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Adaptive Pixel Density

Updated: Apr 17, 2026

Deprecated: This page describes the legacy Adaptive Pixel Density feature, which is no longer supported. For current dynamic resolution functionality, see Dynamic resolution.

Adaptive Pixel Density allows applications to scale down the application viewport when GPU resources are constrained, and to scale up as they become more available. The runtime controls resolution scaling externally based on GPU load.

For CPU-bound applications, this feature can improve visual quality.

The following charts illustrate pixel density (gold) and frames per second (blue) on a demo application with Adaptive Pixel Density off and on, respectively.

Chart of pixel density and frames per second over time with Adaptive Pixel Density off.

Chart of pixel density and frames per second over time with Adaptive Pixel Density on.

The hmd pdadaptive console command and vr.oculus.PixelDensity.adaptive CVar are deprecated and no longer supported. To enable dynamic resolution, enable the Mobile > Dynamic Resolution > Enable Dynamic Resolution checkbox in Project Settings (bDynamicResolution). Configure the scaling range with the following CVars (default values shown):

r.Oculus.DynamicResolution.PixelDensity: Set to a value greater than 0 to manually override density; set to 0 for runtime control (default: 0).

r.Oculus.DynamicResolution.PixelDensityMin: Minimum pixel density (default: 0.8).

r.Oculus.DynamicResolution.PixelDensityMax: Maximum pixel density (default: 1.2).

The [Oculus.Settings] INI section is deprecated and no longer supported. To configure density limits on startup, specify the appropriate CVars per device in BaseDeviceProfiles.ini. For example:

[Meta_Quest_3 DeviceProfile]
+CVars=r.Oculus.DynamicResolution.PixelDensityMin=0.8
+CVars=r.Oculus.DynamicResolution.PixelDensityMax=1.2

For more information about CVars and console commands, see Console Manager in Unreal Engine⁠ in Epic’s documentation.

If you do not want some Actors within your level (e.g., text displays) to be scaled, they should be drawn using separate VR Compositor Layers which are not scaled by pixel density. For more information, see VR Compositor Layers.

Note: To minimize the perceived artifacts from changing resolution, pixel density changes are smoothed on a per-frame basis, with a maximum increase of 0.010 and a maximum decrease of 0.045 per frame.