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Carmack Compares Oculus Quest Hardware Power To Last-Gen Game Consoles (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the less-than-or-equal-to dept.

During a talk at the Oculus Connect conference today, Oculus' CTO, John Carmack, compared the company's newly announced Oculus Quest headset to the Xbox 360 and PS3 in terms of power. Ars Technica reports: That doesn't mean the Quest, which is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC, can generate VR scenes comparable to those seen in Xbox 360 or PS3 games, though. As Carmack pointed out, most games of that generation targeted a 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second. On Quest, the display target involves two 1280x1280 images per frame at 72fps. That's 8.5 times as many pixels per second, with additional high-end anti-aliasing effects needed for VR as well. "It is not possible to take a game that was done at a high-quality level [on the Xbox 360 or PS3] and expect it to look good in VR," Carmack said. Expecting Rift-level performance from a self-contained mobile headset like the quest isn't realistic, Carmack said, partly for simple electrical reasons. While a high-end gaming PC often draw up to 500 watts of power, Carmack said the Quest only uses about 5W, a tidbit that should be of benefit to the Quest's still unconfirmed battery-life statistics.

That relative lack of hardware power is going to require some developers to adopt "a different programming style that's been necessary on the PC," Carmack warned. "With a modern PC, you have so much extra power, you don't need to be a hotshot programmer to make a game people love. You don't really have that convenience on any mobile platform, really, but especially not on our platform." That's not an insurmountable problem, Carmack suggested, as long as developers focus on the dozen or so things that players really need to concentrate on in an average game, rather than "thousands" of pieces of graphical fluff. He suggested developers look back to the lessons of platforms like the original PlayStation and Nintendo DS to see how developers crafted memorable experiences on much less-powerful hardware. Carmack went on to say that "realistically, we're going to end up competing with the Nintendo Switch... they'll pick up Quest as [a] mobile device, just like Switch."

73 comments

  1. I can see the VR migraines already by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "While a high-end gaming PC often draw up to 500 watts of power, Carmack said the Quest only uses about 5W" - So I'll save electricity while I give myself nausea-inducing headaches in your disjointed VR strobing slide-shows, sweet.

    Fuck your FPS, fail.

    1. Re:I can see the VR migraines already by Penis++Breath+(TM) · · Score: 1

      Why don't you just step over here and DIE IN A FIRE?

  2. As long there's enough memory... by Z80a · · Score: 2

    You just can shove a crapload of big textures and pretend the hardware is more powerful than it actually is.
    Baking, PRT, more baking, normal maps...

    1. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wouldn't that require a high texture fill-rate, which the Oculus Quest probably doesn't have?

      Also, games with high resolution textures, but low polygon counts and no lighting, look extremely weird. There are some indie games like that and that can appear extremely unnatural to the point where they're somewhat disturbing.

    2. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Z80a · · Score: 2

      Textures are only sampled N times per pixel onscreen, not mattering if its a 32x32 or 4096x4096 piece of thing.
      Of course, caches may get into play, but i never seen an actual performance hit caused by a bigger texture, unless was a texture being pulled from the main RAM thru a slow bus (not that there is such thing as fast card bus).
      Now anisotropic filtering on the other hand....
      Also i don't think we're talking PS1 levels of low poly here.

    3. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And no global illumination or dynamic lighting. And no detailed polys.

      Yeah, no thanks. It will end up looking like Doom with high resolution textures.

    4. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "but i never seen an actual performance hit caused by a bigger texture" Then you don't know what you're talking about, with the caveat that you said TEXTURE, singular instead of TEXTURES, very plural and sometimes very large.

      There's no debate, larger textures take more VRAM. Run out and you juggle. VR isn't kind when your framerate stutters, that is headache land. So you have to have good HW or you have to run low details, which sucks. (So Quest sucks)

    5. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Z80a · · Score: 1

      Baked GI can look quite convincing as long you don't actually rotate objects around.
      Also you can kinda get away with dynamic simple light with baked ambient occlusion, like it's done with super mario galaxy.

    6. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used to attempt a lot of this kind of fakery with the Quake/id Tech engines and it never does look right though. Baked level lighting is easy to spot and you end up with blob or hard edged stencil shadows for entities.

    7. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Why dont any of you understand that the bulk of the market is people watching those VR porn videos. This product is enough for that purpose.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    8. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lost in the story: The PS3 GPU is 10X slower than the Nintendo Switch, and the Nintendo Switch is a good 6 times slower than the best available PC GPU.

      So really this is just an embarrassing comparison to begin with. VR is not ready for mass consumption and most of what's been produced already is still pathetic, as it's looking at a painting, not depth.

    9. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The graphics realistically should be close to a Playstation Vita TBH which was about 25% that of a 360 or PS3.
      That should be good enough for most Indie VR experiences.

    10. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Z80a · · Score: 1

      This is exactly why i said "unless was a texture being pulled from the main RAM", which is what happens when you run out of VRAM, which is why the OP is also named "as long there's enough memory".

    11. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Compare PS3 and Switch, the former has 256MB of graphics memory, the latter has 4GB unified memory, just a little bit faster in terms of bandwidth. (More bandwidth saving features in the Switch GPU which is a decade newer)

      It's a game changer such that the Switch gets straight ports from the PS4 (games that run at 60 fps on PS4/Xbox and run at 30 fps on Switch, and/or other limitations.)
      The new Oculus thing probably has a faster CPU than the Switch, GPU I don't know : perhaps not any better.
      You can't do 720p and 30 fps hence the expectation of simpler looking games but it's still high res and has a ton of memory.

      What if you could run a 1GB cartridge on the SNES and games were made for it? You could have a ton of crazy things like thousands of character animation, a different face for each enemy and various clothes, body sizes ; thousands of digital sound effects, digital music parts, some video playing on bill boards in the background, full voice acting, a huge world map.

    12. Re:As long there's enough memory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think I remember some of this from the real games (I'll include the Half-Life 1 engine in your Quake / ID lot)
      You go move or blow up a crate or something and its shadow remains on the floor. I don't remember which of the games.
      The stencil shadows were hardly ever used, you could enable it with Quake 3 (in the game's frigging in-game command line) but it was a bit geometry challenged, what with playing a man running at 100-200 mph and spinning around and increasing the f.o.v. (I think I used 105!)
      In Quake 2 they were just shitty, not shadows at all but some mix of grey and black polygons based on the low poly character models do you remember that?

      Kingpin used them and they were impressive! They worked by being 100% black in a dark game and gritty sort of diesel punk game. I think a 3dfx Voodoo 1 has all the features to run them (maybe it even runs the game decently but it was already low on RAM and slower than low end graphics cards in 2000/2001 already, so I didn't get to try)

  3. Thanks for nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Hey Facebook! you suckered me into a high end PC for the Rift and now you are abandoning me to compete with Nintendo - suck it!

    1. Re:Thanks for nothing by Z80a · · Score: 1

      Come on, it's not like it's that hard to survive the next nintendo portable thing. The PSP did survived it quite well and also the...

    2. Re:Thanks for nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey Facebook! you suckered me into a high end PC for the Rift and now you are abandoning me to compete with Nintendo - suck it!

      they already are my friend... they already are... do even think about the IoT buttplug.. it is supposed to do that..

    3. Re:Thanks for nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Come on, it's not like it's that hard to survive the next nintendo portable thing. The PSP did survived it quite well and also the...

      nintendo shift og sh*t or whatever they call it ... is just a big fail

    4. Re:Thanks for nothing by N1AK · · Score: 1

      You might be a sucker but I can't see why anything in this announcement means Facebook suckered you. Your rig will still work, people will still develop for higher end platforms. This could be a really good step for all VR gaming. Companies can only invest so much on developing for VR when it's a tiny market, if standalone devices like this considerably expand the market then the resources spent on providing content for that market will increase. Once a company is well positioned to develop for VR in a limited resource environment they are also in a better position to develop for VR on higher end devices.

    5. Re:Thanks for nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess by "suckered" I meant that I had hoped that I had future proofed my PC build enough that it would still be viable for the Rift 2. With all of the development work going towards standalone, that becomes less likely. Wonder if there could be an equipment addon that would allow the Quest to harness the muscle of a nearby PC?

  4. APK Hosts File Engine for Linux/BSD... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    See subject: APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux/BSD h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p

    Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any 1 solution (99% of threats use hostnames vs. IP address most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!

    Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" slowing you hosts speed u up 2 ways: Adblocks + Hardcode fav. sites u spend most time @ vs. competition loaded w/ security bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + overheads slowing u (messagepass 'souled-out' to advertisers easily detected & blocked addons + firewall filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploitation!

    * ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI 4 Linux/BSD!

    (Better vs. Windows model in speed/efficiency/merge)

    APK

    P.S.=> Protects against Spectre & Meltdown + ads/trackers/botnets/malware downloads/malcript/email malicious payloads... apk

  5. MacOS version available, too... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    It's here! APK Hosts File Engine 1.0++ 64-bit for MacOS h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r M a c O S . z i p

    Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any 1 solution (99% of threats use hostnames vs. IP address most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!

    Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" slowing you hosts speed u up 2 ways: Adblocks + Hardcode fav. sites u spend most time @ vs. competition loaded w/ security bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + overheads slowing u (messagepass 'souled-out' to advertisers easily detected & blocked addons + firewall filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploitation!

    * ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI 4 MacOS!

    (Better vs. Windows model in speed/efficiency/merge)

    APK

    P.S.=> Protects against Spectre & Meltdown + redirect poisoned or downed DNS/botnets/malware downloads/malcript/email malicious payloads... apk

  6. Or Not by dohzer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    lack of hardware power is going to require some developers to adopt "a different programming style that's been necessary on the PC,".

    Yeah, they'll either have to do that, or simply not develop for the platform. I wonder which they will do.

    1. Re:Or Not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mobile devices will always be more underpowered by non-mobile devices. It's just how processor power efficiency works.
      It just depends on if people will care or not. For checking Facebook on their mobile devices, people will not care about using a computationally under-powered device. For rendering 90Hz VR experiences that will either induce euphoria or nausea, high computational ability MATTERS A LOT.

      We haven't yet gotten to the point where 3D rendering in mobile devices is "just good enough" like we have with general purpose computing. (A typical desktop with a typical CPU in the past 2 decades has more than enough processing power needed to do basic web browsing.) It's too soon to say when that will be for VR.

    2. Re:Or Not by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Yeah, they'll either have to do that, or simply not develop for the platform. I wonder which they will do.

      Why wonder when you can look at similar platforms, e.g. Anything Nintendo has ever made.

  7. LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    JOHN CARMARK is FACEBOOK Employee

    1. Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      haha we're saying facts looool

    2. Re:LOL by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 1

      Shouldn't he be sitting in a parking lot somewhere in a Ferrari?

    3. Re: LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not after he lost it to Thresh.

  8. This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    C++ written in OOP doesn't respect the modern CPU architecture because it trashes the cache. It doesn't matter that the CPU is blazingly fast if it's waiting several cycles to load data from memory. OOP is the worst thing that has happened in terms of the video games industry (or performance oriented software) because it over-emphasizes some human philosophy by assuming its good to ignore the actual hardware by abstracting away from it. At the end of the day, you are talking to hardware and hardware doesn't care about your philosophy. If you get a cache-miss it can be an order of magnitude slower than if you organise your data properly and follow Data Oriented Design. Check out Mike Acton's talk on this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc). Even Scott Meyers beats around the bush on this topic on how it's a flawed language (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDIkqP4JbkE&amp=&index=22&amp=&list=WL&amp=&t=15s)

    1. Re:This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      After watching Mike Acton's video I now realise that my 15 year career of being a software developer was a lie

    2. Re:This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And this is why old school programmers went bare metal and knew assembler.

      You had to understand the op-codes and how they interacted and how you could use them to optimise in non-obvious ways.

      Modern compilers are pretty good now, but you still see some weird patterns that a good assembler programmer would laugh at.

      Any level of abstraction to make coding simpler slows things down as you now have a translation phase. and some fixed patterns don't chain well.

      And then you have "patterns" useful for a lot of stuff, but a lot of programmers seem to be obsessed with them, but don't really understand when not just going with the standard pattern is better instead.

    3. Re:This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The problem with C++ is that it's meant to be a low-level language that you choose for performance, but with OOP it introduces these higher level concepts that negate the performance benefits, making it a less obvious choice as a language. If you don't care about performance then choose Java or C#, it's can get to up to 60% to 80% performance of C++ and you don't need to worry about all the pitfalls. If you care about performance pick C or C++ written in a C-style. C is high performance and actually simpler and less pretentious than C++. Take a look at how many different meanings the word const takes depending on where you put it. Take a look at all these rules you need to remember - rule of 3 becomes rule of 5 and all the gotchas when doing operator overloading. All the C++11 and 17 features are basically there just to try to fix the broken parts of the language (move operators).

      Also if you every opened up profiler on a C++ application, you see that so much time is wasted on object construction/destruction. "new" is not the same as "malloc" because doing new invokes a constructor and that implicitly sets off a chain reaction of other things like it's member's constructors and fills up the stack with all of this stuff that you probably didn't need at that point in time, trashing the cache.

      It's a common misconception that writing performance oriented code needs to look ugly and hard to understand. C style sequential code is simple to understand and easier to get the compiler to generate assembly that makes more sense in terms of performance. Somewhere along the line we all got caught up in Object Orientation - almost like taking some analogy too far and we convinced ourselves that all these layers of abstraction were necessary and everyone forgot that they were engineers who actually know about hardware and shouldn't try to run away from it

    4. Re:This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends, were you trying to program high performance software that would squeeze every drop of power hardware had?
      Obviously 99% of dev don't need this and have rushed deadline too so cannot do this.

      It doesn't change the fact that abstracted concept can hurt performance, cpu wise.

    5. Re:This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      C is high performance and actually simpler and less pretentious than C++

      I don't think the word "pretentious" means what you think it means...

    6. Re:This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you don't care about performance then choose Java or C#, it's can get to up to 60% to 80% performance of C++ and you don't need to worry about all the pitfalls

      Go here if you want to see how 'slow' C++ is:

      https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/faster/cpp.html

    7. Re: This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Op is referring to c++ written in oop. Doubt this benchmark toy program is oop

    8. Re: This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      30 years ago, the overhead of OOP might have been noticeable.

      Nowadays, with 4GHz CPUs and tons of RAM, I highly doubt the difference is significant. It may not even be measurable in human terms.

    9. Re: This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In a lot of cases, you are right. The higher-level languages knowingly paid the performance penalty for other benefits such as modularity and scalability where you scale horizontally by just adding another node to a cluster.

      In the context of this article, this is the perfect example why performance matters - if we want VR to work properly on a low-wattage device with decent battery life, then this is vital. The thing is most people are not even aware of the degree in performance penalty they are paying to stick with OOP.

      For games, you are basically capped by single threaded performance so this becomes important again. For multi-core CPUs, doing the wrong thing means you not only invalidate the CPU cache of the current core you are on, but all of the core's cache. See Scott Meyer's (if you don't know who he is then you haven't been using C++ long enough) video

      Also don't forget the environmental impact...inefficient software means a higher energy usage and a higher carbon footprint

    10. Re:This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the link you provided, if you are referring to the "k-nucleotide" program in the benchmark where the C++ implementation achieves 3.66 seconds and the C one achieve it in 5.07 seconds, if you click through to the source code you'd notice the C++ one is using 4 threads where the C one is single threaded. Also note the C++ implementation is quite procedural and not OOP

    11. Re: This means throw out OOP and C++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been developing with Unity for Gear VR, and I can tell you it is pure bloat. There is nothing lean-and-mean about it... but the games run pretty well. Nevertheless I'm inclined to learn the native API and code at a lower level.

  9. comparisons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AC unfavorably compares trump to a mentally retarded clone of Mussolini who was born with his head permanently up his own ass.

    LOL@vword: biology

  10. Pfft... it's worse than the old PSVR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Sure, the PSVR has a slightly lower resolution at 960x1080xRGB per eye, but it does it at 120Hz.

    I've found zero mention whatsoever of what type of screen is actually in it (OLED or LCD), which makes me think it's LCD based. At least the PSVR is an emissive OLED screen meaning black pixels are actually black and not some light-leaked-through-crappy-LCD-cells version of black.

    1. Re:Pfft... it's worse than the old PSVR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure, the PSVR has a slightly lower resolution at 960x1080xRGB per eye, but it does it at 120Hz.

      I've found zero mention whatsoever of what type of screen is actually in it (OLED or LCD), which makes me think it's LCD based. At least the PSVR is an emissive OLED screen meaning black pixels are actually black and not some light-leaked-through-crappy-LCD-cells version of black.

      my old Samsung Galaxy Note 4 has a higher resolution per eye when used as a Google Cardboard VR headset, than Oculus rift, htc vive, psvr and this new P.O.S. oculus spy-VR..

      If you buy anything from Oculus then YOU are owned by FapBook!

      Since Oculus is owned by Facebook, I would NEVER EVER buy ANYTHING from Oculus, nomatter what!
      Mark is not going to spy on me any more than he already does.

      HTC Vive and the microsoft headset makers are the best options... actually I would say that the MS headset makers would be the best bet, since they are already following an establish standard.. even IF that standard is defined by Microsoft.

    2. Re:Pfft... it's worse than the old PSVR by locopuyo · · Score: 1

      It's probably OLED considering the standard Rift is OLED.

      --
      The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
    3. Re: Pfft... it's worse than the old PSVR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do realize that Microsoft is spying on you just as much? Right?

    4. Re: Pfft... it's worse than the old PSVR by batukhan · · Score: 1

      If you're going to compare it to PlayStation VR that's tethered to a console box, you might as well compare it to the Rift which is tethered to a PC

  11. I'm not so sure this'll work by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    folks developed for the 3DS because the install base was so huge. At $400 for a niche tech I don't see this taking off. Plus, well, a lot of the folks I know who want VR want it to be a bit more photo-realistic for... um... reasons. Maybe if they make games like this.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:I'm not so sure this'll work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Plus, well, a lot of the folks I know who want VR want it to be a bit more photo-realistic for... um... reasons.

      No need to beat around the bush. We all know you want VR to watch gay porn. Your two-incher gets rock-hard seeing a dick entering a dude's butthole.

  12. MOD PARENT UP! by Penis++Breath+(TM) · · Score: 0

    ^ UP ^ I ^ SAY ^

    ...or would you like US to do it for you?

  13. Nice backhand there John by mnemotronic · · Score: 3, Informative

    "With a modern PC, you have so much extra power, you don't need to be a hotshot programmer to make a game people love. You don't really have that convenience on any mobile platform, really, but especially not on our platform."

    In other words, game developers have become less interested in hardware familiarity, algorithm efficiency, and counting cycles, preferring to let the compiler optimize out their f**kups or the hardware to overwhelm bad style with massive parallelism. I guess I can understand; features and delivery schedules are set by marketing and management and aren't related to reality. And if you are a manger needing to cut overhead, and you decide to hire a bunch of fresh-out-of-school straight-A engineers in, let's say, southeast Asia who look good on paper but can't program worth s**t, you get what's coming to you.

    --
    The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
    1. Re:Nice backhand there John by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thats pretty much all programming these days. When you see SaaS platforms written in java gobbling up gigabytes of data even before users even start to touch the platform.

      No one programs anymore, they write a little bit of bandaid code to link together 300 libraries and hope and pray it works.

    2. Re:Nice backhand there John by ckatko · · Score: 2

      > You don't really have that convenience on any mobile platform, really, but especially not on our platform."

      That strategy worked out great for the Nintendo 64! Let's see how it works out for them...

      Takeda said, "When we made Nintendo 64, we thought it was logical that if you want to make advanced games, it becomes technically more difficult. We were wrong. We now understand it's the cruising speed that matters, not the momentary flash of peak power."[2]

  14. Give us Rift + wireless + no sensors. Thanks. by tonymercmobily · · Score: 2

    I own an Oculus Rift and have spent a substantial number of hours on VR.
    What we really want, is an Oculus Rift with:

    * Wireless headset. I would be very happy to have a battery back around my belt, or whatever. Please not on my head.
    * Sensort-less tracking. I want to be able to take it anywhere

    But, having a small bloody computer in there... really? No thanks. I will gladly use my own computer with a nice 1080, or my Gaming laptop with a nice 1050 (not much, but OK) if I really want to take it outside.

    I really hope I can hook up the Quest to a PC and use it as a headset.

  15. rsilvergun = fake name massive human fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    See subject: Your MASSIVE FAIL in this life is you're nothing more than a chattering little do-nothing "ne'er-do-well" online & you know it...

    * Is that the best your "phantasyland FAKE NAME" (for your fake lie of a so-called 'life') can manage?

    When a FAKE NAME do nothing like YOU does better than I have? Then talk (you're all talk & no action)...

    You can't help you're an immature little BUTTHURT no-mind, lol! I blew you away in TONS OF PLACES and easily dust your no-mind bullshit blatherings.

    APK

    P.S.=> The TRUE PRICE of your UNIDENTIFIABLE FAKE NAME do-nothing selves like you that I can ALWAYS CASH IN ON (lol) is that I can use FACT/TRUTH on them to SHATTER their all TOO fragile delusional egos that they actually know A DAMN THING in computing, lol... apk

    1. Re:rsilvergun = fake name massive human fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, this is getting me nostalgic for the old days of the internet...pure unadulterated raging insanity.
      I liked the web a lot more back then.

  16. I am a simple man. by CptLoRes · · Score: 1

    When Carmack speaks, I listen.

    1. Re:I am a simple man. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're an idiot. Carmack's a dinosaur who sold out

    2. Re:I am a simple man. by blkhawk · · Score: 1

      Dinosaurs are cool. Plus they have lovely plumage.

  17. This is DOA. For more than one reason. by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    First, developer support. Unless Facebook is REALLY putting a LOT of money behind it and develop a fair amount of good applications themselves, nobody else will. You'd have to train your staff to program for a platform that will likely have very few users in the beginning and is vastly different from any other platform you developed for so far. This alone will almost certainly guarantee that no AAA studio will jump onto it, they are VERY risk-averse. So what you'll probably get is smaller studios and indies that can take a risk.

    Then there's the hardware. If the hardware is as powerful as last-gen console hardware, anything you produce will invariably suck if it has to stand against other VR titles on Occulus Rift and Vive that can tap the power of high-end PC gaming hardware. If you want to avoid motion sickness, at least to the best of your ability, you need to be able to produce a smooth simulation. Anything under 30 fps, more likely 50fps, will make people feel queasy. That means the poly count needs to go down. WAY down. In other words, the graphics you'll get will by no means be close to PS3. Playstation, maybe PS2, is more what you could expect.

    A more sensibly comparison would be pitting it against mobile consoles. Comparing this VR set against other VR sets or making people expect playing current console titles in VR will lead to VERY disappointed customers.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  18. Hope it flops by TAz00 · · Score: 1

    Chubby Luckey can suck it

  19. Nothing but win by sad_ · · Score: 1

    I see nothing but wins here;

    - devs who make a game for quest will need to optimize it, this should benefit any platform as well.
    - competing with the switch (compared power wise), i fail to see how this is bad, the switch is doing great!

    --
    On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
    1. Re:Nothing but win by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      - devs who make a game for quest will need to optimize it, this should benefit any platform as well.

      That is the great part. But will anyone BUY the hardware and the games if they look like late PS2 early PS3 games graphics wise in this day and age?
      I mean there's so much focus on graphics there will be plenty of gamers who will scoff at that option and spend the money for PC upgrades instead of under powered headset.

      - competing with the switch (compared power wise), i fail to see how this is bad, the switch is doing great!

      Just because someone said his HW is competing with other one that is extremely popular doesn't mean the new HW will magically get sales.
      Remember OUYA? It was also competing with giants.

  20. why no video input? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what I can't figure out is why these AIO headsets don't have an HDMI/Displayport input and a usb output for their tracking so they can do double duty as a tethered PC VR headset, and switch to being a stand-alone AIO when untethered. Having a portable (albiet low powered) headset that I can also plug in to my pc and use as PC VR would make it very much worthwhile to me.

  21. c6gunner IMPERSONATING me again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    c6gunner your FAKEname's on a post impersonating me & worse is you altering /. user's words https://linux.slashdot.org/com... as I challenged you to show you do better work and you can't after you tried to mock me you hypocrite LYING loser https://linux.slashdot.org/com... .

    * You're online FAKENAME trash c6gunner & a childish dishonest punk.

    PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH TOO saying what I don't on spectre/meltdown https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... & I haven't had a MacOS X version recompiled for me yet (I don't own a Mac but I have a friend who does & can code (to a good extent, good enough to load FreePascal 3.0.4 + patches & Lazarus 1.8.2 IDE for it in 64-bit to do so but he is a BUSY guy, just waiting on him for it to do this as a FAVOR to me...))

    APK

    P.S.=> Impossible to deny FACT of your FAKEname (for your FAKE wasted lie of a so-called life) on that 1st post link above you unbelievable loser... apk

    1. Re:c6gunner IMPERSONATING me again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Your software is just crap - written in crayon, fictional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine as a punchline to a joke by mmell February 17, 2017

      Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is fucking insane - by JazzLad April 20, 2016

      his hosts "program" is actually a broken batch file by xenotransplant August 10 2015

      his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to be a laughingstock while consuming excessive amounts of alcohol by alexgieg September 25 2015

      I like your tinfoil hat by Karmashock September 09 2015

      that APK nut, I can't get him to stop talking about his piece of shit file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015

      I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

      APK

      P.S.=> When YOU do better than THAT by our /. registered peers, then talk (from behind your FAKE NAME for your FAKE LIE of a "so-called" WASTED life) - ok? apk

    2. Re:c6gunner IMPERSONATING me again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only thing APK puts into his mouth is trucker cock down at the glory hole in the Pilot Travel Center off of I81 near his house.

  22. c6gunner IMPERSONATING me again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    c6gunner your FAKEname's on a post impersonating me & worse is you altering /. user's words https://linux.slashdot.org/com... as I challenged you to show you do better work and you can't after you tried to mock me you hypocrite LYING loser https://linux.slashdot.org/com... .

    * You're online FAKENAME trash c6gunner & a childish dishonest punk.

    PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH TOO saying what I don't on spectre/meltdown https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... & I haven't had a MacOS X version recompiled for me yet (I don't own a Mac but I have a friend who does & can code (to a good extent, good enough to load FreePascal 3.0.4 + patches & Lazarus 1.8.2 IDE for it in 64-bit to do so but he is a BUSY guy, just waiting on him for it to do this as a FAVOR to me...))

    APK

    P.S.=> Impossible to deny FACT of your FAKEname (for your FAKE wasted lie of a so-called life) on that 1st post link above you unbelievable loser!... apk

  23. Here's the original & FU idiot... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

    Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is quite valid - by JazzLad April 20, 2016

    his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

    his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

    I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

    that APK guy, I use his host file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015

    I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

    * Linux model = faster/more efficient

    APK

    P.S.=> So LET'S SEE A MORON LIKE YOU DO BETTER as you IMPERSONATE me OR STALK ME via your UNIDENTIFIABLE dirtbag posts... apk

  24. Rant. by westlake · · Score: 1

    "With a modern PC, you have so much extra power, you don't need to be a hotshot programmer to make a game people love. You don't really have that convenience on any mobile platform, really, but especially not on our platform."

    The hotshot programmer tends to deliver a tech demo, not a game.

    That is why the Disney or Pixar movie with include end with 400 engineers credited in very fine print and 50 other creative talents given top billing. Script and story, Art design. Character design and animation. Vocal performance . Music and sound.

  25. Carmack is nothing but a Facebook shill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He lost all respect.

  26. as opposed to what vr is supposed to be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    isnt the point of VR supposed to be its ultra realistic? its all about the immersion and i doubt you can get immersed with a giant headset on your head and shitty 3ds looking graphics.