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: 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.