Apple might have a lot of things going for it, but support for the Oculus Rift isn’t one of them. When asked if the Rift would ever grace the Mac, Oculus’ Palmer Luckey didn’t beat around the bush.
This post was originally published on Gizmodo Australia.
Speaking with Shacknews’ Daniel Perez, Luckey had the following to say when queried over the Rift’s future with Apple’s hardware:
“That is up to Apple. If they ever release a good computer, we will do it.”
OK, now before you get too fired up, Luckey elaborated on exactly what “good” means:
“It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn’t prioritize high-end GPUs. You can buy a $6000 Mac Pro with the top of the line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn’t match our recommended specs.”
According to Oculus, the recommend specs demand an “NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD 290”. Although not Oculus-approved, the FirePro D700 is apparently good enough, going from benchmarks.
Still, the man has a point. The majority of Apple’s current desktop line-up sports Intel GPUs and while Intel has picked up its graphics game significantly over the years, the hardware just won’t cut it when it comes to powering the Rift.
Oculus’ Palmer Luckey will consider Mac support if Apple ‘ever releases a good computer’ [Shacknews]
Comments
22 responses to “Apple Must ‘Prioritise’ High-End GPUs Before It Can Get The Oculus Rift”
The man has a point. good luck defending that apple-fanboys 🙂
No need to, as any Mac owner will tell you- apple just doesn’t care about performance gaming. They care only about mobile gaming. It’s sucks and always has.
Yeah its sad and true, i think the mac aesthetic looks really nice, but its a uniformed look where as other pc’s is pretty user defined (cases/ ui all the jazz). i think windows is catching up to mac really well on the audio production (DAWs) and the photoshop.
even the windows 10 interface is alot more welcoming nowdays
Windows has had all the best daws and the same photoshop as mac since the beginning. There is no advantage to using a Mac beyond personal preference. Mac does pretty hardware, but the internals are shit.
As somebody in the creative realm (arguably filled with the highest percentage of mac users) I can tell you right now that we are just as excited at the non-gaming opportunities that the Rift (and other VR platforms) can potentially bring to the table.
Being able to sculpt or model in VR, and draw in a true 3D realm are just a couple of new production pipelines that might really change things up. These are DEFINITELY things that Apple doesn’t want to miss out on.
To suggest that the Rift is just for gaming is pretty narrow minded. To suggest that Apple can safely ignore this new tech is just ridiculous.
I may like Apple computers, but even my response to the article title was “Yeah, no shit!”. 😛
While you’re shitting on Apple go take a look how many companies that sell pc’s can actually meet the requirements out of the box.
Lets be honest, although Oculus may be available for the market, it’s not aimed at the casual gamer at the moment. How big would you estimate the potential market is going to be at that price point and those entry requirements?
It will probably take at least 2-3 years for the basic tech to start catching up that it can start being sold mainstream. Which as the article stated, means Apple needs to get there shit together if they want a piece of the pie, but they will not compromise their design aesthetic to do it. Especially not for such a small market.
Dell, HP, Asus, Acer, and MSI already have PCs they advertise specifically as VR Ready. Is that mainstream enough?
I agree it’s a ways off the realm of the casual gamer (as is the Mac Pro), but Apple’s favourite market is the creative professional – the people actually building VR content right now. Without Apple’s support, the entire VR industry – tools & middleware as well as content – will all be created solely on and for PCs.
Alas, the very soul of “form over function”…
hmm system integrators such as Dell, HP etc. can only integrate what is available.
As long as Intel and Nvidia drag their feet (and indeed Intel has- with their stepping cycles) the integrators wont have good hardware at a good price to sell.
Blaming the integrators is essentially shooting the messenger.
The real problem is- that VR required far more horsepower than the current generation of hardware could provide at an affordable price.
This is really on the VR makers and the manufacturers not communicating soon enough.
Hell a Titan Black only just scrapes in at “capable” when coupled with a Core i7-3770K & 12GB ram according to some of the benchmarks i’ve seen from the Portal VR benchmark.
But seriously why should a computer that’s designed to be a workstation first & foremost have to be a gaming computer as well? If I was serious about VR i’d go out and research what the ideal components are & build a system around those recommended specs or higher. Not rely on a pre-built* machine that is aimed at the content creators who want to render video at 4K or whatever.
*Yes I know there are pre-built machines out there that are certified as Oculus ready, but they are intended as high end gaming machines, that was their one purpose, everything else is a bonus.
Edit: Just to clarify, no I do not own a Mac, and no I don’t have any interest in VR & I don’t see any reason why I should at this point in time with it being so expensive & the need for at least a GTX 970 to power the Oculus. It’s just way too out there in terms of required hardware & money for it to be worth it in my opinion.
Because “it cost me X thousand dollars!”, therefore should have no trouble performing any task asked of it 😛
Oh right, yeah forgot about that part. I guess I should expect my phone to be capable too cause it cost me a pretty penny, right? 😛
I think mainly because for a good quality VR game with realistic visuals, the minimum would be a 970. I mean you can always do a minecraft style game on VR and I doubt you will need a 970 for it. It is more about having a minimum standard for quality VR game that makes you go “WOW”, which is the only way VR could be the next thing.
Btw Titan Black is literally same performance as a 970 so it is just at the minimum requirement.
We all know Macs were not designed for gaming, Apple fans shouldn’t be butthurt since gaming is just not their thing anyway.
True, I keep forgetting that the Titan Black isn’t as new & “OMG” as it once was :/
I dunno, some people who attack those who choose a Mac over a Windows computer seem to have it in mind that all people ever do with a computer is game, and not do other things.
…?
I’m an Apple ‘fan’ first and foremost, but still have a gaming PC and consoles that get regularly played, and I don’t like mobile gaming at all.
No I’m not upset at all by Mac’s not having VR support, but to say gaming isn’t an Apple fan’s thing is ridiculous.
No no I was specifically mentioning those that only uses mac and claim that their 2012 MBP could run latest games with high settings.
I have a friends who uses mac mainly and game on their gaming PC as well.
You just can’t stop cringing when you start seeing people saying their MBP can run games max setting and 60 fps.
I’m sure it can run DOTA or League of Legends at 60fps 😛
Even the latest Macbook can’t run modern games at max settings 60 fps. It blows my mind that they charge over 3k for such an underpowered machine.
Unfortunately you cant even just go and buy a 980 ti and slap it in one of the macs that let you do that still. they need specialised firmware to play nice with the mac bios(the highest mac compatible card i could find was a 680)
Well said Palmer Luckey, you say the truth and i like you.
“But remember! Apple computers are better for Photoshop and music edition!”
Back when IBM used to build their components, maybe. Now the only difference is aesthetic and a Unix kernel
That’s the joke. That myth is still repeated even in our days when there’s no difference in hardware architecture between both platforms, and Apple comes behind because their prohibitive prices and limited expansion options.