Oculus minimum specs

[Junky Juke]

Waiting for commercial release of the oculus rift, I was looking for some minimun system requirement to run it smoothly with ED. What is a good FPS should I point at? Can a nvidia gtx 750 handle it? Is the CPU and motherboard crucial?
My actual low end rig can handle around 60-70 fps on a 1920x1080 monitor with low quality settings.
Should I push my machine's performance to a minimum 75 fixed fps?
All suggestions will be very apreciated, but keep in mind low budget solutions as I cant afford a thousand euros super-rig.

 

[Frank]

The problem is that there are no minimum system requirements. Even thousand Euro super-rigs aren't really capable of doing VR justice. My finger hovered over the DK2 "buy" button for a long while, not because of the price of the headgear but because of the commitment that came with it. I had an Nvidia GTX640 when the DK2 arrived, and it was usable. I was tweaking and tweaking to get the best compromise of speed and picture quality. One time I just set all the dials to zero, and my! what a difference. Some people here talk of the "screen door effect". The settings I picked caused the "frosted toilet door effect" but it gave me a glimpse of what was possible.

VR is more than a sum of its parts. It's more than just a telly and a motion controller strapped to your head. It is the feeling of being there. The difference in getting the fast framerate and low lag for VR is like the difference between looking at a series of photographs taken with a motorised shutter, and watching a movie.

Good luck if you decide to go for an Oculus Rift, but I'd better warn you now. If you get those similar glimpses of how the DK2 could perform better, you might find the temptation to upgrade too great to resist.

 

[Junky Juke]

The problem is that there are no minimum system requirements. Even thousand Euro super-rigs aren't really capable of doing VR justice. My finger hovered over the DK2 "buy" button for a long while, not because of the price of the headgear but because of the commitment that came with it. I had an Nvidia GTX640 when the DK2 arrived, and it was usable. I was tweaking and tweaking to get the best compromise of speed and picture quality. One time I just set all the dials to zero, and my! what a difference. Some people here talk of the "screen door effect". The settings I picked caused the "frosted toilet door effect" but it gave me a glimpse of what was possible.

VR is more than a sum of its parts. It's more than just a telly and a motion controller strapped to your head. It is the feeling of being there. The difference in getting the fast framerate and low lag for VR is like the difference between looking at a series of photographs taken with a motorised shutter, and watching a movie.

Good luck if you decide to go for an Oculus Rift, but I'd better warn you now. If you get those similar glimpses of how the DK2 could perform better, you might find the temptation to upgrade too great to resist.

I have to say my concern is not about image quality but performance. I tried ED with IR tracking and I had to downgrade graphics quality to make it run at min of 45fps because of the annoying flickering while turning my head and looking ad my display.
I'm mostly concerned about head sickness caused by low performance rather than the WOW! effect. If your GTX640 (my previous card too) could make it work... well I feel my 750 could do it.
How was your experience like with DK2 + GTX640?

 

[Frank]

I never measured the performance when I had my 640. The FPS figure isn't visible when you use the DK2 it's too far over into a corner. It was usable but no oversampling meant that the HUD was just a jumble of pixels. It also meant that it was difficult to target specific areas during dogfighting. I didn't use the VR much for Elite when I had the slower graphics card, I basically used it for the occasional "pew pew pew" session.

If you can stomach it, Half Life 2 is a great game for the DK2 user with a slow card. The graphics are fast enough for a great experience. You get to see how tall those tripod striders actually are

 

[Junky Juke]

I just did some digging on the OR main site. Bad news for me:

"Recommended specifications: A desktop computer running a dedicated graphics card with DVI-D or HDMI graphics output, with capability of running current generation 3D games at 1080p resolution at 75fps or higher."

So the 75fps thing is true.

Actually my best Elite performance is around 60-70 fps at 1080p when out into the void and at low quality settings. That's it.
VR by now requires some serious investment in a 1000+ € machine (OR + GTX 970 only is around 700€).
I'll look forward in a year or two when tecnology prices will get down as usual.

Thanks for comments Frank

 

[Masta Squidge]

It gets worse. When rendering 3d, the card has to do nearly twice the work even though the resolution is the same.

I have a gtx titan that can handle 5760×1080 on three monitors and never dips below a v sync 60 fps On ultra.

But with the rift Ifound myself having to drop to medium to maintain 75 At 1/3 the resolution.

The reason being is that it has to render all of the geometry twice Per frame, plus other inefficiency on top of that.

 

[Junky Juke]

So the Oculus Rift is only the little tail of the machine beast you need to build up for a decent VR experience?

I'm a little disappointed. Maybe it is too early to talk about "commercial" use.

Maybe I'll try some fancy google cardboard with my cell phone just to see how 3D VR works, then I'll throw it away and invest my money in most important things (a new car, house repairs, vacation)...

...and keep enjoying 2D version of E

 

[CMDR Holycow]

So the Oculus Rift is only the little tail of the machine beast you need to build up for a decent VR experience?

I'm a little disappointed. Maybe it is too early to talk about "commercial" use.

Maybe I'll try some fancy google cardboard with my cell phone just to see how 3D VR works, then I'll throw it away and invest my money in most important things (a new car, house repairs, vacation)...

...and keep enjoying 2D version of E

No it's not. Right now, a single 970 or 980 can get a GREAT experience in a DK2. You won't get ultra settings... and you won't even get high settings with 0 studder. I play right in between medium and high with a single 970, and there is literally no other gaming experience that has EVER come even remotely close to what this is like. If you run a pair of 970 or 980s in SLI, you will be able to really kick up the settings. BUT.. the CV1 will not be a DK2... it will require 90hz, and will most likely be 1440. That means even 980s in SLI probably wont get you above high settings, maybe even back down to medium. (just guessing). My guess is that if you want to run the CV1 game in high or ultra, you will likely need whatever the flagship card is at the time of release, in SLI.

Right now... I am having the best gaming experience I have ever had by a factor of 10, with my single 970+DK2

 

[Junky Juke]

So I guess I have to squeeze some more 10 fps from my PC to be able to enjoy a low quality setting ED on the DK2.
If a single 970 can get a great experience then could a 750 on an optimized machine (SLI + maybe a clean install, plus some little tweakings) do the trick? I confess that all the positive coomments by OR users on this forum is spilling some real excitement inside of my nerd's brain.
I have to do some testing and see if I can push my little machine to a better performance: if I can get to the sweet spot (75fps)... it will be the moment I push my finger on the BUY button...

EDIT: and of course I have to do it before CV1 comes out

 

[CMDR Holycow]

So I guess I have to squeeze some more 10 fps from my PC to be able to enjoy a low quality setting ED on the DK2.
If a single 970 can get a great experience then could a 750 on an optimized machine (SLI + maybe a clean install, plus some little tweakings) do the trick? I confess that all the positive coomments by OR users on this forum is spilling some real excitement inside of my nerd's brain.
I have to do some testing and see if I can push my little machine to a better performance: if I can get to the sweet spot (75fps)... it will be the moment I push my finger on the BUY button...

EDIT: and of course I have to do it before CV1 comes out

75 isn't a "sweet spot"... its a must. Or you get jidder, and it ruins the experience. Heck, even on my old GTX470, I could play this game on 1080 on my monitor on ultra with room to spare. In the DK2, it was unplayable on rock bottom settings.

 

[Juniper]

If you can stomach it, Half Life 2 is a great game for the DK2 user with a slow card. The graphics are fast enough for a great experience. You get to see how tall those tripod striders actually are

Just for the record... you should never give someone their first experience of VR in Half Life 2. No matter how much they pout, no matter how much they beg, it's almost guaranteed to put them off the whole experience for life.

Definitely Level: Advanced.

 

[Pate]

I just yesterday got my GTX 970, which replaced my old GTX 750Ti, for DK2 use.

I got my DK2 about a week ago, but after spending about an hour with it, tinkering with various settings, I realised that even with Low settings I simply got nausea from the low framerate. I decided to wait until I get my 970, and yesterday after getting and playing for two hours using Medium graphics quality settings, no more nausea!

Today I have been experimenting with supersampling, anti-aliasing and other such settings, but as Cpt.America said, a single 970 runs fine on medium to high settings, but it is not fast enough for supersampling or Ultra settings with no judder.

To the OP, if your 750 is slower than my 750Ti, you will only get frustrated (or sick) trying to use it with DK2, sorry.

Pate

 

[Junky Juke]

I just yesterday got my GTX 970, which replaced my old GTX 750Ti, for DK2 use.

I got my DK2 about a week ago, but after spending about an hour with it, tinkering with various settings, I realised that even with Low settings I simply got nausea from the low framerate. I decided to wait until I get my 970, and yesterday after getting and playing for two hours using Medium graphics quality settings, no more nausea!

Today I have been experimenting with supersampling, anti-aliasing and other such settings, but as Cpt.America said, a single 970 runs fine on medium to high settings, but it is not fast enough for supersampling or Ultra settings with no judder.

To the OP, if your 750 is slower than my 750Ti, you will only get frustrated (or sick) trying to use it with DK2, sorry.

Pate

Shame about that. Yes I think my 750 is slower than 750Ti. Also shame that I bough it just 1 month ago. If I knew it wasn't enough for OR experience...

Thank you all for feedback. I'll have to really think about what to do next. The actual hardware requirement-costs ratio to use the OR seems quite too high for a mid budget person like me. I dont feel good with a 700-800 bucks investment to play videogames.
But at least you helped me to have a clear idea of what are actually new generation videogaming requirements.
Thanks a lot guys.

"If you aren't playing Elite Dangerous in the rift, you aren't playing Elite Dangerous yet"

...a sad player says ciao

 

[Frank]

Just for the record... you should never give someone their first experience of VR in Half Life 2. No matter how much they pout, no matter how much they beg, it's almost guaranteed to put them off the whole experience for life.

Definitely Level: Advanced.

My first Oculus Rift experience was with Half Life 2. Kerrash had it at the Elite Meet a few years back. I knew I wanted one but was a little concerned about the reports of nausea. John Stableford had an adverse reaction to it and I wanted to be sure I wouldn't have the same. I played Half Life 2. I leapt off high buildings. I moved backwards and forwards whilst look in various different directions. I drank copious amounts of beer. Nothing made me feel queasy.

When I got my own headset I found that the greatest factor for the unsettled stomach effect was just the length of time in cyberspace. I used a kitchen timer to limit my sessions and slowly develop my VR legs. The main thing was to not develop an association with playing on the DK2 and feeling sick.

 

[Juniper]

My first Oculus Rift experience was with Half Life 2. Kerrash had it at the Elite Meet a few years back. I knew I wanted one but was a little concerned about the reports of nausea. John Stableford had an adverse reaction to it and I wanted to be sure I wouldn't have the same. I played Half Life 2. I leapt off high buildings. I moved backwards and forwards whilst look in various different directions. I drank copious amounts of beer. Nothing made me feel queasy.

When I got my own headset I found that the greatest factor for the unsettled stomach effect was just the length of time in cyberspace. I used a kitchen timer to limit my sessions and slowly develop my VR legs. The main thing was to not develop an association with playing on the DK2 and feeling sick.

You're honestly the first person I know who has done this. Everyone (including myself) who has tried this that I'm aware of felt severe nausea within about 10 minutes of play.

I think I don't handle VR experiences where you move. I can only handle them if you're stationary and the background moves around you. I can last hours in E: D with no problems whatsoever.

Even the thought of playing HL2 in VR makes me feel queasy now.

 

[Frank]

You're honestly the first person I know who has done this. Everyone (including myself) who has tried this that I'm aware of felt severe nausea within about 10 minutes of play.

I think I don't handle VR experiences where you move. I can only handle them if you're stationary and the background moves around you. I can last hours in E: D with no problems whatsoever.

Even the thought of playing HL2 in VR makes me feel queasy now.

Have you tried that new Alien: Isolation? Does that make you feel sick? I've not bought it yet. I haven't even bought any driving games for the DK2. Driving is a great experience in VR as well. It was the driving game I always went for on those Virtuality arcade machines at the Trocadero Centre.

I've not really played anything else. I've got a rig that plays Elite: Dangerous fairly comfortably in VR. Why would I play anything else?

 

[Juniper]

Have you tried that new Alien: Isolation? Does that make you feel sick? I've not bought it yet. I haven't even bought any driving games for the DK2. Driving is a great experience in VR as well. It was the driving game I always went for on those Virtuality arcade machines at the Trocadero Centre.

I've not really played anything else. I've got a rig that plays Elite: Dangerous fairly comfortably in VR. Why would I play anything else?

Same.

I've bought Alien Isolation, and played it a bit, but not in VR. It doesn't officially support the Oculus so you have to do a bit of hacking to get it to work. Because of my experiences in HL2, I haven't done that. Also because playing it in the Oculus would probably scare the bejeesuz out of me even more than it does already!