VR minimum specification for Elite Dangerous (DK2)

[Xebec]

Greetings Commanders,

Many of you have been asking about the minimum system requirements for VR in Elite Dangerous, including Horizons, so here they are:

• 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

We are passionate about VR and Elite Dangerous is leading the way in cutting edge VR software development. This is what we consider to be a minimum spec to have a good experience on forthcoming consumer VR headsets.

As most of you are aware we currently support HTC Vive and the Oculus rift 0.5 SDK. We continue to work with Oculus on support for their more recent SDKs, and will let you know if and when there is more to announce.

Can you say if the release headsets will allow fallback lockins to 60 and 75 hz instead of 90hz to allow for some lower end HW?

 

[Soda Popinski]

I ran 970 SLI for a while with a DK2. (Sold the DK2 recently waiting for the CV1..)

The short answer is that it's a definite improvement, but it's not as much as an improvement as SLI typically is for a monitor setup. It worked well for me, but I would have bought a 980Ti had they been available at the time.

The longer technical answer is that to sustain 75 or 90fps for the DK2/CV1 you need to have a response time of <13.3ms (75) or 11.1ms (90) from when you move your head to when you see the next frame. Where SLI can be a bit of a handicap is that it introduces two new latencies over a single card: 1. (Typically) - the PCI express lanes are now half speed (x8 vs x16) introducing additional time to copy textures from RAM to the card. 2. The frame "copy time" between the two cards.

If a GTX 980 can render a frame in 10ms, and a single GTX 970 renders it in 12ms.. GTX 970 SLI may 'render' in ~7ms (2x GPUs are not as efficient due to drivers, system, etc), and you still need to add time (i.e. 1-2ms) for copying that frame between the two GPUs, which means the GPU response time for SLI 970s might be 8-9ms, or only 10-20% better than a single GTX 980.

That 10-20% latency improvement might be enough to give you the settings you want, but it's significantly less than the ~ 40-60% monitor FPS improvement most people are thinking of.

Would you say SLI helps with judder or just makes a difference in lag? Currently I get judder with a single 970 while in space dock. Not too much of a problem on the surface with the Horizon beta.

 

[Soda Popinski]

Like many i bought a 970 as per recomended for VR. I dont want to sell it at a loss for getting a 980. The best FD can do is work with nvidia to implement VR sli, that way each 970 renders each display independent and that brings much better performance than a single 980, and we dont lose as much money. And no madmyke, you cant reply me again.

Do we know if Elite will move to DX 12? If so, I'd keep that "old" 970 instead of selling it for a loss, as the extra GPU will help with the multi-GPU processing.

Can you please please explain HOW you got the DK2 working on Windows 10? I can't get it to work for anything.

Try installing SDK 0.5 for it to work with Elite.

 

[Karnath]

Would you say SLI helps with judder or just makes a difference in lag? Currently I get judder with a single 970 while in space dock. Not too much of a problem on the surface with the Horizon beta.

I used to run 970's SLI, it definitely made a difference keeping frames above 75 but did introduce a slight lag in head tracking in the end we parted ways and went to a single Titan x

However when the first Horizon beta was launched i had very poor judder, especially in space dock which has always been super smooth in the main game, so i decided to update to the latest driver 359.06 which thankfully fixed all my judders in Horizons. Also been stable without issues

Worth a try ?

 

[Xebec]

It definitely helped with judder. Basically on my setup - a single 970 would do low settings without Judder, but medium caused judder. With 2 x970s I could generally run high without judder. (pre-Horizons).

 

[Soda Popinski]

I used to run 970's SLI, it definitely made a difference keeping frames above 75 but did introduce a slight lag in head tracking in the end we parted ways and went to a single Titan x

However when the first Horizon beta was launched i had very poor judder, especially in space dock which has always been super smooth in the main game, so i decided to update to the latest driver 359.06 which thankfully fixed all my judders in Horizons. Also been stable without issues

Worth a try ?

I'm on the latest NVidia drivers, but am running 0.5 SDK running Elite in Extended. I'll give the new 0.8 SDK / Direct Mode a try on the new beta.

Thanks for info. I'll likely wait for the CV1 before deciding on which way to go (+970, upgrade to 980, or wait for 1000 series).

 

[Alec Turner]

I'm on the latest NVidia drivers, but am running 0.5 SDK running Elite in Extended. I'll give the new 0.8 SDK / Direct Mode a try on the new beta.

Thanks for info. I'll likely wait for the CV1 before deciding on which way to go (+970, upgrade to 980, or wait for 1000 series).

Unless I've missed a recent announcement (and I don't have an Occulus) I thought ED didn't work with anything above SDK 0.5. Isn't that the point where FD announced they were dropping support until the consumer version was out?

 

[RiftFlyer]

Unless I've missed a recent announcement (and I don't have an Occulus) I thought ED didn't work with anything above SDK 0.5. Isn't that the point where FD announced they were dropping support until the consumer version was out?

It works with runtime 0.8 through steamVR

 

[Alec Turner]

Incidentally, for those curious about the i7 on the minimum requirement, I just discovered cpubenchmark.net where you can compare two CPU's (probably graphics cards too).

Anyway, here's the comparison between the i5 4690k and their i7 3770k ...

http://cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2284&cmp[]=2

Bottom line: slightly less performance but WAY better value for money.

Edit: Oh, and ditto on the GTX 970 vs. GTX 980 ...

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2954&cmp[]=2953

I feel content (for now).

 

[Beachlight7]

I'm confused by these minimum specs. Quad I7 and 16mb ram and 4GB video card. When this game should eventually be running at 120fps at 1080p on a 1.6GHZ PS4 with 8GB total unified ram, and low end graphics card. There is going to be some serious optimisation for Playstation VR.

 

[Karnath]

I'm confused by these minimum specs. Quad I7 and 16mb ram and 4GB video card. When this game should eventually be running at 120fps at 1080p on a 1.6GHZ PS4 with 8GB total unified ram, and low end graphics card. There is going to be some serious optimisation for Playstation VR.

I didn't even know that had announced a PS4 version let alone VR support for it ?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I'm confused by these minimum specs. Quad I7 and 16mb ram and 4GB video card. When this game should eventually be running at 120fps at 1080p on a 1.6GHZ PS4 with 8GB total unified ram, and low end graphics card. There is going to be some serious optimisation for Playstation VR.

watcha talkin bout willis?


whilst it is a fair shout ED will come to PS4, what makes you think it will run on VR?

NMS was demoed on the rift and said to be a very compelling experience. however it is not coming to PS VR. Sony have not said why, neither have anyone from hello games, but it would not be a huge leap to suggest it is because the ps4 simply cant manage it.

I just hope sony do not use their leverage to force hello games to drop VR for PC as well due to "parity". I have a feeling they may however. Thank god PC is lead platform for ED.

edit... actually I am interested, and hopeful to read that in what seems a uturn after sonyCEO said no VR for NMS, it not seems to be back on the "possible" table.

still, it does not mean ED will manage it.

 

[Beachlight7]

Well, I think the current speculation about the silence and the delay of NMS is because it could be a special PS VR launch title in June 2016. Sony are being very hush on it until an official announcement next year about PS VR.
I expect Frontier to have a big challenge in making Elite PS VR fully operational. Probably why they are taking their time in announcing it too. They may also wish to launch Elite as a VR title rather than just space sim on the PS4. I think Eite on PS4 could be out this month if they wanted a standard version of the game, but I think something special awaits, I am optimistic about these things.

 

[RiftFlyer]

There isn't a hope of elite dangerous running on a PlayStation in VR at 120Hz. Maybe they could port the original Elite but not the version that's juddering away on my PC.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I think Eite on PS4 could be out this month if they wanted a standard version of the game, but I think something special awaits, I am optimistic about these things.

it certainly could be, if the XB1 can run it the PS4 can too, however I reckon they have taken a little bag of cash off MS for some exclusivity (toal guess)

as for VR. I hope you are right. IF they could port ED VR as well as you are suggesting to PS4 without crippling the eye candy, and if they passed on these optimisations to the PC users, this would be great news indeed.... however I just do not see it happening myself.

imo either the visuals will have to be totally borked, or it wont happen. I personally feel it will be PS5 and Xbox 4 before we see VR/AR start generally supporting standard AAA titles in VR on console

That being said, I have heard fab things about Eve Valkyrie and also PS VR in general, and I would love to eat my words on this

There isn't a hope of elite dangerous running on a PlayStation in VR at 120Hz. Maybe they could port the original Elite but not the version that's juddering away on my PC.

I am out of my comfort zone here, so forgive me if I am wrong, but, I am fairly sure PS VR is not expected to run games at true 120fps the same way that the VIVE is 90fps @ 90hz.

indeed there is some wiggle room here. FSX on my old PC (I do need to try it on my new one) only ran at around 50fps, which would normally be a disaster for VR, however it actually used decoupled headlook, so the head tracking was still at 75fps even when the game framerate tanked.

this was absolutely fine, and only became problematic when you started getting close to 30fps. I can see something like this being a handy cheat, for both PS VR and lower end PCs in VR in general.

infact its a real shame ED does not support decoupled head look now.

 

[Beachlight7]

The PS VR is an enforced 120fps by the headset. The PS4 will render, at the start 60fps, though the idea is to do 120fps native in the future. The system is clever and will even override the ps4 real rendered frames for more preferable virtual frames if the headset decides they are better for the head movement and the eyes to give a no lag experience in game. It will feel like 120fps full fluid movement.
Good news for frontier and other developers is that Sony has unlocked the 7th core of the PS4, this was previously reserved. So there could be a rough 15% increase in cpu power. Any little helps.
I'm sure frontier are working on it right now.

 

[slopedarmor]

On low, my GTX 970 SLI runs at around 15-20% per individual card tops on 1080p (1920x1080@60fps = 124416000 pixel per second). Lets say that ED really has to calculate the whole thing 2 times (which it does not have to), so we have 2x 1080x1200@90fps = 2 x 116640000 pixel per second, which SHOULD produce about 2 times the load of 1080p by this calculation (or the recommended specs for ED as a whole need to change, which is something that could infuriate quite a few people). Now, not mentioning that SLI does not double performance per % total load (it's actually more a increase of 1.8 in most cases), that should come out to about 60-80% load on low on an GTX 970, which sounds perfectly reasonable to me at least.

If they say the minimum is a GTX 980, that would mean that the game would take a load of about 120% on the GTX 970 tops ON LOW. That's 50% more than the calculated maximum load we have up there (which is quite a pessimistic calculation really, it should be lower), what does ED do that creates 50% more load on VR but not on normal gameplay? I get that you can't precompute frames on VR (which, btw, increases load but decreaes VRam-usage which currently tops out @ 2.5GB on Ultra on GTX 970 SLI which is probably a worst case setup for the VRam) as it increases latency, but both NVidia and AMD offer options that precompute everything they can and only compute perspective relevant information the very last moment, reducing latency.

Either the recommended specs for ED as a whole change or I'm missing something important here, where to those 50% come from? Heck, CCP has gone on record saying that Eve Valkyrie will be pretty safe with "the new GTX 900 series or the AMD 200 series", which is partially BELOW the recommended specs for the Oculus Rift itself! Both games look pretty similar to me. Maybe ED VR has just sloppy optimization and I'm reading too much into this.

Hi,
VR headsets usually render in a higher resolution than the actual panels inside.The 1920x1080 DK2 actually renders in ~2300x1450.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/2ddpqx/whats_with_the_2364x1461_resolution_in_some_demos/


And the Vive runs at 3024x1680 @90 hz. (457 million pixels per second) (it has 2160x1200 physical resolution, just like consumer rift)
Source (4th slide): http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2015/Alex_Vlachos_Advanced_VR_Rendering_GDC2015.pdf


Which kinda lies in line with the consumer rift's ~400 million pixels per second.
quote
"On the raw rendering costs: a traditional 1080p game at 60Hz requires 124 million shaded pixels per second. In contrast, the Rift runs at 2160×1200 at 90Hz split over dual displays, consuming 233 million pixels per second. At the default eye-target scale, the Rift’s rendering requirements go much higher: around 400 million shaded pixels per second. This means that by raw rendering costs alone, a VR game will require approximately 3x the GPU power of 1080p rendering."
Source: https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/powering-the-rift/

This is because of the distorion, why is explained here, especially from 5:02 to 8:45
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7qrgrrHry0

You said ED doesn't have to calculate everything twice... mayybe for the CPU but the GPU certainly needs to render everything twice! Kinda like splitscreen. Which reduces performance slightly. And the FoV is larger than on a monitor, which puts more stuff on your screen, which also reduces performance slightly.

So hopefully now you know why VR is a pig to run, considering you also want higher framerates vs a monitor.
Personally from my own understanding and experience with VR I already assumed for a long time a 970 would not cut it for Elite in consumer VR.

And then Eve Valkyrie... well that game is 'just' dogfighting and doesn't have space sim stuff going on in the background unlike elite, which must help with performance for sure.


And my thoughts about Elite on PSVR, until proven otherwise, I'm convinced that won't happen : p sorry Beachlight7
It's 30 fps on xbox, I don't see them getting a solid 60fps (extrapolated to 120) with both a larger FoV and resolution... unless they really scale down graphics but I just don't expect it.


Personally I sometimes play Elite in my rift DK2. Haven't played Horizons though : p
2600K @ 4.5 ghz
8 GB RAM
SLI GTX 780 @ 1110 mhz

Enough to play with the ingame 1.5 supersampling with a pretty good 75 fps
I have yet to try Horizons, maybe ram will suddenly be an issue for me? : O and how much performance do planets eat? : o

I can go on still.... xD
However people (nvidia? sony?) might implement stuff like rendering just the edges in a lower resolution, to help reduce the amount of pixels. Might also require effort on the dev's side??

And until VR SLI is implemented SLI works (yay!) but is not perfect. I'm not sure but since SLI alternates the frame rendering? I THINK that means when you get 90 fps, each card generates 45, which does leave you with 90fps smooth gameplay (yay!) but with the latency of 45 fps (single gpu) gameplay. perhaps? I think VR SLI will fix that Might also require effort on the dev's side??
Not that I can actually tell the latency is higher... nope not really.

And just wanted to mention I'm also exited about Star Citizen! But SC in VR, yeahhh... that's long term, right now you might need 980ti sli for that in offline mode or something xD

Cheers

 

[slopedarmor]

And the Vive runs at 3024x1680 @90 hz. (457 million pixels per second) (it has 2160x1200 physical resolution, just like consumer rift)
Source (4th slide): http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2015/Alex_Vlachos_Advanced_VR_Rendering_GDC2015.pdf

Also as slide 59 says Valve can apparently reduce it to 378 million pixels/sec with practically no downside

 

[Beachlight7]

Regarding the PSVR Sony has said "the display we chose is 120Hz True HD OLED and each pixel of True HD has R, G, and B subpixels, so if you count the number of subpixels, our True HD has more resolution, more subpixels, than higher resolution than what you can see on a smartphone".
Sounds good, so its better display than other VR headsets that use smatphone screen technology.

 

[slopedarmor]

wow true hd, true hd and even moar TRUE HD!!!! :/
Yes the psvr is not pentile that doesn't change the fact it'll need to render all games in a res higher than 1080p. FYI you'll still be able to see pixels in vive, rift and psvr. And unlike rift/vive the PSVR is a single oled panel and not 2, which might not be ideal. Superior display compared to other VR headsets? I doubt it, you can't just count subpixels and say it has moar therefore it's better. If I were to count pixels the rift/vive would come out on top.