https://uploadvr.com/valve-135-vr-headset-half-life/ This is just a rumor as far as I'm concerned, but a good one that makes sense. Valve owns Steam and has been busy for the last ten or fifteen years working to eliminate the need for Microsoft Windows, and to create an open source platform that would allow them to sell more games at cheaper prices. Gabe Newel used to work for Microsoft, and knows the drill all too well, and part of creating a cheap next generation open source platform is to make it VR friendly. This latest headset they are working on appears to be a compromise between field of view and the "screen door effect", which is the result of using lenses to magnify a pixelated image. To even come close to eliminating the effect would require an 8k resolution display, and this headset could be a simple compromise in resolution, field of view, and price which is actually what's noteworthy about the whole rumor. Thus far, Sony rules the VR headset world with a few million sold for the PS4, the HTC Vibe is believed to be the best in the consumer market for your bang-for-your-buck if you don't mind paying $800.oo for a headset. Valve appears to be working towards something that's a cut above Sony for PC gamers, and banking on the fact they can easily tweak it at will for video gamers, just like Sony. The Oculus Rift has dominated that market space to a great extent, but Valve appears to be adapting the HTC vibe technology to their own market. Currently, VR headsets are still somewhat limited in the range of games they can play and the technology to adapt games to VR has been slow in development compared to the hardware, but all that is about to change with the release of the next generation consoles. For me personally, the optics and technology are what's interesting, and I don't even own a VR headset and don't see the attraction. However, its going to be crucial for the upcoming Dx12 release and the progress Valve and others are making with expanding Linux games and Vulcan. Unlike a lot of gamers, Linux programmers tend to use headsets for other purposes, including educational ones, and the ability to combine the interests of both in cheap hardware and software will inevitably lead to improvements in open source gaming and VR. In part, this about cloud gaming and VR which are relying on AI technology and expanding their servers nationwide to make it work in the US on even a rather ordinary laptop. The very companies pushing to move everything into the cloud AI are the ones who have an interest in carving up the internet, so I follow what news there is of everyone's attempts to stop them.
how much performance does VR headset take away from your computer? in terms of FPS. if i get 80FPS in my sim, what will i get running VR?
Just saying you get 80fps means nothing without knowing the resolution. If that's 80fps at 1080p that could be enough and you might check with the video game headset itself to see what they recommend. The PlayStation headset is both cheap and easy on the requirements and there are others as well that are in the same ballpark such as the Oculus Rift. That varies a great deal depending on the game and the headset. The HTC Vive required 90fps per eyeball, which is hard as crap on almost any computer out there, and part of the reason everyone is rushing to find ways to make it cheaper and easier to do on a normal computer. For example, Microsoft is in hot water with people for delaying their new Dx12 which would make it a great deal faster to run these kinds of applications on a computer, because it can leverage more cores on a processor and other things. Right now the industry is still taking the very first steps to make it affordable, but they are impressive steps that are easily cutting the requirements in half in every way imaginable.
