Essentials

Foveated rendering

Updated: Sep 14, 2026
Meta VR devices support fixed foveated rendering (FFR). FFR renders the edge of a frame at a lower resolution than the center. This reduces GPU work where the change is harder to see.

Benefits

  • Improved frame rate in applications with GPU fill bottlenecks — up to 25% in pixel-intensive apps
  • Reduced power consumption — lower heat and longer battery life
  • Higher eye texture resolution — increase sharpness in the center while maintaining performance

How it works

Meta VR devices use tile-based rendering. In this process, the GPU divides each frame into tiles and renders each tile to completion.
FFR lowers the resolution of tiles near the edge of the eye buffer while keeping more detail near the center.
Because the optics are less sharp near the edge of the view, the lower resolution is less visible there. This leaves more GPU time for the rest of the frame.

Subsampled layout

Meta VR devices support subsampled layout. Enable it when you use FFR. Instead of stretching the lower-resolution peripheral content to fill the eye buffer, subsampled layout stores that content at its actual rendered resolution in a subregion of the buffer.
This reduces the amount of data the system copies between GPU and main memory, saving memory bandwidth while FFR is active. It also reduces blocky, pixelated artifacts in the periphery, because the display samples from the true rendered pixels instead of a stretched image.

Choose an FFR level

FFR offers Low, Medium, and High levels. Test each level on every Meta VR device you support because the same level can produce different image quality and performance across device models. Results also depend on pixel-shader cost and content near the screen edges.
FFR does not use eye tracking. Its high-resolution center, called the fovea, stays fixed in the middle of the frame.

Tradeoffs

  • FFR does not always improve performance in apps with simple shaders. Its fixed cost can be greater than its rendering savings.
  • Use compositor layers for user interface (UI) content or text that must stay sharp. FFR does not affect compositor layers.
  • Reduced quality is easier to see when an app draws attention to the screen edges. UI on an avatar’s belt is one example.

Eye-tracked foveated rendering (ETFR)

Eye-tracked foveated rendering (ETFR) is a separate feature. It moves the high-resolution area to follow the user’s gaze.
Check whether ETFR is available at runtime before enabling it. Do not rely on a device name.

Engine-specific guides

Fixed foveated rendering

Tile-based rendering

Eye-tracked foveated rendering (ETFR)

Nav Logo
English (US)
© 2026 Meta