VR Ready for $500!

LMAO... reprojection city I tells ya... You might want to take a look at a few of the [H]'s VR reviews ;)
 
FX 4350..... really clearing out those old Piledriver stocks. Wonder how many beers I need to make Kyle drink to do a review on that??
 
FX 4350..... really clearing out those old Piledriver stocks. Wonder how many beers I need to make Kyle drink to do a review on that??

I'm sure it won't be CPU bound...the 470 will probably be more limiting.
 
These low end systems are meant to use the 45fps Asynchronous Spacewarp feature they announced yesterday.

I'm guessing they are oculus certified if they can hold at least 45fps in common games.
 
These low end systems are meant to use the 45fps Asynchronous Spacewarp feature they announced yesterday.

I'm guessing they are oculus certified if they can hold at least 45fps in common games.

They're allowed to dip as low as 45 FPS, but they still need to hold 90 most of the time.
 
Do you have a source on that? My impression was that these super low end systems were targeting 45fps.

The way Async Spacewarp is implemented is that if you drop below 90, it automatically switches to 45fps with ASW. It's similar to how vive's interleaved reprojection is triggered, but the technique itself is apparently much more advanced. It's not like ATW where if you miss a single frame here and there it will fill in the gaps.

"At Oculus Connect today, CEO Brendan Iribe announced a new, lower minimum hardware spec for using Oculus Rift. The new spec is thanks to a technology called Asynchronous Spacewarp, allowing systems to deliver a stable 45 frames per second, while the ASW technology effectively doubles that and fills in the gaps. That means smooth VR running on cheaper hardware. Here it is:
  • Nvidia 960 or greater (down from Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater)
  • Intel i3-6100 / AMD FX4350 or greater (down from Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater)
  • 8GB+ RAM (same)
  • Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output (same)
  • 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 (change from 2x USB 3.0 ports)
  • Windows 8 or newer (change from Windows 7 SP1 or newer)
"

(The 45fps + ASW mode allows the camera to run at a slower rate, thus allowing it to be used with a usb 2.0 port)
 
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The low end specs will definitely be running ASW. If you go read some of the Oculus forums Rift users with mid to high end cards are simply maxing most of their graphics settings and enjoying the experience. Bottom line the feature halved the game requirements. Realistically you get a 75% performance boost give or take. There can be some distortion at times, but that requires really pushing the hardware. Some game styles are more affected than others. Cell/Toon shading doesn't work well with the motion prediction. So maxing all the details and enabling supersampling may cause the odd hiccup, but generally the experience is smoother as even animations get smoothed. It only works on Nvidia cards right now, but AMD cards are coming soon according to an Oculus dev. AMD are also the only ones with a blog on how the feature works I've seen so far. It's also providing an arguably smoother experience than the standard non-VR one.
 
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Do you have a source on that? My impression was that these super low end systems were targeting 45fps.

The way Async Spacewarp is implemented is that if you drop below 90, it automatically switches to 45fps with ASW. It's similar to how vive's interleaved reprojection is triggered, but the technique itself is apparently much more advanced. It's not like ATW where if you miss a single frame here and there it will fill in the gaps.

"At Oculus Connect today, CEO Brendan Iribe announced a new, lower minimum hardware spec for using Oculus Rift. The new spec is thanks to a technology called Asynchronous Spacewarp, allowing systems to deliver a stable 45 frames per second, while the ASW technology effectively doubles that and fills in the gaps. That means smooth VR running on cheaper hardware. Here it is:
  • Nvidia 960 or greater (down from Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater)
  • Intel i3-6100 / AMD FX4350 or greater (down from Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater)
  • 8GB+ RAM (same)
  • Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output (same)
  • 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 (change from 2x USB 3.0 ports)
  • Windows 8 or newer (change from Windows 7 SP1 or newer)
"

(The 45fps + ASW mode allows the camera to run at a slower rate, thus allowing it to be used with a usb 2.0 port)


I don't have any source. That was just my take-away from the announcement. It'll be interesting to see how it's perceived by the public (the ones who aren't posting here or /r/oculus) once it's fully implemented and developers begin to design around it.
 
You can already enable it and use it if you have a rift and an nvidia card. It should "just work" in all existing games. I don't think it will change how games are designed. To maximize your potential player base, you will still want 45fps+ on crappy systems and ~90fps on higher end systems. It's possible someone could target 45fps on high end systems with heavy amounts of detail or simulation, and just say their game won't run on low systems. I doubt Oculus would be on board with that, though.
 
VR Ready doesn't necessarily mean playable or you won't end up woozy on the ground after an hour.

Technically AMD's marketing is correct; that combo is VR ready and you can game with that hardware. It is not however preferable or a good showing for VR tech. There is a huge difference in VR gaming at 45 FPS compared to 90FPS.

If AMD keeps going down the road of cheap cards for VR it will hurt the future adoption of VR tech. Gamers will be less inclined to invest if their initial exposure to VR is not pleasant.

VR right now is expensive and requires a lot of hardware power. AMD shouldn't essentially BS users thinking their slow combo is good enough because it isn't.
 
VR Ready doesn't necessarily mean playable or you won't end up woozy on the ground after an hour.

Technically AMD's marketing is correct; that combo is VR ready and you can game with that hardware. It is not however preferable or a good showing for VR tech. There is a huge difference in VR gaming at 45 FPS compared to 90FPS.

If AMD keeps going down the road of cheap cards for VR it will hurt the future adoption of VR tech. Gamers will be less inclined to invest if their initial exposure to VR is not pleasant.

VR right now is expensive and requires a lot of hardware power. AMD shouldn't essentially BS users thinking their slow combo is good enough because it isn't.

It's "Vista Ready" all over again IMO...
 
VR Ready doesn't necessarily mean playable or you won't end up woozy on the ground after an hour.

Technically AMD's marketing is correct; that combo is VR ready and you can game with that hardware. It is not however preferable or a good showing for VR tech. There is a huge difference in VR gaming at 45 FPS compared to 90FPS.

If AMD keeps going down the road of cheap cards for VR it will hurt the future adoption of VR tech. Gamers will be less inclined to invest if their initial exposure to VR is not pleasant.

VR right now is expensive and requires a lot of hardware power. AMD shouldn't essentially BS users thinking their slow combo is good enough because it isn't.

This isn't an AMD thing, its oculus. It doesn't even work on AMD cards yet. They think 45 fps with ASW is good enough, and early impressions seem to support that. I would like to try it myself.
 
Just say NO to any kind of reprojection. I have pushed my system into constant reprojection mode once in a flight sim and it was a terrible experience. I like high quality graphics in many of my normal games even at the cost of frame rate (want 60 but fine with 40-45), but in VR I have the complete opposite reaction, I will take lower settings with no AA on my games rather than have it drop into reprojection mode. I get they are trying to use this to break the cost of entry but they are doing a serious disservice to VR by marketing under powered systems as ready IMHO. Wasn't it Oculus that were the ones bitching to all the other VR makers to not rush to market their HMDs because bad VR would be something that would hurt the future of VR? Now it seems that they are losing in sales to Vive so are willing to do something that might be inherently as bad as making a poor HMD and are okay with it.

To be fair I haven't seen oculus ASW so I really am not one who really can make a proper comparison, but I just can't see it being all that much better than the Vive implementation. Just because you can run VR on an underpowered system doesn't mean you should run it on there and give people trying to get it on the cheap an experience that taints the future of VR. Just FYI, if every VR game I tried when I bought my Vive ran as bad as when the flight sim I ran was in constant reprojection mode, I would have returned my Vive and wrote VR off as not ready. That is what is going to happen to a lot of people that get caught in this VR-Ready trap IMHO.
 
I havent seen it either but I wouldn't compare it to simple reprojection. Vive's reprojection simply takes the last frame, reprojects it with updated headset rotation data, and then averages it with the last frame. This causes ghosting and there is nothing predictive about it.

Oculus' ASW uses the two previous frames plus updated rotation AND position data to actually extrapolate a new frame with updated object positions and even animations. It can't be perfect of course but oculus is confident enough in it to sell systems that use it 100% of the time, so it must be pretty good. Oculus more than anyone has an interest in not tainting the market with crappy VR experiences. The first impressions of it are very positive and I would love to try it myself. I have a powerful enough PC that I wouldn't need it, but if it's good and allows more people to experience VR then it's going to expand the market and there will be more games for me to play.
 
o_O Nvidia supports ASW and AMD does not yet rig is using an AMD card :confused:. I guess you only get VR premium experience on the Occulus with AMD using ASW. These diverging standards I see will make configurations, games etc. more difficult to make and to work out the bugs. I can't wait for the first PS4 VR games to migrate over to the PC and what host of issues that will bring :cyclops:.
 
ASW/ATW are done at the runtime layer, the games don't have to do anything to support them.

I think Oculus is going to add AMD support for ASW in the next week or two.
 
Just because you can run VR on an underpowered system doesn't mean you should run it on there and give people trying to get it on the cheap an experience that taints the future of VR.
Who said anything about underpowered systems? Is the new minimum any different than the old minimum if it provides a similar experience? Even the guys with recommended settings could now crank up the details for a better experience. Guys with high end hardware appear to be doing just that. Running Project Cars for example at maximum settings and getting a smooth experience.

ASW/ATW are done at the runtime layer, the games don't have to do anything to support them.
The effects would work better if built directly into the games as opposed to tacked on. Doom has been using a similar effect, but they were writing out motion vectors straight from the shaders. Constrast that to ASW taking a 2D image and likely the depth buffer and attempting to extract data that already existed. They also had a ton of render targets so the static scene geometry and animated characters could be different resources for reconstruction. As well as rendered at different frequencies. The big concern for a dev would be getting the input to run asynchronously to better utilize the effect. Get the engine updating at 90Hz (HMD refresh rate) while rendering at a lower rate for better tracking. Especially with upcoming devices that may be wanting 120Hz or higher. No reason the game couldn't be rendering 10fps while providing a smooth experience depending on gameplay. The better solution may be a 240Hz HMD updating tracking at that frequency. There wouldn't be much hardware that could push a full scene at 240fps reliably. ASW the game could render 90fps and warp it to 240 for solid tracking with near 0ms input lag. That's the real beauty of the effect, it provides ~0ms (realistically ~2ms) input lag.
 
Sounds like the Rift has some software advantage here. Is it really transparent to the game? Hardware?
 
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