mac pro

[jmp470]

Hi all VR users, I'm interested in potentially going into the VR world, however, I'm starting to price out rigs and set ups. I'm currently using a iMac 27" with windows 10 and love the game. However, I was considering upgrading to a Mac Pro (2999 version) and either getting a Samsung 55" 4K tv or going with VR. Would a Mac Pro work with VR? Is anyone already using this set up, if so, how do you like it and what would you have done differently?

Thanks

 

[CylonSurfer]

A Mac Book Pro would likely not work with consumer VR and Elite Dangerous. The minimum spec for Consumer VR and Elite is a GTX980 and I'm not aware of any Mac running such a powerful card. For £2999 or $2999 you could build a very powerful VR ready gaming PC and still have change for your Samsung 4K TV.

Best option if you are serious about VR gaming is a PC at this point in time, and likely will be for some time to come.

The best advice for now would be to wait for one of the VR HMD's to release so people can actually test performance against certain hardware & software. New GPU's should be released over the next few months or so, so you may want to hold on cash for a little while and see how things play out.

 

[Khyrios]

Hi!

I own a Mac Pro and a DK2 over a year now...

some Infos:

Elite does not work with Oculus Runtime 0.8 under Windows 10. You can install 0.5, but this ist not officially supported with Windows 10 - as I am developing with my rig this is not an option for me. Also you can use Windows 8.1 with 0.5 and run Elite in VR.

Elite never worked with CrossfireX. You can try other profiles, but for me it never worked. So the dual graphics cards are a waste only with Elite. But this is a Elite graphics engine problem - as example GTA V flies on this machine with full CrossfireX, you will never play it again on a console after playing it.

A Mac Pro is capable running 3 4k Displays, but it is not a 4k gaming machine. It is a really good 2/3k gaming machine ( even better if more games would work with CrossfireX ). If noise is factor: playing GTA V for hours and you only hear a low noise air stream from this machine is quite impressive.

What to do?

Wait for a new Mac Pro ( I am still hoping Apple will deliver a new one ).
Wait until final consumer VR Headsets are released.

I wouldn´t even buy a PC for VR now, because when VR finally launching for the masses there will be at least new graphics card for sure...
and DK2 is not sold anymore from Oculus for a good reason... CV1 is a universe better ;-)

So wait 6 month, save the money now and buy a really nice machine next year...

 

[jmp470]

That's for the information. Looks like I will be waiting for the bugs to get worked out on the consumer editions. The hard part, is the waiting, as VR seems like a winner in the long run.

 

[Valderon]

Not that this info helps much but I play on an 2012 12 core mac pro with a modded 3 gig 780 gtx card. I play elite on the DK2 in boot camp on a mixture of low and medium settings. Horizons is pretty demanding. Depending on the planet I have to dial down the effects even more. I'm planning on keeping my mac for work and getting a dedicated PC gaming rig. I really want to buy it now, but I agree with everyone to hold out till next year. Im in a similar situation as you.

I know whatever I do, im going with a SLI setup with 2 of the most diesel cards available at the time

Good luck!

 

[rennarda]

I'm a massive Mac fan - I use them all day for my work, and my home life. But even I ended up building a custom gaming PC for ED and VR.

For just a tad over £1K I build a good gaming rig that will happily run ED on the Occulus, and supports Horizons too (Horizons isn't supported on the Mac due to the lack of compute shaders in Mac OSX OpenGL).

 

[buyback]

I'm a massive Mac fan - I use them all day for my work, and my home life. But even I ended up building a custom gaming PC for ED and VR.

For just a tad over £1K I build a good gaming rig that will happily run ED on the Occulus, and supports Horizons too (Horizons isn't supported on the Mac due to the lack of compute shaders in Mac OSX OpenGL).

I too built my first PC after 10 years Mac only just for ED + Rift. You can't beat the price here was about 1500€ including the DK2 beginning this year. I only upgraded the Cpu to a Broadwell 2 months ago. Its also more flexible for upgrades to CV1 / next gen GPUs.

Its almost Headless with only a small Atrix Lapdock HDMI display for OS. I use remote Keyboard/Mouse with Synology from my Mac and also sometime use Steam In-Home streaming when not using the Rift (fine on 1080p/60Hz on my Mid 2011 iMac, while that machine is utterly underpowered to run ED directly with decent Framerate on bootcamp)

I don't use it for anything else - so kind of luxury maybe but that IMac still suits me for anything else.