Oculus is making it easier to get into virtual reality games; at least where hardware is concerned. The company revealed new technology called “asynchronous spacewarp” that fills in missing frames to achieve the required 90 fps on the display.
The technology does it by creating synthetic frames to be inserted between actual display frames. It sounds like Oculus is simply doubling up on frames; but this allows lower end computers to output 45 fps and still provide a reliable VR experience. The difference between actual 90 fps and the frames achieved with the spacewarp will be noticeable, but that’s not the point.
Lower end computers will be able to run VR games using this new development, with Oculus saying that it has lowered the barrier to entry to at least an i3-6100 or AMD FX4350 processor combined with a GeForce GTX 960. A substantial departure from the previous minimum requirements.
This essentially allows people with smaller budgets to also get into VR; at least in theory. It is difficult to tell just how effective the spacewarp technology will be in smoothing out the gaming experience.
Oculus also announced the price of the upcoming Oculus Touch at the same event. These controllers will be sold for $199 (about RM830) from 19 December; while an additional camera sensor will be sold for $79 (about RM330). The extra sensor will allow the Oculus to room-scale in the same way that the HTC Vive does.
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