Developers of virtual reality content will be very pleased with the news that Oculus has released the latest version of its software development kit, Oculus PC SDK 1.3, which is available now for download directly from the Oculus website.

The timing of this release is excellent and lives up to the company’s promise that SDK 1.3 would coincide with the launch of the consumer Oculus Rift headset.

One of the best features is the inclusion of Asynchronous Timewarp, or ATW. When developers use the SDK 1.3 to create sample content, ATW will automatically apply the last rendered frame through the Oculus Compositor. This ensures that huge spikes and declines in frame rate will no longer be an issue for developers and users. In addition to ATW inclusion, this update also brings support for the Unreal Engine 4 and Unity Engine.

New features for the Oculus SDK and runtime include:

• Added Asynchronous TimeWarp (ATW). For more information, see Asynchronous TimeWarp.
• Added features for VR focus management, which helps you smoothly transition users between your game or experience and Oculus Home. For more information, see VR Focus Management.
• Updated queue ahead to be adaptive. Queue ahead previously processed frames 2.8 milliseconds in advance to improve CPU and GPU parallelism. Adaptive queue ahead works similarly, but automatically adjusts the start time from 0 to -1 frame (depending on the current performance).
• Added the performance indicator, which displays when the application is slow or not maintaining frame rate. For more information, see Performance Indicator
• Added the Oculus Compositor performance HUD (ovrPerfHud_CompRenderTiming) and renamed the application performance HUD (ovrPerfHud_RenderTiming) to ovrPerfHud_CompRenderTiming.
• Support for DirectX 12 (DX12). For more information, refer to the Oculus Room Tiny (DX12) sample.

While this update brings much-needed improvements and advancements, expect many more updates to the SDK in the coming months. There is no doubt that Oculus is working hard to ensure that developers have the best hardware and software in their hands to create immersive virtual reality games and experiences.

For a list of runtime and API changes, including known issues in the Oculus PC SDK 1.3 check out the changelog for more information.