VR hype train picks up steam
Nearly threes year after it debuted on Kickstarter, Oculus Rift, now a Facebook project, is almost ready for prime time. It has the potential to flip PC gaming on its head (in a good way), and despite the long journey from concept to retail product, hype remains high. To ensure things stay that way, Oculus has partnered with select system builders to promote "Oculus Ready" machines.
Oculus says "these systems will start at a variety of price points under $1,000," thereby making VR gaming accessible to the masses. There will also be a variety of hardware configurations represented by Nvidia, AMD, and Intel.
Asus has already come out of the gate with two Oculus Ready desktops, the G11CD and the ROG G20CB, both powered by processors based on Intel's Skylake architecture and Nvidia GeForce GTX graphics.
The G11CD is an "aggressively-designed" mid-tower chassis with a central LED array on its front panel and "Mayan-inspired markings." Gamers can customize the lighting effects with 8 million color options. Beyond the physical design, Asus isn't yet ready to share too many details about the hardware, other than to say it will house DDR4 memory and USB 3.1 ports.
For the small form factor crowd, the ROG G20 trades a mid-tower case for a 9.5-liter chassis. It also sports an aggressive profile and Mayan-inspired markings.
With either system, users just need to connect their PC to the Oculus Rift and download the required drivers.
Beyond Asus, Oculus says Dell and its Alienware brand are on board with the Oculus Ready movement. It's a short list, though only for now -- Oculus plans to announce more Oculus Ready PC partners by the end of the year.
That said, the recommended hardware for the "full Rift" experience is an Intel Core i5-4590 or higher processor, GeForce GTX 970 / AMD 290 or higher graphics card, and 8GB+ of RAM. Required specs include Windows 7 SP1 or newer, two USB 3.0 ports, and HDMI 1.3 output.
Oculus Rift is scheduled to release in the first quarter of 2016.
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