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It's been almost a year now since Oculus announced that the consumer version of the Rift virtual reality headset would only support Windows PCs at launch—a turnaround from development kits that worked fine on Mac and Linux boxes. Now, according to Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, it "is up to Apple" to change that state of affairs. Specifically, "if they ever release a good computer, we will do it," he told Shacknews recently.
Basically, Luckey continued, even the highest-end Mac you can buy would not provide an enjoyable experience on the final Rift hardware, which is significantly more powerful than early development kits. "It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn't prioritize high-end GPUs," he said. "You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top-of-the-line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn't match our recommended specs."
"So if they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we'd love to support Mac. But right now, there's just not a single machine out there that supports it," he added. "Even if we can support on the software side, there's just no audience that could run the vast majority of software on it."
Source: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/oculus-founder-rift-will-come-to-mac-if-apple-ever-release-a-good-computer/.
See also: Shacknews blog.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2016, @03:05PM
I find it hard to believe that the Rift requires such high-end hardware to run. What is stopping them from giving lower-end hardware a 'degraded' experience instead of locking them out completely?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2016, @03:11PM
As much as I dislike this whole idea of VR, I can support their decision not to degrade the experience. Doing so would compromise their product and make it less likely people would actually want it.
Or in other words, they go against this particular behavior: "When talking to customers, we tell them we only sell the best, nothing but the best of the best for the customer. When we purchase our materials, we look for the cheapest possible thing... so 'we can pass that saving on to the customer'..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2016, @03:19PM
It's more likely that people will go "you mean I have to buy a new, several thousand dollar computer, just to play Rift games? Screw VR!"
I mean, that's what I would say, anyway. But then again, hardcore gamers seem perfectly fine with spending a few grand on a new 'rig' every now and then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2016, @04:07PM
I just bought a fast i7 w/16g memory and put a good but cheap gtx750ti card in it. It plays every game at full detail settings, but it doesn't pass the VR test. Oh well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05 2016, @12:54AM
Buy a better video card.
Your bottle neck is the cheap ass card. But you knew that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2016, @03:21PM
If there's an experience I would _not_ degrade, it would be a virtual reality experience: Even with the best realism it can make people nauseus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2016, @03:27PM
Even with the best realism it can make people nauseus.
Isn't that a susceptibility thing, though? Some people get nauseous with even the best VR, and some don't have that problem at all even with crappy VR? I agree that degraded experience would make it more likely, but some games (such as the release game Lucky's Tale) takes place in a cartoony-style world, not realistic at all. Wouldn't it be acceptable to have less polys and keep the high FPS?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2016, @03:33PM
You need to be streaming upwards of 90fps to your eyeballs if you don't want to be vomiting after an hour.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Friday March 04 2016, @04:05PM
Unless you want it to look like something from the 90's VRML days, you need high-res, dual-screen (both showing technically different scenes, so twice the rendering), at very high frame rates.
And given that you're not just rendering a 2D desktop, that actually requires quite some hardware behind it. Apple stuff is basically business-class hardware in those terms. It's like saying that Intel HD graphics should be fine for gaming. Sure, if you're playing Minesweeper...
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday March 04 2016, @04:17PM
Iris certainly not, but an R9 M370X should be enough.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ledow on Friday March 04 2016, @04:24PM
You're kidding right?
http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-M370X-Mac-vs-GeForce-GTX-970M [gpuboss.com]
Apparently my several-year-old laptop GPU outperforms it.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday March 04 2016, @05:02PM
No, I'm not kidding. My point is that it should be enough to power a rift, if my 320M 256MB could power the DK1.
Hardware sucks, but not *that* bad. Let's see, if something changes for the better with the upcoming Skylake revision, though I'm already planning on getting a hackbook pro for a while, if just for the additional SATA space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05 2016, @12:57AM
Your point is wrong though.
Try this on for size:
I should be able to get 35mpg in my 95 Explorer. All the new vehicles get that much and they do the same thing.
What would you think? I know you would think that dude is an idiot. What do you think everyone else is thinking about you right now...
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Monday March 07 2016, @11:39AM
I should be able to get 35mpg in my 95 Explorer
I'm using the metric system, jackass.
You're telling me that a 2 GB gfx card is incapable of rendering 2 hi-res image streams at 60-90 fps? Think again:
The recommended spec, "for the full Rift experience [emphasis added]" is a 970GTX or an R9 260 (see https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/powering-the-rift/). [oculus.com] The M390X is just ~30% slower than the 260 [gpuboss.com]. This ought to be enough, especially if you turn the details down. Not everyone needs to play with all setting set to ultra. Your comparison lacks a wheel, especially, because with some tinkering and careful driving it would probably be possible for your "idiot" to get that mileage, but that's a different story.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2016, @04:25PM
> What is stopping them from giving lower-end hardware a 'degraded' experience instead of locking them out completely?
The same reason OS X has a better reputation than windows. Once you allow that, rift will be "that awful thing that gives you headaches and a horrible experience".
(Almost) Nobody cares that people brought this upon themselves by using unsupported, low-end hardware. $2000 Apple and good experience, vs $200 HP and bad experience for many people reduces to "Apple good, else bad".
HP, Dell and Lenovo are actually a very good example of this: Their cheap stuff is awful, their expensive stuff is good, look at their reputation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2016, @05:29PM
What is stopping them from giving lower-end hardware a 'degraded' experience instead of locking them out completely?
Price! Who's going to pay $1,500 for the "full experience" version (which includes PC & headset) when they can test the waters for half that?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 04 2016, @11:16PM
I think they want a certain gaming experience to run at the somewhat high resolution and definitively high (and more importantly, stable) framerate. The metric they like to use is pixels per second (width * height * framerate). Insert your resolution and frame rate target to get a comparison. For example, 233,280,000 pixels per second for consumer launched Oculus Rift (2160x1200x90) vs. 221,184,000 pixels per second for 1440p gaming at 60 FPS. This PPS requirement could go way up in 2018-19 when the next Oculus Rift comes out. Bump it up to widescreen 4K at a higher frame rate? 4096x2160x120 = 1,061,683,200 pixels per second, 4.5 times more.
I feel that some VR will work just fine on Oculus Rift or other VR headsets with lower powered GPUs. For one, VR video. It's much easier to display pre-rendered video, even if it is in 360°, than it is to render a game in real time, with shadows, ray tracing, blah blah blah. Also, I would assume that simpler demos with lower levels of detail and less heavy GPU work, like kaleidoscopes or other cool stuff without billions of polygons, would run just fine, even at the 90 Hz frame rate.
To get back to your question, they shouldn't lock out anybody from attempting to run something with Oculus Rift and weaker hardware. I have no idea what DRM or other restrictions will be involved, but the device will be hacked very soon after release. I expect it to be seen working with Linux, BSD, 5 year old GPUs, crappy framerate, whatever.
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