We’ve talked about virtual reality a lot over the last year or two, and from the time that I’ve spent with it, it really is an exciting prospect for the future of technology and gaming, but there are a few things that stand in the way of its wider adoption. On the one hand, you have the technical aspects, with hardware that has some quite clear limitations, from pixel density in the head mounted displays, to the cables that are a necessary evil, the limited play areas, and so on.
Even more important than all of this is the price. Whether or not you want to buy the first generation of this technology is moot if you simply cannot afford it, and for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, that they cost north of half a grand on their own is imposing enough, before you even come to consider the cost of the hardware to run it. But that price is already coming down, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s coming down fast.
For one thing, there’s the PlayStation VR, which will debut at £350 on its own and over £400 if you need to add a camera and Move controllers alongside it. But there’s over 40 million PlayStation 4’s out there already, and that means there’s 40 million gamers with the hardware required to power the headset. That’s a huge market that Sony can already try to tap into, bringing all of the simplicity and relative ease of console gaming to bear at the same time.
Yet the PSVR is also the lesser of the three headsets. The PlayStation 4 is nowhere near matching the minimum hardware requirements that the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive share, and so while 90 frames per second is the target on those platforms, it’s just 60 frames per second on PSVR. And on top of that, it’s a comparatively fixed platform; the PlayStation 4 “Neo” is coming, but the graphical step up it can logically achieve will only serve to shore up the PlayStation 4’s VR credentials, as opposed to let it take the next step to higher resolutions and frame rates.
On the PC side of things, it’s currently much more interesting. So much of the pressure of making VR possible lies with AMD and Nvidia, and the last couple of months have seen them both take major steps into a new generation of GPU hardware. Backed with a smaller 14nm die process, having been stuck on 28nm for the last few years, their latest GPUs are vastly more efficient and can be much, much more powerful and cost effective. However, their first GPUs on this new process could not be targeted at more different audiences.
Nvidia have done what they so typically do and looked to dominate the high end. The GTX 1080 is on the cusp of being able to run games at 4K with 60 frames per second, but costs around £600 for the privilege, while the GTX 1070 is much more affordable – still around £400 – but easily matches and beats the previous top tier GPUs. They’re eminently desirable pieces of hardware for any PC gamer, and the 1070 in particular will be a very popular card, but they ultimately do very little to bring VR to a wider audience. The GTX 1070 costs more than the 970 that it succeeds in the pecking order – the entry level Nvidia GPU for VR – but we’re still waiting to hear of a “1060” card that would match the 970’s graphical power at a lower price point. So far, Nvidia have maintained that high bar to entry.
Unless, of course, you’re paying attention to AMD. Their Polaris architecture isn’t vying for any performance crowns, but is targeted at the wider market – it’s this architecture that will reportedly feature in the Neo, while its successor is Scorpio bound. Much of this line of GPUs is still under wraps, just as most of NVidia’s forthcoming cards are, but the first card to be announced, the RX 480, has been designed specifically to meet the demands of the first generation of VR headsets, and does so with a staggeringly low $199 starting price point – around £190 in the UK after adding taxes.
It’s a bold play for marketshare, and unless Nvidia react quickly – surely they will make their own counter move within the near future – it’s one that could quite easily work. The card is a good match to the previous generation’s Radeon R9 390, but does so while using around 150W and costing much, much less, and that’s very appealing. That appeal extends well beyond VR, and as reviews have rolled in, it’s a card that can easily handle the vast majority of modern games at 1080p60 and is pretty comfortable at 1440p – especially with AMD’s advantages in Windows 10 and DirectX 12 – but lowering the price of entry for VR is one of the key the selling point.
It’s barely been three months since the release of the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, but technology moves at such a pace that it’s already so much more palatable to invest in VR, and it will only become more so in the next couple of years. That’s important to remember when looking at this technology. There’s a long, long way to go before it’s perfected, but it’s not just that the technology will get better, but that the minimum bar for entry is going to come down to the point where it’s within reach of tens of millions more than it currently is.
Of course, there’s still no getting away from the fact that, right now, VR is still an expensive luxury.
camdaz
I’ve seen a few reviews for the RX 480 and it’s a very good card if you compare it to AMD’s other cards but it’s a long way behind Nvidia’s 980 ti and above, but a heck of a lot cheaper. It tends to struggle with anything over 1440p.
All the reviews I’ve seen say it a great entry card for VR
Eldave0
Have been pleased with the reviews for the 480 overall.
I’ll get by using my 750ti for a little while longer but I’d imagine I will have a 480 by the end of the year :)
Avenger
All the talk of VR, I’d actually like to get the opportunity to try it out sometime to decide whether I’d ever want to invest or not.
I feel VR shouldn’t be a platform either, but a peripheral. I want to see major games that I’d normally take advantage of be VR compatible, as opposed to a lot of the accompanying dedicated VR titles like EVE: Valkyrie and Adrift (which are best of the bunch).
There’s just one major question I have though. Where’s Journey??? :P