Fool me, this is real good shit ! [the VR thread]

[Dio]

Graphics cards can't be that big an issue, or the PS4 wouldn't be capable of running anything similar.

Interesting comment. So why aren't all the VR companies recommending £50 graphics cards of PS4-like performance, but instead a £200+ card with an order of magnitude more horsepower?

[zip accident]

Graphics cards can't be that big an issue, or the PS4 wouldn't be capable of running anything similar.

Interesting comment. So why aren't all the VR companies recommending £50 graphics cards of PS4-like performance, but instead a £200+ card with an order of magnitude more horsepower?

I don't know, basically, but if the PS4 GPU is enough on it's own, then there's something off, maybe the PS4 version has a much lower resolution?

[gumboot]

Graphics cards can't be that big an issue, or the PS4 wouldn't be capable of running anything similar.

Interesting comment. So why aren't all the VR companies recommending £50 graphics cards of PS4-like performance, but instead a £200+ card with an order of magnitude more horsepower?

An order of magnitude sounds about right for the tax you pay to not know exactly what you're working with.

[venusian]

Sony have said that Morpheus comes with an external brick. I don't think they've said what this is for. I guess Giles knows but isn't allowed to say.

My immediate guess was that it contains a couple of GPUs with a very low latency connection to the screen(s).

[pogo]

Sony have said that Morpheus comes with an external brick. I don't think they've said what this is for. I guess Giles knows but isn't allowed to say.

My immediate guess was that it contains a couple of GPUs with a very low latency connection to the screen(s).

That seems very unlikely. A GPU needs fast access to memory, as does the CPU. More importantly developers making games that are both VR and non-VR will not want to be doing twice as much work targeting different architectures. It must be a power brick.

[zip accident]

Graphics cards can't be that big an issue, or the PS4 wouldn't be capable of running anything similar.

Interesting comment. So why aren't all the VR companies recommending £50 graphics cards of PS4-like performance, but instead a £200+ card with an order of magnitude more horsepower?

An order of magnitude sounds about right for the tax you pay to not know exactly what you're working with.

Ooh, so knowing exactly which GPU registers etc are exactly where is worth that much? That does make a lot of sense.

[Absolute_Zero]

Sony have said that Morpheus comes with an external brick. I don't think they've said what this is for. I guess Giles knows but isn't allowed to say.

My immediate guess was that it contains a couple of GPUs with a very low latency connection to the screen(s).

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... r-revealed

[gilesgoat]

I know what the external block is and what it does but I cannot tell you ...

The thing is anyway, think about it, there's NO WAY you could do "all outside"

You NEED a GPU "attached to a CPU" to render things and send them to a monitor as fast as it can.

You have to do rendering, you have to do it differently per eye, you need to process lot of data .. "how could you possibly make all this info go back and forth a cable and do it all externally" ?

Probably with "huge effort" you could do .. which basically would mean "you have an external brick that does all the stuff and your PC becomes just 'a terminal' to it" ..

At this point is like to say you bought a second PC in the form of a "brick" and that is what runs the game.

Putting all the GPU power required and such inside the visor .. well .. I suppose "the closest to that" is the Gear VR .. let's say I am talking in pure THEORY here that if you could put a Samsung Galaxy 6 per eye and a connector to a big external PSU MAYBE "you could be somewhere else" ..

WHO KNOWS MAYBE one day that will be the sort of route .. however for as much poweful as it can be even such a thing has its limitations.

And its costs .. that would be pretty high ..

[KlaxonCow]

An order of magnitude

Just for clarification, when folks are saying "order of magnitude" here, do you mean a binary order of magnitude or a decimal order of magnitude?

Because, you know, arithmetically, there's quite a difference between double and tenfold - and, as we're talking about computers, it's worth remembering that "order of magnitude" is context-sensitive to the base you're counting in, and computers count in twos and not tens. So there is a potential ambiguity here.

[zip accident]

An order of magnitude

Just for clarification, when folks are saying "order of magnitude" here, do you mean a binary order of magnitude or a decimal order of magnitude?

Because, you know, arithmetically, there's quite a difference between double and tenfold - and, as we're talking about computers, it's worth remembering that "order of magnitude" is context-sensitive to the base you're counting in, and computers count in twos and not tens. So there is a potential ambiguity here.

So why aren't all the VR companies recommending £50 graphics cards of PS4-like performance, but instead a £200+ card with an order of magnitude more horsepower?

Clearly, that's a base ten order of magnitude.

[gravy]

You NEED a GPU "attached to a CPU" to render things and send them to a monitor as fast as it can.

That can be at the end of a lead these days.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9910/raze ... t-ces-2016

Thunderbolt is a cabled PCI express bus.

[Whiteball]

I guess when people talk about 'mega powerful' graphics card requirements they are thinking of full on AAA titles with eveything cranked up to ultra high mega top setting or whatever they have these days...

Surely the smaller, simpler (yet still highly enjoyable) types of games don't need quite so much GPU grunt even in VR?

[zip accident]

You NEED a GPU "attached to a CPU" to render things and send them to a monitor as fast as it can.

That can be at the end of a lead these days.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9910/raze ... t-ces-2016

Thunderbolt is a cabled PCI express bus.

So you pay for the screen, a two core CPU with hyperthreading, and GPU enclosure, then pay for your own GPU? At those prices that would smart even if the CPU was strong.

However, it doesn't look as if the Sony box contains the sort of GPU grunt that enclosure seems to be designed to hold, and gumboot's remark about knowing exactly what the CPU and GPU combination in a PS4 is makes a lot of sense.

I guess when people talk about 'mega powerful' graphics card requirements they are thinking of full on AAA titles with eveything cranked up to ultra high mega top setting or whatever they have these days...

Surely the smaller, simpler (yet still highly enjoyable) types of games don't need quite so much GPU grunt even in VR?

IMVHO, if you're talking about POV rotation matching head rotation in realtime (which is necessary, not optional), then the GPU grunt is required, if you're talking about any resolution above 320 X 200.

[gravy]

I guess when people talk about 'mega powerful' graphics card requirements they are thinking of full on AAA titles with eveything cranked up to ultra high mega top setting or whatever they have these days...

Surely the smaller, simpler (yet still highly enjoyable) types of games don't need quite so much GPU grunt even in VR?

Yeah you do. 2 screens and super high frame rate.

Great for GPU vendors innit

[gumboot]

Graphics cards can't be that big an issue, or the PS4 wouldn't be capable of running anything similar.

Interesting comment. So why aren't all the VR companies recommending £50 graphics cards of PS4-like performance, but instead a £200+ card with an order of magnitude more horsepower?

An order of magnitude sounds about right for the tax you pay to not know exactly what you're working with.

Ooh, so knowing exactly which GPU registers etc are exactly where is worth that much? That does make a lot of sense.

Well, register maps aren't super interesting, but if you don't know where the pessimal cases are and can't prove that you touch none of them in your game then you have to assume that among all the possible permutations of the hardware (including CPU and bus topology) and pipeline configurations everything is a pessimal case and that, broadly, the hardware needs to be ten times more capable so that's its weakest link (wherever it might be) isn't a bottleneck.

This time you can't just say "shitty/unexpected hardware can still play but it might not be as good" because not-as-good could make you throw up, or possibly worse.