I wonder if the VR experience will make up for whatever the difference in graphic detail is lost to run it that way. Kinda like driving a Ferrari with cloth seats instead of leather seats. Who cares it's still a Ferrari.
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Oculus Rift available for preorder for $599.99, shipping in March
- Thread starter War Eagle
- Start date
I wonder if the VR experience will make up for whatever the difference in graphic detail is lost to run it that way. Kinda like driving a Ferrari with cloth seats instead of leather seats. Who cares it's still a Ferrari.
I'm new be nice
Member
I have to wonder if once video card architecture starts being designed a little more strongly towards VR that things wont start to level out again, and also as you said the various ways in which we can save on rendering. It seems like usually some clever engineering and software tricks can improve on rendering in the long run.
I've heard strong sentiment among the various tech and gaming outlets that a good VR experience doesn't require expensive assets to bring a great sense of presence.
The 970 should run games in the oculus store at high settings. Means nothing for other titles.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
Yup, for reference Elite: Dangerous requires a 980 as a minimum for SteamVR. I know I'll have to upgrade my 970 if I ever want to play the Titanic: Honor and Glory experience, whenever that gets completed. Things gonna look lo-fi for the most part for awhile, but those premium looking titles will be in there too for people with better cards. I imagine Project Cars will be another one requiring higher than a 970.
So a 970 won't run on a DK2/CV1 even with details cranked down?
All of Oculus's games will be optimized to run fine on a 970, and they are highly recommending other developers follow their lead. I wonder if they will go as far as restricting software not optimized properly for their spec from the Oculus store, but I don't know. Just like how the PC market has always been though - it's an open market and developers can make a game with as steep of requirements as they like. They just have to know that even the majority of people with a VR headset won't be able to play their games properly and that could be a major issue when the market starts small enough to begin with.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
So a 970 won't run on a DK2/CV1 even with details cranked down?
Oh no it will for those oculus home published titles. I've been using one with my dk2 for awhile, but without a target spec and lack of optimization in certain games and demos you can certainly dip below 75. Again, that's pre-Cv1 wild west development, I was speaking more to the more demanding titles like Elite which most certainly will not show up on Oculus' store.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
Yeah you'll wanna have a 980 minimum for Elite.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=207248
Unfortunately, probably not. Maybe with a lot of other settings turned down. Although iirc the 980 is only the requirement for the planet expansion, not the base game. I could be wrong though.
EDIT: Yep, I'm wrong. Thanks wanderingprostheyltite. It's the rec for both versions. Damn.
Guardian Monkey
Member
mbs are tied more to cpu
momolicious
Member
Costs less than an iphone yet everyones got an iphone these days lol.
Apples to Oranges (no pun intended) but the Rift really is a device worth $599. If there's ever been a bleeding edge entertainment experience this new and radical truly worth the asking price of $599, this is it man. This isn't just a better TV. It's not just slightly faster gizmo with a slightly new UI. It's not just being able to turn a few graphical settings up to Ultra to see some mroe blades of grass in a game you already played. This is a whole new platform and a whole new experience.
Everything about the Rift's design reeks of high quality and thoughtful development. It will most likely knock your socks off. Not just a "oh hey that's a nice piece of tech" or "this is pretty cool," but "Ohh Myy God." Especially if you haven't used any of the dev kits. It's still a great deal at $599 imo.
InaudibleWhispa
Member
Elite jumping to a minimum of a 980 seems insane to me. I know it has to push more pixels and frames for CV1, but I had it running on the DK2 at low settings with an R9 270. Was really looking forward to getting back into Elite but I don't see myself upgrading GPU's again this year (currently got a 970). I already own the game though so I guess I'll give it a good try.
Yep, taking off work just to preorder my Vive. Not going through this shit. NOOOOOOPPPPEEE!
opticalmace
Member
The new GPUs will use the same standard (PCI-E) as your current motherboard does. It'll probably stay this way for quite a few years tbh. So yeah, if you want to upgrade all you have to do is remove the old card and put the new one in.
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
They didn't mention what quality settings those recommended specs are for either.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
I'm a little confused myself cause with a 970 the game defaults me to the high preset with dk2. Anyone know the resolution percent increase from dk2 to cv1? Like I get that devs are typically encouraged to downsample for vr which is ofc taxing as all get out, but you'd think Frontier could squeeze some extra perf for a low preset. Not like their reqs are gonna stop me from firing it up to see for myself anyhow how it runs come cv1 shipping...this is assuming they manage to get it over to the 1.0 runtime to begin with. Can cv1 even use older runtimes?
Herr Starr
Member
I can confirm that. One of my greatest surprises and delights with the DK2 was when I realized that even a flat, untextured wall looks awesome in VR. I mean, look around you right now. Odds are you're sitting in a room with white, flat walls, or at least something similar. You don't look at those and think they look horrible (okay, most people don't), but if you saw the same thing in a non-VR computer game, you'd think they looked unfinished and boring. VR lifts things back up to how you perceive them in reality, which means things don't have to look complex to convince you that they're real and interesting.
Exactly. For instance playing Minecrift started to feel like I was on a giant Minecraft movie set sometimes. The game is made of fake, awful looking voxel blocks yet it was like they were still tangible objects that were actually there. Like they had painted Minecraft textures on big cardboard boxes or something.
Hunkering down in a tree fort during a thunderstorm has legit felt like I was in a safe, cozy space. I could almost feel the dampness of the rain falling just outside. When breaking blocks I'd get these phantom sensations of all the particles falling on my face. Building from tall heights became legit unnerving sometimes and I had to take breaks. And this is Minecraft graphics. It just had great implementation and ran perfectly. It's really all about the baseline of the hardware specs and VR implementation. "Graphics" have nothing to do with it. Wild stuff. And CV1 will be even better.
ThisGuy
Member
Sweet, thanks.
Dreamwriter
Member
Frontier said those were the minimum recommended specs for Elite, which means Low settings. Which makes sense since I needed it set to Low to get a solid 75fps on a DK2 with my 780ti (which is about the same as a 970) using the OpenVR wrapper. That Horizons expansion is really tough on systems, my new 980ti still needs some settings lowered to get a solid framerate at all times (though most settings are at Ultra).
Herr Starr
Member
I'm hoping they are taking the same approach as Oculus, which would mean that the recommended specs are actually meant for the High graphical setting or around its ballpark.
Dreamwriter
Member
But, I just told you they are not, they said that was the minimum system to get a playable framerate. I have the game, I have an Oculus DK2, I had a GTX 780ti, and I had to set it to low quality.
Also, Oculus never said that their minimum settings were for High, that wouldn't make sense since those are supposed to be the minimum system. You cannot have lower specs and use apps you get from Oculus Home. Those apps *require* a GTX 970, 8GB RAM, Intel i5-4590, two USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port, and HDMI 1.3.
Herr Starr
Member
But nothing about what detail level they're referring to. Minimum specs in VR seem to be handled differently from regular gaming, at least by Oculus. Palmer Luckey has explicitly stated that games in the Oculus Store should be able to run at High+ detail level with the minimum specs. These are minimum specs more closely related to console specs than what we're used to on PC. Developers can create the intended experience for those exact specs. Note that there's no recommended specs published by Oculus. That's because the minimum specs cover that already.
Teknopathetic
Member
"But nothing about what detail level they're referring to."
He just told you, later in that post, his experience running the game on a DK2 (which has a lower resolution and refresh rate than CV1) with a graphics card that is roughly equivalent to a 980 with some OC.
He just told you, later in that post, his experience running the game on a DK2 (which has a lower resolution and refresh rate than CV1) with a graphics card that is roughly equivalent to a 980 with some OC.
Herr Starr
Member
Yes, but it's not an Oculus Store game, and it's running on a driver and a way of rendering VR that is obsolete and won't work with the CV1. All bets are off here, which is why we're discussing this in the first place. I do think you're right about Elite specifically (though not general Oculus Store games), but there are too many unknowns for us to conclude. Elite isn't really well optimized for VR so far, but could be by the time the CV1 comes out.
Teknopathetic
Member
"Yes, but it's not an Oculus Store game, and it's running on a driver and a way of rendering VR that is obsolete and won't work with the CV1. All bets are off here, which is why we're discussing this in the first place. I do think you're right about Elite specifically (though not general Oculus Store games), but there are too many unknowns for us to conclude. Elite isn't really well optimized for VR so far, but could be by the time the CV1 comes out."
The conversation (at least the quoted poster and who he was responding to) was about Elite, specifically. As far as Oculus Store games go (and I should've posted a thread about this but whatever), Eve Valkyrie's NDA is up and at least two beta testers have said that with machines that are roughly the recommended spec, performance was good on High settings with a DK2.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/40hy1s/eve_valkyrie_nda_lifted_lets_discuss/
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/40hy1s/eve_valkyrie_nda_lifted_lets_discuss/cyuhgib
The conversation (at least the quoted poster and who he was responding to) was about Elite, specifically. As far as Oculus Store games go (and I should've posted a thread about this but whatever), Eve Valkyrie's NDA is up and at least two beta testers have said that with machines that are roughly the recommended spec, performance was good on High settings with a DK2.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/40hy1s/eve_valkyrie_nda_lifted_lets_discuss/
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/40hy1s/eve_valkyrie_nda_lifted_lets_discuss/cyuhgib
I'm new be nice
Member
I think it's a dangerous comparison for those who don't look back fondly on the N64 and PS1 days, but it all kind of reminds me of those early days of polygonal games. Back then it didn't really matter what the textures looked like because it was just so dang impressive to see fully polygonal worlds.
I'm sure as time goes on we will want more out of our VR experiences, but right now the basics are impressive enough.
I wouldn't want to go back to N64 graphics, but I'm oerfecrly happy to take a drop in bells and whistles (and some basic detail) for the returns you get from VR. If you consider VR a separate platform then maybe it'd be easier to reset expectations around graphics?
And it's not like to get warpy polygons like PS1, or hideous blurry textures like N64. Games will still look great in comparison. Just not quite as snazzy as monitor/TV targeted games
I'm new be nice
Member
Yeah, certainly not a literal comparison. It's how I've kind of been categorizing it in my mind lately, though. Maybe I just yearn for those old feelings again.
InaudibleWhispa
Member
From Palmer's AMA:
They're recommended specs not minimum. Something for devs to target. You will need those specs to guarantee you can play every game on the Oculus Store but that doesn't mean every game needs those specs. They're not going to force a really simple GearVR port to require a 970, for example.
Dreamwriter
Member
Do you have a link to that? I've been following this closely and never read any statement like that, so it'd be a good read. Like I said, it doesn't make sense - "minimum" specifications means a game won't run with worse. So if the minimum specs gets you "high quality" when there are other options, you could lower your specs and run it at worse quality, but Oculus has been making it very clear that you *need* a powerful computer.
Sleeping Lesson
Member
Dreamwriter
Member
No, but Oculus is treating those as minimum specifications and they've always talked about them as the minimum required. He's saying in that statement you quoted that the "experience" you will be getting won't be barebones. But that's different from saying that the games' quality settings will run at "high" on that hardware, so that wimpier hardware will be able to run those apps by just lowering the quality settings. Remember, 90fps at 1200x1080 per eye is what you need to get, and that's going to take a lot of power even with simpler graphics.
Herr Starr
Member
It's the quote that the others just mentioned above.
Here's what seems to be confusing people: We have had the term "minimum specs" around for years, and it has always meant "the absolute minimum hardware you need to run this game at an acceptable framerate on the lowest detail settings". That's not what Oculus is going for with their minimums. When they say it, they mean "the absolute minimum hardware you need for us to guarantee that you'll have a good experience with no hiccups." A game with no graphical options is likely to have the two interpretations overlap, but if you have access to these settings, you can get away with less powerful hardware if you're willing to sacrifice graphical fidelity. But there's no guarantee that it'll work well. You could have a shitty experience in one game and a decent experience in another. Oculus' minimum specs merely gives you a baseline to work with, both as a developer and as a player.
Felix Lighter
Member
From this article:
Here is some Elite Dangerous specifics about what they consider minimum experience according to Michael Brookes, the Executive Producer:
Here is some Elite Dangerous specifics about what they consider minimum experience according to Michael Brookes, the Executive Producer:
InaudibleWhispa
Member
The game was mindblowing in a DK2. If I can get it running at 90fps with no stutter, that's all that matters to me. Hopefully that's achievable with a 970 without trying to match their very high visual fidelity standards. If not, oh well, no harm in trying.
Dreamwriter
Member
That is the complete opposite of everything Oculus has been saying. They have never even hinted that you can get away with less powerful hardware. You *need* a GTX 970, if you don't have one you should not buy an Oculus Rift. That has been the clear message that Oculus has been putting out.
DouglasteR
Member
Being able to land the Anaconda on a chasm´s bottom on a planet´s surface and then running around in the "makko" was simply worth thousands of dollars. Memorable.
Will be the first game i will try on the CV1.
artsi
Member
Of course you can if you're able to lower settings enough that you get 90fps minimum.
But that's not something Oculus should advertise because people will ramp up the settings to maximum anyway, and complain that they get sick.
Dreamwriter
Member
Beware the SRV (the mako) - that is the one thing in the game that could make people sick in VR. I can use it, but I get that feeling, the twinges, that say if I did it long enough I could get motion sickness. Maybe if you were careful not to hit bumps and do flips and things
Herr Starr
Member
Of course they aren't hinting at it. They're not going to even touch that topic if they can avoid it. The last thing they want is to have thousands of customers come complaining that their underpowered hardware isn't working well with the Rift, and that Oculus has lied to them. By not saying anything about it, they leave it up to us enthusiasts to figure it out and inform others of our findings. That way, if something goes wrong it's on us, not Oculus. This is very deliberate.
DouglasteR
Member
Beware the SRV (the mako) - that is the one thing in the game that could make people sick in VR. I can use it, but I get that feeling, the twinges, that say if I did it long enough I could get motion sickness. Maybe if you were careful not to hit bumps and do flips and things
Indeed, very nausea inducing.
But for us, heavy VR gamers/users is tolerable.
When i landed, i could perceive the gas giant in the space above, while the sun shone thru the hills, making the scene very beautiful.
The awe is much superior to the sickness, although it lingers in the mind.
Makes me remember the first time (when the extended windows was the norm) when i, being inside the station, rotated to my left to create space for the giant T9-Heavy pass. When i did so, i glanced a small truck passing in another "gravitional layer" in a road and immediatly felt nauseous, much more because of my brain trying to adjust to the conflicting axis than to the rift.
Elite is a must have experience. We live in a 3D world, but stuck in a 2D plane.
Palmer did mention in the AMA that some apps may work on lower machines, but that they can't officially support it:
I wouldn't be surprised if a few games could also get by with lower end hardware (e.g. a GearVR port without significant graphical improvements), but obviously anyone wanting a guarantee that they can run the games they buy from Oculus's store should ensure that they meet the minimum spec.
I'd go a bit further then this.
Oculus isn't "not saying anything about it". They're explicitly saying something about it - you need a 970 or better. Case closed. Absolutely no wiggle room. That's the opposite of staying silent or not saying anything.
Oculus isn't "leaving it up to enthusiasts to figure it out", they're directly telling people "don't even try" because they know that you simply won't have a good experience without it.
Enthusiasts who try to prove otherwise are just naive and desperate to hope their their under-powered hardware will work even though it won't.
My limited experience with DK2 felt like the first time I played Mario 64. It was only the second time in my life that I really felt such a leap for videogames.
Herr Starr
Member
It's business speak. I don't know how familiar you're with it, but this is how it always works. The Oculus Rift minimum specs situation is no different. There's a number of reasons why they're saying what they're saying, but most of it has to do with relations with developers and business partners, as well as their lawyers.
All of what you say is true, but you're drawing the entirely wrong conclusions from it. Having said that, if you follow what you're saying to the letter, then you're going to be very safe come the Rift launch.
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Pretty much. I used to do hardware testing for a living when I started my career 15 years ago, and determining min and recommended specs were part of it. Yes, sometimes you actually could use lower hardware than what we ultimately came up with and still get through a game reasonably well at lower settings, but there were either enough graphical issues or performance hiccups that made us go for a higher spec. Less customer support issues to have to deal with as a result as well.
Palmer's answer previously quoted stating...
...leads me to believe there's still some wiggle room to lower graphical settings in order to get better framerates at the resolution needed if you wanted to try hardware that's not quite up to spec.
But that's not ideal for the experience they're shooting for, hence why they went with the target they mentioned. Note that it's not implying high/ultra settings either, merely "good" which usually equates to Medium (assuming a typical V. Low/Low/Med/High/Ultra spread) so those who feel a recommended spec should target at least High quality settings will think the spec is too low.
In any case, people will find out in due time. Especially with something like Elite, which already has quite a bit higher VR spec than the Rift's.