VR minimum specification for Elite Dangerous (DK2)

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

Well, there are quite a few things that are unaffected by your point of view, like general geometry, physics, shadows and so on. All those things will only be computed once and then rendered with 2 different POVs (which takes a lot less power from your GPU). Also, they changed the system requirements, what was minimum before is now recommended (lookee here). Still enraged by them selling Horizons as a seperate game, not an addon. That's the same as "Planetary Annihilation" did and it's the same thing that made me stop play that game. I really don't see enough changes in Horizons to justify this, but I think that it's gonna get a lot worse if they plan to do that with every major update (say, release ANOTHER 60$ game when they figure out how to walk around and shoot people, yet ANOTHER one for player piloted capital ships and so on, which would come out to at least 200$ for players who played from the very beginning and want to use the new features). They made a game with a lot of empty space for a reasonable price and now they want us to buy another game that basically is the same as before, just with a lot of empty planet additionally. At the very least they could've released 1.5 with freaking working missions instead of releasing ALL the new combat missions broken. /rant
 
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ya this game is pretty expensive, I paid 40 euro for my pre order, and 162.50 euro for my expansion pass. In a few years I'll know if it was worth it xD
those recommended specs are probably still the minimum for a smooth framerate, and probably not at highest settings.
 
Thanks Zac!

Is this the absolute minimum? isn't it possible to do VR with lower levers of ingame details?
For which level of details is this recommended?
If this is the minimum, what is the recommended configuration?
Could it work with a GTX 970 with low or medium settings? As it's the minimum requirement for the Oculus Rift, I guess many people bought this card for that purpose.
Also what is the AMD/ATI equivalent video requirement? Radeon Fury X?


Original ED

I was running elite dangerous on VR in original ED with the following, mind you it wasn't on "ultra" settings but still didn't experience any juddering, was very smooth;

CPU - Intel first gen i7 LGA 1366
AMD HD 7900 Series
Tri series Ram 12gig
650W Power supply
Solid state HDs!
Standard air cooling

I will say my video card was running at 100% and seemed to be maxing it out, high noise levels but it worked...

Horizons (never tested with old chip set as I updated before release)

CPU - skylake i5-6600K 3.5GHz @ 4.5GHz, very easily since I water cooled this one..
HD 7900 Series - still using for now, still tossing up between fury x and the Ti, was hoping for price drop in the new year, just turned graphics down for now works fine but not ideal but get me by for the next few weeks
16 gig RAM DDR4 3400
650W Power supply 'until I update video card'
Solid State HDs

This gets me by, I have a great VR experience, maybe not everything maxed out "in ultra" i run low settings but still enjoy ED in VR find it hard to play on the monitor as VR is so awesome, have always been able to play with graphics setting to avoid juddering, this often meant using older DK2 drivers as sometimes the latest release had bugs.


Any advice on which video card I should update to, i know that nVidia seem to get better frame rates but I'm a AMD fan so learning to the sapphire fury x or R9 fury with HDM, any advice?
 

Billexista

Banned
What about VR SLI? I have 2x 970GTX and i plan to get OR CV. I think that it should run even better than than without OR since every card can render one eye and it is lower resolution than my 1600p display so even memory use could be lower. Am I right?
 
Sorry to ask, i thought this was the most appropriate place. Anyway, i'm running on:

Core i7-2600K (3.4Ghz)
8GB RAM
A shinny new ATI RAdeon 390X with latest drivers

Comparing with the minimum requirements, i'm a little worried about the CPU and RAM. I never tried anything like VR, but i'm very tempted to buy an Occulus Rift when the consumer version is available. Is my hardware not enough for VR? I can play any game maxed out. :S
 
Sorry to ask, i thought this was the most appropriate place. Anyway, i'm running on:

Core i7-2600K (3.4Ghz)
8GB RAM
A shinny new ATI RAdeon 390X with latest drivers

Comparing with the minimum requirements, i'm a little worried about the CPU and RAM. I never tried anything like VR, but i'm very tempted to buy an Occulus Rift when the consumer version is available. Is my hardware not enough for VR? I can play any game maxed out. :S

8 vs 16GB of RAM is more about caching to reduce load times imo; I think you'll be fine with 8 GB.

If you do a very mild OC with the 2600K you'll be up at specs in no time. A 4.0 ghz (all 4 cores) 2600K is equal or faster than a 3770K (recommended spec), and a 4.4 ghz 2600K will defeat the 4770K Haswell CPU (at stock). The 2600K will do 4.0-4.2 ghz on the stock air cooler, and 4.4 very easily with a better cooler.

As for the 390X - it all depends on AMD's driver team - the GPU is powerful enough..

(I ran a 2600K @ 4.6 Ghz with 970 SLI for a while with the DK2 - one 970 did low-medium, two did high.. and the 390X is inbetween the two). I think your setup will do low + some settings on the release Oculus. It will still look good.
 
So my machine exceeds the minimum requirements, yet even with everything set to the lowest setting, I only get smooth FPS in space. Anywhere in stations, on planets, or even approaching planets it all falls to crap :( And this is with a DK2, which has lower performance requirements than what final consumer headsets will have.

So I am confused. Were these minimum specs just guessed at or are these actual tested specs? Not accusing, just asking.

I7-4770K @ 4.2, 16gb RAM, GTX 980ti 6gb VRAM
Windows 10x64, DK2 and SteamVR
 
So my machine exceeds the minimum requirements, yet even with everything set to the lowest setting, I only get smooth FPS in space. Anywhere in stations, on planets, or even approaching planets it all falls to crap :( And this is with a DK2, which has lower performance requirements than what final consumer headsets will have.

So I am confused. Were these minimum specs just guessed at or are these actual tested specs? Not accusing, just asking.

I7-4770K @ 4.2, 16gb RAM, GTX 980ti 6gb VRAM
Windows 10x64, DK2 and SteamVR

You are running almost the same specs as myself even better with that GPU there is no way you should be having those problems something isn't set right as mine is running awesome. Quick question you are not launching then running the game on Steam are you? If so don't launch it directly from the FD launcher makes a huge difference at least in my case and have seen several other mentions of this on here.
 
You are running almost the same specs as myself even better with that GPU there is no way you should be having those problems something isn't set right as mine is running awesome. Quick question you are not launching then running the game on Steam are you? If so don't launch it directly from the FD launcher makes a huge difference at least in my case and have seen several other mentions of this on here.

Well I am not sure how to answer that. I am running the ED Launcher from steam, and then the game from the launcher. Since the launcher exe is running the game exe, I am not *really* running the game from steam.
 
Well I am not sure how to answer that. I am running the ED Launcher from steam, and then the game from the launcher. Since the launcher exe is running the game exe, I am not *really* running the game from steam.


There are 2 different launchers the other is the FD launcher. Use the FD launcher. When I run this game off the Steam launcher it is literally unplayable cannot even turn my head without it skipping across the screen. The FD launcher runs smooth as silk. I am running everything on high except shadows and in game ss at 1.5 also using reshade.

I7-4790K at 4.0 ghz oc'd to 4.8, ge force 980, 0.8 runtime, win 10
 
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There are 2 different launchers the other is the FD launcher. Use the FD launcher. When I run this game off the Steam launcher it is literally unplayable cannot even turn my head without it skipping across the screen. The FD launcher runs smooth as silk. I am running everything on high except shadows and in game ss at 1.5 also using reshade.

I7-4790K at 4.0 ghz oc'd to 4.8, ge force 980, 0.8 runtime, win 10

That is what I meant. I am using the FD Launcher. I don't have it as a steam game at all, nor do I have a steam launcher. I don't have the steam edition. I only added the normal FD launcher as a "non steam game" so that I could enable SteamVR.
 
Ok, I've been following developments on VR for years now and I've really been looking forward to using it.
I already bought Elite Dangerous and I'm not playing it until I have a VR Set so I can be completely blown away by the whole stuff.

One problem though, the more the release get closer, the more I feel I won't be able to make it decently with my spec.
I recently bought a house so you can easily imagine now is not the time to build a new setup on purpose ^^

Here is my setup:

i7 2600
8gb ram
PNY GTX 770


So, am I dreaming, do I really need a GTX 970?
I can consider going to 16gb of ram easily.
What about the CPU?

Thanks for your time. I'd be like a kid missing christmas for ten years in a row if I can't make it ^^
 
What about VR SLI? I have 2x 970GTX and i plan to get OR CV. I think that it should run even better than than without OR since every card can render one eye and it is lower resolution than my 1600p display so even memory use could be lower. Am I right?

VR sli isn't here yet so as of now every card can not just render one eye. For now it's just regular old sli.
2560x1600 @ 60hz = 368 million pixels/second
Vive = 378 million pixels/second, or even 457 million pixels/sec when brute forcing.... assume the 378 is where it's at : p
So No the vive/rift is slightly harder to run than your 1600p display.

Once VR SLI is there though, well a 100% scaling should help :)
 
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Favorite part of this thread is reading people say "I think a 970 should be the minimum recommended card". Well if you think that then ok buy the rift and find out, I find it hard to believe the specs mentioned weren't seriously considered before releasing this post. Unless a patch for some kind of optimization come out a 980 is still the minimum.
 
Perhaps this has been said before, but everyone as speaking about how they need better hardware, yet there is a software solution already available which can soften the need to upgrade just yet.

If the developers could take advantage of Asynchronous Timewarp, the hardware requirements for a smooth VR experience could be broadened significantly.

An example is FlyInside. It provides a smooth VR experience in MS Flight Simulator down to 30 FPS by fully supporting TimeWarp.

I am thinking that ED VR could benefit from using this feature (which I believe is now supported by SteamVR).
 
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I have everything needed but the graphics card I'm currently running EVGA 780 GTX TI in SLI. I know SLI don't work with rift.....yet but Occulus spec requirements state the 780 GTX TI can run rift. I've never had a dk kit and haven't used VR but the rift is on preorder. I have i7 4770k cup and 32 gab Ram what foes do you think I'd get?
 
Hello everybody,

i am kind of unsure if my current System will run Occulus and Elite Dangerous properbly without problems, cause the Occulus Tool says my CPU is not enough.

Currently i am running the following:

CPU: Intel I7 3990k not overclocked Socket 2011 (could upgade to 4820k which would be slower to certain performance Tools)
GPU: Radeon R9 290 Tri X 4GB
Ram: 16 GB DDR 3 1600
MB: Rampage IV Exteme (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/RAMPAGE_IV_EXTREME/)
USB: 3.0 (Tool says my drivers our not supported so i possibly need a USB Card)

I am a bit hesitant to upgrade that System. It is pretty good. When i Update i would basicly need to replace every major component. In that i would need a complete new PC. So do i have any chance to run ED on Occulus CV with these Specs?

Purgafox
 
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