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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, Informative) by takyon on Friday March 04 2016, @06:25PM
I don't think that's necessarily true given an increase in frame rates and resolution.
Consumer Oculus Rift is 1080×1200 per eye @ 90 Hz.
Developer Kit 2 was 960×1080 per eye @ 75 Hz.
Developer Kit 1 was 640×800 per eye @ 60 Hz.
Most smartphones inserted into cardboard are probably limited at 60 Hz.
AMD and others have talked about an initial target of 120 Hz frame rate, with AMD specifying 240 Hz in the far future. 90 Hz is described as the minimum rate necessary to avoid eye strain. They also mentioned "16K per eye" resolution [soylentnews.org]. They want to keep selling GPUs, so it's no surprise they want the requirements to skyrocket.
Let the early adopters describe whether they are killing their eyes at these higher resolutions and framerates. Wait 5 years and the hardware will be much better and there will be much more content available, and you can just borrow a friend's headset to test it for yourself.
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