I know Phil has repeatedly said there will be no VR support at launch. But the spec of Xbox Series X makes me wonder, it is possible to power a good VR experience? If not, does anyone know what are the missing pieces?
Last edited:
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
If Microsoft decides to flip the switch on for Xbox Series X VR, what level of performance could it achieve?
- Thread starter Jeffrey Guang
- Start date
it could play pretty much any VR game on the market right now.
More than enough for HL:A if they wanted, wouldnt be missing anything since they could just support WMR headsets which have inside out tracking so no external cams needed, just plug and play.
More than enough for HL:A if they wanted, wouldnt be missing anything since they could just support WMR headsets which have inside out tracking so no external cams needed, just plug and play.
I think that high framerates are especially crucial for VR experience and given the CPU in XSX I don't see a problem for VR, the system has plenty of raw power for gaming, VR are not.
I believe they were going to be working with Oculus at one stage but I can't remember what happened.
MS, HP and Valve.
MS has been participating in the VR space for a while now so its not too suprising, its probably the next gen of WMR headsets which are pretty great and cheap these days.
Don't personally know smaller details that may prevent VR compatibility (plug n play at least), but I imagine those things would be fine.
As far as specs, hoo boy. It could handle anything existing right now with ease at probably a significantly higher resolution than even the Index. A big part of it is that they didn't skimp on the cpu this time around. Solid performance is absolute king in the VR world.
And this isn't accounting for all of the increased efficiency that headsets are going to allow for in the near future. For example if they wait until around half way through the gen foveated rendering could actually enable IQ to be better than it would be on a standard screen, even sitting inches from your face. Facebook is absolutely pouring money into R&D for that kind of stuff though, so there's no way MS would come up with a better/earlier solution; Abrash (Oculus) said it's still a good 4 years out at Oculus Connect 5 last September.
As far as specs, hoo boy. It could handle anything existing right now with ease at probably a significantly higher resolution than even the Index. A big part of it is that they didn't skimp on the cpu this time around. Solid performance is absolute king in the VR world.
And this isn't accounting for all of the increased efficiency that headsets are going to allow for in the near future. For example if they wait until around half way through the gen foveated rendering could actually enable IQ to be better than it would be on a standard screen, even sitting inches from your face. Facebook is absolutely pouring money into R&D for that kind of stuff though, so there's no way MS would come up with a better/earlier solution; Abrash (Oculus) said it's still a good 4 years out at Oculus Connect 5 last September.
Last edited:
That's for pc though, it's a headset made by HP, Valve, and Microsoft. It's not expected to come to Xbox at least for now.
Specs wise it could do it great. They just need to make/get/buy a headset and get dev support which is what they dont want to do because its a considerable money sink that isn't mainstream enough for them to justify it.
It is fairly high risk compared to standard gaming right now, but with a more captive audience like the PS4 had with PSVR, the numbers are guaranteed to be decent. 5% hardware attachment rate for Sony (>5 million) with a VR solution that was very poor in some areas and the price of a console. I believe the software attachment rate for PSVR games was really solid too. A bunch of the PSVR games were either PCVR ports, or standard game to VR ports, which costs considerably less than ground up VR games. And VR game developers that are doing ground up VR stuff at this point are usually a very small group of devs so to match the currently existing game quality the cost is not nearly as high as a standard game (minus games like Alyx) . At some point you gotta plant that seed to watch it grow. And after playing HL: Alyx, I think a lot of people would buy a headset just for that. A ton of good preexisting games could also be ported over day 1. They wouldn't have to start from scratch at all for multiplats.
Last edited:
Absolutely.
I'm playing Half-life Alyx right now on my RTX 2080, an SSD, and the 8-core 16-thread i9-9900k.
The game looks amazing, performance is perfect, and XSX can apparently match that. I'd reckon that this setup actually goes well beyond what HL:A can do.
I'd love to try a VR game with similar production values, but using a 4k headset and DLSS or temporal resolution (reconstruction + scaling).
Does it have usb-c on the front? Ideal solution for convenience would be a single usb-c connected for and supporting headsets with inside out tracking. Eg oculus rift S or even quest with a link cable.
issue Isn't the box being capable, it's getting enough devs to port across. That shouldn't be an issue hopefully - all about expanding addressable market.
issue Isn't the box being capable, it's getting enough devs to port across. That shouldn't be an issue hopefully - all about expanding addressable market.
I don't feel there's a VR game available right now that couldn't be made to work with either of the next-gen consoles, and I include Half-Life Alyx in that. And with devices like the Oculus Quest taking off, we have an anchor of sorts for VR for the time being in terms of system requirements, scale and specs of the games. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing as people want to invest in hardware and be able to play games for years - I feel a lot of the fears/naysaying about VR revolved around your HMD, its input or the hardware it's tethered to being out of date before too long. People don't want to spend £400 on a HMD only to be asked to buy different controllers a year down the line or find that it doesn't work with certain games or hardware.
I don't feel system specifications are an issue. I think the more important problem for VR is that people want their HMDs to be somewhat abstracted from the device it's attached to. If you decide to switch from Xbox to PlayStation or buy a second console you don't need to buy a new TV, but if all the console makers start using their own proprietary VR setups then it's not going to instil consumer confidence in the medium. People should just be able to buy an Oculus Rift, Valve Index or any sort of decent HMD that has good tracking and inputs and expect to use that with all their hardware and possibly carry it forward when they upgrade.
I don't have any hope Sony will do the right thing, but I'm hoping that Microsoft treats VR less like a proprietary peripheral and more like a standards-based output device, like a television or speakers. Just set a baseline standard for input (I feel something like the Oculus Touch controllers are a decent start for what constitutes good VR input) and let people use whatever HMD meets that baseline.
I don't feel system specifications are an issue. I think the more important problem for VR is that people want their HMDs to be somewhat abstracted from the device it's attached to. If you decide to switch from Xbox to PlayStation or buy a second console you don't need to buy a new TV, but if all the console makers start using their own proprietary VR setups then it's not going to instil consumer confidence in the medium. People should just be able to buy an Oculus Rift, Valve Index or any sort of decent HMD that has good tracking and inputs and expect to use that with all their hardware and possibly carry it forward when they upgrade.
I don't have any hope Sony will do the right thing, but I'm hoping that Microsoft treats VR less like a proprietary peripheral and more like a standards-based output device, like a television or speakers. Just set a baseline standard for input (I feel something like the Oculus Touch controllers are a decent start for what constitutes good VR input) and let people use whatever HMD meets that baseline.
Good VR experience, yes. It will run current games perfectly well, but it will likely not have any specific hardware features to accelerate performance. It also depends on the kinds of experiences that will span the entire generation. Whether or not their headset of choice supports inside-out tracking or things like foveated rendering will be very important. I can't see them having created their console with VR in mind as they aren't actively invested in VR being a tentpole feature of their console and even downplay it, but the headset they choose and the features it has is probably the most important thing.
The breakout box was made for the share screen (VR visuals on TV screen), so its not really necessary.
Since PCVR uses both the USB and Display Port, I'm going to assume the inclusion of an adapter for HDMI<->Display Port could be enough to use it on the Series X.
Yup, and if foveated rendering then higher probability of wireless due to less required data transfer/compression to get equivalent IQ. If no foveated rendering, wireless will be highly unlikely if the native resolution is decent.
I wouldn't be surprised if it couldn't match the PS5's ability to do VR, if only because I expect Sony to have developed technology in their hardware especially to accelerate some VR-specific operations, which Microsoft probably aren't doing in the Series X unless they already anticipating on seriously supporting VR at some point.
Also, does Series X have an equivalent to Tempest Audio? That's going to be a big deal for VR experiences. VR isn't all about the visual aspect.
Also, does Series X have an equivalent to Tempest Audio? That's going to be a big deal for VR experiences. VR isn't all about the visual aspect.
If it has a full fat USB-C that can be used, that can be enough on its own - no breakout box etc.
MS have been working with MR and VR for years now. I expect their software and hardware support to be top notch as well. More than enough tech on the graphics, ssd and audio side to push VR. I kinda hope they do add support since it is good to have options and since that recent VR headset was MS, Valve and HP, it makes sense to push. Maybe even get some Steam VR support.
Yep, I was just talking to a friend about how amazing Horizon would be in VR. Then make a deal with Valve for Half Life Alyx... Halo Infinite on Steam for Alyx on XSX trade? I mean Infinite is already going to Steam and Valve would never do that, but still.
Power is there... no need to worry about that. If they jump in, it better be almost completely wireless.
Well it will be there at some point. Phil mentionned that they need to get rid of the wires and doing so keep the smallest lag possible. But given their breakthrough with the new controller and what they're aiming in the Cloud space, it's a matter of time.
There power is definitely there, the issue is that you can't go into it half heartedly.
Hundreds of people and thousands of hours of resource would need to go into it to ensure that even support was there for existing devices.
Then you need to start drumming up ongoing support from developers, to keep software coming a a steady pace.
The water has already been tested and I think as of now it would be hard to justify that investment, when all signs point towards it still being niche.
It doesn't have a USB-C port, it does have a full size USB 3.2 port that could work depending what features the port supports. I doubt it though.
My thinking is based on Sony's previous efforts to accelerate VR on the PS4 Pro (long article, so I've quoted the relevant paragraph below). I'm assuming Sony will continue to make similar efforts to further accelerate VR on the PS5 hardware too.
Most USB C ports and cables are USB 2.0.
Type C is a connector. 3.2 is as good as it gets regardless of whether a C or A connector.
While true, when people think of USB C they usually think of the 3.1 version that's in most laptops and computers and not the lower spec'd version that's a glorified charging port. Also despite the full port being 3.2 it might not support the video and power requirements VR would need to run on one cable. No way of knowing as is without a tear down or some word from MS. Really really really hope it does because I want VR on Series X more than anything just in case PSVR 2 doesn't get decent controllers or inside out tracking.
It's basically the same tech as VRS. Actually Nvidia implemented VRS for foveated rendering purposely.
The shading isn't really the hard part. It's the eye tracking that needs more work.
There is a fixed foveated rendering but it doesn't really offer the same benefits.