Oculus Rift Hardware Requirements Revealed, Linux and OS X Development Halted 227
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.
in other news... (Score:2, Funny)
"They have no timeline for going back to the less popular platforms." that means windows 8 is doomed
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Win8/8.1 has more users than OSX, and the "Windows" platform means that supporting Win7 gets Win8.x for free.
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Actually, as both a Vista user and a Windows 8.1 user, I'm pretty okay with 8.1.
Vista was okay too, after they patched the heck out of it. Windows 7 was better than both, but Windows 10 will hopefully give me that Win7 feel with a new OS again.
Of course, Linux and OSX never had a chance. My Vista box plays more games than either of them even though it is now showing its age.
Excellent (Score:2)
Just the excuse I needed to upgrade my graphics card.
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"a massive commercial disaster in the '90s"
Oh, you mean like virtually every internet tech company out there that went bust during the .com bubble? Good thing nobody has decided to attempt to build an internet company after that, since that was such a disaster.
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No it wont, unless you're prone top motion sickness, in which case VR is not for you.
Even VR a decade ago didn't make me sick, and I'm having a great time with my VR Gear and S6. Oculus fixed whatever caused the virtual world to warp as you turn on older VR systems like eMagin's device. It literally feels like being in a different environment. The phone version of Oculus is damn good, and the PC version will be much bett
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No it wont, unless you're prone top motion sickness, in which case VR is not for you.
Yeah right, sure. That's why oculus games' developers themselves are complaining about VR sickness:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/... [arstechnica.com]
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You can also exclude all people with neck problem. Apart from attaching a screen to your head, VR wont do much for them. For you ageist people, yes, this is a older person problem. Still of course it all counts, as you lose more and more market segments, the loss of buyers hugely inflates the development cost per unit. The target audience will run into economic limits, apparently quite major economic limits. That target market is shrinking all the time and everyone is already guessing that upon release as
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It could be the games themselves that are causing it rather than the platform.
I remember HL2 would cause me to get motion sick, but only on the level where you drove the fan boat through the acid canals and nowhere else.
The only other game to cause me to get motion sick was wolfenstein 3d if it was run on a modern computer. Older computers (that ran at a slower frame rate) didn't cause it for some reason.
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So... it's a question of whether the motion that we see has to match the motion that we feel in the inner ear? Because I don't see how that working in real life is a guarantee that it will work on VR hardware.
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not buying one anymore. I was super excited too.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not buying one anymore. I was super excited too.
I'm still looking forward to it. I have a friend that is going to toss a bucket of blood on me while I'm playing Call of Duty. He is also going to hold a fish under my nose when I'm watching 3d porn.
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Don't forget the unripe melons to simulate the breast implants, and a plucked chicken to simulate the razor bumps down below.
Re: Well... (Score:2)
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A very good friend indeed.
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But a friend with weed is better?
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You know...if they would just release API info and good information AS they develop internally for Win7....to the public, then the Open Source folks will work on the Linux versions for them.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
They probably don't want a sub-par version out there harming their reputation, so it would be most likely be a mistake to let the open source people run with it.
Actually, if they release ALL of the specs, it may be the other way. And that would be embarrassing as well.
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At least valve knows how to develop for linux.
I'll wait for their headset rather than support facebook.
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It seems like yesterday...
Oh, the logos are still there?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game/video_share [kickstarter.com]
Just above the "Team" blurb.
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I wouldn't be surprised if it worked on systems that didn't meet the spec...but I also wouldn't be surprised if they didn't guarantee *any* sort of pleasant experience on those systems including motion sickness, like they already have a problem with. All of the requirements are there to reduce latency, especially the synchronous display.
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I'm happy I didn't kickstart it now. I'll just wait for a competitor with support. For the amount of money they made during the kickstarter, there is no reason why they couldn't do that
No doubt! And another reason kickstarter can bite you in the ass. I wonder if the Linux folks (who in the beginning of the humble indie bundle were much more that %1.5 of the revenue) are demanding their kickstarter bid back?
Mac/Linux support removed... mildly surprised (Score:2)
Not surprised at all at linux support being removed, but being owned by facebook I'd think mac support would be a priority...
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Definitely not surprised about Linux. I bought a dk1 and ended up installing Windows on a second drive to play with it. Linux support is in huge quotation marks. Once you manage to get it working smoothly, you then have a barren wasteland as far as things to actually do with it.
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Mac support is pointless right now, you can't buy Apple hardware with enough GPU power.
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Mac users account for 10% of the users at best. How much of that 10% is using the latest Mac Pro?
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How much of that 10% is using the latest Mac Pro?
Virtually none of them? Did I get that right? ; )
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Why 10%?
I own a windows box for gaming, and use macs / linux for work. Many PCs sit in offices, or are owned by people who like Facebook but do not play games. Where do market share estimates come from for new gaming hardware? Surely it is not the installed base of each platform, because the platform is sold into many market segments, and most of them have zero probability of buying new gaming hardware.
Just curious, I know the steam survey samples active gamers, but steam is still over-representative of the
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That's an excellent question. Those "10%" numbers always come, as you say, from counting all computers including those sold to businesses. The numbers are also skewed in Steam because of the cheer number of Windows-only games.
Your question about the breakdown for games that are available for all three platforms is a good one, I'd be interested to see such numbers as well.
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I was of the same opinion too. A Mac Pro is a cheap UNIX workstation.
Just out of curiosity, what these days would be considered a not-so-cheap UNIX workstation? Does anyone still sell such a thing?
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The graphics workstations for special effects animations are still a very real market. They tend to have high end 10Gig, quite a lot of high speed RAM, flash drives for local processing, and very, very powerful video cards. They also used to have firewire for high bandwidth peripherals or external drives, but everyone's pretty much given up on that.
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The graphics workstations for special effects animations are still a very real market. They tend to have high end 10Gig, quite a lot of high speed RAM, flash drives for local processing, and very, very powerful video cards.
Hmm, can you give some example brand names or links? I googled around, and all I could find was this article [triosdevelopers.com] on the evolution of workstations, which only lists the new Mac Pro and some (unnamed) souped-up Windows/Intel PCs as the modern equivalent of a Unix workstation.
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I was careless: I actually meant a "Linux" workstation, not technically a "UNIX" workstation. I'm also rapidly approaching NDA material if I give out customer or partner names who use such hardware.
I'd look into what ILM, Industrial Lgiht and Magic, is using these days for their artists. Their switch from SGI based workastations to Intel hardware running Red Hat software was an exciting piece of technology news some years back.
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Not surprised at all at linux support being removed, but being owned by facebook I'd think mac support would be a priority...
But do people normally swap video cards in & out of Macs? Only if they do would an OS-X version of this been useful. Also, while iOS may be wildly popular, the same ain't true about OS-X.
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For an apple can you even get that level of video card? Been awhile since I specd one out. Linux would be no prob. But macs are usually slightly wimpy on the vid card side?
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Even if they support Linux, you still need people producing content for it that also supports Linux. I have a DK1, and while I did manage to get it going on my gentoo install, there was (and honestly still is) very little to actually play with. I ended up just installing Windows on a second drive.
Re: Mac/Linux support removed... mildly surprised (Score:5, Informative)
Wait for Valve to get interested. Then both Mac and Linux support issues will be covered (at least somewhat).
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Valve is already interested. The HTC/Valve VR system is a competitor to the Oculus Rift, and will probably be better due to Valve's background in game publishing.
And Linux support, and more Linux games, and not having just pissed off the Linux community by ditching them at the side of the road... Who world have thought how much the Linux community would support a DRM company?
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I don't have a problem with DRM that doesn't get in the way. DRM that makes the product unusable is mostly what we've seen before.
Re: Mac/Linux support removed... mildly surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't have a problem with DRM that doesn't get in the way.
Even more than that. Valve has worked hard to make Steam very feature rich. Unlimited installs, In home streaming, cloud synced saves, family sharing, big picture, VR mode, the card collecting meta-game, community features, Windows, Mac, & Linux support (most titles with access to all available versions), built in patching, built in modding support (workshop), etc.
Sure it has DRM, but they hugely offset the inconvenience of the DRM with features that take care of a lot of annoyances and issues players have had with or without DRM.
Not saying they're perfect. Their customer service could be greatly improved. That said, 7 years and I haven't had to call them for an account issue (knock on wood).
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Happy Smiley DRM is still DRM. The Infrastructure is in place and proven and operating for whomever comes along next to run the company.
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Then where did the dying light same day port and bio-shock ports come from? not to mention boarderland's the pre sequel upon launch port?
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You cannot design a Windows computer on OSX - there is no parametric 3D CAD, schematic capture, PCB layout, etc. software available on OSX.
You may mean that there is no Solidworks support and no Altium support in OS X. In that, you would be right. However, your claims of no 3D CAD, schematic capture,or PCB layout are all factually incorrect.
You fail at Google. Stop trashing a 6-digit UID with blatantly false information.
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Confirmed. There are Parametric 3D CAD programs for OSX. There seems to be schematic capture as well. Didn't bother with Googling others.
Unclear if they are of the professional level needed to design actual commercial products, but I think we will call this myth: "Busted."
Amusing aside, I recall doing digital design in college... on a Mac (pre-OSX). It worked, although that fucking program crashed at least once a session. Forget what it was called.
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Platform differences (Score:2)
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.
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OSX requirements would be: Wait until Apple sell hardware fast enough.
Re:Platform differences (Score:4, Informative)
Right now the "consumer Macs" don't have the GPU power (the Mac Pro does, but it's a sliver of their sales), and even if they did, Apple doesn't focus on the drivers in the way that happens on Windows - while it's possible for third party vendors to release drivers (Nvidia does it, for example), it's just not common - the vast majority of Mac users are running with the driver that ships with the OS and it doesn't get updated often.
They have made some strides forward in shipping decent GPU hardware, but the software is still somewhat lacking for heavy 3D lifting.
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I'd be happy if Apple would just expose the Intel QuickSync functionality. I can't even use this with Windows on my MBP.
Re:Platform differences (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the only graphics that exist in the world are the high-end games that were intentionally written for hardware that didn't even exist at the time of programming, yes?
Wake up, man. High-end gamers have long ago become the minority, ever since the rest of the world discovered that you can use computers to play games. "My little pony" games outsell most of the games reviewed in gaming magazines except for the top 20 or so. Farmville has more players than World of Warcraft had even at its peak.
Occulus Rift is a cute toy for a gamer, but for people working in the 3D design sphere, it could have been a tool. I'm talking visualisation, architecture, construction, event management. Everything where a look at what it will look like before you build or make it can save you thousands or millions. Now have you checked lately what creative people use? I sat down in a room full of design people less than two weeks ago, and every single one of them had a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. Zero windows computers in the room. You think they're going to give a fuck for your technical argument about driver support? If it doesn't support what they're working with, they'll not be using it, and that's it.
Still in the super-early adopter phase (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: Still in the super-early adopter phase (Score:2)
Game developers stop the exponential increase in scene complexity, fidelity, draw calls, shader complexity, etc.
the people who'll be buying VR will not be willing to settle for medium detail.
Contradiction detected. You want developers to stop building in high levels of detail, but then say their audience won't settle for anything less?
This is exactly what the detail slider is for. You can't really fault developers for making their game look even more awesome on future hardware while still being playable today.
Just turn the detail down if you need smoother play (in VR or not), and have a closer look at your apparent need to max all the sliders. Don't force the developers to artificially limit de
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"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 l
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(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.
You don't need to worry about this one too much anymore. You see, the "next gen" consoles are already out. That means if the game can't be played on a XBone or PS4, it won't get produced (by the mainstream producers). The only thing that will be pushing graphics much more are developers still trying to figure out what they can squeeze out of the existing hardware (which usually takes 2-4 years time, of which we are already in year 2). And given past generations, Microsoft and Sony won't be looking to replac
Kickstarter (Score:3, Insightful)
Hope all the kickstarter backers are happy with what became of their money.
Re:Kickstarter (Score:4, Informative)
The Kickstarter was for the DK1, which was shipped.
But this is still massively fucked up. The HTC headset Valve is launching sounds much better.
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Can you elaborate on why this is fucked up and why valve's sounds better? Genuinely curious.
A history of actually shipping the stuff they talk about... And lots of shipping Linux games.
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Oculus has talked about 7 diffrent headsets and they have shipped 4 and plan to ship 1 more in less than a year.
Steam has shipped how many headsets?
Oculus:
DK1 - shipped
Crystal Cove - demo'd never shipped
DK2 - shipped
Crecent Bay - demo'd never shipped
GearVR - shipped
GearVR S6 - shipped
CV1 - shipping in future
Valve:
http://www.engadget.com/2015/0... [engadget.com]
Vive - demo'd
DK1 - shipped only to select partners/developer houses
CV1 - shipping in future
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Because Facebook.
Re: Kickstarter (Score:5, Interesting)
I certainly am. I got my DK1 on schedule at a great price, AND I'm getting to see VR succeed in the marketplace. And as a bonus, I'm watching Oculus and Palmer do quite nicely out of it.
I don't remember "stick it to the Big Guys" being a campaign goal on the Kick starter pitch.
Re:Kickstarter (Score:5, Informative)
Let's put this stupid never ending meme to rest, shall we?
The 9500 Kickstarter backers got their DK1 for their money. Including me. I was one of the first ones. They have delivered what they have promised in the campaign, nothing less, nothing more.
Or do you really think that the development beyond the DK1 and the massive hiring that included people like Abrash and Carmack that has brought Oculus from a 3 person startup to a large company acquired by Facebook was actually financed by the Kickstarter money? You need to get real, those Kickstarter 2.5 millions were long gone by then. Yes, the Kickstarter got it off the ground but everything else was paid by venture capital - and Facebook. So the Kickstarter backers really don't have any reason to not be happy about what became of their money nor does Oculus have anything to report to them anymore.
Now whether the direction in which Oculus is going meshes with the ideals about "democratization of VR", cheap VR that everyone could enjoy etc. that is another discussion. Personally, I am not happy with what they are doing, because instead of making the VR cheap and easily accessible it is going to be a toy for the rich kids only. The minimal PC requirements are actually the least of the issues, even though it is something that the lay person is most likely to deal with.
The much worse problem is that their SDK is becoming more and more proprietary, closed binary blob that requires your 3D engine to pretty much build everything around it, otherwise it is a nightmare to integrate. It is pretty telling that even Unreal Engine 4 *still* doesn't have a good DK2 integration, year after DK2 is out - it is that complex and that intrusive to do and their heavily threaded and pipelined engine is not a good fit for the expectations the SDK has. I am afraid that with these crazy requirements the adoption by actual content producers - game studios, application developers, etc. is going to be minimal.
The massive effort required to re-engineer the games (both the engines and to adapt the content) to support the Rift will not pay off when only a small niche will be able to actually use it. Heck, current games are barely able to consistently hit 60fps at 1080p, here we are asking double the resolution and, should we follow the recommendations from Oculus, we should be targeting 90-120fps. Good luck with that ... Either the Oculus games will have massively reduced visual quality compared to the "normal" versions or will require insane hardware. Most likely both. I just don't see the game studios jumping on this bandwagon on a massive scale. I am afraid that what will most likely happen is that it ends up as yet another obscure and poorly supported gizmo, like the Razer Hydra, things like the Vuzix glasses, various shutter 3D glasses that were sold for PC over the years etc. A pity and a massively wasted opportunity, really.
That they have stopped the Linux and Mac support - I think it was obvious that this was only a matter of time. The writing was on the wall ever since they have released the DK2 with the two-part SDK architecture (closed source binary blob runtime and an open library to talk to it). The Linux and Mac SDKs were much delayed and when the SDK finally arrived, it wasn't full featured - e.g. the "direct" mode has never arrived to Linux (even though it is possible to make something like that work and probably with fewer bugs and glitches than the horrid driver hack they do on Windows).
The Mac SDK may eventually come back, but I am not having much hope - most Mac users have laptops and most laptops with discrete GPUs actually don't render directly to the external output but into a framebuffer of the integrated ("slow") GPU which then sends the image out. Which is the architecture that is explicitly not supported by Oculus. The Linux SDK is very likely dead for good, even though they won't say so. It just doesn't make commercial sense to go there, the market is small. So it will be likely languishing in limbo forev
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That "90fps needed for no motion sickness" is just a big red herring. Sorry. We had VR for much longer than Oculus exists and there were ways to have usable VR even at 30fps. Sure, 90 looks better, but things can be done with less. Moreover, the motion sickness is primarily function of content, not framerate - you can have even 120fps and you will still get sick if the camera is wildy gyrating around.
And if nobody will have hardware that will be actually capable of hitting those 90fps at those resolutions t
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At 30FPS it is based on content exactly like you say, at 90 that gets much less so. I've been playing with the DK2 (75FPS target) for quite some time and I've had some very simple movements at low frame rates make me nearly insta barf, yet I've had good experiences with even swooping and sweeping flying motions if the game is keeping up with the rules found by recent VR developers (especially Oculus) which includes frame rate, persistence, no motion blur etc...
Or... (Score:2)
...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.
Linux and Mac development stopped. (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
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Don't worry. The Occulus will most likely end up as a flop anyway.
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No linux support + the facebook deal is one reason i will _never_ touch this piece of hardware.
Actually, both of these reasons would be grounds enough alone to not get close.
Not so steep (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
"to no one's surprise" (Score:3)
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My understanding is that they are working directly with NVIDIA to get VR-specific extensions. If you're really interested, check out this blog post [oculus.com] for a primer.
Source/API Closing Up Oculus F*** Y** (Score:3)
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.
Crap resolution (Score:2)
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welcome back to 1995 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Yet Plenty of games have done 3D without two cares (Score:2)
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?
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Object density and complexity.
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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
Mmm. (Score:2)
Couldn't they use more power for the dominant eye while reducing it for the non-dominant one to get a better overall result?
No Linux? HTC and Valve will have my money (Score:2)
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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 analys
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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 exa
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The problem is nausea. I still remember Descent on VR glasses in the 1990s. Puke.
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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.
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So, what exactly is the innovation and why the hype around oculus now, 20 years later?
1) It's more affordable.
2) The tech is better (less likely to make you sick, etc)
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I owned a Model T when it first came out, what is so different about a Tesla?
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you don't know much about the functional aspect of the model T then do you? The steering wheel and the fact it has 4 wheels on the road are about the only similar things it has.
Just like VR 20 years ago had a screen in front of your face and some accelerators for tracking.
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What you're asking requires completely redesigning GPU pipelines. If VR catches on it will happen eventually, but it's a long way away.