Oculus Rift

Oculus reveals stamp of approval for PCs

Life
Oculus Rift. Image: Oculus

25 September 2015

Worried that your computer doesn’t match the minimum recommended specs for virtual reality? Oculus has a solution. VP of product Nate Mitchell got on stage at Oculus Connect 2015 to announce the beginning of the Oculus Ready PC Program.

It’s targeted at people who are interested in VR, but don’t necessarily have the tech know-how to build their own machine or deal with weird hardware edge cases. Instead, Oculus has partnered with manufacturers (Alienware, et cetera) to stamp machines with an Oculus Ready logo – basically “This computer will work with the Oculus Rift out of the box”.

The minimum specs for the Oculus Rift are: 4Gb RAM; Nvidia 9800 or AMD 4870 graphics card with 1Gb dedicated RAM; 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU or 2.4GHz AMD Phenom 9850 Quad Core CPU; and 65Gb HDD.

While the recommended specs are a bit beefier: Nvidia GTX 970/AMD 290 equivalent or greater; Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater; 8Gb+ RAM; and compatible HDMI 1.3 video output.

Still, Oculus promises you’ll be able to purchase Oculus Ready PCs for under a thousand euro – about what you’d expect if you’re already in the market for a gaming PC. We’ll see how it shakes out. Stay tuned for more announcements from Oculus Connect 2015.

Other than that there was little in the way of specifics revealed at the event. The actual release date for the Rift is still some time in the first quarter of 2016 with a price to be confirmed.

We also know that the Oculus Touch controller won’t be launching the same time as the headset – consumers will have to wait for the second quarter of 2016 for that – again there is no word on pricing.

One of the few concrete announcements from Oculus Connect 2015 was the announcement that Minecraft will be available for it on release. That’s something everyone can enjoy.

IDG News Service and TechCentral Reporters

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