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Facebook has cut the price of the Oculus Rift for the second time this year. It debuted at $800, was cut to $600 in March, and is now $400. Is there real trouble in the virtual reality market, or is it just a normal price correction now that early adopters have been served?
It means that the Rift now costs less than the package offered by its cheapest rival, Sony, whose PlayStation VR currently totals $460 including headset and controllers.
Even so, it's not clear that it will be enough to lure people into buying a Rift. A year ago, our own Rachel Metz predicted that the Rift would struggle against Sony's offering because the former requires a powerful (and expensive) gaming computer to run, while the latter needs just a $350 PlayStation 4 game console.
Jason Rubin, vice president for content at Oculus, tells Reuters that the reduction isn't a sign of weak product sales, but rather a decision to give the headset more mass market appeal now that more games are available. Don't believe it: this is the latest in a string of bad news for the firm, which has also shut down its nascent film studio, shuttered in-store demo stations of its hardware, and stumped up $250 million as part of a painful intellectual property lawsuit in the last six months.
Here's a February story about the Oculus demo stations at Best Buy stores being shut down.
Previously: Facebook/Oculus Ordered to pay $500 Million to ZeniMax
Google Partnering With HTC and Lenovo for Standalone VR Headsets
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:50PM (3 children)
How much computer power does a 3D virtual reality headset really need? is it possible to quantify a minimum level and thus price etc?
I'll assume the frame rate has to be at least 60 fps, and a angular resolution on par with what the eyes can handle. As hint a normal screen with more than 300 dpi (ppi) is rarely useful. Then there's the 3D processing..
In regards to the Oculus Rift, didn't that loose its future once it became relegated to Microsoft only drivers and Facebook ecosystem wet blanket all over it?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:35PM
We had a story [soylentnews.org] about FutureMark releasing a VR benchmark [futuremark.com].
After a search, I found that Tom's Hardware ran VRMark on various processors [tomshardware.com]. You can see the GPUs used on the previous page [tomshardware.com]. I expect that if you look closely at new CPU or GPU reviews, you will find VRMark and possibly other relevant benchmarks. Check the upcoming Vega reviews (once AMD releases something that isn't $1,000).
Normal benchmarks may also be applicable although I may be wrong. For example, if you are getting 1440p at 90 FPS or better on certain titles, it would seem TO ME that your system is VR capable. The current Oculus Rift has a 2160×1200 resolution with a 90 Hz refresh rate.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:05PM
I'll add that when looking at benchmarks for VR, you'll definitely want to take note of the minimum FPS. Sometimes one GPU will have a higher average FPS than other, but dramatically lower minimum FPS due to bad optimization, drivers, or whatever. Percentiles can also be used [anandtech.com] to give a better idea of how demanding a title is throughout an entire benchmark sequence.
Minimum FPS is considered important for VR because a sudden drop in FPS below the acceptable amount (60-90) hurts immersion and maybe triggers NAUSEA.
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 15 2017, @01:17PM
It depends almost entirely on what sort of graphics you want.
If you're content with 90's style flight simulator vector graphics then pretty much any modern $300 laptop can deliver satisfactory frame rates and responsiveness for a seamless VR experience.
If you want 1080p PS4-class graphics, then you're going to need something at least 4x more powerful than a PS4.