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.
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.