Is VR dead?

[RCHeliguy]

This is the wrong path IMO that only helps NVidia sell new GPUs.
What AMD and not the latest and greatest Nvidia users are going to do?
HMD shouldn't be barebone display with lenses, it can certainly carry supersampling function, including foveated SS to unload GPU at least a bit.

I'm not going to argue about what the right or wrong way for headset manufacturers to go is. I'm simply pointing out that foveated rendering and eye tracking isn't remotely main stream yet and for now we are relying on brute force processing at the PC side.

However in terms of headset processing, Oculus with their Quest has actually made the largest advances in terms of an SDK that is light on processing and that has very good results with most processing in the headset and a low bandwidth link to a PC.

Qualcomm has shown where they think think this is going. They are focusing on standalone products.

I have no idea how this will play out. We have divergent paths, but Oculus has connected the two. Time will tell if we will eventually have a complementary hybrid solution.

 

[anton_Chez]

*

 

[BrunoBæ]

Time will tell if we will eventually have a complementary hybrid solution.

Wasnt there some rumours when the Index were launched that the empty front "box" with the USB connection could potientially be used in some kind of inside-out mod/experimentation?

 

[RCHeliguy]

Wasnt there some rumours when the Index were launched that the empty front "box" with the USB connection could potientially be used in some kind of inside-out mod/experimentation?

I haven't heard about any accessories of any value for the expansion port. The only thing I've seen is a kickstarter campaign for a fan accessory, but at least in my experience a fan is completely unnecessary.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Wasnt there some rumours when the Index were launched that the empty front "box" with the USB connection could potientially be used in some kind of inside-out mod/experimentation?

It doesn't have the right cameras for that.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I thought Quest is mainstream with foveated rendering. Vive Pro Eye has eye tracking. And Pimax features onboard SS chip.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I thought Quest is mainstream with foveated rendering. Vive Pro Eye has eye tracking. And Pimax features onboard SS chip.

The Quest is doing the same thing as VRSS with no eye tracking to improve the center of the display.

StarVR has eye tracking too, but where is the foveated rendering support for it ?

At this point I believe it still requires custom software.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

The Quest is doing the same thing as VRSS with no eye tracking to improve the center of the display.

My point is that it does not have to be on GPU or PC at all, and Quest is good "mainstream" example of offloading that processing to HMD. And yes, I know what kind of foveated rendering Quest has.

 

[RCHeliguy]

My point is that it does not have to be on GPU or PC at all, and Quest is good "mainstream" example of offloading that processing to HMD. And yes, I know what kind of foveated rendering Quest has.

Then what was your point? I mentioned the Quest earlier as being an example of headset processing.

The Quest is a completely stand alone product that only works with a PC because of a tether. It isn't a partnership between a PC GPU and the headset.

The main asset that Oculus came up with was an SDK that is able to do reasonably well with much less processing power. The end results doesn't look quite as good as something that is PC based.

Now what Oculus is working in in their R&D labs, who knows?

 

[RCHeliguy]

OK, here is a headset "available" with foveated rendering, 90fps, superior color OLED, 210 degree by 120 degree FOV, price not listed.... The resolution is not in Reverb, or 8KX territory, but best in class FOV, best in class optics with almost zero distortion, best in class color.

Unfortunately it appears that the foveated rendering is only supported when using their eye tracking SDK, which may mean it won't do diddly poop for us using a SIM.

I'm sure it looks beautiful, but I wish it had nicely integrated headphones, more resolution and a higher possible refresh rate. But I'm sure the color, FOV, and optics are amazing.

The last time they listed this for sale it was about $3,100 before they decided not to sell it. No telling what the situation is right now.

 

[BrightCandle]

That StarVR headset has to be a look into the future of the sort of tech VR headsets will have in the future. The eye tracking allows for dynamic IPD automatically and the custom lenses produce a complete field of view with no distortion. I think if we could also get a pair of 4k screens in it and a price that I can swallow (under 1k) then that is what I want for my next headset.

 

[BrunoBæ]

Checking the video above and the one mentioned from Berlin 2018 it is difficult to understand why they have cancelled selling the $3100 version to users.
Because when you see how many users ready to spend the amount of money for a DD wheel - then at least some of them would also spend the $3100 for this VR set - if it became possible to use it for their favorite game.
But maybe they have made a calculation showing that the income selling such a kit compared to the cost of launching a commercial version for the end users would not add up.
But its a pity anyway.

 

[Terry Rock]

I almost spilled my beer when he said 'competing headsets'.
They're no 'competing' headsets to Star-VR in terms of price.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I not very optimistic about 2020, for reasons other than the world events around us.

Intel has pretty well written off the 10nm process and is currently expecting it's 7nm process to be shipping by the end of 2021! Unfortunately they have been slipping on release dates worse than Pimax lately! NVidia is expected to announce the 30 series cards in September of 2020. DDR5 for motherboards looks interesting and appears like it may be a substantial improvement eventually, but more likely seen in 2020, but not main stream until 2021.

So... it looks like 2020 will have very little thunder in terms of hardware

Going into 2021, we will have:

• Faster DDR5 DRAM for motherboards with the potential to be 50-100% faster than DDR4
  
  
• 3080Ti GPU with 30-40% more power and DP 2.0 support for higher resolution and frame rates.
  
  
• But we will likely still be CPU bound for some titles until 2022.

The largest area that we could hope to see improvements in 2020 may be software.

"Ideally" 2020 will be the year that software companies find ways to be more efficient with what we've got and 2021-2022 will when we unleash the fruit of that labor on faster hardware.

Sadly I'm not hopeful for much headway for software in 2020 either.

• Multi-core processing is currently prohibitively difficult for "most" developers to handle. We need a breakthrough in the underlying development tools to abstract multi-core processing away. This is currently what I would call a top 5% developer issue and we need tools that allow average developers to do this.
  
  
• Foveated rendering is a chicken and egg problem. Until there are many headsets with eye tracking being sold which won't happen at their current price point there is no incentive to write the software to support them. ( Currently it appears that all foveated rendering systems currently require using custom SDK's from VR headset manufacturers. ) So there is little reason for a standard to emerge that would be incorporated into Unity and Unreal Engine, nevermind the custom graphics engines used by sim developers.

At some point we will see a convergence of software that better makes use of our hardware and new more powerful hardware than can actually change the landscape in a meaningful way.

 

[odiopower]

DDR5 will be slower than a good OC DDR4 kit, for a good kit we we need to wait a lot, and not for getting no where a boost of 50-100% performance game wise.

3080ti will come at the end of the year, rtx performance will get a nice boost, gtx gain will be lesser.

buying Intel cpu For the next 2year is almost as burning cash, just get the 3900x, is the best gaming cpu for VR by a long shot. 9900x is the best second pick.

IMHO ofc.

 

[RobertR1]

DDR5 will be slower than a good OC DDR4 kit, for a good kit we we need to wait a lot, and not for getting no where a boost of 50-100% performance game wise.

3080ti will come at the end of the year, rtx performance will get a nice boost, gtx gain will be lesser.

buying Intel cpu For the next 2year is almost as burning cash, just get the 3900x, is the best gaming cpu for VR by a long shot. 9900x is the best second pick.

IMHO ofc.

9900k is way better for gaming and VR than a 9900x.

Esp on a good board with tuned bdie

 

[RCHeliguy]

What is the point in saying bad things about DDR5 memory. It is the next standard. New memory always starts similar to OC'd versions of the previous memory standard.

DDR5's baseline format will be at 3200 which is equal to my OC DDR4 memory but DDR5 will eventually have the ability to go 262.5% faster than the DDR 4 memory I'm using now. 8400. I don't know how long it will take for the memory to get that fast or be supported that high on MB's, but it's coming.

 

[odiopower]

9900k is way better for gaming and VR than a 9900x.

I meant the 9900k, srr typo. Still is a dumb buy, the 3900x is better.

 

[Miguel Batista]

I meant the 9900k, srr typo. Still is a dumb buy, the 3900x is better.

For gaming, the 3600 is better than the 3900x

 

[anton_Chez]

Hardware in 2020 is non existent.,....

Also, AMD exists.

Apparently anyone that is involved in gaming / sim racing only believes that Intel and Nvidia can save us from themselves.

I can't understand how anyone remotely interested in PC hardware doesn't acknowledge the fact that AMD is making one of the biggest resurgences ever seen. It's not 2015 anymore. AMD will be dropping bombs on both competitors. Once day people will take notice.

I can only sit and wait until AMD high end GPU's are finally released to finally get rid of this 1080Ti. The last great GPU