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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, Informative) by opinionated_science on Saturday May 16 2015, @08:55PM
I modded you up , but I feel compelled to comment. Fuck Oculus. They sold out. By limiting the deployment to Windoze shows cowardice and greed for the "safe" option.
Or perhaps straightforward bribery? A great disappointment....
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:04PM
"Windoze"? Seriously? Are you stuck in 1998 Slashdot?
Face it, Windows XP and later are highly successful, widely used operating systems. People like to use Windows 7, and it works really well for them. Linux and OS X and every other non-Windows desktop OS is nothing but an irrelevant, minor player.
Maybe Linux will catch up with Windows, now that it's trying to imitate it through developments like systemd and GNOME 3. But I don't think it has a chance. By the time it manages to replicate the Windows experience, Windows will be even better than it already is, causing a typical systemd/Linux distribution running GNOME 3 to play catch up once again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:12PM
How can somebody disagree with the fact that Windows is the most successful OS out there by a huge margin? Is 98% of the market really not enough to indicate success?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:35AM
Windows is so widely used mainly because it uses every dirty trick in the book to get people hooked (i.e. giving it away for free or at a discount in schools, much like a drug dealer would do for first-time clients) and to make it the de facto standard in the workplace. If more people knew the dangers of proprietary software, and realized that freedom is about more than just practical benefits, they would not accept this.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Sunday May 17 2015, @11:02PM
Who do you think is saying that? Is there anybody in this entire comment section that's denying Microsoft's market dominance?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Sunday May 17 2015, @11:07PM
There's value in having competition even if it doesn't capture more than a thin sliver of the market.
Frankly, I would associate a lot of the frustration and anger directed at Microsoft with jealousy. Plenty of us wish Linux or J Random System or whatever could be so dominant.
Lot of anger and spittle flying around in this comment section.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:05PM
What's wrong with selling out to the evil Facebook? Did they fail to deliver on any of their Kickstarter promises? Kickstarter is crowdfunding, not crowd investing.
Once the device is released, someone will make it work on Linux. It was the same way with the... MICROSOFT Kinect.
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(Score: 5, Informative) by opinionated_science on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:13PM
Read the article. Binary blob is corporate speak for "fuck off innovation".
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:27PM
None of the articles contain the words "binary" or "blob".
What I do is that "Several titles are playable on the Rift via the free and open source Vireio Perception VR drivers" [wikipedia.org] and "Oculus's Nirav Patel announced that the original Oculus Rift developer kit (DK1) is now fully open-source, with the exception of the pieces that aren't actually in production anymore" [pcworld.com].
Maybe you should check your paranoia.
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:33PM
What does it mean to "check" something? Like what does "check your paranoia" mean? What does "check your privilege" mean?
Is it like checking the oil in your car?
Is it like checking your coat at the opera?
Is it like writing a check to pay for the damage you did at a restaurant when you shat in their urinal?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @11:22PM
Had you ever been on a date and taken the gal someplace nice, you might be familiar with the concept.
Hatcheck [google.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @12:12AM
You clearly didn't read that comment. If you had, you would have seen:
That's exactly what you describe.
(Score: 5, Informative) by opinionated_science on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:37PM
Are you are a troll? It has been contained in the numerous comments by active developers that there has been increasing "blobing".
Nvidia is guilty enough with their drivers, but at least they *try* and provide parity between linux, mac and M$.
AMD has lost the plot, but are trying to get some FOSS organised.
Oculus sold out. I don't care about the kickstarter angle, but publicly announcing "windoze only" is "fuck off" to the many people who support them, and specifically damages the attempt to liberalise the game playing platforms. It narrows the market.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:42PM
No, he's obviously not a "troll", you freak. Are you the one who has been abusing the "Troll" mod lately?
You're really coming off as some sort of a kook. All of these false accusations you keep on leveling make us question your mental abilities and stability.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday May 17 2015, @05:00PM
Dial down the "bitter" there dude, Nvidia and AMD are under no obligations to even release graphics drivers for Linux, let alone let Joe Public read the source code. Be thankful they even bothered to do it - there were probably far more profitable things they could have done with the engineers tied up on those projects, unless Steam Machines take off in a big way, of course.
Also, read the article before you go off on one and sound like an idiot - it never said Windows only:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @12:04AM
They're under no obligation to even release graphics drivers for Windows or OS X, either - and if they don't make decent drivers for the platform I want, I'm free to tell them to fuck off while I go buy from their competitors.
That doesn't mean I have to like it when people that make good hardware refuse to release drivers and refuse to release enough documentation for me to make the drivers on my own. I have every right to complain about it, just as they have every right to ignore me.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday May 18 2015, @04:12PM
I am not bitter, that's just the taste of experience. Like cheap coffee.
They may not say "Windows only" but "Windows first" since Windows is the incumbent monopoly, is effectively the same. You are welcome to disagree but deflection looks bad for you.
If Nvidia and AMD released full hardware details, I would not expect them to release drivers, but the corporate need for control forbids this.
As it is Nvidia has put some effort to get their hardware to work properly, though there is someway to go. AMD has had awful drivers but are trying revive with FOSS.
Thank you for the ad hominem, I now know I do not feel compelled to take the comment seriously, but at least you were not anon....
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Tuesday May 19 2015, @08:55AM
Redefining "Windows first" to mean "Windows only" is reaching, plain and simple. "Windows only for at least a year", that I can get on board with. With the SDKs already out for Mac and Linux, writing off any possibility of Mac and Linux support in the future is pure cynicism.
To be honest, I don't understand the whole furore around the lack of manufacturer-written open source Linux graphics drivers from AMD and Nvidia. I'm building a budget gaming rig at the moment; having no desire to blow 30% of the budget on a Windows license, I'll be installing Ubuntu on it. I also have an old AMD 7850 I'm recycling from an old folding rig, so I'm fairly invested in AMD's driver performance right now. However, personally I don't care whether the driver is open source or not as long as I get reasonable performance out of the hardware with it. Of course, that's just me - I'm certain there are plenty of other considerations that other people have for preferring/requiring open source drivers, but I just don't see them from where I am. Open to explanations though, always interested to learn stuff like this.
And... what ad hominem? You want a character attack, I could actually insult you rather than implying possibilities ;)
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday May 19 2015, @05:16PM
Quote "Also, read the article before you go off on one and sound like an idiot - it never said Windows only:".
I consider that ad hominem. I read the article and countered I had also read the comments on other sites, and this announcement was not isolated. Your assertion therefore was incorrect...
I do not expect manufacturers to write code. I expect them to write coherent specs so 3rd parties can. Oculus has taken it upon themselves to keep it all in house, therefore they have to write the code.
Saying "Windows first" is effectively "Windows Only" because it benefits only Windows for that to be true as the specs are isolated to Windows developers. This is not paranoia this is empirically true.
I don't want FOSS for FOSS sake, but being sold HARDWARE that CANNOT be used without it, puts the onus on the hardware manufacturer. And it supports the status quo, which is "Windows only".
Just because the industry has been distorted by Microsoft so that drivers were preferentially written *solely* for Windows, does not mean this is the preferred or beneficial state for us all.
I too just want stuff to work, but this is a "new" thing that has not yet become established and so these early "battles" can have an effect later on.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:27PM
Why the fuck was that shit modded "Informative"?
Binary blobs are innovation. They're used because companies want to keep their advanced, cutting edge technology secret for the time being, as a commercial competitive advantage.
Open source software is typically the opposite of innovation. It's typically just an attempt to reimplement whatever the binary blobs contain. Just look at the Linux kernel. It was just an open source clone of SunOS, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, and other closed source commercial UNIXes. The same is true for most of the GNU software, too.
Binary blobs are indicative of extreme innovation, beyond what has been done before.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:51PM
Please do not mix up kernel with OS.
o GNU is the OS - that matches up more with unix: AIX, HP-UX, BSD, ...
o Linux is the kernel - it is what "owns" the base hardware and the timing that the rest of software needs to talk to /with
o systemd, now owns the drivers and other functions... logs, drivers, ... This present to GNU "the Unix" you talked about above.
Yes, that is simplifed but helps to keep the parts straight.
For VR from Oculus Rift, it is dead to me. Just TP-LINK which has released another USB wireless that does not support anything but Windows. Even though they are using Linux in their routers and are one of the last truly configurable routers. Nice two faced operations. But then again Linksys hates users more with $250+ router that cannot even have meaning configuration and then lied about supporting OpenWRT.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:58PM
I think that you're the one who is mixed up.
A modern Linux distro consists of 3 parts:
1) Systemd: this is the kernel of the Linux distribution. It does pretty much everything.
2) Linux: this is the bootloader that is used to start systemd when the computer is first turned on. This will eventually be phased out, and systemd will start directly.
3) The package manager (RPM or APT): this is used to occasionally prevent the system from booting properly, by upgrading to newer versions of systemd.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fritsd on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:13PM
I don't think so.
If binary blobs are innovation, how come there are more scientists than alchemists nowadays?
IOW is Isaac Newton remembered for his 30 years of work on the philosopher's stone (yes, that one popularized by J.K. Rowling), or for his PUBLIshed work Principia Mathematica?
(I'm immodestly aiming for the +11 Insightful here ;-) I had this thought in 2009 or so and was quite well chuffed with it)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:15PM
Binary blobs are only a mystery to outsiders who lack the knowledge to understand them. They make perfect sense to the engineers who designed and built them. Binary blobs are innovation at its finest. They are cutting edge science and engineering at their finest. They embody knowledge that the masses are not yet capable of handling.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Katastic on Saturday May 16 2015, @11:35PM
The Kinect was "open sourced" because Bunnie (a FOSS nut), working for Microsoft, went out of his way to leave the USB stream unencrypted so that people would quickly follow the bread crumb trail.
They either fired him afterward or he quit soon after.
Kinect 2 (or "Kinect One" for the morons at Microsoft) didn't have Bunnie involved, and was encrypted from the start.
What's the point I'm getting at? That unless you specifically have someone "on the inside" these days, "Just make a Linux version" is an extremely detailed, difficult, coordinated effort that doesn't just magically pop up. Nobody has made a Wii U emulator--and for years upon years people thought there would never be a Wii emulator.
Meanwhile, the Linux support of Kinect 2 STILL does not support everything that Windows does. Why? Because it's undocumented and nobody on the inside is willing to help!
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:33AM
Wait what? A Wii emulator was out 2.5 years after the console was released. That's pretty quick. Similarity to the GameCube helped a lot.
And 'no one has made a WiiU emulator'? Of course not. It's too new. And frankly, there's probably not much demand for an emulator. It's not a terribly popular system.
Hell, they're still working on getting GameCube and PS2 emulation right.
I really wish someone would get a decent Xbox original emulator working. I want to play Metal Wolf Chaos, damnit.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday May 17 2015, @05:44PM
Ya know I have yet to figure out WTF is going on with the devs with the original Xbox...I mean for Pete's sake it was a Celery 733MHz running a stripped down Win2K on a 20GB IDE drive with a Geforce 2 GPU....hell that should be the easiest one to come up with an emulator for, its nothing but a COTS PC with a DRM bootloader! I mean if devs could get XBMC running on the thing I don't see what would be so hard to get an emulator, especially compared to stuff like the Emotion Engine of the PS2 or the PPC chip of the Wii...WTF devs?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @02:59AM
What's wrong with selling out to the evil Facebook?
Ethics. Or if you want to delve deeper, the distorted imbalanced economy which gives such strong incentive to betray the former.
Did they fail to deliver on any of their Kickstarter promises?
In letter, no. In spirit? Absolutely.
Once the device is released, someone will make it work on Linux.
The end doesn't justify the means.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:06PM
It's a universal lesson learned over and over again -- Once something cool is bought out by a big corp, they squeeze it for what it's worth and write it off as a loss after they shit it up. It's what Dice did to Slashdot, and there are plenty of other examples in all sectors of business to include tech and computing.
Instead of blaming the big evil corporations, perhaps we should start holding startups' feet to the fire for selling out their principles. I work for a big evil corporation, and what I said above is exactly what happened to the unit I work for after they were acquired by the big evil corporation.
And this is another interesting true story - The big evil corporation I work for once offered to buy out Sea-Bird Electronics, [seabird.com] one of the bigger and more well-known non-evil maritime electronics corporations. Sea-Bird told my company to fuck off with their offer because they didn't want their name associated with the military industrial complex. Now that takes balls and principle.
It's kinda like when your "monogamous" significant other cheats on you. You should be mad at them for their weakness, not the Don Juan who was able to take advantage of that weakness.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:10PM
How would your theory explain what has happened to Rust? How did it go from being the most promising new programming language in decades to becoming a hellish monstrosity ruled by hipsters?