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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: 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 : )
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(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.
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