One of the biggest barriers to virtual reality in its bid to become mainstream was its lack of support for low-end PCs. The point was never clearer than in the case of Oculus Rift, which required, among other things, a GTX 970 to boot at its launch.
Thankfully, the people behind the revolutionary headset have been hard at work, and that shows with the unveiling of updated minimum specs required to run the Rift VR.
This has been achieved largely through a technology called Asynchronous Facewarp (ASW), which allows VR titles to run at 45 frames per second rather than the previous 90. It smoothens up the animation too, so the computer is able to run the titles without having to skimp on quality.
That’s not the only benefit, as Oculus claims it may also reduce some of the motion sickness felt by players in VR.
The functionality has been rolled out to all major recent GPUs, including AMD’s Radeon RX 400 series, Nvidia’s GTX 1000 and 900 series (minimum GTX 960). You’ll need an Intel Core i3-6100 or an AMD FX4350 processor, with 8 GB RAM. OS running should be Windows 8 or newer.
Of course, virtual reality is still largely quite expensive, with the Rift itself being the most expensive piece in the puzzle at $599, but at least now a lot of people can save up for the headset without worrying about their PCs. Whether it will be enough to fight with the PSVR remains to be seen though.
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