You Only Render Once

You Only Render Once: Enhancing Energy and Computation Efficiency of Mobile Virtual Reality

Authors: Xingyu Chen, Xinmin Fang, Shuting Zhang, Xingyu Zhang, Liang He, Zhengxiong Li

Abstract

Mobile Virtual Reality (VR) is essential to achieving convenient and immersive human-computer interaction and realizing emerging applications such as Metaverse. However, existing VR technologies require two separate renderings of binocular images, causing a significant bottleneck for mobile devices with limited computing capability and power supply.

This paper proposes an approach to rendering optimization for mobile VR called You Only Render Once (YORO). By utilizing the per-pixel attribute, YORO can generate binocular VR images from the monocular image through genuinely one rendering, saving half the computation over conventional approaches.

Our evaluation indicates that, compared with the state-of-art, YORO can save 27% power consumption on average while achieving high binocular image quality (0.9679 SSIM and 34.09 PSNR) in mobile VR applications. Additionally, YORO can increase the frame rate by 115.2%. These results corroborate YORO's superior computation/energy-saving performance, paving the road to a sustainable mobile VR.

Demo Video

Demo Video for YORO in Scene Bistro, Sponza and Lost Empire. Running on Vivo IQOO 12.

Key Features

• Universal Compatibility: YORO is a general optimization technique compatible with OpenXR frameworks, supporting various COTS VR devices such as Meta Quest, HTC Vive Focus, Pico Neo, Apple Vision Pro and more.
• Production Ready: YORO is production ready and can be directly applied to the Unity engine to support various VR games and applications.
• Extensible Architecture: YORO can serve as a cornerstone and be integrated with other optimization techniques such as Foveated Rendering and Asynchronous TimeWarp to further enhance the performance of VR applications.
• Handles Close Objects: YORO handles objects at very close distance without noticeable artifacts.

Performance Improvements

• 27% power consumption reduction on average
• 115.2% frame rate increase
• High binocular image quality: 0.9679 SSIM and 34.09 PSNR
• 50% computation savings over conventional approaches

Resources

• 📄 Paper
• 💻 Code
• 📊 Data
• 🎮 Unity Engine Plugin
• 🎬 Demo Video (uncompressed)
• 📱 Demo App (Android)

Citation

@inproceedings{chen2025yoro,
  title     = {You Only Render Once: Enhancing Energy and Computation Efficiency of Mobile Virtual Reality},
  author    = {Xingyu Chen and Xinmin Fang and Shuting Zhang and Xinyu Zhang and Liang He and Zhengxiong Li},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 23rd Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys '25)},
  year      = {2025},
  pages     = {1--14},
  address   = {Anaheim, CA, USA},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  doi       = {10.1145/3711875.3729133},
  isbn      = {979-8-4007-1453-5/25/06},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3711875.3729133}
}

About the Research

This work represents a significant advancement in mobile VR technology, addressing the critical bottleneck of dual rendering for binocular displays. By implementing a single-pass rendering approach that generates both eye views simultaneously, YORO opens new possibilities for sustainable and efficient mobile VR experiences.

The research was published in MobiSys '25 (Proceedings of the 23rd Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services) and demonstrates substantial improvements in both energy efficiency and computational performance for mobile VR applications.