Google Daydream’s Star Wars VR experience touts PC-level graphics on mobile

The benefit of a tethered, desktop-powered virtual reality setup is that you can get significantly more visual fidelity from a PC with a GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card plugged into a power outlet as opposed to the tiny, battery-powered GPU in a phone. But Google is claiming that could change.

Google has developed a technology called Seurat that makes it easier to render lifelike, highly detailed 3D environments on a mobile VR headset. While companies like Nvidia and Qualcomm have beefed up the graphics capabilities of smartphones in recent years, those tiny chips still lag behind massive PC cards. But instead of trying to brute force pixels onto its Daydream headsets with more power, Google is using software to enable developers to render beautiful scenes in real time. And Hollywood effects house Industrial Light and Magic’s experimental division, ILMxLab, has already used Seurat to bring some of the assets it built for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to life in a VR experience.