VR Gaming with less than recommended specs

I used to run my DK1 off a 760 I believe, it ran it with dropped frames on some games, but I was able to play TF2 and portal and not die. With the 780ti I'd say you'd be at least able to run things smooth with not too many dropped frames.

run the SteamVR perfomance test in steam. It'll get you a pretty good idea where you'll stand regardless of headset.

 

In terms of steamVR, I'd expect it to be mostly fine. Framedrops are less of an issue there thanks to their various tech, and a reasonable number of the demos and such are very simple and dont seem to require anywhere near what they say on the tin - I know Space Pirate Trainer doesn't even spool up my 980ti, though I've never looked at actual load percentage. As far as oculus goes, I have a lot less experience there since I sold my rift after messing with it for a few hours, but I'd expect it to be less tolerant of less than ideal hardware, since they have no dynamic resolution scaling or such implemented.

It's worth noting that hardware is cheap though, so if you buy into a VR headset and your 780ti is getting sloppy, you can buy a GTX 970 or R9 290x for around $200 used, and I fully expect those prices to drop a fair bit further as RX 480 and the Geforce 10 lineup are becoming available. And since the used market is stupid, 780ti is actually worth almost the same as a 970, so you could probably swap one for the other for about $30 in shipping and ebay fees.

And finally, I think I'd be remiss if I didn't outright suggest the Vive over the Rift. I like Palmer as much as the next gal, but buying a rift just because we frequent his site would be a mistake - it's a more comfortable headset, and it's got some nice stuff like the software focus, but the Vive is just a much cooler experience - roomscale is transformative and the Rift simply doesn't have it right now. And the Rift touch controllers still don't have a release date, so who even knows, especially given how bad Oculus seems to be at actually shipping product on time - I'd expect to not be able to buy oculus touch at MSRP until Q1 2017 at this point. Plus Oculus has been doing some shady flax with DRM and buying exclusivity, so *Can'tSayThisOnTV* that flax - Facebook can die in a fire if they want to have monitor exclusivity.

 

I'll have to agree with Sam,

The Vive is a better product. Although the Rift is comfier and lighter, the lack of controllers really destroys the immersiveness, plus you have no idea how much they are going to cost.

That said, I wouldn't really suggest buying any VR units right now, because they have the same issue as a PS3. #nogaems That said, I do think that SteamVR is going to be a bigger market, simply because every single PC gamer has steam installed, but not every PC gamer has the facebook store installed.

That said, I'm sure the Rift will be one of the first units that reads your brainwaves and eye movement in order to present you better sponsored content and increase your filter bubble.

 

I third the Vive suggestion, I've been using mine for a few months now, well worth the investment. If the Rift had launched with the Touch controllers it would be a pretty even bet since both work with SteamVR in the beta releases.
Really wouldn't want to go back to a 360 controller after having used the Vives motion tracked controllers though, being able to use your hands is greeat.

 

In the end it doesn't matter which first-stage VR Unit you buy.

The first company that comes up with a unit that has an integrated GPU so that you can use it with a potato PC will win, hands down.

 

Well a standalone headset is the ultimate goal, of course - or even contact lenses that can seamlessly do AR or VR. But for now, a standalone headset just isn't attainable. The power requirement is quite high (~160w or so to hit steamVR ready, I'd guess, assuming 45w mobile i7 and GTX 1060 with a very lightweight system build using good parts) for any sort of helmet, and the headsets can get pretty hot even without heavy duty processing going on inside. The other major issue is inside out tracking - it can be done, but it adds hardware and processing needs, which all add to the cost. Hololens is the closest thing to a true standalone headset, and it's not capable of nearly the pixel fill or resolution that a Rift can display, and it costs a Heck of a lot more. Heck, hololens Dev kits are pushing $4k on ebay, and I assure you microsoft is selling them at a notable loss (based on their stated 5 year time to market for business customers, I'd guess each headset costs them around $20k to make, not including R&D - puts em around ~$2k each when it's time to put em on the market, which is very fair for enterprise customers.).

So for now, PC-attached is the way to go. I suspect we'll see something that has a tablet class SOC integrated into the headset, with a wireless or maybe tethered external tracking camera/lighthouse/whatever inside of 2017, but it simply won't be competitive with PC-attached options.

As for the development of PC attached sets, I do fully expect to see a headset with a battery and wireless data connection - probably like 60ghz wireless - relatively soon. The cables are the real bane for now, after all, rather than being in proximity to the PC in the strict sense.


It's also worth noting that the power requirements for seriously good VR are gonna be climbing pretty fast for now. Heck, the Nvidia Funhouse demo recommends SLI GTX 1080 for render and at least a 980ti for dedicated physics and audio for high settings. Gen 2 rift and vive will almost for sure be based on the new higher density SAMOLED panels, which will result in probably ~50% more rendering load at the bottom end, and I wouldn't be all that surprised to see the framerate go up. Then sometime around 2020, or maybe sooner, we'll see lightfield displays hitting the market, which will solve lots of lensing and weight issues, but will introduce higher rendering requirements (that's where nvidia is going with the Simultaneous multi-projection in pascal - they wanna be able to render hundreds or thousands of viewports on the same scene for lightfield displays). Ultimately we want to see 16k per eye at >144hz as soon as possible. I'd guess that in 5 years we'll laugh at how primitive the Rift and Vive were compared to what we'll have then, just like how we laugh at DK1 and cardboard today

 

I don't think wireless is feasable for a long time. It becomes a bandwidth issue, as you need to send a massive amount of data extremely quickly across a wireless connection. It's mostly the reason why gaming via wireless displays sucks so much. I don't think you'll be able to do much over wireless for quite some time. Heck, the oculus is already pushing the limits of USB3.0.

What I'd expect to see is some sort of interface that would allow a headset to talk to a graphics card directly, and then delegate some tasks to the headset. Think SLI or something.

 

Nah. Wireless is fine. The latency issue with wireless is that it's digital - for the video you'd want to go nearly analog, no checksums or packets or whatever, which would help the latency a lot. As for the USB connections, good wifi has plenty of bandwidth for that, and it's worth noting that the main thing that pushes bandwidth on USB for the rift is the camera, which could still be wired just fine - the usb to the headset itself is a lot less imperative - it's power, and IMU and microphone and audio - easy as pie to make that wireless.

To prove my point more eloquently, Scalable Graphics has already shown a Vive working wirelessly - and they claim people can't really tell a difference in latency. Obviously I'll wait for science to make a judgement, but it's certainly possible with current tech.

As for an SLI-esque sharing of resources, it's certainly technologically feasible, but it's also very unlikely for now, I'd say - there's too many companies, too many standards right now. And Heck, SLI/CFX are barely supported by and large anyway, and they're downright popular compared to VR headsets for now.