The developing process of Oculus Rift runs slowly towards the
final stage. Soon, the retail version of the Facebook's head-mounted display
will be available. After teasing consumers with the newest look of Rift, now
the Oculus VR team has announced the list of hardware that are needed to
support this virtual reality device .
Since it was first revealed on the Kickstarter, there were
two questions most frequently asked: First, how Oculus Rift will transform the
entertainment industry in the future and the second is about what kind of
system needed to run the device. For the last question, Oculus VR has got the
answer. It takes 'efforts' if you really want to enjoy the Rift optimally. The
list can be seen below:
- NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
- Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
- 8GB+ RAM
- Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output; supports 297MHz clock through direct output architecture
- 2x USB 3.0 ports
- Windows 7 SP1 or newer
It looks a bit demanding. However, according to Oculus Chief Architect, Atman Binstock, the decision was made to ensure the developers optimize hardware configurations, as well as presenting the best virtual reality experience to the consumers. VR provides a visual result that has never existed before, a position tracking system will affect the perception of human body - can't be done with a monitor.
The consequence is the increasing need for technical rendering
and graphics quality. On one hand, the virtual reality device helps to boost
the performance value and competition of GPU. Furthermore, the manufacturers -
not only Oculus VR team - will meet some challenges that should be solved: the raw
rendering cost, real-time performance, and latency level.
In Oculus blog, Atman Binstock explained:
"On the raw rendering costs: a traditional 1080p game
at 60Hz requires 124 million shaded pixels per second. In contrast, the Rift
runs at 2160×1200 at 90Hz split over dual displays, consuming 233 million
pixels per second. At the default eye-target scale, the Rift’s rendering
requirements go much higher: around 400 million shaded pixels per second. This
means that by raw rendering costs alone, a VR game will require approximately
3x the GPU power of 1080p rendering."
Seeing it from a positive perspective, Oculus Rift might be
able to enliven the competition of graphic components made by reputable
manufacturers. But this announcement may seem a little bit annoying, especially
for those who have recently upgraded to a GTX 960 GPU or equivalent.