Futuremark Announces VRMark: A Benchmark For Virtual Reality Systems

Today Futuremark revealed that they are in the process of developing a benchmark for virtual reality hardware and displays. In the same naming style as PCMark and 3DMark, this new virtual reality benchmark will be called VRMark. According to Futuremark, VRMark will use a combination of software and hardware to evaluate a system's ability to provide a high quality virtual reality experience.

Because virtual reality systems have many aspects that all need to be functioning properly to provide a good experience, the process of benchmarking them is different from how you would test a computer or a smartphone. VRMark will evaluate a system's ability to provide a high and consistent frame rate, as with virtual reality it's important to both have a high frame rate, as well as to ensure that the timing between those frames is consistent.

In addition to measurements of the hardware's ability to render and display frames in a timely and smooth manner, VRMark will evaluate the sensors located in a VR head-mounted display. Lowering sensor latency has been a big part of the development process for VR headsets, and VRMark will help companies and reviewers evaluate this aspect of VR system performance.

There's currently no word on when VRMark will be released, apart from the promise that it will launch in 2015. Virtual Reality benchmarks like VRMark will certainly be a useful tool to see how the various VR headsets currently being developed compare to one another.