Multi-Pass Stereo Rendering

What is Multi-Pass Stereo Rendering?

Multi-Pass Stereo Rendering refers to a traditional rendering approach that processes each eye's view separately, creating greater computational demands than more optimized methods and potentially limiting visual complexity in immersive applications.

How does Multi-Pass Stereo Rendering work?

This conventional rendering technique handles stereoscopic 3D by executing the entire rendering pipeline twice - once for each eye - including separate passes for scene culling, shadow calculation, lighting, and post-processing for each viewpoint. While straightforward to implement, this approach effectively doubles the rendering workload compared to traditional single-display applications, placing significant demands on both CPU and GPU resources.

The performance impact of multi-pass rendering creates challenging constraints for developers targeting immersive platforms, often requiring substantial optimization or visual compromises to maintain acceptable frame rates.

This technical limitation explains why early VR applications frequently featured simpler graphics compared to their conventional counterparts despite running on powerful hardware. More efficient approaches like single-pass stereo rendering and stereo instancing have largely superseded multi-pass techniques in modern development, though understanding the performance characteristics of each rendering method remains important when optimizing across diverse hardware configurations and platform capabilities.