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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 $6,000 Mac Pro with the top-of-the-line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn't match our recommended specs."
"So if they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we'd love to support Mac. But right now, there's just not a single machine out there that supports it," he added. "Even if we can support on the software side, there's just no audience that could run the vast majority of software on it."
Source: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/oculus-founder-rift-will-come-to-mac-if-apple-ever-release-a-good-computer/.
See also: Shacknews blog.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gravis on Friday March 04 2016, @03:54PM
there is no excuse for dropping Linux support unless, "Linux isn't worth our time" is considered valid. that said, i'm glad i avoided investing in Oculus Rift from the very start.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04 2016, @04:50PM
Economically speaking that is a very valid reason. But on Linux you're free to make your own.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Friday March 04 2016, @06:35PM
I agree totally. I suspect the lack of Linux support was probably an "encouraged" feature, because it stopped diluting the market for Micro$oft.
Is it a surprise they are messing with their Xbox line?
Can't use Oculus anywhere other than WinVidia Win10 PC? Mac too slow?
That's a shame.../s
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Friday March 04 2016, @06:51PM
It's not up to them. VR goggles require very low latency or you'll physically feel nauseous. In order to have that, you'd need to use the kernel-land. However, since all the GPU manufacturers violate each-others patents, they can't release optimized, low latency, open-source kernel drivers. So, they write kernel shims and closed source user-land drivers with obfuscated binaries. This means high-latency; Which means no VR for Linux in the foreseeable future.
In a few years time, when GPU hardware becomes 20-30% faster (not in throughput, but in latency) than what's required for minimal VR needs, user-land drivers might be enough.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05 2016, @01:36AM
VR goggles require very low latency or you'll physically feel nauseous.
This is bullshit. The nauseous effect is caused by the disparity between your visual input and that of your inner ear's orientation to the ground. The "Muh Latency" lingo is just sales propaganda to convince you they fixed motion sickness, but it is 100% bullshit unless the machine comes with a graviton emitter.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday March 06 2016, @12:45PM
No. Read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_sickness [wikipedia.org]
http://oculusrift-blog.com/john-carmacks-message-of-latency/682/ [oculusrift-blog.com]
The research leading up to helmet-mounted displays started out attempting to replace the canopies in helicopters with cameras. It goes back to the 70s and 80s and made similar observations. At the time, they didn't have the compute or quality displays to pull it off so they ended up with HMDs. Now, the money goes into drones.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday March 05 2016, @08:05PM
It's not up to them. VR goggles require very low latency or you'll physically feel nauseous. In order to have that, you'd need to use the kernel-land. However, since all the GPU manufacturers violate each-others patents, they can't release optimized, low latency, open-source kernel drivers. So, they write kernel shims and closed source user-land drivers with obfuscated binaries. This means high-latency;
wow, that's another load of shit! fun fact, you get better performance from graphics cards on Linux than you do on any version of Windows.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Sunday March 06 2016, @02:44AM
No. No. Fuck no.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-skylake-windows&num=1 [phoronix.com]
How about this... http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mordor-win10-linux&num=1 [phoronix.com]
It's common knowledge Windows graphics driver are better than the Linux drivers (proprietary or open source). Hell, the Linux drivers don't even support OpenGL 4! Not sure why you said something so patently wrong. I love Linux also, but come on man!
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 1) by bitstream on Saturday March 05 2016, @05:44AM
Don't be glad you didn't invest in a particular project. Instead only use your resources on projects that are open source or where you have the rights to the "IP" such that when and not if the management goes bad. You always can cooperate with others to get to *your* goals.