Oculus Rift requirements revealed

First of all: Not sure if this is a topic for the tech forums, but as the tech forums seem to be intended for help, and there is no help required here, I guess that Off-Topic was the better choice. If not, please move

So I just received a kickstarter Update regarding the Recommended Spec for the oculus rift. The Detailed post can be found over here

The specs you are expected to have when running a Oculus Rift:

The recommended PC specification is an NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD 290, Intel i5-4590, and 8GB RAM. This configuration will be held for the lifetime of the Rift and should drop in price over time.

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As far as I understand it, they are giving some recommended specs, so that game designers can develop games around that spec and people who want to use a Oculus Rift have a guide Line what they actually need to run it. So if Developers and Players focus around that spec, it should work out.
That does not mean that you won't profit from an even better PC. You will probably still be able to tweak stuff within the game to make it look cooler. But you are expected to have this setup if you want to run games smoothly, which is more important than ever because stuttering will make you literally feel sick.

I am personally still running a Phenom II X3 with a GTX 260 as I didn't really need a better PC for the current games I play (Witcher 3 is the first one which will likely not run, and GalCiv 3 is the first one where I really think I could profit a lot from a newer PC). I was actually waiting to upgrade my PC until the rift comes out, which is currently scheduled for Q1 2016. In comparison, the HTC/Valve VR already has a release date set for November 2015.
However they both have a different Setup. The Rift is basically only the goggles including headphones (and mybe a mic, not sure about that), while the HTC/Valve will also come with special controlers and scanners and the Valve experience seems to be aimed at movement in real space (4,5m*4,5m). So while the Oculus is expected to cost around 350$, the Valve VR is more likely around 500$, and in the package the Valve VR might cost up to 1000$ or so.

I am most probably going for the Rift, because I don't need the movement part anyways (and don't have the space for that) but that really depends on how good the goggles itself compare to the Valve VR Goggles.

So what are you going to do? Already decided for one or another? Are you going to upgrade/replace your PC for that?

I'm not upgrading anything because I'm not interested into the thing because it'll cause a crapload of photoepilepsy and travelling disease vomits, but seeing the recommended spec...

There were dreams by consolebuyers that Oculus Rift will work flawlessly with "nextgen" consoles. They can flush those dreams down the toilet.

Well, they will have the Morpheus...which will then probably only run with very special games which have an "extremely low" modus to be able to make the game run with 60-90 fps.
Microsoft is also working on VR but they said that they are trying to calculate things in the cloud instead of the GPU which...can hardly work out imho.

Developers will love it if it catches on. Graphics will need to be much simpler to allow running smoothly on consoles, so cheaper and easier to make, but customers will still be excited.

I just bought a new laptop so am not getting another. But it looks like mine will run it ok. Time will tell and I will likely get one of the VR sets eventually..

My computer is 4 years old, so by December I might upgrade it for the Rift. My video card is a GTX750 so I guess that would need to be updated too since according to http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html my card is less than 50% the speed of the 970.

Toff said:

I just bought a new laptop so am not getting another. But it looks like mine will run it ok. Time will tell and I will likely get one of the VR sets eventually..

Click to expand...

Maybe not: "...many discrete GPU laptops have their external video output connected to the integrated GPU and drive the external output via hardware and software mechanisms that can't support the Rift. Since this isn't something that can be determined by reading the specs of a laptop, we are working on how to identify the right systems. Note that almost no current laptops have the GPU performance for the recommended spec, though upcoming mobile GPUs may be able to support this level of performance," he writes.

GTX 750? That's never 4 years old. Should be from 2014 or so.
But yeah...it's one generation behind and the budget version (the higher the last two digits the more "gamer card" it is, from like a 20 as a "office card", to 80/90 as hardcore gamer cards)
Has a benchmarkscore of 3,249, while the 970 has a score of 8,648

I mean you will probably be able to run it on "decent" fps. The problem is, that decent fps will make you feel sick with the rift. Stuttering is a no go and the goal is to get stable 90 fps. That is what is eating the power.

My computer is 4 years old, but I upgraded my video card about a year ago. That's why I was dismayed, upgrading my computer was in the 'budget', but my video card was supposed to last me for another year or 2.

It's gonna take developers a few years to release some good stuff for it so there's no hurry really. Version 2 will be better anyway.

Well, there are already some games which are extremely tempting.

For me personally it's mostly Elite: Dangerous.
But I think also Frontiers might be interesting with Rift, though not perfect.
And then there are games like Euro Truck Simulator which will be great with the rift as well / already are.

I don't need to upgrade and will probably pick up a rift to give it a try.

If I understand the technology correctly, they have to render each image twice - one for each eye - which would seem to be extremely expensive.

I don't know if I'd want to pay that price in terms of performance, and as much as I'd love tech like this to make it big, I doubt it'll escape the gimmicky nature of its limitations.

I am pretty sure it's a matter of time. Even Zuckerberg doesn't expect it to be "everywhere" within the first years.
As mentioned in this Video he thinks that the release is just the first step and from there on it takes 5-12 years till it's truely present in mainstream.

Well, the first steps were taken many, many years ago and it still hasn't caught on at all.

Maybe one day, but the tech will evolve a lot until that happens.

Well, like every tech yes. I do think the rift will finally start the mainstreaming process.

The Matrix is real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INDKNA7kXoo