System Requirements for Rift to run smoothly.

Hi there,

have no experiences to share on the Rift itself, but my guess is it won't tax your hardware in any significant way, leaving your CPU & GPU as the main bottlenecks. The CPU certainly isn't high end, but should be ok.

The HD graphics chip is probably the dealbreaker for any serious VR work (or even enjoyment) though. The latest HD 4000 integrated GPUs are just good enough to run modern games/graphics engines at low detail settings, and those are recognized to be a huge improvement over previous generations.

It you had a desktop I'd say slap a 100-150$ GPU in there and you're good to go. Luckily there are quite affordable gaming-capable notebooks out there. Anything from a Geforce 640M upwards (or Radeon 8750 up) would be a huge step up for graphics Performance and sufficient unless you want to really max out graphical settings.

Honestly i think posting requirements for a good rift experience is pointless because it relies completely on the game being played and the content within. You can technically have an amazing experience with a laptop that's a few years old if you happen to choose the right game to experience it with. So really the requirements would be on a per-game basis.

I think ist fairly safe to say if anyone plans to get into development and content creation for VR/the Rift, he/she'd need at least a somewhat decent graphics card for that. Especially since by all reports a smooth and consistent framerate is essential for a good VR experience. And honestly I don't see an Intel HD getting a consistent 60fps at pretty much anything.

So unless you're going for some sort of abstracted, untextured gameworld style with very simple geometry and a limited amount of objects, or only intend to play Rift-modded Versions of 10 year old games, a 3 year old integrated Intel HD GPU is just not gonna cut it.

The requirements really depend on the game or application you are trying to run.

That said, if you want to run modern games in 3D/VR, you will probably need a mid-to-high-end graphics card.

I'd like to know how the Rift (i.e. stereoscopic rendering @ 60+FPS w/ v-sync) performs across different games/demos/engines on different hardware configurations.

It's useful data that could potentially guide peoples' hardware purchasing decisions. More importantly-- it's a first step toward (somewhat) defined hardware specs/recommendations for the Rift, which I feel is particularly important for the consumer version.

I'm happy to create and maintain a benchmark Google doc spreadsheet if folks would participate and think it's useful. What do you guys think?

I could certainly try and test one on some really ancient hardware (some 2001 era PC's XD) - when I actually get one that is.

But the basic requirement for a decent experience would seem to be running at 60 fps.
I assume however that you'd have to target that as a minimum framerate, because I've come across games that, while averaging 60fps can in some cases drop to 20 or less, which seems like it wouldn't be particularly pleasant.

I mean, even without VR I find wildly fluctuating framerates more irritating than stable ones. (To me, a stable 20 fps is more pleasant than something which swings from 5 to 40, even if the average is higher. But that could just be me.)

I've got several computers to work with though, so I don't know what the reality will be.
Out of habit I'll probably begin coding on my 6 year old laptop, which has a core 2 duo combined with an Ati X1400 gpu.

I can't say I'm overly familiar with the performance of the intel HD 4000, but I'd be surprised if it's worse than this 6 year old low-end part. (even if it did outperform intel gpu's from that era by a significant margin)

Now, to be fair, I recall getting 240 fps in Quake 3 on that thing, so if you're willing to go design graphics to those kind of standards I doubt you'd have huge performance problems.

But of course, that's pretty ancient nowadays, and I can't really begin to guess how far you can push things before graphics complexity starts to become a problem.

It's also worth remembering that on my desktop system (AMD HD5770 - about 20 times faster than the laptop, by benchmark standards, anyway), I've noted that forcing 3d on at the driver level can cost 10-15 fps on a game running at about 50 fps otherwise.

Perhaps this can be reduced if it's integrated directly into the game engine, but I certainly wouldn't underestimate the cost of 3d or even the warping required for the rift. (granted, the low overall resolution might help, but again at this point it's all mostly guesswork.)

In any event, I intend on designing things that'll run on my laptop if at all possible, just to get a sense of what kind of limits hardware that weak imposes if you're designing for a VR system and want to avoid making people feel really ill.

Nothing like a bit of experimentation.

Would someone who's already received their Rift be interested in working with me to establish some benchmark tests?

Dear Developers,

I have recently ordered my rift after I got to know that the consumer version is set to release in late 2014.

I'm not a developer or a video gamer, instead the ideas/concepts like Virtual Reallity, Argumented Reality and Simulation Argument entice me. I also have been a fan of virtual reality/argumented reality movies like The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, Inception etc. I know that the rift is not going to give me a Matrix like experience but I hope this is a beginning that certainly has potential.

I do not have any gaming consoles, devices/hardwares not even a gaming PC and I thought that the rift will work with just my laptop however I just realised that I was wrong.

I want to request for a cheap solution so that the rift just works properly with my current laptop. The rift is already costing me far more than I expected it is $ 300 + $ 67 (Shipping) + $ 100 (approxx custom) = $ 467 so I will appreciate a cheap and best solution. Kindly note that I may be puchasing the consumer version next year so I would want my laptop to work with that too.

My laptop has following configuration :

OS : Windows 8 Pro
Processor : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2450M CPU @ 2.50GHz 2.50GHz
Installed memory (RAM) : 4.00 GB
System type : 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor

Adapter Information
Chip Type : Intel(R) HD Graphics Family
DAC Type : Internal
Adapter String : Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000
Bios Information : Intel Video BIOS

Total Available Graphics Memory : 1664 MB
Dedicated Video Memory : 32 MB
System Video Memory 0 MB
Shared System Memory 1632 MB

Thank you all in advance

If you don't have the info handy, you can try running this utility called GPU-Z that will tell you a lot more stats about your graphics card: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

I have a 4-5year old laptop that was pretty powerful at the time that gets 2.7 Gtexel/sec fillrate with 120 parallel shaders and 256MB of VRAM, and now I have a gaming PC that gets 137 Gtexel/sec fillrate with >1500 parallel shaders (and all running twice as fast) and 2GB of VRAM. Graphics power has come a long way in 5 years. Most Rift demos run like crap on that old laptop.

I'd suggest going to Logical Increments, figuring out how much you want to spend and go from there. (And it's not all about the graphics card, your CPU is still important too)

Honestly, it's really not very fun playing Rift demos and games on an old PC -- you miss out on a lot of graphic quality, fluidity, and framerate. And if you can't get a solid 60FPS that never dips, "you're gonna have a bad time".

My pc is by no means an uber power house. I have an AMD Phenom 2 955BE and a cheapy mobo. Not OC'ed at all also I had a radeon 4670 GPU. Total cost at purchase was $450 for entire pc. When I first got my rift, I had some graphical concerns because my frames per second were extremely low even at 1280x800 basically no demo was a playable as motion sickness occurred almost instantly.

I upgraded only my graphics, psu and monitor and now everything is playable. I bought a NVidia gtx760, an AOC 1080p monitor from BB and Corsair600 psu. Even after I upgraded my graphics and psu almost every demo I had was still instant nausea. This was due to my screen being 1600x900 resolution which is not an acceptable input for the Rift. This forced me to clone instead of extend which as it turns out induces latency. It was enough to cause vr sickness almost instantly. After the monitor purchase I can now extend 1080p to the rift. I have no noticeable latency issues and for the most part vr sickness has not occurred. it really just depends on the coding of the game for now. Half life 2 was the cause for motion sickness and now is fully playable.