Is the lack of price, and all the 'and we'll give you freebies' message an indication that it's going to be a little pricy?
Submitted by babychaos on Tue, 2016-01-05 22:40
I'm keen on a VR headset but is the Occulus still the one? The Vive has recently announced it's adding cameras to the front, which I can't immediately see a great need for but being able to reach for your coffee on your desk without removing the headset might be handy.
I share Pete's concern about the lack of price and also a lack of announced games that are going to be "VR ready". Elite:D (which is ideal for it) did a huge amount of Dev effort to get it VR ready (well worth it, as far as I can tell). I haven't seen many games announce they are working on support for it or the Vive, nor have I seen any hardware specs. Will my machine have to generate twice as many FPS?
Submitted by brainwipe on Wed, 2016-01-06 09:02
I have a gut feeling it's not for me. For a start, there was a warning a while ago that Oculus will not support laptops (due to the external display port not being linked to any discrete graphics card...I've not been able to ascertain if mine can do external graphics from the 970m, or the onboard or not...but it's a big risk).
Secondly, I suffer pretty badly from motion sickness. Even using Rob's mini-drone left me with a slightly queasy feeling, and I've had it from computer games where the screen/controller sync was not quite correct (Red Steel on the Wii, and a game we played at Blondecon with garish colours). Cars, ships, swings...the list of things that can make me spew is pretty long.
I love the idea of VR, and especially AR (the Microsoft Hololens is what really impressed me of all the stuff I've seen), however I'm approaching the immersive side of it with a fairly cynical slant...
Submitted by babychaos on Wed, 2016-01-06 09:42
That's fair. My goggles, although lag free (less than 1ms) can cause motion sickness like no other. I don't suffer from it but plenty who have "been onboard" with me have. No doubt someone within pissing distance will have a VR headset you can have a go on before forking out. That's probably the best thing to try. Some say that you can minimise motion sickness by having a very wide field of view but I don't buy it.
AR is also very, very exciting. Tabletop-style games with augmented reality would be fab, not to mention the benefits of it around the home. I think battery power is still a pain in the arse, tho. COME ON, SCIENCE!
Submitted by brainwipe on Wed, 2016-01-06 10:27
Lack of price and still no firm launch date; the Vive might well still be out before it.
The Vive's camera doesn't do too much for me as it seems to be mostly linked to usages where you are walking around the room, which I already know I don't have enough space for. I am hoping the Oculus has perfected a simply sitting at your computer experience, that would keep me happy for the time being.
There is a very good chance I will just order an Oculus on a whim ... when it arrives everyone will be more than welcome to give it a go :)
Submitted by Bigger Rob on Wed, 2016-01-06 12:05
£499 (+£30 shipping) & expected March 2016 ... ordered mine.
Submitted by Bigger Rob on Wed, 2016-01-06 16:43
I think I'm going to wait and see what valve come out with. I also have the motion sickness issue so spending 500 quid to get something that just makes me vomit like a fountain doesn't seem the best use of money.
Submitted by Evilmatt on Wed, 2016-01-06 19:11
the expected date seems to have slipped to may 2016 now either they can't meet demand or they're slipping
Submitted by Evilmatt on Wed, 2016-01-06 19:12
Also doesn't include the oculus touch widgets so they'll be another couple of hundred bucks/quids zuckerburg is going to get a few robot butlers out of this one
Submitted by Evilmatt on Wed, 2016-01-06 19:38
Ohhh, that's a lot, for basically fuck all games. And nausea. That's definitely not a tempter price...
Submitted by babychaos on Wed, 2016-01-06 21:14
Five hundred. No thank you. That's 2 high spec racing quads or a zero-to-hero setup.
Submitted by brainwipe on Thu, 2016-01-07 08:36
The price was a bit of a sucker punch, I started to get buyers guilt the moment I ordered, but it is a pre-order so I (hope I) can still cancel if I come to my senses or other options prove to be better.
For the slipping date, I am hoping that just means the for shipment from (presumably from China) which arrives in March has sold out, and it is simply pushing later pre-orders to the later shipments, it is essentially what Apple does with all its pre-orders. The only real annoyance is that I don't know if I got one of the March units since their ordering system fell on its arse and took quite a while before it would accept my payment details.
At the moment I am just trying to think about how immersive Elite is going to be and trying to forget the ludicrous price tag.
Submitted by Bigger Rob on Thu, 2016-01-07 09:19
For many people it will be a new/upgraded PC as well... I'm definitely out on spec. I have a GTX 970M, which misses spec, and I only have 2 USB3 ports (and only 1 USB2 port...so I'm one short, and no mouse).
Why does it need 4 USB ports? Is that how it powers?
Specs
Graphics card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Memory: 8GB+ RAM
Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
Input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
Operating system: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
Submitted by babychaos on Thu, 2016-01-07 09:38
The 4 usb ports supposedly breaks down like this
one for the camera it uses for tracking, one for the onboard head orientation tracking, one for an xboxone controller, and then one for the touch controllers
since the touch controllers are not yet available you can cut that one back I guess
Submitted by Evilmatt on Thu, 2016-01-07 19:27
HTC with the vive and steam vr are saying they'll targeting april for release no price yet though
nVidia have added a "VR Ready" check to their geForce Experience program...this pretty much confirms that I won't be getting a headset...their only listed "VR Ready" GPU's are the desktop 970, 980 and 980Ti.
Interesting article on Eurogamer which suggested that even machines with the minimum spec are not going to be able to handle most top-end games, as the rendering requirements for VR are way beyond current requirements (for example 90fps, and a render resolution of 3K...while the current gaming "sweet spot" is 60fps at 1080p).
Submitted by babychaos on Fri, 2016-01-15 21:33
I have basically the minimum stated by Oculus which was set about a year ago; Elite already stated their requirements, and they are a tad higher:
• Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K Quad Core CPU or better / AMD FX 4350 Quad Core CPU or better
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 980 with 4GB or better
I am not going to be upgrading in the short-term for VR, I just hope the next gen of GFX cards provide a decent leap in performance to cover the current performance shortfall caused buy the minimum GFX cards being the current top-end models.
Submitted by Bigger Rob on Mon, 2016-01-18 12:11
So vive preorder has been announced Feb 29th shipping April 799 dollars for the headset the tracking widgets and the controllers and for now two free games
Pretty steep
Also min spec a gtx970 so probably needs a new graphics card as well.
Out of the announced systems I like the valve proposition best but still lot of money not sure if it's worth it at this early stage. Money wise it's on a par with the rift but it's just got the touch controllers in the package where as oculus will sting you about couple of hundred bucks six months down the line when they get round to oculus touch. Not sure which approach is better here.
Submitted by Evilmatt on Mon, 2016-02-22 09:25
It's really important to remember that min-spec with VR really isn't enough. You need mid-spec, else you're likely to feel nauseous and get headaches - even if you don't get motion sickness. The image must be smooth at 90Hz. You cannot afford lag. You cannot afford frame drops. These things will tire your brain out in a way that just doesn't happen with a monitor.
I remember being a guinea pig on the Cave VR rig in the Comp Sci department. Caves are/were fully immersive projection rooms. One chap was working on the psychological effects of various things, such as lag, framedrop, distortion, etc. I was a good guinea pig because I had proof that I didn't get motion sickness, having completed my aerobatics awareness course at RAF Syerston the month before. Distortion wasn't a problem - you got used to it, as was low resolution (although it was a bit crap).
Lag and framerate were the killer. He used a demo where you put a vase onto a pedestal. He asked me to do it 10 times, picking it up from various places on the floor near the centre of the Cave and putting it onto the pedestal. I wore headphones and there was a virtual radio playing music from one corner. Each time, he fluctuated the visual and audio lag in bursts. By the time I got to the end, I actually stumbled and had to take off the glasses. I felt sick for about an hour afterwards. I found that framerate didn't make me sick, it just made it impossible.
It was a really fun afternoon and I loved it but the physiological effects of not-good-enough hardware. RPS agree but it's been known about for ages, with decent rigs struggling with the dev Occulus hardware.
Submitted by brainwipe on Mon, 2016-02-22 10:59
Indeed I get motion sickness so I'll need it to be spot on or it'll be an unpleasant experience. It's one of the reasons I prefer the valve offering part of their design philosophy is people can't get sick using it and most of their experiences are stand up type affairs where the risk of motion sickness is a lot lower. I still might have to take some pills to make it workable.
ran that on my machine it rated me at the low end of capable and recommended a graphics card upgrade which is sort of what I was expecting
Submitted by Evilmatt on Wed, 2016-02-24 19:44
Sort of what I expected...
It didn't put the CPU into fast mode (which is 3.7Ghz), but even so, VR ain't happening here...
Submitted by babychaos on Wed, 2016-02-24 21:16
Actually, just noticed it only used the on-board GPU, not the 970M...is there a way of forcing an application to use a certain GPu, and enforce the turbo feature of the CPU? This didn't really test my PC as a gaming rig, it tested it as a web browser...
Submitted by babychaos on Wed, 2016-02-24 21:36
Given the current line up of cards, the GPU test is likely very simple:
Not Ready < nVidia GTX 970 < Ready
Submitted by Bigger Rob on Thu, 2016-02-25 10:12
I'm working on a different line of GPU's though...I strongly suspect that I'm still not going to be VR ready, but it would be good to confirm it using the correct hardware.
Apparently I can set the preferred GPU per application in the nVidia Control Panel, and I suspect then, once the laptop is trying to achieve more, the CPU should switch to non-battery saving mode (aka "screaming hornet fan mode")
Looking at 3DMark, they have a recommended score of ~9,300 on Firestrike 1.1 for Oculus Rift, and my laptop comes in at ~6,600, so some way off...
Submitted by babychaos on Thu, 2016-02-25 10:55
Prepare to hate me ...
... and begin!
Submitted by Bigger Rob on Thu, 2016-02-25 18:17
I think you can force applications to run in full fat graphics mode something like right click on an app and there's a "Run with Graphics Processor" thing in that menu that allows you to pick intergrated or nvidia
Submitted by Evilmatt on Thu, 2016-02-25 18:51
Big R, I'm coming round your house.
To stay.
Submitted by brainwipe on Thu, 2016-02-25 21:46
I consciously stepped out of the PC arms race when I went over to using laptops.
I will, however, happily participate in a power:weight competition with PC's :-) My entire rig, including the mouse, weighs 2.2kg.
Submitted by babychaos on Fri, 2016-02-26 07:38
Oh, we're playing the reforming the argument game, are we? Yes, lets! :-)
Well, if we're talking power to weight. My 250 quad has a 32bit processor, runs at (48A x 11V) 528W and is 0.5kg AUW, giving it a power to weight of 1056W/kg. Being generous and assuming your laptop has a 500W power supply, that would mean its power:weight ratio is a paltry 227W/Kg. Don't feel bad, though, the Ducati 1199 Superleggera only comes in at 842W/kg.
(I don't think I'm going to win this, EMW's quad will have a higher power:weight ratio. It's smaller, draws more current and he has a "4s" 16v battery...).
Submitted by brainwipe on Fri, 2016-02-26 09:38
In terms of "arbitary technology competition", I'm guessing someone's smart-phone would win?
My laptop has a paltry, small 150w adaptor.
If we are doing watts per kilo, I personally currently come in at 4.92w/kg on lactate threshold. I'm going to say with some degree of confidence that I'll win the biological test at least...
Well, it's an improvement. This was after a bit of fiddling, and convincing the GPU to swap over (you can't do the right-click shortcut as it's a steam-launched app, doing a shortcut to the .exe itself doesn't work, so I'm guessing there are launch parameters, and the nVidia control panel did not initially ID it as a game).
Despite the reported integrated GPU, pretty sure it ran on the 970M this time...for a start the results are significantly different, and I could hear the fan kick in. Still didn't trigger the turbo setting on the CPU though... Ignore that...just ran it with a system monitor going, and it was using Turbo when required (looks like the middle third of the test is Processor intensive, as I was reporting 130% CPU usage!), just the Steam tool does not report it correctly...
Submitted by babychaos on Fri, 2016-02-26 19:03
One thing that seems to be gaining ground in the gaming laptop market is the external graphics card both razer and alienware have systems that now have that as an option. For a desk tethered system having essentially a docking station with a "real" graphics card in it that you can use when at home while still maintaining the take anywhere aspect of the laptop seems like an interesting solution to the typical problem. Still a way off industry wide adoption and there's some special sauce in some of these implementations (there usually some flavour of thunderbolt which is just a broken out pcie bus). That would make vr from laptops more a possibility.
Submitted by Evilmatt on Fri, 2016-02-26 20:09
Not a bad idea...I have a "docking station" of sorts (well, a pile of USB wires and a laptop stand with the power brick tucked underneath), so having a GPU in there, and a lightweight "take anywhere" screen and keyboard would work well for me.
Some of the other "desktop replacement" laptops are just daft...like this "where did we hide the full-size GTX980 SLi" model. It's over twice the weight of my laptop, and 3 times the cost.
Submitted by babychaos on Sat, 2016-02-27 08:31
I see the Vive pre-order is open now ... £746.60 including shipping ... and I almost had a heart attack with the Rift; I still want to try the Vive though.
Submitted by Bigger Rob on Thu, 2016-03-03 19:36
I've seen some of the videos of the vive pre that show the almost consumer unit versions running. It looks like the room based experience is going to be awesome oculus really need to get their touch stuff working to play into that area.
Everytime I watch one of those videos I find myself at the vive preorder page wondering if I can swing 799 dollars and however much a new pc that could run the thing would cost :S
Submitted by Evilmatt on Fri, 2016-03-04 05:42
The new PC is the hidden cost for me.
Submitted by brainwipe on Fri, 2016-03-04 08:46
I guess I'll look at the state of things once it comes time to replace my current pc perhaps by then the prices will be more reasonable. I'd also like to try one out in some fashion to make sure it doesn't turn me into a vomit fountain.
Submitted by Evilmatt on Fri, 2016-03-04 19:25
A very wise decision.
Submitted by Bigger Rob on Fri, 2016-03-04 22:12
To be fair, I am still desperate for a VR system. It's a matter of when for me! :)
Submitted by brainwipe on Mon, 2016-03-07 12:00
I have just upgraded my machine in anticipation... I might be available for visits to let people play with it or a limited tour down Reading way for the cheap cheap price of a couple of beers.
It's a tetherless system all in one VR and AR unit. Presumably it's a variant of their APU technology essentially a laptop you wear on your head. Not sure how they will do orientation tracking with that something like the lighthouse system the vive uses or maybe it uses what looks like stereo cameras on the front to do it using the room around it plus some gyros.
Interesting idea tho wonder what sort of price tag it will carry and how it will compare to the others performance wise.
Submitted by Evilmatt on Tue, 2016-03-15 02:00
I'm sceptical about the performance and the hardware they have to support it.
Vive and Rift both have very similar hardware specs for the machine to drive it for a reason. 90 FPS (a recognised minimum for VR) at the resolutions we're talking about appears to require a chunky CPU, graphics card and memory.
All of which either run hot or require probably noisy and/or heavy cooling options.
Then you have power, running all of that from a battery that is lightweight also seems a stretch, at least for any length of time.
If this is legit, you essentially seem to be strapping a gaming laptop to your head.
If they can run all of that happily in a headset without those drawbacks, then that tech would be useful for more than just a headset (e.g small, quiet gaming laptops).
It just seems to be a bit too good to be true at this stage, especially when compared to what currently appears to be the leading edge options about to be launched.
Submitted by baron on Tue, 2016-03-15 09:30
To be fair, my laptop is only 2kg (and if you add in a year of GPU development you could probably get it VR-Ready using a 980M, or maybe 2), and you could probably get rid of some stuff (keyboard, trackpad, the traditional hard-drive, screen is much smaller). It does, however, get fucking hot (and noisy, when all the fans kick in). I probably wouldn't want it bolted to my head.
Also, at full whack the battery doesn't last much more than an hour. I'm also skeptical that the AMD solution is viable.
Submitted by babychaos on Tue, 2016-03-15 09:58
There's really not enough there to comment on beyond speculation. If it is a unified architecture then a lot of buggering about can be minimised because you're making all the chips together. I'm with you on the weight, tho. Batteries are fucking heavy!
In their defence, AMD are a PLC and vaporware is toxic to their share price. If they announce it then they really should be nearly ready to go.
What's also nice is that there are other systems coming out. It feels like 2016 is finally the dawn of consumer VR. Hurrah. Even though I can't afford any of it!
Comments
Is the lack of price, and all the 'and we'll give you freebies' message an indication that it's going to be a little pricy?
I'm keen on a VR headset but is the Occulus still the one? The Vive has recently announced it's adding cameras to the front, which I can't immediately see a great need for but being able to reach for your coffee on your desk without removing the headset might be handy.
I share Pete's concern about the lack of price and also a lack of announced games that are going to be "VR ready". Elite:D (which is ideal for it) did a huge amount of Dev effort to get it VR ready (well worth it, as far as I can tell). I haven't seen many games announce they are working on support for it or the Vive, nor have I seen any hardware specs. Will my machine have to generate twice as many FPS?
I have a gut feeling it's not for me. For a start, there was a warning a while ago that Oculus will not support laptops (due to the external display port not being linked to any discrete graphics card...I've not been able to ascertain if mine can do external graphics from the 970m, or the onboard or not...but it's a big risk).
Secondly, I suffer pretty badly from motion sickness. Even using Rob's mini-drone left me with a slightly queasy feeling, and I've had it from computer games where the screen/controller sync was not quite correct (Red Steel on the Wii, and a game we played at Blondecon with garish colours). Cars, ships, swings...the list of things that can make me spew is pretty long.
I love the idea of VR, and especially AR (the Microsoft Hololens is what really impressed me of all the stuff I've seen), however I'm approaching the immersive side of it with a fairly cynical slant...
That's fair. My goggles, although lag free (less than 1ms) can cause motion sickness like no other. I don't suffer from it but plenty who have "been onboard" with me have. No doubt someone within pissing distance will have a VR headset you can have a go on before forking out. That's probably the best thing to try. Some say that you can minimise motion sickness by having a very wide field of view but I don't buy it.
AR is also very, very exciting. Tabletop-style games with augmented reality would be fab, not to mention the benefits of it around the home. I think battery power is still a pain in the arse, tho. COME ON, SCIENCE!
Lack of price and still no firm launch date; the Vive might well still be out before it.
The Vive's camera doesn't do too much for me as it seems to be mostly linked to usages where you are walking around the room, which I already know I don't have enough space for. I am hoping the Oculus has perfected a simply sitting at your computer experience, that would keep me happy for the time being.
There is a very good chance I will just order an Oculus on a whim ... when it arrives everyone will be more than welcome to give it a go :)
£499 (+£30 shipping) & expected March 2016 ... ordered mine.
I think I'm going to wait and see what valve come out with. I also have the motion sickness issue so spending 500 quid to get something that just makes me vomit like a fountain doesn't seem the best use of money.
the expected date seems to have slipped to may 2016 now either they can't meet demand or they're slipping
Also doesn't include the oculus touch widgets so they'll be another couple of hundred bucks/quids zuckerburg is going to get a few robot butlers out of this one
Ohhh, that's a lot, for basically fuck all games. And nausea. That's definitely not a tempter price...
Five hundred. No thank you. That's 2 high spec racing quads or a zero-to-hero setup.
The price was a bit of a sucker punch, I started to get buyers guilt the moment I ordered, but it is a pre-order so I (hope I) can still cancel if I come to my senses or other options prove to be better.
For the slipping date, I am hoping that just means the for shipment from (presumably from China) which arrives in March has sold out, and it is simply pushing later pre-orders to the later shipments, it is essentially what Apple does with all its pre-orders. The only real annoyance is that I don't know if I got one of the March units since their ordering system fell on its arse and took quite a while before it would accept my payment details.
At the moment I am just trying to think about how immersive Elite is going to be and trying to forget the ludicrous price tag.
For many people it will be a new/upgraded PC as well... I'm definitely out on spec. I have a GTX 970M, which misses spec, and I only have 2 USB3 ports (and only 1 USB2 port...so I'm one short, and no mouse).
Why does it need 4 USB ports? Is that how it powers?
Specs
Graphics card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Memory: 8GB+ RAM
Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
Input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
Operating system: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
The 4 usb ports supposedly breaks down like this
one for the camera it uses for tracking, one for the onboard head orientation tracking, one for an xboxone controller, and then one for the touch controllers
since the touch controllers are not yet available you can cut that one back I guess
HTC with the vive and steam vr are saying they'll targeting april for release no price yet though
Sounds like preorders for the vive will be Feb 29th http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/11/10748770/htc-valve-vive-vr-preorder-da... still targeting the april release date still no word on price
nVidia have added a "VR Ready" check to their geForce Experience program...this pretty much confirms that I won't be getting a headset...their only listed "VR Ready" GPU's are the desktop 970, 980 and 980Ti.
Interesting article on Eurogamer which suggested that even machines with the minimum spec are not going to be able to handle most top-end games, as the rendering requirements for VR are way beyond current requirements (for example 90fps, and a render resolution of 3K...while the current gaming "sweet spot" is 60fps at 1080p).
I have basically the minimum stated by Oculus which was set about a year ago; Elite already stated their requirements, and they are a tad higher:
• Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K Quad Core CPU or better / AMD FX 4350 Quad Core CPU or better
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 980 with 4GB or better
I am not going to be upgrading in the short-term for VR, I just hope the next gen of GFX cards provide a decent leap in performance to cover the current performance shortfall caused buy the minimum GFX cards being the current top-end models.
So vive preorder has been announced Feb 29th shipping April 799 dollars for the headset the tracking widgets and the controllers and for now two free games
Pretty steep
Also min spec a gtx970 so probably needs a new graphics card as well.
Out of the announced systems I like the valve proposition best but still lot of money not sure if it's worth it at this early stage. Money wise it's on a par with the rift but it's just got the touch controllers in the package where as oculus will sting you about couple of hundred bucks six months down the line when they get round to oculus touch. Not sure which approach is better here.
It's really important to remember that min-spec with VR really isn't enough. You need mid-spec, else you're likely to feel nauseous and get headaches - even if you don't get motion sickness. The image must be smooth at 90Hz. You cannot afford lag. You cannot afford frame drops. These things will tire your brain out in a way that just doesn't happen with a monitor.
I remember being a guinea pig on the Cave VR rig in the Comp Sci department. Caves are/were fully immersive projection rooms. One chap was working on the psychological effects of various things, such as lag, framedrop, distortion, etc. I was a good guinea pig because I had proof that I didn't get motion sickness, having completed my aerobatics awareness course at RAF Syerston the month before. Distortion wasn't a problem - you got used to it, as was low resolution (although it was a bit crap).
Lag and framerate were the killer. He used a demo where you put a vase onto a pedestal. He asked me to do it 10 times, picking it up from various places on the floor near the centre of the Cave and putting it onto the pedestal. I wore headphones and there was a virtual radio playing music from one corner. Each time, he fluctuated the visual and audio lag in bursts. By the time I got to the end, I actually stumbled and had to take off the glasses. I felt sick for about an hour afterwards. I found that framerate didn't make me sick, it just made it impossible.
It was a really fun afternoon and I loved it but the physiological effects of not-good-enough hardware. RPS agree but it's been known about for ages, with decent rigs struggling with the dev Occulus hardware.
Indeed I get motion sickness so I'll need it to be spot on or it'll be an unpleasant experience. It's one of the reasons I prefer the valve offering part of their design philosophy is people can't get sick using it and most of their experiences are stand up type affairs where the risk of motion sickness is a lot lower. I still might have to take some pills to make it workable.
I know what I'm trying tonight
http://store.steampowered.com/app/323910
ran that on my machine it rated me at the low end of capable and recommended a graphics card upgrade which is sort of what I was expecting
Sort of what I expected...
It didn't put the CPU into fast mode (which is 3.7Ghz), but even so, VR ain't happening here...
Actually, just noticed it only used the on-board GPU, not the 970M...is there a way of forcing an application to use a certain GPu, and enforce the turbo feature of the CPU? This didn't really test my PC as a gaming rig, it tested it as a web browser...
Given the current line up of cards, the GPU test is likely very simple:
Not Ready < nVidia GTX 970 < Ready
I'm working on a different line of GPU's though...I strongly suspect that I'm still not going to be VR ready, but it would be good to confirm it using the correct hardware.
Apparently I can set the preferred GPU per application in the nVidia Control Panel, and I suspect then, once the laptop is trying to achieve more, the CPU should switch to non-battery saving mode (aka "screaming hornet fan mode")
Looking at 3DMark, they have a recommended score of ~9,300 on Firestrike 1.1 for Oculus Rift, and my laptop comes in at ~6,600, so some way off...
Prepare to hate me ...
... and begin!
I think you can force applications to run in full fat graphics mode something like right click on an app and there's a "Run with Graphics Processor" thing in that menu that allows you to pick intergrated or nvidia
Big R, I'm coming round your house.
To stay.
I consciously stepped out of the PC arms race when I went over to using laptops.
I will, however, happily participate in a power:weight competition with PC's :-) My entire rig, including the mouse, weighs 2.2kg.
Oh, we're playing the reforming the argument game, are we? Yes, lets! :-)
Well, if we're talking power to weight. My 250 quad has a 32bit processor, runs at (48A x 11V) 528W and is 0.5kg AUW, giving it a power to weight of 1056W/kg. Being generous and assuming your laptop has a 500W power supply, that would mean its power:weight ratio is a paltry 227W/Kg. Don't feel bad, though, the Ducati 1199 Superleggera only comes in at 842W/kg.
(I don't think I'm going to win this, EMW's quad will have a higher power:weight ratio. It's smaller, draws more current and he has a "4s" 16v battery...).
In terms of "arbitary technology competition", I'm guessing someone's smart-phone would win?
My laptop has a paltry, small 150w adaptor.
If we are doing watts per kilo, I personally currently come in at 4.92w/kg on lactate threshold. I'm going to say with some degree of confidence that I'll win the biological test at least...
My quad is up there with Formula 1 cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-weight_ratio
I think EMW's is probably higher but nowhere near the Top Fuel drag racers.
Well, it's an improvement. This was after a bit of fiddling, and convincing the GPU to swap over (you can't do the right-click shortcut as it's a steam-launched app, doing a shortcut to the .exe itself doesn't work, so I'm guessing there are launch parameters, and the nVidia control panel did not initially ID it as a game).
Despite the reported integrated GPU, pretty sure it ran on the 970M this time...for a start the results are significantly different, and I could hear the fan kick in.
Still didn't trigger the turbo setting on the CPU though...Ignore that...just ran it with a system monitor going, and it was using Turbo when required (looks like the middle third of the test is Processor intensive, as I was reporting 130% CPU usage!), just the Steam tool does not report it correctly...One thing that seems to be gaining ground in the gaming laptop market is the external graphics card both razer and alienware have systems that now have that as an option. For a desk tethered system having essentially a docking station with a "real" graphics card in it that you can use when at home while still maintaining the take anywhere aspect of the laptop seems like an interesting solution to the typical problem. Still a way off industry wide adoption and there's some special sauce in some of these implementations (there usually some flavour of thunderbolt which is just a broken out pcie bus). That would make vr from laptops more a possibility.
Not a bad idea...I have a "docking station" of sorts (well, a pile of USB wires and a laptop stand with the power brick tucked underneath), so having a GPU in there, and a lightweight "take anywhere" screen and keyboard would work well for me.
Some of the other "desktop replacement" laptops are just daft...like this "where did we hide the full-size GTX980 SLi" model. It's over twice the weight of my laptop, and 3 times the cost.
I see the Vive pre-order is open now ... £746.60 including shipping ... and I almost had a heart attack with the Rift; I still want to try the Vive though.
I've seen some of the videos of the vive pre that show the almost consumer unit versions running. It looks like the room based experience is going to be awesome oculus really need to get their touch stuff working to play into that area.
Everytime I watch one of those videos I find myself at the vive preorder page wondering if I can swing 799 dollars and however much a new pc that could run the thing would cost :S
The new PC is the hidden cost for me.
I guess I'll look at the state of things once it comes time to replace my current pc perhaps by then the prices will be more reasonable. I'd also like to try one out in some fashion to make sure it doesn't turn me into a vomit fountain.
A very wise decision.
To be fair, I am still desperate for a VR system. It's a matter of when for me! :)
I have just upgraded my machine in anticipation... I might be available for visits to let people play with it or a limited tour down Reading way for the cheap cheap price of a couple of beers.
Ace, Baron! :)
As the top post on Reddit says:
VR is the future
http://i.imgur.com/UFYgx1Y.gifv
http://i.imgur.com/uuXhhAq.png
(I give up trying to post it so it shows up directly...)
Pete - fixed
This one just pop up The AMD Sulon
It's a tetherless system all in one VR and AR unit. Presumably it's a variant of their APU technology essentially a laptop you wear on your head. Not sure how they will do orientation tracking with that something like the lighthouse system the vive uses or maybe it uses what looks like stereo cameras on the front to do it using the room around it plus some gyros.
Interesting idea tho wonder what sort of price tag it will carry and how it will compare to the others performance wise.
I'm sceptical about the performance and the hardware they have to support it.
Vive and Rift both have very similar hardware specs for the machine to drive it for a reason. 90 FPS (a recognised minimum for VR) at the resolutions we're talking about appears to require a chunky CPU, graphics card and memory.
All of which either run hot or require probably noisy and/or heavy cooling options.
Then you have power, running all of that from a battery that is lightweight also seems a stretch, at least for any length of time.
If this is legit, you essentially seem to be strapping a gaming laptop to your head.
If they can run all of that happily in a headset without those drawbacks, then that tech would be useful for more than just a headset (e.g small, quiet gaming laptops).
It just seems to be a bit too good to be true at this stage, especially when compared to what currently appears to be the leading edge options about to be launched.
To be fair, my laptop is only 2kg (and if you add in a year of GPU development you could probably get it VR-Ready using a 980M, or maybe 2), and you could probably get rid of some stuff (keyboard, trackpad, the traditional hard-drive, screen is much smaller). It does, however, get fucking hot (and noisy, when all the fans kick in). I probably wouldn't want it bolted to my head.
Also, at full whack the battery doesn't last much more than an hour. I'm also skeptical that the AMD solution is viable.
There's really not enough there to comment on beyond speculation. If it is a unified architecture then a lot of buggering about can be minimised because you're making all the chips together. I'm with you on the weight, tho. Batteries are fucking heavy!
In their defence, AMD are a PLC and vaporware is toxic to their share price. If they announce it then they really should be nearly ready to go.
What's also nice is that there are other systems coming out. It feels like 2016 is finally the dawn of consumer VR. Hurrah. Even though I can't afford any of it!