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posted by takyon on Saturday May 16 2015, @08:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the 90-to-120-fps-gpu-sales-trick dept.

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.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:23AM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:23AM (#183956)

    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....

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