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Baseline hardware requirements to run the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset have been determined. They recommend a NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD Radeon R9 290 equivalent or greater GPU, an Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater CPU, 8 GB RAM, 2x USB 3.0 ports and "HDMI 1.3 video output supporting a 297 MHz clock via a direct output architecture."
Oculus chief architect Atman Binstock explains: "On the raw rendering costs: a traditional [1920×1080] game at 60 Hz requires 124 million shaded pixels per second. In contrast, the Rift runs at 2160×1200 at 90 Hz 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 30-60 fps. The Rift has no such luxury, however.
The last requirement is more onerous: Microsoft 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 Microsoft Windows. They have no timeline for going back to the less popular platforms.
Are there any good alternatives that make use of a more open GPU (say, from Intel) from a VR manufacturer that provides proper support for FOSS platforms? Even better would be if the RAM requirement were lower, and something other than USB were used, perhaps Ethernet. And an alternative to HDMI that doesn't require a 10,000 US$ fee per manufacturer, regardless if you make 10 circuits or 100,000.
Tom's Hardware and Anandtech.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @08:52PM
In reality, it's an economically-sound decision.
Linux is a very minor player. Linux is at most 2% of the desktop market, and that's being generous. Keep in mind that the systemd debacle is still playing out. Experienced Linux users are fleeing it left and right for FreeBSD and OS X. We can expect that 2% to drop to 1%, if not lower.
OS X sees somewhat higher usage than Linux, but it still pales in comparison to Windows. We're looking at maybe 6% to 8% of the desktop market.
In addition, just having some share of the desktop market means that the share belonging to gamers is much smaller. Again, being generous, maybe 0.2% of all Linux installations are used for gaming. Maybe 2% to 3% of all OS X installations are used for gaming.
Focusing on Windows makes complete sense. It still has 90% or more of the desktop market. Over 95% of gamers use it.
If you're working on a product for the PC gaming market, you have no choice but to target Windows. Targeting anything else is just fucking stupid when you care about being a viable business.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:52PM
So some thin-skinned Linux neckbeard or OS X hipster can't accept the fact that his preferred OS isn't really used at all, and must resort to using abusive moderation against those who point out this fact. It's pathetic, but typical. Fanatics like that often do have severe trouble facing up to reality, and they do tend to lash out at anyone who expresses the truth.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:56PM
I modded you and your comment's parent up. Even if the numbers your comment's parent listed aren't exactly factual (I don't know whether or not that's the case) or even deliberately misleading, the sad fact is that it is a prudent business decision regarding the Occulus Rift and Linux/OSX.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:02PM
Those numbers are comparable to those of the many website usage stat data sets that are out there. Mac OS X is typically at most 8%. Linux is typically 2%.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Sunday May 17 2015, @06:09AM
Steam's hardware survey : http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=combined [steampowered.com]
Click on the OS Version line : )
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday May 17 2015, @11:57AM
For anyone who can't be bothered, it shows Linux use at 0.57% and Mac use at 3.1%. That leaves Windows with 96.33% of the Steam market share.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @10:44PM
That's not a good measure, either. I'm an avid systemd/Linux gamer, yet I refuse to use Steam. There are a lot of us who won't install proprietary software on our computers. That's why we use systemd/Linux in the first place.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday May 18 2015, @12:02AM
I would agree that it isn't a perfect representation. But i totally disagree with your reason. You could never use the Oculus Rift anyways without installing proprietary binary blobs for GPU and the rift itself. Most games with rift support are closed source so you couldn't play them either.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @01:16AM
Gee. Y'think?
At best, they are USA-centric--or were, several years ago.
Wikipedia's numbers for March put Windoze usage under 43 percent. [wikimedia.org]
Uruguay - 13.54 percent, Venezuela - 7.58 percent as examples of current numbers [mrpogson.com]
Linux usage a year and a half ago (world map) [muylinux.com]
Any estimates on how far Lose8, specifically, has shifted those toward darker colors in the ensuing year-plus?
This graph might be useful in your estimate. [mrpogson.com]
Whether these figures extrapolate to gaming is another issue, I will admit.
-- gewg_ (who is not a gamer at all)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @02:06AM
We're talking about advanced, cutting-edge graphics hardware that pushes even the best graphics workstations available today to their absolute limit, and even then they can't keep up.
Your stats include mobile devices that can barely power their own tiny screens.
If you even bothered to look at the breakdown of your stats, you'd see that the 15% "Linux" share is actually 14% Android!
Congratulations, you've just used the most irrelevant statistics here ever. The only things they prove is that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, and that Windows actually is the most widely used desktop OS by a huge margin.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday May 17 2015, @12:11PM
Yeah, those really are crap figures in this context, web server traffic means absolutely nothing when looking at gaming market OS share. The Steam numbers previously posted are much more relevant.
In fact, these web traffic figures are just appallingly bad figures, period. iPad and iPhone OS are both listed in the mobile AND non-mobile categories, plus by far the most popular version listed is 1.X - yeah, right. Playstation and Wii are listed as mobile OSs. The Wikipedia app itself is listed as an OS.
tl;dr - Crap figures are crap.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:56PM
It's just that Oculus contributes to a worse world.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:00PM
Gaming on a Linux or OS X system is much worse than gaming on a Windows system. They're doing everyone a favor by targeting the best gaming OS.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:49PM
Want to quantify "worse" please?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:44PM
it might be the ideal solution to the overpopulation problem when eventually everyone will just fuck in virtual reality
when the world is full of fat lazy welfare bums, nobody will wanna fuck in real life cos it requires physical effort
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 18 2015, @05:48AM
Real life fucks comes with diseases, pregnancies, time consumption and finding a partner drain. So of course some people will find virtual dating a lot more interesting.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @08:47AM
Not if you marry little girls.
Deuteronomy 22 28-29 allows this.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by aristarchus on Saturday May 16 2015, @11:10PM
So some thin-skinned Linux neckbeard or OS X hipster can't accept the fact that his preferred OS isn't really used at all, and must resort to using abusive moderation against those who point out this fact. It's pathetic,
It was I! I modded the GP as flamebait, and evidently I was correct, even though my skin is of normal thickness and my neckbeard was surgically removed (well, shaved) a week or so ago. Not abusive at all. Let me explain why I modded thus.
1. post adds nothing to the discussion, it stating obvious facts without contributing to a discussion of the OP.
2. Flamebait, although rather subtle as flamebait goes: insulting language, accusations of stupidity, etc., seemingly designed to produce a flame war. Congratulations.
3. Micro$oft shilling, of the sort that later on in the thread will result in complaints about "Windoze".
4. AC: if you want to be a microSerf shill flamebaiter, at least have the decency to register a regular username so that the rest of us will know what to expect when you have something very important to tell us all.
So I hope the anonymous author of the GP has learned from this traumatic experience. If no, please go away, or I will mod you "a second tyime"!!!
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @12:10AM
One of the SN administrators should take away that fool's moderating privileges. He just openly admitted to abusing them. He should never moderate again.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:23AM
1. post adds nothing to the discussion, it stating obvious facts without contributing to a discussion of the OP.
Not true, the entire point of his post was that it wasn't some evil plot by Facebook, but rather a legitimate business decision that very well could have been made if they weren't acquired.
2. Flamebait, although rather subtle as flamebait goes: insulting language, accusations of stupidity, etc., seemingly designed to produce a flame war. Congratulations.
If you had focused on the silly comment he made about systemd driving hordes of people away I might have skipped this line. But the 'stupid' comment he made is really only insulting if you're a business owner trying to make a different decision. The worst case scenario is it might start a 'flame war'... or rather just plain a discussion about the value of maintaining projects for much smaller markets.
3. Micro$oft shilling, of the sort that later on in the thread will result in complaints about "Windoze".
There is no Windows shilling. I think you've got your own biases at play here.
4. AC: if you want to be a microSerf shill flamebaiter, at least have the decency to register a regular username so that the rest of us will know what to expect when you have something very important to tell us all.
Speaking of flame bait....
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Hairyfeet on Sunday May 17 2015, @05:32PM
Its also for technical reasons, I mean just look at the hardware requirements. Lets face it guys, Linux has NEVER EVER been great when it comes to GPU support, this is why Firefox even goes so far as to disable hardware acceleration [osnews.com], something Windows has had since Vista.
Linux fans can scream and curse me all they want (I wish they'd scream and curse at Torvalds and friends, maybe shit would improve) but the reason the "Hairyfeet Challenge" has been able to stand for 8 years without a single "consumer friendly" distro passing is because the driver model just sucks and Torvalds simply will not accept that "let the kernel devs handle it" may have worked in 1993, when all the Linux drivers could fit on a single floppy, just does not work when we are talking about several tens of thousands of drivers for hardware of ever increasing complexity. Hell look at how long its taken for the devs working on the AMD FOSS drivers to get where they are and they had AMD hand them the docs AND hire extra devs familiar with the hardware to work on the project!
Will Valve change things with SteamOS? You can dream if you want but I personally doubt it, I still say the reasons that Newell created it for, a hedge in case the Windows market took off or if MSFT tried to lock down third parties services, left the building with the Ballmernator. I think he'll keep it going for another year or so as a bargaining chip but its pretty obvious that the Windows market at best is gonna be the kind of "Candy Crush/Bubble Witch" ultra mainstream casual market which Steam simply does not appeal to and the masses aren't gonna want SteamOS because your top 25 games? They just won't run on it. that isn't even touching on the fact that Steam is DRM and a large vocal minority of Linux faithful look at DRM as desirable as the black death.
But as long as Torvalds and friends refuses to come into this century and give Linux a driver subsystem that you can actually update/upgrade without the GPU manufacturers having to crank out a new driver with each patch or some kernel dev having to somehow magically come up with the time to go through a decade plus worth of GPU drivers to fix 'em? Then your high end graphics requiring games and gear just ain't coming there, sorry. Hell look at what SteamOS carries now, its nearly all indie games that would run on an Intel Atom netbook, you just don't see graphical powerhouses coming to Linux, its just not able to handle it.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.