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Frontier releases official Elite Dangerous Horizons VR Requirements

K

Krejlooc

Banned
Want a taste of what top end VR games on PC are asking for? These are minimum requirements:

OS: Windows 7/8/10 64 bit
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
Network: Broadband Internet Connection
Hard Drive: 8 GB available space
Click to expand...

Behold, one of the first games with official "VR" minimum requirements. This is in contrast to their normal "conventional" minimum requirements:

OS: Windows 7/8/10 64 bit
Processor: Quad Core CPU (4 x 2Ghz)
Memory: 6GB
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 470 / AMD 7240 (DirectX11 functionality required)
Network Broadband Internet Connection
Hard Drive: 8 GB available space
Click to expand...

Quite a steep incline over the normal version.

More info here: http://vrfocus.com/archives/26034/frontier-reveals-vr-minimum-specs-elite-dangerous-horizons/

I expect those specs to be pretty normal for VR games. A 980, 16 gb RAM, and a serious processor (preferably with hyperthreading) is what I'd expect games like Star Citizen to also officially require as minimum specs.

EDIT: Keep in mind, these are minimum requirements for the consumer versions of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Meaning these are the requirements frontier expects in order to run the game at 90 fps at a resolution of 2160×1200.
 
U

UpDownLeftRight

Banned
I can keep up with that on everything but the gpu. I will say that is a lofty requirement considering my old 580 was doing max settings at ultra locked at 60fps/1080. I was kinda hoping this would be one of very few games that my 970 could pull off in VR.

If this is what it takes to run ED in VR other games are going to have some really high requirements.
 
T

Thom Yorke's Wobbly Eye

Member
To be fair, Elite isn't a VR-only title so I'm not too surprised that their specs are higher than Oculus "VR minimum". Their engine and the game wasn't built specifically to spit out 90fps at 2160×1200 in stereo 3D and that's tough to do. I'd imagine games that are built from the ground up for VR will have more lenient specs than this.
 
A

Akronis

Member
OS: Windows 7/8/10 64 bit
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
Network: Broadband Internet Connection
Hard Drive: 8 GB available space
Click to expand...

In what universe are these CPUs even remotely similar?
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
UpDownLeftRight said:
If this is what it takes to run ED in VR other games are going to have some really high requirements.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that these early VR games will support drivers that greatly benefit from VR SLI setups. So, that 980 likely really is an actual minimum requirement. I've been advocating it for over a year now - if you're looking to get into PC VR gaming, you need to seriously be looking at dual GPUs. I'd expect a dual 980 setup to get plenty of exercise from the first wave of VR titles.
 
S

shandy706

Member
Well...my upgrade to the 980 Ti seems to have JUST gotten me above the minimum. lol

I do need to up my RAM though it seems.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Thom Yorke's Wobbly Eye said:
To be fair, Elite isn't a VR-only title so I'm not too surprised that their specs are higher than Oculus "VR minimum". Their engine and the game wasn't built specifically to spit out 90fps at 2160×1200 in stereo 3D and that's tough to do. I'd imagine games that are built from the ground up for VR will have more lenient specs than this.
Click to expand...

Elite has had VR support since day 1. In fact, one of their very first developer diaries from when development actually began was to announce VR support at a fundamental level in the project.

Hence why it's one of the best VR experiences out there. Lots of elite dangerous, especially the UI, is designed around VR.
 
U

UpDownLeftRight

Banned
Krejlooc said:
Keep in mind that these early VR games will support drivers that greatly benefit from VR SLI setups. So, that 980 likely really is an actual minimum requirement. I've been advocating it for over a year now - if you're looking to get into PC VR gaming, you need to seriously be looking at dual GPUs. I'd expect a dual 980 setup to get plenty of exercise from the first wave of VR titles.
Click to expand...

Damn that's a shame. I'm a much bigger fan of the single card setup. However I've been thinking of maybe holding off until pascal/volta releases for VR since that would give some time for it to settle so I guess I should cross my fingers and hope HBM2 will help out too.

I'm kind of hoping that in the next year or two we will start seeing the x80/x80ti series being designed to mesh well with the requirements for VR. If not I guess it's time to drop my Asus Xonar to gain another PCI slot back.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Incidentally, if people haven't heard, the latest Elite Dangerous Horizons beta build has sneaked Oculus Rift runtime 0.8 support, giving the game full Windows 10 VR support. Also, OpenVR drivers have been spotted in the games directory (which is a given, because it has cross Vive and Oculus Rift support) so expect this to be like early 3D games where you could can between various VR drivers.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Visualante2 said:
I expect minimum to provide steady, high frame rates. Enough to prevent motion sickness and vomiting.
Click to expand...

I tested Elite Horizons this morning on a rig with very similar specs (albeit an i7 4970k) and a DK2 on Windows 10 using the 0.8 drivers and it ran great. You need to do a bit of a work around to get it running at 75 hz (otherwise you get microstutter) but once it's set up it runs great, even when you're on the ground exploring planets.

Keep in mind I ran at 75 hz at 1920 x 1080, so it'll be a little more stressing for consumer headsets.
 
T

Thom Yorke's Wobbly Eye

Member
Krejlooc said:
Elite has had VR support since day 1. In fact, one of their very first developer diaries from when development actually began was to announce VR support at a fundamental level in the project.

Hence why it's one of the best VR experiences out there. Lots of elite dangerous, especially the UI, is designed around VR.
Click to expand...

Sure, I'm aware of that, but the engine and game still isn't built for VR only (I used to work at Frontier).

They've done a great job making Elite work with VR and it's one of my favourite experiences but I can see why it will need such a beefy spec to run with the Oculus CV1 / Vive. If it was a VR only game and they were devoting all of their resources to making it work perfectly in VR I'd imagine it wouldn't need such a heavy spec (but it'd still need a monster PC - that's just the nature of VR). That's not a criticism of Frontier or Elite - just the reality. It's not a VR only game and so they can't put all their resources into the VR side. They've done a great job considering.
 
F

Felix Lighter

Member
Krejlooc said:
Elite has had VR support since day 1. In fact, one of their very first developer diaries from when development actually began was to announce VR support at a fundamental level in the project.

Hence why it's one of the best VR experiences out there. Lots of elite dangerous, especially the UI, is designed around VR.
Click to expand...

You're right however, I don't think they limit scope with VR requirements in mind. I'm sure they do what they can to optimize and care a lot about VR but they are realistic about the part of their audience that will be early adopters. The will be a small percentage and willing to make an investment.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
UpDownLeftRight said:
Damn that's a shame. I'm a much bigger fan of the single card setup. However I've been thinking of maybe holding off until pascal/volta releases for VR since that would give some time for it to settle so I guess I should cross my fingers and hope HBM2 will help out too.

I'm kind of hoping that in the next year or two we will start seeing the x80/x80ti series being designed to mesh well with the requirements for VR. If not I guess it's time to drop my Asus Xonar to gain another PCI slot back.
Click to expand...

Well, keep in mind that the early results are coming straight from Nvidia and AMD so provide ample amounts of salt, but it looks like SLI support effectively doubled framerate with regards to VR. The early benchmarks shows that it's a nearly perfect division of labor.

Splitting rendering per eye is apparently a great solution for VR speed issues.
 
L

LucidMomentum

Member
I'm still in. Let's go.

Krejlooc said:
Well, keep in mind that the early results are coming straight from Nvidia and AMD so provide ample amounts of salt, but it looks like SLI support effectively doubled framerate with regards to VR. The early benchmarks shows that it's a nearly perfect division of labor.

Splitting rendering per eye is apparently a great solution for VR speed issues.
Click to expand...

I hope they get that out soon. I can't wait for my SLi setup to not be ignored for the most part by devs.
 
C

cilonen

Member
UpDownLeftRight said:
I can keep up with that on everything but the gpu. I will say that is a lofty requirement considering my old 580 was doing max settings at ultra locked at 60fps/1080. I was kinda hoping this would be one of very few games that my 970 could pull off in VR.

If this is what it takes to run ED in VR other games are going to have some really high requirements.
Click to expand...

I was running the standard game at 120fps on my 690 / i7 2700K with no issues but man that planetary landings update is harsh. It tanks the FPS into the single digits.

I know the horizons beta is not seeing the 690 in SLI mode, which I can fix in control panel but the planets are major graphically intensive - which is odd as they really don't look that special.

Don't get me wrong, you can find stunning vistas but I'm struggling to see why the planet shaders need to be so intense. The planet surfaces themselves don't justify it.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Thom Yorke's Wobbly Eye said:
Sure, I'm aware of that, but the engine and game still isn't built for VR only (I used to work at Frontier).

They've done a great job making Elite work with VR and it's one of my favourite experiences but I can see why it will need such a beefy spec to run with the Oculus CV1 / Vive. If it was a VR only game and they were devoting all of their resources to making it work perfectly in VR I'd imagine it wouldn't need such a heavy spec (but it'd still need a monster PC - that's just the nature of VR). That's not a criticism of Frontier or Elite - just the reality. It's not a VR only game and so they can't put all their resources into the VR side. They've done a great job considering.
Click to expand...

I don't consider this heavy specs for VR. This falls right into my expectations for VR games, based on my own experiences developing in VR.
 
J

Jams775

Member
Krejlooc said:
I tested Elite Horizons this morning on a rig with very similar specs (albeit an i7 4970k) and a DK2 on Windows 10 using the 0.8 drivers and it ran great. You need to do a bit of a work around to get it running at 75 hz (otherwise you get microstutter) but once it's set up it runs great, even when you're on the ground exploring planets.

Keep in mind I ran at 75 hz at 1920 x 1080, so it'll be a little more stressing for consumer headsets.
Click to expand...

Krejlooc, I've been holding out with a 660ti so far and I'm planing on getting a new graphics card at the same time as a VR headset. I know you have good tastes and known a lot about VR and tech; what would you recommend I get when the time comes? Should I stick with Nvidia or would going AMD be an option? I have an AMD 8350 and 16GB RAM already. Will there be any new cards released around that time? Edit: Also, what headset would you recommend so far? I'm really looking for a headset that'll just work with most VR games and Star Citizen in particular.
 
C

collige

Banned
The CPU and RAM requirements are quite a bit higher than I expected, but I also have no experience w/ E:D. Is the non-VR game particularly CPU-intensive, or is the i7 requirement directly related to VR?
 
A

Akronis

Member
Krejlooc said:
I don't consider this heavy specs for VR. This falls right into my expectations for VR games, based on my own experiences developing in VR.
Click to expand...

High resolutions and high framerates are required, so I don't understand why people would assume it wouldn't require a beefy machine (unless the developer forgoes a lot of performance intensive effects in their game).
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Jams775 said:
Krejlooc, I've been holding out with a 660ti so far and I'm playing on getting a new graphics card at the same time as a VR headset. I know you have good tastes and known a lot about VR and tech; what would you reccommend I get when the time comes? Should I stick with Nvidia or would going AMD be an option? I have an AMD 8350 and 16GB RAM already. Will there be any new cards released around that time?
Click to expand...

Some form of dual 980, dual 980ti, or dual Titan-X setup, depending on your budget, would be my solid recommendation if you have cash to burn.

If buying two cards is out of the question, the 980ti seems like an attractive alternative for bang for your buck. Keep in mind that prices will continue to decline till march or so when these headsets come out, so the longer you wait, the better.
 
kraspkibble

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
Whelp, maybe once I build my next PC. I won't be holding back next time gonna go for i7-K, 16GB, and a GTX 1080 Ti or whatever new AMD card is equivalent to a Fury X.
 
F

Felix Lighter

Member
collige said:
The CPU and RAM requirements are quite a bit higher than I expected, but I also have no experience w/ E:D. Is the non-VR game particularly CPU-intensive, or is the i7 requirement directly related to VR?
Click to expand...

It is a bit CPU intensive but not ridiculously so. The newest Horizons client is 64 bit. Until now it was a 32 bit game so Ram requirements changed with the new tech they added for planetary landings. They needed to switch to 64 bit for their planet surface tech. Apparently they are using some advanced shader tech that requires at least DX11. No OpenGL equivalent at this time so, Horizons will likely not see a Mac release anytime soon.
 
T

Thom Yorke's Wobbly Eye

Member
Krejlooc said:
I don't consider this heavy specs for VR. This falls right into my expectations for VR games, based on my own experiences developing in VR.
Click to expand...

Sure, it's not super-heavy but it is for instance higher than Oculus recommended 'min spec'. I've been doing a lot of VR development too so I know how hard it is to get things running on a decent spec, I'm not criticising their spec and think it's pretty natural given the nature of Elite. They've done a great job. That said I think if it was a VR only title the spec would likely be a shade lower. I don't think the Eve Valkyrie specs have been announced yet but I imagine they'll likely be more lenient.
 
C

cilonen

Member
Krejlooc said:
Some form of dual 980, dual 980ti, or dual Titan-X setup, depending on your budget, would be my solid recommendation if you have cash to burn.

If buying two cards is out of the question, the 980ti seems like an attractive alternative for bang for your buck. Keep in mind that prices will continue to decline till march or so when these headsets come out, so the longer you wait, the better.
Click to expand...

any pointers on whether a Sandy Bridge i7 2700K will still cut it if I upgrade the graphics card setup or am I looking at the whole proc / mobo / ram plus new card(s) and the headset?
 
M

mnannola

Member
I love how these are the minimum specs. I don't think they can release recommended specs because no system out there could crank everything up to the max and run at an acceptable frame rate.
 
F

Felix Lighter

Member
mnannola said:
I love how these are the minimum specs. I don't think they can release recommended specs because no system out there could crank everything up to the max and run at an acceptable frame rate.
Click to expand...

When an acceptable framerate is apparently well over 60fps, that will be a tall order for a long time.
 
J

Jams775

Member
Krejlooc said:
Some form of dual 980, dual 980ti, or dual Titan-X setup, depending on your budget, would be my solid recommendation if you have cash to burn.

If buying two cards is out of the question, the 980ti seems like an attractive alternative for bang for your buck. Keep in mind that prices will continue to decline till march or so when these headsets come out, so the longer you wait, the better.
Click to expand...

Does SLI make a significant difference? I haven't used it since I had two Geforce 7800's. I'm coming into enough money to buy all the graphics cards but I'm not sure if it's worth it for me.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Thom Yorke's Wobbly Eye said:
it is for instance higher than Oculus recommended 'min spec'
Click to expand...

Oculus' "min spec" is for their Oculus Home applications specifically, not all games made specifically for VR. None of the Oculus in-house games seem to be pushing the boundaries like ED does. Really it should just be obvious - the more your game does, the more hardware you need. I don't think there is honestly much Elite Dangerous can do to bring it's specs down - this is the kind of hardware you need to run games of this fidelity smoothly.

Going forward? Yeah, the more optimized the engine is, the lesser the requirements will be. But I don't think those differences manifest at the low end, but rather the opposite end of the spectrum.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Jams775 said:
Does SLI make a significant difference? I haven't used it since I had two Geforce 7800's. I'm coming into enough money to buy all the graphics cards but I'm not sure if it's worth it for me.
Click to expand...

For VR, according to the early benchmarks from Nvidia and AMD, yes, VR SLI is a big improvement. It's not like the old SLI where alternating frames are done by alternating cards. VR SLI is each card rendering per eye. Nvidia claims it doubles their framerate in VR applications.
 
K

Koobion

Member
I wasn't expecting the GPU requirements to be that high. Suddenly the barrier to entry seems like a real problem for PC VR. At the same time, someone spending lots of money on a VR setup would likely have, or be willing to get a high end GPU, so perhaps not.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
cilonen said:
any pointers on whether a Sandy Bridge i7 2700K will still cut it if I upgrade the graphics card setup or am I looking at the whole proc / mobo / ram plus new card(s) and the headset?
Click to expand...

I say rock your processor until you are absolutely forced to change. Funnily enough, the birth of consumer VR will likely give your CPU an extended second life a the much talked up hyperthreading finally has a use. Star Citizen will gobble up as many cores as you can throw at it, apparently.
 
Krappadizzle

Krappadizzle

Member
I think the requirements are more than fair considering what's on screen. The game is gorgeous. I'm hoping a single 980ti will do me well for VR for at least the next year or two. I actually upgraded my old TrackIr for ED and thought it added a lot to the experience, I'd wager VR does that substantially more.
 
D

dumbo

Member
Felix Lighter said:
Apparently they are using some advanced shader tech that requires at least DX11. No OpenGL equivalent at this time so, Horizons will likely not see a Mac release anytime soon.
Click to expand...

The 'shaders' are basically GPU compute - used to generate the planetary terrain. (all of this stuff is supported by opengl/cl, but not supported on 1 particular platform - Apple)
 
C

cilonen

Member
Krejlooc said:
I say rock your processor until you are absolutely forced to change. Funnily enough, the birth of consumer VR will likely give your CPU an extended second life a the much talked up hyperthreading finally has a use. Star Citizen will gobble up as many cores as you can throw at it, apparently.
Click to expand...

Thanks man. Good stuff. I'm trying to hold out until the new memory and GPU architectures establish themselves.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Koobion said:
I wasn't expecting the GPU requirements to be that high. Suddenly the barrier to entry seems like a real problem for PC VR. At the same time, someone spending lots of money on a VR setup would likely have, or be willing to get a high end GPU, so perhaps not.
Click to expand...

I see it as no different from the 3D accelerator card market from 1995. 2016 PC VR will be the realm of hyper enthusiasts, willing to pay a lot for products that will be quickly outclassed and obsolete.

If you buy a VR headset in 2016, you shouldn't expect to keep using it in 2018, essentially. These things will iterate fast.
 
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