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Oculus Rift Hardware Requirements Revealed, Linux and OS X Development Halted
An anonymous reader writes: Oculus has selected the baseline hardware requirements for running their Rift virtual reality headset. To no one's surprise, they're fairly steep: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater, Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater, and 8GB+ RAM. It will also require at least two USB 3.0 ports and "HDMI 1.3 video output supporting a 297MHz clock via a direct output architecture."
Oculus chief architect Atman Binstock explains: "On the raw rendering costs: a traditional 1080p game at 60Hz requires 124 million shaded pixels per second. In contrast, the Rift runs at 2160×1200 at 90Hz split over dual displays, consuming 233 million pixels per second. At the default eye-target scale, the Rift's rendering requirements go much higher: around 400 million shaded pixels per second. This means that by raw rendering costs alone, a VR game will require approximately 3x the GPU power of 1080p rendering." He also points out that PC graphics can afford a fluctuating frame rate — it doesn't matter too much if it bounces between 30-60fps. The Rift has no such luxury, however.
The last requirement is more onerous: WIndows 7 SP1 or newer. Binstock says their development for OS X and Linux has been "paused" so they can focus on delivering content for Windows. They have no timeline for going back to the less popular platforms.
Oculus chief architect Atman Binstock explains: "On the raw rendering costs: a traditional 1080p game at 60Hz requires 124 million shaded pixels per second. In contrast, the Rift runs at 2160×1200 at 90Hz split over dual displays, consuming 233 million pixels per second. At the default eye-target scale, the Rift's rendering requirements go much higher: around 400 million shaded pixels per second. This means that by raw rendering costs alone, a VR game will require approximately 3x the GPU power of 1080p rendering." He also points out that PC graphics can afford a fluctuating frame rate — it doesn't matter too much if it bounces between 30-60fps. The Rift has no such luxury, however.
The last requirement is more onerous: WIndows 7 SP1 or newer. Binstock says their development for OS X and Linux has been "paused" so they can focus on delivering content for Windows. They have no timeline for going back to the less popular platforms.
"They have no timeline for going back to the less popular platforms." that means windows 8 is doomed
Just the excuse I needed to upgrade my graphics card.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
I'm not buying one anymore. I was super excited too.
Not surprised at all at linux support being removed, but being owned by facebook I'd think mac support would be a priority...
I wonder how far off the OSX requirements will be. Typically OSX users pay a higher price for the kernel's greater abstraction between layers, although I've not really dug into the internals terribly deep for a few major revisions. Is that still the case or have the graphics APIs come along at a similar pace to DirectX? What's Apple calling it now? Metal? IIRC this is an IOS-only bit of tech, but it would help whole bunches for it to get ported to the main OS.
I think it has a lot of potential in certain home/small business level niches.
I'm into simulation games (car, air, submarine, whatever), which is a prime example of something where VR could really add to the experience.
I also see a lot of potential in data visualization. There are big companies already doing this with expensive gear, but I think this will trickle down to the small business scale. Being able to surround yourself with a visual representation of data is very powerful for certain kind of analysis.
The question is whether there is enough to keep it going after the hype dies, and that I'm not so sure about.
If you're a developer wanting to write software or games that'll work with this kind of thing, now is a great time to gain some experience with the technology -- go out and buy one.
Otherwise, only those with a ridiculous amount of disposable income, or some other compelling business justification to buy one, are probably going to be purchasing an Oculus Rift, or even a lesser knockoff, for at least 5 years.
I don't think this will reach "power gamer" audiences for 5-7 years, and it won't reach the masses of the "core gamers" for probably close to 10 years.
We also need to make a few assumptions that may not necessarily be true:
(1) The capabilities of GPUs, especially at the mid-range and lower-end, start to be able to push enough pixels to satisfy something this hungry. We were stalled for a number of years because TSMC dragged their feet on the 28nm process. If they delay another couple of years to go smaller than 20nm, the market probably will not be able to support $250-and-under GPUs that can power Oculus Rift or anything similar.
(2) Game developers stop the exponential increase in scene complexity, fidelity, draw calls, shader complexity, etc. I don't see this slowing down at all; if anything, game developers are making their games heavier and heavier at a faster rate than the GPU manufacturers can keep up. There used to be a time when you could buy a single discrete GPU of the highest make/model available on release day of a game, and you'd be able to run it with the maximum detail settings. Now, you either need SLI/CrossFireX, or lower your resolution beyond what's "standard" for the present day. Unfortunately, if texture size and scene complexity continue to climb, it won't matter if the options menu has a detail slider -- if your GPU can't keep up with the required number of pixels per second, it doesn't matter whether you're using big textures or tiny ones.
If "VR" is really going to be a thing, we cannot continue business as usual in the game dev and GPU industries. GPU manufacturers have to pick up the slack and make up for YEARS of lost time. Game devs have to slow down the procession of ever-increasing game requirements.
If you're designing your games to run at 58 to 60 fps at 1080p on max detail with two 980s in SLI, no one is going to be able to install six 980s in SLI to chunk out the required amount of pixels for an Oculus Rift. And trust me, the people who'll be buying VR will not be willing to settle for medium detail. Not til the price of all this comes down to core gamer levels -- no more than $250 for the GPU, and $100-$200 for the VR kit.
Hope all the kickstarter backers are happy with what became of their money.
...or you could try not to cram in so many effects and just make a game that's fun to play and doesn't stutter.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Basically means that this is going to be a Windows-only platform. Since it'll just be SO EASY to use Microsoft's secret sauce to get things working.
Making it totally impossible to duplicate on any other platform and requiring people to start from scratch with the platform again.
So, stopping multi-platform development means it's never going start again. At least not seriously.
Look at gaming in Linux. Now add an order of magnitude or three to that for Occulus support. And nobody's going to want to even try.
They may as well just say "We're going Windows-only-forever so fuck the rest of you up your stupid asses".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
... or, even worse, the Virtual Boy. People have already rejected virtual reality in the '90s, they will do it again. It's just too creepy and naive, I don't want to be "inside" a virtual world. Games and reality must remain separate, otherwise one goes nuts. And now they tell you that you must get the very last GPU to run it, yeah!
And I've also read of many beta testers being sick after using oculus for hours...
Those hardware requirements aren't really that steep. Those GPUs currently cost under $350, so high end but not top-of-the-line. But it isn't supposed to be released until early next year. By then, new high end graphics cards will have been released, and these ones will be solidly mid-range. Also, the initial customers for this will be enthusiasts, the people who already have high end GPUs or don't mind spending a bit extra to get one. By the time this is really mainstream, even low end GPUs will likely be able to handle it.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
I vividly remember, it must be 20 years ago... I was at a (local) IT fair. I bought OS/2 Warp there, so yes, really 20 years ago.
Anyway, they had this game with VR headset. You were siting in a space ship and shooting rockets flying around. It had accelerometers and everything. Sure graphics was not HD, but that was 20 years ago.
So, what exactly is the innovation and why the hype around oculus now, 20 years later?
You're projecting your preferences onto others. I care about 3D, and VR is a lot more that 3D.
"Our development for OS X and Linux has been paused in order to focus on delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software, and content on Windows. We want to get back to development for OS X and Linux but we don’t have a timeline,/i>."
You need to get out of the basement more.
I'm not clear on why this thing has requirements at all. Why are the requirements dependent on the hardware and not on whatever game you're playing with this?
Virtual Boy didn't fail because people don't want VR or immersive tech, but rather because the hardware used had serious issues. It was heavy, expensive, dorky, and the display was basically a lot of low res RED pixels. Just red. It was horrible. I wouldn't pay 50 cents for one new.
Now mind you, I'm not saying that Occulus will succeed, just that if you are going to choose an example to back up your claim that people don't want VR, try to chose something that wasn't an obvious failure to begin with. For example, if you want to claim people don't like hamburgers, don't use the teriyaki & mustard maggot burger as an example of why people don't want hamburgers.
The original Oculus API was very open. Now large swaths of code are being put into binary services. The latest API is massive change again. Now they are putting all the distortion related code in binary blob/service. Good luck trying to port it to Mac or Linux.
,have to do Vector*3.
Now I see why it has taken so long to get a final product, you suffer from NIH syndrome.
Oh one more thing stop fing writing of your POS code from scratch. WTF a logger class, string class, smart pointer class and finally yet another fing linear algebra that class just plain sucks. Oh you want to do 3*Vector3M, nope
Finally can you fing decide if you are going to use tabs or spaces to indent your code or at least keep them the same in the same fing file.
The problem is nausea. I still remember Descent on VR glasses in the 1990s. Puke.
We were running the rift on a computer who's only real claim to power is 16 gigs of ram, everything else kind of sucked. To be sure it could handle most recent games just fine but it wasn't anything special. This was the dk2.
Now they're almost done with their third revision and suddenly you need a supercomputer? Bullcrap.
I enjoyed the dk2. The resolution is fine to play games on. I don't really get why they're pushing for however many times the resolution and graphics power as it just limits the userbase and sales.
Most people didn't watch Transformers 4 at all.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You mean like in business? They HATE windows in business. People complain about it all the time. But like withholding taxes, they have no choice. So I guess withholding taxes are popular!
it doesn't matter too much if it bounces between 30-60fps.
Never played Battlefield 4 eh?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Facebook agreed to acquire Oculus VR for US$2 billion in cash and Facebook stock.[1]
...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
So I've used the DK1, the DK2, and the Samsung Galaxy GEAR VR. Of these the Gear VR had the best picture, but even it looked like a 1990s dithered image. VR needs to be at least 4k+ before it's going to look good. I'm really underwhelmed by the Occulus rift at this point. Sure they might have cracked the high refresh rate stuff but the resolution staying bad means it won't be an experience with anything close to presence.
What you're asking requires completely redesigning GPU pipelines. If VR catches on it will happen eventually, but it's a long way away.
I'm amazed that anybody would think MS Windows is a popular platform. There is a difference between forced to use and most popular.
And what is that difference? Windows is popular due to Microsoft's monopoly on it.
Binstock says their development for OS X and Linux has been "paused" so they can focus on delivering content for Windows. They have no timeline for going back to the less popular platforms.
Go fuck yourself.
'nough said.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I remember doing 60FPS 3D Gaming back on shutter glasses.
At 2048x1536.
Years ago.
On FAR WEAKER hardware than a GTX970.
What's your excuse, Oculus?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Couldn't they use more power for the dominant eye while reducing it for the non-dominant one to get a better overall result?
Object density and complexity.
Anyway, the HTC vive is way more interesting, so even if the Oculus offered linux support, I would have probably gone with Valve.
3D and VR are two different beasts. Moving your head while playing a 3D game (or watching a movie) doesn't affect the scene. There's no motion sickness to be had (besides a very small percentage of the population which actually do manage to be affected). When it comes to VR with head-tracking, you need another level of speed and fluid motion entirely. I've used the DK1 and own the DK2, and I can assure you there's a world of difference between playing a game that's been properly optimized to play fluidly on it (eg, Elite Dangerous) and playing one that hasn't been (eg, Portal 2). Within 30 seconds of playing Portal 2 with the DK2, and I had to turn off the PC and lie down from the motion sickness. (No, not from going through portals - hadn't even made any - the engine just wasn't "right" for it).
You're right, you can do stereoscopic 3D on an onboard VIA chipset with a mobile processor. You don't suffer if there's any frame lag. put, but it into a headset where the scene moves where you look, and you'd suffer. Their original goal was to get frame lag down to under 19ms for head movement updates, but I believe the goal is now something like 9ms. That is, in less than 9ms after a head movement change, it now needs to have rendered the first frames it wasn't predicting and have calculated the speed and direction of your movement so it knows which frame to render next. It's not like a mouse where you've moved it to a precise location and the engine knows already exactly what frames are to be rendered next. You're organic, and it's using accelerometers and infrared head tracking to measure as carefully as possible (without the pinpoint precision that, say, a cursor or controller button has) exactly how you've moved your head, and correctly predict (it already needs to be rendering the frame before it flips it, because by then your head's moved again) what the next one's going to be.
This all has to come together to give you a fast, seamless, fluid natural motion. And to pull this off with modern games at HD resolutions (neither DK1 or DK2 are "high definition" by any stretch of the imagination, which is the only reason they get away with fairly reasonable feeling - even though sometimes jerky - motion for games that are specifically optimized for them) will require a good video card and a good processor, because the average consumer wouldn't (and shouldn't) accept the image resolution of the development kits.
A fixed viewpoint 3D render like you're discussing is much "cheaper" processor-wise, and even when it stutters, doesn't make people sick, hence not needing a powerful videocard.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
I wouldn't pay 50 cents for one new.
The new-in-the-box price is about $1000 on eBay.
That's kind of a misnomer, though. Probably a huge percentage of the Virtual Boys on the collector market right now are 'taken out of the box only a few times' examples. Still, one that is unopened is always a rarity.
"Moving your head while playing a 3D game (or watching a movie) doesn't affect the scene."
Yes it does. You either see the screen, or you start seeing less of the screen.
"When it comes to VR with head-tracking, you need another level of speed and fluid motion entirely."
Anyone that's played the standup VR head/shoulder mounted mech game you could find in arcades can tell you that's bullshit, too.
" It's not like a mouse where you've moved it to a precise location and the engine knows already exactly what frames are to be rendered next. You're organic, and it's using accelerometers and infrared head tracking to measure as carefully as possible (without the pinpoint precision that, say, a cursor or controller button has) exactly how you've moved your head, and correctly predict (it already needs to be rendering the frame before it flips it, because by then your head's moved again) what the next one's going to be."
Then maybe Oculus should use technology that's been KNOWN to work and is already tested - like the arcade mech game mentioned above.
"A fixed viewpoint 3D render like you're discussing is much "cheaper" processor-wise,"
That sure as fuck was NOT the case when Crysis was first released and I'm pretty sure that holds true still to this day with whatever iteration of the latest 3D engine and the game code some random dev spews out.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You're already nuts if you can't tell the difference between VR and reality. No, VR is not going to fail. It's amazing. You seem to be unable to live in the present.
"Yes it does. You either see the screen, or you start seeing less of the screen."
No, it doesn't, unless you're talking about an autostereoscopic display such as the 3DS. A 3d image rendered on a '3d enabled" TV or computer monitor is static. Take the glasses off and move your head left and right - they're just polarized pixels. The 3d effect is an illusion.
"Anyone that's played the standup VR head/shoulder mounted mech game you could find in arcades can tell you that's bullshit, too."
"Then maybe Oculus should use technology that's been KNOWN to work and is already tested - like the arcade mech game mentioned above."
Riight.. because the requirements for 6-degrees-of-freedom HD gaming with spatial tracking and 9ms lag should somehow compare to a 276x372 8-bit render with 50 ms lag? And the former has to be less than a tenth the price? Guess where that's made up - in the requirements of the hardware you're plugging it into.
"That sure as fuck was NOT the case when Crysis was first released and I'm pretty sure that holds true still to this day with whatever iteration of the latest 3D engine and the game code some random dev spews out." ... even higher!
You're not even having the same conversation anymore. A fixed viewpoint 3D render is much cheaper than a non-fixed non-predictive one. It was when Crysis came out too. Are you simply pointing out that the graphics requirements were high for Crysis when it came out? Sure, nobodys questioning that. But now imagine if there'd also been a VR version at the same time, at the same resolution and graphical quality - guess what? The hardware requirements would be
I get you're angry about something, but I can't tell what. There's not much coherence in what you're saying other than an underlying belief that "they should be able to render modern upcoming games, in 3D VR, with much lighter hardware requirements than they're insisting on.". Of course.. that's why all the other companies out there competing with them have done so.. oh wait.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Do you honestly expect HTC and/or Valve to have invented some magic which somehow manages to render images at the same (or higher) resolution & framerate, with the same image quality and in-game graphics options, with any less beefy hardware to back it up? Or do you think Oculus are simply lying about what is needed for a good experience?