Palmer Lucky: Rift will come to Mac if Apple "ever release a good computer"

[Mikesky]

What about people with Hackintoshes? Obviously they're not officially supported but some people's would have the raw power to do VR if they wanted to surely?

[Orangeator]

3 minutes ago, Mikesky said:

What about people with Hackintoshes? Obviously they're not officially supported but some people's would have the raw power to do VR if they wanted to surely?

#1 The drivers for most hardware for the Apple OS is only for the hardware apple uses.

#2 Hackintoshes are not officially recognized as an Apple PC.

#3 If some how they could build a hackintosh with the power to run VR, there wouldn't be a large enough user base for it to be worth Oculous's time.

#4 I hope this answers your question.

[Mikesky]

1 minute ago, Orangeator said:

wouldn't be a large enough user base for it to be worth Oculous's time.

It hasn't stopped the Vive having support for Macs though.

Imma gonna test this on my hackintosh tomorrow, the thought only just occurred to me.

[Orangeator]

1 minute ago, Mikesky said:

It hasn't stopped the Vive having support for Macs though.

Imma gonna test this on my hackintosh tomorrow, the thought only just occurred to me.

Haha alright, I wish you luck.

[derick90]

40 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

that case is still beautiful even in 2016, wish they had kept it and had drivers for cards not used by Apple

An easily upgradable Mac? Lol that's not their business model mate.

[suicidalfranco]

14 minutes ago, derick90 said:

An easily upgradable Mac? Lol that's not their business model mate.

.... OH right, 2013 is the trash can Mac, was thinking about the previous one

[derick90]

13 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

.... OH right, 2013 is the trash can Mac, was thinking about the previous one

Wait, they made one that looked like a trash can? I thought they were all.... Oh... i see... So I purchased a computer from the Apple store? Shit...

[Lethal Seraph]

Pretty ballsy if you were to turndown a big market like that, who knows Apple might be working on their own VR module... I meant if they release an iVR that can run on a toaster with ease, how much more it'll perform on a PC. 

[Sakkura]

10 hours ago, potoooooooo said:

I mean, the 2013 mac pro was pretty ballin

 

Getting a bit old tho

Meh, the top GPU is a D700, which is essentially an underclocked 280X. But okay, the power-hungry 290 & 290X wouldn't be very Apple. 

[Misanthrope]

9 hours ago, Mikesky said:

What about people with Hackintoshes? 

They can just dual boot into Windows.

[Doobeedoo]

Expecting high end desktop hardware and for reasonable price from them... yeah doubt it.

[Humbug]

HTC Vive is supporting Mac and Linux.

 

But I guess the target market who are going to be early adopters of virtual reality are not really the Mac demographic. May change when more non-gaming virtual reality applications come into play...

[Trik'Stari]

There would be no point, as there's hardly any games for Apple anyways. Hell, Linux probably has more games available.

[AlTech]

17 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

snip

I think you are using terrible formatting and I think most would agree with me.

[BuckGup]

Macs aren't meant for gaming but they can I guess. Also the only good computer they have is the Mac Pros which are horribly over priced. I only see Apple staying alive from the Iphone

[AlTech]

Just now, SamStrecker said:

Macs aren't meant for gaming but they can I guess. Also the only good computer they have is the Mac Pros which are horribly over priced. I only see Apple staying alive from the Iphone

Don't forget the 5K iMacs with R9 M295X!

[abazigal]

I am not sure what the merits are to boasting about the insane specs needed to support your VR hardware. 

 

For one, not everybody's PCs have those specs either, nor is everyone going to run out and upgrade their specs just to be able to support VR hardware. When you make your equipment require such relatively high specs, you are basically limiting your market to tech enthusiasts who don't mind being early adopters or splurging on high-end PC specs. 

 

Which is odd because Facebook is not in the niche market of selling expensive hardware. They will want mass adoption of their VR technology because their business model involves engaging a huge user base. 

 

Second, it's no small secret that macs have never really been good for gaming. Apple prioritises the creative industry, and optimises their hardware accordingly to cater to those specific workflows. That's why the Mac Pro has dual GPUs, which is great for rendering videos, but suck for gaming (price-wise). This doesn't make the product conceptually flawed, it just means that it's not for gamers. 

 

Third, I have no doubt that Apple is acutely aware of this issue and probably working on their own VR tech. Apple is rarely ever first to the market, but they do have a knack for taking a certain product mainstream, and making it accessible to the masses. 

 

In a nutshell, if Occulus won't support the Mac, it's their loss, not Apple's. Just don't cry when Apple (or some other company) does eventually enter the VR fray with its own offering. 

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

I think you are using terrible formatting and I think most would agree with me.

And I think the forum sucks when posting from mobile devices and I also think everyone would agree with me.

 

How am I supposed to right click to remove formatting on a touch screen exactly?

[Trixanity]

50 minutes ago, abazigal said:

Snip  

It's not about boasting. Boasting about the hardware requirements is not the point at all. 

 

I you want to play video games with high visual quality and with an immersive experience that does not make you ill, the requirements are simply gonna be up there. There is very little way around it. Otherwise you'll have to compromise on the experience so every machine can drive a HMD, which would kinda defeat the point. 

 

Now if we step away from the gaming scenario, you might be able to slacken the requirements significantly but that's pretty obvious. If you don't need massive processing power for your task, then outputting to two reasonably high resolution displays will be fairly easy. Kinda like how Intel integrated graphics can drive one or more 4K displays but do any 4K rendering and it fails. This is why a Mac can't do the Rift with the current planned content. 

 

To reiterate: no issue with connecting the Rift to a Mac nor is there anything prohibiting making drivers but the experience would be awful unless you compromise the experience to make it work. No wizardry can significantly reduce the processing power required. 

 

You are correct in that they hurt their own sales and should add support for Macs for the social VR stuff or whatever low requirement VR stuff they can come up with but playing Star Citizen in VR (or whatever) simply will not happen whether Apple or anyone else tries to make it possible. There is no software solution to this hardware problem. 

[BuckGup]

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Don't forget the 5K iMacs with R9 M295X!

Yeah that steaming pile of thermal throttle

[captain cactus]

19 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Apple:

2 years later makes a (theoratically) VR ready computer.

When you run it:

         Overheats so much that it throttles and then the frame rate is so bad you can't run VR on it any more.

Pretty much the iMac right now.

[captain cactus]

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Don't forget the 5K iMacs with R9 M295X!

Ah yes, the all-in-one desktop computer with a mobile GPU that thermal throttles. In a desktop.

 

 

wtf

[Unhelpful]

Do you people forget that apple doesn't advertise that they make gaming machines? Dear god let's just keep bashing them for not doing something that they aren't trying to do. They have excellent laptops. They don't have excellent gaming laptops. Good was a poor choice of words.

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, JoeyDM said:

Do you people forget that apple doesn't advertise that they make gaming machines? Dear god let's just keep bashing them for not doing something that they aren't trying to do. They have excellent laptops. They don't have excellent gaming laptops. Good was a poor choice of words.

I think in the context of Performance Vs Price you'd be very hard pushed to describe Apple Hardware as "GOOD".

 

You pay more to get less and the less you get not only performs worse due to Apples restrictive software policies but it also thermal throttles like a bitch and/or downclocks itself just because it feels like it (or more accurately because Apple decided to squeeze everything into a stupid case where form must always outweigh functionality).

 

If you gonna sell a product that costs more than all the other Gaming Laptops out there that performs worse than all of them then you'd better be ready for some stick from the industry.

 

But hey, it looks good, right?

 

Just an FYI here

 

15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display

• 2.8GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
• 16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
• 512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
• Intel Iris Pro Graphics + AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB GDDR5 memory
• Mac OS (Free)
• £2,419

14-inch Razer Blade Touch Screen

• Intel^® Core^™ i7–4720HQ Quad-Core processor with Hyper Threading 2.6GHZ / 3.6GHz
• 16GB dual-channel onboard memory (DDR3L-1600MHz)
• 512GB SSD (SATA M.2)
• NVIDIA^® GeForce^® GTX 970M (3GB GDDR5 VRAM)
• Windows 10 (Licensed)
• £2,449

So yeah, you get a one inch smaller TOUCH screen with a slightly slower CPU, same memory, same SSD but with a 3GB Geforce GTX 970M for £30 more. Plus then you get Windows with full Steam support, decent drivers and much more available software.

 

And your here defending them claiming they never claimed to make gaming laptops, nope they didn't but they certainly price their systems to match an equivalent gaming laptop. Oh yeah, and if that Apple can maintain a 4Ghz Boost Clock then I'm the richest man in the world.

[Thiback]

21 hours ago, jol159 said:

if they do it that far in the future they will lose a lot of fans

Not necessarly. Apple products are chosen in general for their perceived fiability and clean design. Ipod nanos didn't feature an FM radio until fifth gen while other MP3 players makers had this integrated for decades before. Steve job discreetly introduced radio to the ipod public during a 2009 keynote for the ipod nano, as if it were merely a detail. Their sales didn't dwindle. 
Considering this precedent, I'd say when they will release VR compatible computers at last, they won't mention it too loud, and therefore they'll probably not loose fans a bit.