VR minimum specification for Elite Dangerous (DK2)

Hey guys, I'm tentatively looking at the Rift and HTC Vive. I'm leaning towards Vive at present but one thing that I hadn't expected was that my laptop may not be up to snuff.

According to the minimum requirements for either, my graphics card is a bit sub-par. From experience, or just a greater knowledge than mine, how would these specs cope running something like Elite in VR (either Occy Rift or Vive):
I ran on a 4500k desktop with a 670(?) I actually forget, but was several models old and the midrange.

It's pretty workable ant moderate settings; but you will get frame drops and planet-side I tended to get nauseated.
 
I haven't read every single post in this thread, so perhaps someone has mentioned this already, but just in case they haven't...

One MAJOR aspect of this whole "minimum VR spec" everyone needs to consider is the literal "physical" side-effects on the gamer using an under powered rig with a VR headset like the Occulus, VIVE of whatever... If the frame rates are not up there at a very high number and "maintained" there is a very strong likely hood that the gamer is going to quickly suffer from motion sickness, head aches and a whole litany of other maladies created by the disconnect between the eyes, the brain and the body.

This is why VR is unlike anything any of us have ever dealt with before. While it is annoying to be dealing with frame rate drops, hitches and other performance related issues when playing on a traditional monitor or HDTV, these issues don't make you physically ill.

Not taking the VR specs seriously has a lot more drawbacks associated with it than anything we as gamers have ever faced. I doubt most people are going to be able to power through these physical side effects and blow them off. Your brain and body are going to rule in that decision, and if they say NO GO! Then I am afraid it will always be NO GO as long as that gamer continues to try to run their VR rig with under powered or borderline optimal hardware.

My two cents. :)

Great discussion by the way! I plan to go through and read the entire thread front to back when I get some time to do so. I've been playing ED on the XB1 since day one of the GPP, and I simply LOVE this game! (Over 19 weeks invested according to my stats) But now I am ready to take it to the next level!

I am currently in the process of building my Ultimate Elite Dangerous Gaming PC! I'm personally not going to be getting into the whole VR side of ED right away, but the machine I am building is definitely going to be able to handle it. I never thought I would own another gaming PC, but Elite has been such a joy on the Xbox One that I want to experience the game on the highest level possible, and that means a high end gaming PC. And to future proof my investment, I definitely want it to be capable of running a VR headset if and when I choose to buy one.

And in case anyone is curious, here are the foundational components of the build I have chosen:

My "Elite Machine" is being built around the Intel Core i7-6700k with w/ASUS Z170 DLX Mobo, ASUS GTX 980ti (factory overclocked) 6GB vram Strix GPU and 32GB DDR4/2666 mhz RAM | I am going to run ED off of my SSD boot drive which is a Samsung V-NAND SSD 950 PRO M.2 [512GB]

My original budget was $5500.00 USD without a monitor, but based on what I paid for everything listed above I think I can bring it all in for much less than that by continuing to hunt down the best deals I can find on each and every component. :D


Please do not post in a dark colour, makes it VERY hard to read on a dark theme.

Z...
 
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I'm running a DK2 on the 1060 gtx coupled with a Skylake i5-6600 w/ 16g ram. Running Horizons on Ultra, super sampling set to 1.25, and no issues with framerate. Not sure how to display the FR in the dk2, tho. :)
 
can i run it?

Hello Guys,
first off i must admit that i am not that mutch of a PC talent and i am a bit lazy aswell, thus i didnt read ALL google links, but i just tested my system with the STEAm performance thingy.
The Steam test told me that i can run Occulus Rift "Average", my Processor was highlighted in green but my graphicscard was yellow actually.
I would mainly want to play Elite Dangerous in VR so is this possible on my System with my current specs:


Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4Gbyte
RAM 8.0 GB


The SteamVR Software said that only the Graphicscard is a bit low, is this true? if i upgrade my graphicscard toan GTX 1060 does that mean i can run Elite VR in high settings?
What will the framerate look like without updating the Graphicscard? Does someone have experience with VR on about the same machine that i got?

Thanks to all,

InMediah
 
IMO, with 1060 you'd be able to run it pretty well, with 960 be prepared for lower FPS.

I'm doing some tests those days, with a loaned DK2, on my 6 years old PC :eek:

My system is:
CPU: Intel Core i5-2300 2800 MHz (about to switch to i5-3570K and OC it :) )
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z68X-UD3P-B3
Memory: 8192 MBytes @ 667 MHz, 9-9-9-24
Graphics: EVGA GTX 780, 3072 MB GDDR5 SDRAM
Drive: INTEL SSDSC2MH120A2, 117.2 GB, Serial ATA 6Gb/s

Just started testing, so don't have precise results so far, but the game is playable even on ultra VR setting. By "playable" I mean no stuttering.
Your 960 and my 780 are pretty close in video game performance, so my case might help you out. I'll post test results in the following days...

Take into consideration, that CV1 will most likely be heavier on your system than DK2, because the resolution and frame rate are higher.
 
Switching to i5-3570k had almost no effect on FPS in DK2 :(

From what I saw, the lowest FPS is in stations, so that's where I'm testing at:
VR ULTRA ~ 35-40 fps
VR HIGH ~ 50-60 fps
VR MEDIUM ~ 70-75 fps (DK2 max FPS=75, CV1 max FPS=90)

The supersampling setting seems to have the most effect on FPS.

I think I'm gonna try and OC the GTX780 and play with graphic settings some more, will update after that.
 
I'm running a DK2 on the 1060 gtx coupled with a Skylake i5-6600 w/ 16g ram. Running Horizons on Ultra, super sampling set to 1.25, and no issues with framerate. Not sure how to display the FR in the dk2, tho. :)

Yes I have near enough the same system except i5-6500 running at 4.1g and everything ingame flies along smoothly even the space warp I often see stuttering on youtube, this is using a dk2. I was also wondering what others use for displaying frame rate in ED on a DK2
 
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Interested in getting an Oculus due to the £400 deal. I have an i5 4690k and a 1070. Obviously my GPU will on VR, but I'm worried about my CPU. I also only have 8GB of RAM.

Any benchmarks out there? I can't really find anything decent, just absolute monster builds with 32GB of RAM and high end i7's.
 
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Interested in getting an Oculus due to the £400 deal. I have an i5 4690k and a 1070. Obviously my GPU will on VR, but I'm worried about my CPU. I also only have 8GB of RAM.

Any benchmarks out there? I can't really find anything decent, just absolute monster builds with 32GB of RAM and high end i7's.

I've got an i5 4690k. Oculus experience was fine with my GTX 970 and it's still fine with my GTX 1080. I don't know how much difference it makes but I do have have 16Gb RAM tho.
 
I've got an i5 4690k. Oculus experience was fine with my GTX 970 and it's still fine with my GTX 1080. I don't know how much difference it makes but I do have have 16Gb RAM tho.

Nice. I'm just worried about stuttering and having to deal with low quality. Upgrading my CPU would mean a new motherboard too, and I'd really be stepping up to an i7 because my i5 is nice and strong, and an i7 is an expensive step just for VR. I also don't see the need for more RAM as I don't do much but game and the odd gamedev on my PC.

Guess I'll stew on the decision a bit longer, as the sale is lasting until mid August.
 
Nice. I'm just worried about stuttering and having to deal with low quality. Upgrading my CPU would mean a new motherboard too, and I'd really be stepping up to an i7 because my i5 is nice and strong, and an i7 is an expensive step just for VR. I also don't see the need for more RAM as I don't do much but game and the odd gamedev on my PC.

Guess I'll stew on the decision a bit longer, as the sale is lasting until mid August.

You will be fine on that CPU. I did some testing with a VR mark benchmark here a while back but it seems ED is better optimised now (not that it was bad then) and I've got no intention of upgrading my i5 4570K anymore, which was recently discussed a bit here.

I upgraded from 8 to 16 Gb a few months ago and I can't say I really noticed any difference. I've never even seen my RAM usage go beyond about 7.2Gb total while playing ED in VR. You'll be fine and you can always add a bit of RAM later if you want.
 
Just ordered the $400 Rift deal.

Looking for suggestions on a high value video card upgrade in terms of good playability in Elite for the next 2 years.

1060 or 1070 gtx? 6gb or 8gb?

Current System:
i5-6500
960 GTX 4gb
16gb RAM
256gb NVME SSD
x52 HOTAS

BTW, the x52 and Tobiiii EyeX do NOT work together on any of the 3 computers I have tried which is why I decided to commit and go VR.
 
Aaaah..

GPU? a gtx960. maybe, somehow; barely able to handle it.

CPU? It would cook an egg before it ran VR Elite..

And after taking a good long look at my system, there is NO quick fix to be able to handle it.

I'd have to spend a minimum of 750eu.
I could "just" spend 400 and hope my GPU can handle but.. Then i'd still have to upgrade AGAIN within a year. 'Quick pain' is the best option (long term).

The best idea really is to just spend 1000eu, get another gtx690, more power, 32gb ram, a pretty nice CPU, futureproof it.
Oh and +300 for every 'money total' so far cuz VR headsets cost tons!


tl;dr:
"the best (long term) option quickly becomes to just buy a Beast of a System. And not take a vacation for a year or two..":|
#FeelsBad
 
Received the new Rift finally. Put it on a system with a 3rd gen i7, RX 480 4gb, 16gb RAM and a SATA SSD.

On VR LOW it run smooth as silk and still is quite playable.
VR LOW with screendoor graphics is still massively better than non-VR IMO.

Still not sure if the Nvidia 1060 GTX or 1070 GTX is the sweet spot for value but will probably get a 1070 with at least 8gb when the funds are available.
 
The thing is that the published specs are way too low and so are the benchmark results.
Some VR ready tests like steam and VRmark even take SLI crossfire into account which does not work unless the devs implement the code for it.

The 970 is NOT enough to run Elite Dangerous in VR.
Frontier and many other developers are holding VR back by not implementing SLI/Crossfire so people have to upgrade to a high-end card instead of buying a second 970.

Currently the only VR title supporting crossfire/sli is serious Sam. Real pity as it is not helping VR by making the experience either horrible or super expensive.
 
I think I'll post my specs to shimmer some light of hope for those reading this thread...

I'm using Vive. I was able to run Elite on, 8GB RAM, Ivy Bridge i5-3570k (non-overclocked) and a GTX 670. Yes you read that right. 670. Granted it was not that pretty, aliasing everywhere etc. HOWEVER... Everything besides stations and some seldom planetary configurations was giving a pretty okay gameplay. It was of course nowhere Oculus' clarity levels, because for that you need heavy supersampling. But it was playable and enjoyable and that was BEFORE Valve introduced the reprojection algorithms.

Stations are so poorly optimized that even friend with i7 and 1080 has heavy frame drops (compared to normal gameplay). IDK about 1080Ti.

I've since then upgraded to a 1070. I'm now able to run Elite on dr.kaii's VR recommended settings, which are quite high-ish. I play Elite without problems, however I haven't logged in since the alien bases so IDK if the performance didn't take a hit. Station's FPS is dependant of lightning conditions and where you are in the station - these hangars with blinding lights overhead tend to be the worst. Still its nothing which would turn your game into a slideshow (anything below I (subjectively) think 50 fps is totally unplayable in VR).

So no. CPU is not the bottleneck here. GPU, surely is.

All that said - 960 is a pretty rubbish card, sorry. It was on par with my 670 in most benchmarks. And to quote the article:
In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 Gigabyte 3xWindForce Edition are marginally better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 2GB. The GTX 960 has a 147 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 670, but the GTX 670 has 48 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 960.

IDK about the 1060, but it surely will be better than 960... I would skip that card and pony up for a 1070 which can handle everything currently on the market in FullHD ultra-high-whatevers and it is (or rather WAS) a great value for money. But with the cryptocurrency craze ruining the prices, I don't know anymore - that research is up to you. Or you might want to wait until next lineup (AMD Vega & NVidia Volta) comes out and hopefully knocks the current prices back to sane levels or the Ethereum craze will end.

henri said:
Frontier and many other developers are holding VR back by not implementing SLI/Crossfire so people have to upgrade to a high-end card instead of buying a second 970.
Yeah yeah its an international mafia agreement to force the SLI suc... owners to buy more expensive cards! I lol'd so hard :D SLI is a developer's nightmare, it introduces microstutters out of the blue and there are so many combinations of hardware out there it is very costly to support correctly. And surprise surprise, it generally doesn't mix well with VR. Which is strange because in theory one card is doing one eye, and it should be good, right? No. That is not the case because the SLI memory is shared/cloned and the cards are alternating frames which is not what you'd want in VR (you want the same frame but different camera angle). Reading material: http://www.nvidia.com/object/slizone_ask_mmm013.html
 
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