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Opinion: Oculus Ridiculous, My Take on the Oculus Rift


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I spent the great deal of my early morning reading about the Oculus Rift and how it might change computer gaming. Apparently, it's the new Virtual Reality Headset of the 21st century, and with the power of today's Hi Definition graphics, it will revolutionize your gaming experience forever.

The funny thing is -- Nintendo tried this and it failed with the Virtual Boy. And by the way, they already have a Virtual Boy emulator now for Oculus Rift development kits. But, perhaps it was a fluke? Just poorly designed hardware for a damn good concept? At the moment, Sony and Microsoft seem to believe this, as we might see VR headsets in the near future with the XBOX ONE and PS4.

Regardless, the Oculus Rift is about PC gaming, and the cool thing is that it's open source. But, the majority of people are going to buy it to play the newest games, and currently the only game that fully supports it is Team Fortress 2.

But, where it gets interesting is that according to the latest August 2013 issue of Custom PC (UK Magazine), you will need a hefty graphics card to run a game with Oculus Rift. Your GPU will have to be able to run the newest games at least at 60FPS with V-Sync and Stereoscopic 3D enabled.

How many GPU's support just 60FPS of the major games currently out (i.e. Crysis 3)? According to Custom PC's recent benchmarks (with zero note of having VSync or Stereoscopic 3D enabled for the tests), that would be the nVidia GTX Titan 6GB, which can run Crysis 3 at a steady ~61FPS on a 1080P HD Resolution (1920x1080). Of course, that's if you can buy an Oculus Rift right now, and start playing, which you'd be stuck with a development kit (nothing wrong with that, but it's buying a beta product).

Finally, don't forget, your GPU will have the game set to a 1080P resolution, but currently Oculus Rift only supports a viewable 1280x800 resolution, or each eye at 640x800. Maybe they'll up this in the final consumer version, but there isn't even a release date set.

Anyway, let's say you did want to play with Oculus Rift right now at its full potential... how much would it cost?

Oculus Rift Development Kit = $300
nVidia GTX Titan 6GB = $1,019.99 (newegg Price)
Total (not included the CPU you will need) = ~$1,319.99

Projected release date for Oculus Rift? Maybe... 2014.

The moral of the story here is you're going to need a damn good computer if you want to use Oculus Rift at the best of its capabilities for PC gaming. The only way this might change is if the requirements to use Oculus Rift will change by its consumer release, or if you use it for 3D porn, with penis sensor capabilities (I'm not joking). [ADDED: It's also very bothering with the reports of numerous people feeling nauseous / motion sickness [1, 2, 3] after limited (5-10 minutes) to extended usage of the Oculus Rift. The good news is Oculus VR (company behind Oculus Rift) has taken extensive note of this and has called upon game developers to try to work on adjusting their games accordingly to limit this, but even they admit it may be impossible to completely eradicate it.]

Until then, I'm calling this the Oculus Ridiculous.

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$1k for a top of the line rig is pretty cheap considering my mother paid that for one over 10 years ago which nearly had a 1gig processor and I think 512mb ram.

 

You'd probably be paying around $2k once your rig is complete. The GPU only is around $1k.

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Yeah but in a year it'll be half the price, it's one of those "do i get it when it comes out, or wait til it's on ebay".

 

Agreed. I responded to this same question, as I submitted this to reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1j53k5/oculus_ridiculous_my_take_on_the_oculus_rift_with/

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Would never buy that latest and greatest vid card. Way too pricey and would be obsolete in 2 months. Wait at least 4 months after one comes out is the way to go.

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Would never buy that latest and greatest vid card. Way too pricey and would be obsolete in 2 months. Wait at least 4 months after one comes out is the way to go.

 

Actually, I would say obsolete is a bit of a stretch after just 2-4 months. I bought a GTX 680 in March of last year and it still holds up to the top cards this year.

The price has hardly changed on average as well: http://camelcamelcamel.com/EVGA-GeForce-DisplayPort-Graphics-02G-P4-2680-KR/product/B007KC1R3A?context=browse

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