Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THIS YEAR WILL see the first batch of new Virtual Reality (VR) devices like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR, and Sony’s PlayStation VR released to the general public.
While Samsung and Sony’s version will require a phone or console to run respectively, both Oculus Rift (which announced preorders are opening on 6 January) and HTC Vive both require a high-end PC to run.
That’s a bit of a problem for the majority of PC owners. Nvidia, the world’s largest maker of graphic chips for PCs, says that roughly 13 million PCs in the world – or less than 1% – will have the capability to run VR. That is high-end machines capable of running VR with optimal settings and can ensure that frame-rate is constantly high (if it isn’t, it can cause motion sickness).
Considering there are more than one billion PCs out there, that means a tiny proportion of PCs are ready for it, limiting the amount of people who can buy it and have it running perfectly.
Why the low figures?
While the current VR experiences are immersive – you can be transported down to the bottom of the ocean and see a giant blue whale pass by or be thrown into a Wild West-style shooting range – the graphical power needed to run them is significant.
For Oculus Rift, it requires either a Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD 290, graphics cards that would cost around €400 to buy. While they’ve been around since 2014, they’re still high-end requirements that would only be found in gaming PCs. On top of that, users will also need an Intel i5-4590 or greater and 8GB+ of RAM.
HTC hasn’t announced the requirements for Vive yet. When we tried it out last month, they told us they were working on reducing the specs required before announcing them. Still, the requirements will likely be similar to Oculus Rift when they are announced.
So why are the requirements so high? The short answer is the number of things you have to run to create a good VR experience are far greater than on a normal screen. As there’s a disconnect between you and the screen, you don’t feel odd if it slows down. In VR, even a millisecond of slowdown is noticeable.
This was something explained by Oculus VR’s chief architect Atman Binstock back in May. He mentioned how there are three graphical challenges for VR: raw rendering costs, real-time performance and latency. The high specs aren’t there just to run a VR experience, they’re also there to cope with any unexpected demands.
Traditionally, PC 3D graphics has had soft real-time requirements, where maintaining 30-60 FPS has been adequate. VR turns graphics into more of a hard real-time problem, as each missed frame is visible. Continuously missing framerate is a jarring, uncomfortable experience. As a result, GPU headroom becomes critical in absorbing unexpected system or content performance potholes.
Not letting history repeat itself
The above is one of the biggest concerns for Oculus VR and other major players. The concept of VR has popped up every now and again since the 80s but the promises it made failed to materialise.
This was down to a number of things: the technology needed to run VR properly not being available, the headsets being uncomfortable or offering jarring experiences or the setup costs were far too expensive for the average person to consider.
That’s why getting it right for these new VR devices is paramount (and also why so many of them have been taking their time before launch). If it isn’t, that could set the industry back years.
For many new devices launched, the first year or so will see the more enthusiastic fans buy them first before the general public start taking an interest.
Its founder Palmer Luckey believes this slow buildup will help it in the long-run, creating anticipation for devices before the average person can realistically buy them. But setting the standard and making sure everyone knows what you need first is essential.
In the case of Oculus, it doesn’t need to go out all guns blazing and make a profit from day one (being owned by Facebook has its benefits and is something Luckey acknowledges), and has enough breathing room to make things right.
The other factor to consider is how hardware improves over time. What is seen as high-end now will be the standard in a few years time, and for those VR experiences that rely on smartphones like Gear VR and Google Cardboard, high-end devices now will be the norm in a year or two.
So if you’re thinking about buying a VR device, just make sure you know what’s needed first as you might have to spend more than you would expect.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
I used a VR headset twice and they are amazing. There is a downside unfortunately as they cause nausea and dizzyness. I actually seen a guy puke after using one.
Declan, the rift uses a low latency tracker that should virtually eliminate the nauseous effects of VR headsets of old.
That is good news.
Rift FTW. I’ve been keeping an eye on its development since its kickstarter campaign. Great bit of kit, I genuinely can’t wait to try one.
I have used Oculus rift at a demonstration and the two things I noticed were – you can see the outline of the pixels and the RGB colours at the edges of each pixel. it literally is like looking at a screen up close so the resolution doesn’t look great.
The 2nd thing is that when you look around in real life, you move your eyes so you don’t have to move your head as much, but with rift you have to exaggerate your head movement to look left and right – imagine looking around if your eyes couldn’t move.
It was good fun for all of the 3 minutes I used it.
Still too early … 5 years before this tech matures
Quite a few people have been using developer models of the Rift to date. The tech is mature.
Early adopters will ensure success … however its the content that will become more important …
I’ve got a gtx 970 and i7 and 16 gb ram. I’d say the vr headsets are pricey though.
Already have one and I don’t need any laptop to use it. it’s called life.
Well aren’t you just the coolest guy on the planet. I wish I was as cool as you.
I’m going to order more gigabytes so I can run OR In HD. I might need a bigger floppy disk though.
Looking to get one this year as I’m building pc. If you are going to do it might as well overdo it and put 2 980s in
Get 2 970s instead and upgrade the RAM.
Got a 980ti OC edition a few weeks back, beast of a GPU. Just waiting on new stock of i7 6700k’s before my new build is complete.
Cant wait to get my hands on a retail RIft after buying and using the dev kit v1.
Yeah stick two 970s in there and hope and pray their software is designed to use SLI technology
Go the whole way and get Titans :)
I’ve tried a Samsung gear vr. Wow. What a piece of kit. Pity you need a high end Samsung phone to make it work.
have your say