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Scawen
Up and Coming
June 6, 2014

Minimum requirement Windows 7 for DK2?

Hi there, I'm the developer of Live for Speed - http://www.lfs.net

We have an Oculus Rift version available in test patch form as you can see on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=5335

Why I'm posting here is because I was disappointed to read in the DK2 FAQ that the minimum requirement for a Windows PC is Windows 7:
https://support.oculus.com/hc/en-us/articles/201835987-Oculus-Rift-Development-Kit-2-FAQ

I believe this, if true, would be a bad mistake so that's why I want to discuss it here. My reasoning is simple enough and I use our own project as an example.

Live for Speed (aka LFS) uses DX9. We don't want to move to a later version because some of our users run LFS in Wine which supports up to DX9, and some of our users have XP. We don't need any features of later versions of Direct X so it makes sense to stick with DX9. Using later versions would alienate some of our users for no good reason.

However, Microsoft has disabled the ability to use a debug version of DX9 on Windows 7 (or later). So, as a programmer who needs debug output, I am forced to stay on XP. I prefer XP anyway, but that is beside the point. I don't have a choice. I do have a separate hard drive I can plug in to run Windows 7 if needed, but that is a bit of messing around I would prefer not to do.

Windows XP obviously supports USB and has great graphical output, so I can't think of a genuine reason why a Rift should need Windows 7 to operate. I hope that it will be possible to install and use it on XP. I have ordered my DK2 and will be upset if it doesn't work on the computer that I use for development every day. It's going to be hard to develop the LFS support for DK2 if I have to swap hard drives every five minutes to test each change.

I asked technical support about this and got the reply "The development kit may work on in Windows XP. However we are only testing, and officially supporting, Windows 7 and later."

This reply is a bit too vague for me. I really need to know that it WILL work on XP. As far as I know, the Oculus examples use DX9 shaders. So doesn't that suggest that XP should be supported? I think it is a simple and worthwhile thing to just test every now and then, that the Oculus drivers still work on XP and that no Windows 7 specific functions have been used by mistake.

    23 replies

    cybereality
    Inspiring
    June 6, 2014
    The core SDK itself should work with Windows XP, but I don't think anyone has tested it so it's possible some modifications are necessary. It's been this way since the beginning. We've never supported XP. Some developers have gotten it to work, though, at least with the older SDKs.

    I would test out the latest SDK in OpenGL mode and see if that will work on XP (the DirectX10/11 samples of course will not work). Hope that helps.
    AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
    ScawenAuthor
    Up and Coming
    June 6, 2014
    Hi cybereality, thanks for your reply.

    It's not actually the SDK itself I am concerned about, if I am understanding this correctly. In fact I am connecting LFS to the Rift drivers through a DLL which I built in Windows 7. This is because the SDK requires Visual Studio 2010 and I have that installed on my Windows 7 hard drive. VS2010 is said to work on XP SP3 but I don't want to mess up my VC6 installation.

    So the only thing I am concerned about is the Rift drivers, which I hope can be installed on XP.

    I am imagining that some kind of drivers need to be installed (for the computer to recognise the Rift - non-developers would install them) and that the drivers are separate from the SDK (which allows you to write software that connects to the drivers - only developers would install this).

    If I am misunderstanding the way it works, please let me know.
    Live for Speed - www.lfs.net
    cybereality
    Inspiring
    June 6, 2014
    No, I don't believe any special drivers are necessary. The Rift is just using standard HID USB drivers.

    At least that is how it works for DK1. I do think that moving toward DK2 and beyond there will be drivers (required for the camera, etc.) so it won't be that case forever.
    AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
    ScawenAuthor
    Up and Coming
    June 7, 2014
    Thanks for the info, but I'm still left not knowing if it will be possible to use the DK2 on XP. :?

    I am hoping those new drivers could be made in such a way that they do work on XP, if there isn't some very good reason to restrict their compatibility.

    I hope I've explained in enough detail why it is important to support XP. It is the only available operating system that a developer can use if they want to code for DX9, which is still an important version of DirectX to use.

    I am guessing you can allow the drivers to run on XP by simply not using any Windows 7 specific functions, and occasionally running a test to check it still works on XP. I'd be happy to check it works on XP for you any time, if you don't have enough resources. ;)
    Live for Speed - www.lfs.net
    nicorose
    Up and Coming
    June 10, 2014
    Short:
    Every Game / Programm will have its own Minimum requirements. Like todays "normal" Games. So its hard to say.
    The Oculus itself will only need a full HD signal.
    cybereality
    Inspiring
    June 10, 2014
    @scawen: You may be able to get DK2 to work (in some capacity) on Windows XP. However, to use all the features I believe we will require a modern operating system.
    AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
    ScawenAuthor
    Up and Coming
    June 11, 2014
    Thanks for the reply.

    All I'll need is the device info so I can render the correct image (once) then the head tracking info (continually).

    That's all - nothing that XP can't handle! ;)
    Live for Speed - www.lfs.net
    Anonymous
    June 19, 2014
    We need a rift ready program that lets rifters know if their machine has passed the requirements maybe a java based program auto run that scans the rifters machine and connects to the oculus server to check minimum requirements before the rift sdk starts up? also have I heard that nvidia will or have released driver for sli cards for the rift? I have gtx680m in sli 2gb gddr5 with upcoming i7 3940xm oc'd 4.5ghz
    cybereality
    Inspiring
    June 19, 2014
    "VRBabe14" wrote:
    We need a rift ready program that lets rifters know if their machine has passed the requirements...

    You can run an in-game benchmark and just check the that the frame-rate is over a certain amount. Or have a stand-alone demo that people can try and test if it runs well.
    AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
    Anonymous
    June 19, 2014
    "cybereality" wrote:
    "VRBabe14" wrote:
    We need a rift ready program that lets rifters know if their machine has passed the requirements...

    You can run an in-game benchmark and just check the that the frame-rate is over a certain amount. Or have a stand-alone demo that people can try and test if it runs well.


    True and hopefully in the next update the rift sdk might have in-game benchmark like pc games have.
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