two live readouts on the right — rendered-pixel fraction and GPU shading speedup — are computed directly from the same scale(θ) field driving the visualization, not decorative numbers: they show why foveated rendering is the single biggest per-frame GPU cost saver in modern eye-tracked VR.

Gaze point (drag me) Low-res periphery tile

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