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[POLYGON] Oculus Rift has a new minimum spec, $499 entry-level PC

4K views 68 replies 43 participants last post by  epic1337 
#1 ·
Quote:
At Oculus Connect today, CEO Brendan Iribe announced a new, lower minimum hardware spec for using Oculus Rift. The new spec is thanks to a technology called Asynchronous Spacewarp, allowing systems to deliver a stable 45 frames per second, while the ASW technology effectively doubles that and fills in the gaps. That means smooth VR running on cheaper hardware. Here it is:

  • Nvidia 960 or greater (down from Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater)
  • Intel i3-6100 / AMD FX4350 or greater (down from Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater)
  • 8GB+ RAM (same)
  • Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output (same)
  • 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 (change from 2x USB 3.0 ports)
  • Windows 8 or newer (change from Windows 7 SP1 or newer)
source
 
#3 ·
No just no. That is not the problem with VR.
 
#6 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by NightAntilli View Post

So... $500 PC... And more than that on top just for the VR headset...

Might as well buy some extremely good speakers and play on a decent monitor.
It stupid. People much rather pay $700 for GPU and $300 for VR than the other way around.
 
#9 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by xSociety View Post

I really want to try VR but I can't bring myself to buy one until v2 or v3 Vive comes out and some worthwhile games.
Thats the problem with VR. Quality Content, full featured content and than V1 hardware.
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZealotKi11er View Post

Quote:
Originally Posted by xSociety View Post

I really want to try VR but I can't bring myself to buy one until v2 or v3 Vive comes out and some worthwhile games.
Thats the problem with VR. Quality Content, full featured content and than V1 hardware.
I agree, VR is not good enough yet. Both the games and the hardware are lacking. I will have no interest in v2 or v3 if the goal is cheaper hardware, it needs to be significantly better even if it is more expensive. I am sick of the grainy image, you can see every sub-pixel, along with the blurry and streaky lenses. The sharp in focus field of view on these headsets is much smaller than the total field of view. I would get a new VR headset even if it only had much better lenses, even if it was $2000+. At least 1920x2160 per eye would be great too but it is the lenses that bother me the most.

Current VR is real VR, it not comparable to a good monitor with great speakers in that even with the lousy image the very low latency tracking tricks you into thinking you are there in a fundamental way. However, reducing the quality of the experiance further in order to offer a cheaper price seems like going backwards, if people try sub-par VR and are not satisfied they will probably not look for better VR content, etc. Asynchronous Spacewarp isn't good enough to use all the time to simulate 90 FPS out of 45 FPS, it is for masking the occasional delayed frame so you don't get nauseous.

Already the split marketplace (Oculus and SteamVR) is hurting VR a lot, we don't need developers trying to target a 960.

TL;DR Standard VR isn't good enough yet to try to make it cheaper.
 
#16 ·
Damn, lots of hate.

Asynchronous Spacewarp was a feature that was included in a FSX/Prepar3d plugin that allowed VR (FlyInside). It works astoundingly well; give it a shot before you totally write it off.
 
#17 ·
Oculus are desperate. They're getting their backside kicked by the Vive (look at September's Steam Survey) and Palmer is a toxic character associated with the brand.

PS VR will show Oculus how to sell a VR experience soon with millions of sales.
 
#18 ·
Why are so many of you guys crapping on this new development? It's lowering the all-in cost of owning a PC VR rig by a huge amount: $500 lower than before. Many more people will be able to own a VR system, thereby increasing the total addressable market (TAM), thereby encouraging more developers to create more content for the ecosystem; that is precisely the problem that needs to be solved right now.
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by firagabird View Post

Why are so many of you guys crapping on this new development? It's lowering the all-in cost of owning a PC VR rig by a huge amount: $500 lower than before. Many more people will be able to own a VR system, thereby increasing the total addressable market (TAM), thereby encouraging more developers to create more content for the ecosystem; that is precisely the problem that needs to be solved right now.
Same reason people crap on consoles. They stifle development.
 
#20 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cyro999 View Post

Doesn't fix movement-to-pixels lag
It does attempt to, it comes in after the frame was rendered and warps it with current head tracking data to attempt to move it into the right place. It uses the 2D frame data but does take GPU resources so you have to stop rendering the frame early enough that you have time to warp it with the GPU before V-sync.

This works reasonably well when everything is at the same distance but it starts going weird with a mix of up close and far away.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SectorNine50 View Post

Damn, lots of hate.

Asynchronous Spacewarp was a feature that was included in a FSX/Prepar3d plugin that allowed VR (FlyInside). It works astoundingly well; give it a shot before you totally write it off.
It is definitely not an ideal solution.

22.2ms between each frame at 45 fps and a new v-sync every 11.1 ms at 90 fps.

V-sync 0, Time 0 ms, frame 0:
Frame 1 gets game data based on current head position, starts rendering
V-sync 1, Time 11.1 ms, frame 1:
Nothing to display yet.
V-sync 2, Time 22.2 ms, frame 1w:
Frame 1 is warped with current head data. Frame 2 started based on current head position.
V-sync 3, Time 33.3 ms, frame 1w2:
Frame 1 warped again with new head data, Frame 2 still rendering
V-sync 4, Time 44.4 ms, frame 2w:
Frame 2 displayed but it started rendering 22.2 ms ago and we warped frame 1 with tracking data from only 11.1 ms ago so we already have to warp frame 2 for the current head position. Frame 3 started
V-sync 5, Time 55.5 ms, frame 2w2
Frame 2 warped again with current head tracking data. Frame 3 still rendering.

Using Asynchronous Spacewarp to double 45 to 90 fps means warping every single frame twice or having unacceptable latency in the head tracking. You never see an unwarped frame so you better hope the warp is really good in all situations.
 
#21 ·
Quote:
Why are so many of you guys crapping on this new development?
Talking about why it's worse than running the game at a higher framerate is 100% fair

45fps render warped to 90fps adds ~22.22ms of latency on the frame render (1000/45)

a 120fps render would add 8.33ms (1000/120) so ~14ms less

14ms is a huge amount for a head mounted display with motion tracking and latency is really high up on the list of reasons that you want triple digit framerates for VR
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shatun-Bear View Post

Oculus are desperate. They're getting their backside kicked by the Vive (look at September's Steam Survey) and Palmer is a toxic character associated with the brand.

PS VR will show Oculus how to sell a VR experience soon with millions of sales.
PS VR is terrible if you have seen the reviews.
 
#23 ·
change from Windows7 to Win8?...do not approve.
 
#24 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asmodian View Post

It is definitely not an ideal solution.

22.2ms between each frame at 45 fps and a new v-sync every 11.1 ms at 90 fps.

V-sync 0, Time 0 ms, frame 0:
Frame 1 gets game data based on current head position, starts rendering
V-sync 1, Time 11.1 ms, frame 1:
Nothing to display yet.
V-sync 2, Time 22.2 ms, frame 1w:
Frame 1 is warped with current head data. Frame 2 started based on current head position.
V-sync 3, Time 33.3 ms, frame 1w2:
Frame 1 warped again with new head data, Frame 2 still rendering
V-sync 4, Time 44.4 ms, frame 2w:
Frame 2 displayed but it started rendering 22.2 ms ago and we warped frame 1 with tracking data from only 11.1 ms ago so we already have to warp frame 2 for the current head position. Frame 3 started
V-sync 5, Time 55.5 ms, frame 2w2
Frame 2 warped again with current head tracking data. Frame 3 still rendering.

Using Asynchronous Spacewarp to double 45 to 90 fps means warping every single frame twice or having unacceptable latency in the head tracking. You never see an unwarped frame so you better hope the warp is really good in all situations.
No, it's certainly not. That said, not everyone can afford ideal, and this is a great compromise for a non-sickening VR experience on a budget.

Quite frankly, the only real time you notice the warping is when you move your head in the environment a long ways really, really fast. For 99% of cases, you don't even notice because the warping is occurring in your peripherals, and not much detail can be seen there anyway unless you're looking right at it.
 
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cyro999 View Post

Talking about why it's worse than running the game at a higher framerate is 100% fair

45fps render warped to 90fps adds ~22.22ms of latency on the frame render (1000/45)

a 120fps render would add 8.33ms (1000/120) so ~14ms less

14ms is a huge amount for a head mounted display with motion tracking and latency is really high up on the list of reasons that you want triple digit framerates for VR
The head movement latency would be fine because of the timewarp. What also would work very well with high input latency are devices like joysticks, including the ones on controllers.

But input devices like mouse or hand trackers could be a big issue. And both big VR headsets makers seem to push for them. Maybe they could render the virtual hand trackers every frame and put them on top of the timewarp corrected image.

If they polish this technics enough it also means way better "high end" games because of less performance limitations for everyone.
 
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