Yahoo News Facebook just made Oculus Rift way more affordable
Virtual reality will soon be a lot more affordable.
Oculus will be compatible with lower-end PCs, including an upcoming $499 laptop, the company's CEO Brendan Iribe announced Thursday during the Oculus Connect conference in San Jose.
Oculus introduced a new set of minimum specs required to run its Rift headset, making it compatible with much cheaper PCs than before.
Oculus Rift now needs lower PC specs…because of Timewarp! OKIES. pic.twitter.com/KoOjSb14sA
— Raymond Wong 💾📼🍕 (@raywongy) October 6, 2016
The first of these will be a $499 AMD-powered PC from CyberPowerPC. It's not clear when it will be released but the company said it would be coming soon. Previously, the minimum cost of a VR-ready PC was closer to $800, with many costing significantly more than that.
"PC VR is more affordable than ever!" We partnered with @Oculus & @CYBERPOWERPC to release a VR Ready $499 PC! More details soon! #BetterRed pic.twitter.com/Lajs0WFvBO
— AMD Radeon Graphics (@AMDRadeon) October 6, 2016
The shift in hardware requirements is possible thanks to something called Asynchronous Spacewarp, which helps reduce dropped frames so that games can stay at 90 frames per second, even on computers that aren't very powerful.
Oculus's "asynchronous spacewarp" fills in missing frames to keep an app at 90fps, which will especially help with lower-end PCs. pic.twitter.com/7Dp3PfNjY2
— Harry McCracken (@harrymccracken) October 6, 2016
Additionally, Iribe announced that there are now VR-ready laptops from four different manufacturers: Asus, Lenovo, AORUS and Gigabyte. The CEO predicted this list would grow to include "hundreds" of laptops in the next few years.
