VR for everyone, what AMD's dream mean for game developers?

[laminutederire]

Hi there,

So Amd presented their Polaris GPU line-up, and they argued that it would give VR possibility for under 300$ GPU's. If they succeed in getting VR to the masses, how will it affect how games are currently made, and will there be a leap, from studios, to VR games?

Wanted to know what games veterans would think about these question!

 

 

[Sentura]

probably not much at all, VR is hugely niche and to be honest the hype will probably fade once the tech gains some footing. Until game designers find out how to not make it into a gimmick it will not be particularly interesting for games outside of the VR niche. I certainly can't see myself playing first person or third person games requiring clutch actions or timing while at the same time trying to adapt to the screen also being part of the "gameplay".

 

On the other hand, I have seen some really interesting uses for it in real life, such as VR mounted on a drone, allowing you to see as a drone would see... in 360 vision.

[laminutederire]

@Sentura AMD has planned on 100 million users in the next couple of years. Isn't it a good enough market ? 

You make a good point about games not be ready for mass adoption since they aren't that easily developed for common genres..

[Sentura]

A good enough market for what though? What will they achieve with it? I don't see VR having an effect at all in the games market, because it won't be a replacement for monitors.

[blackdog]

I saw the announcement on LinusTechTips; is it any clear how they are driving improvements mainly to VR?

Aside: saw a comment in an IGN panel about the new nVidia 1070-1080, and apparently they were saying it's only worth if you have 1440p or more. Didn't listened too carefully (multitasking) but sounded like performance at 1080p is not increasing much…!??

[laminutederire]

On Friday, June 03, 2016 at 10:28 PM, blackdog said:

I saw the announcement on LinusTechTips; is it any clear how they are driving improvements mainly to VR?

Aside: saw a comment in an IGN panel about the new nVidia 1070-1080, and apparently they were saying it's only worth if you have 1440p or more. Didn't listened too carefully (multitasking) but sounded like performance at 1080p is not increasing much…!??

I think they just wanted to push VR with a single card, with minimum consumption possible, at a price below 300$.

Well first off nvidia's isn't thatimpressive since you'll probably have a 1080 performance with two RX 480 in crossfire, for more than 200 $ less.

That being said, what I understand with all of that, in 1080p all cards are so powerful they crush it. Problem is that they get bottlenecked by the CPU at those resolutions since they are so so powerful. Hence the static impression in 1080p. Don't know if that's clear?

Edited June 5, 2016 by laminutederire

[Buddy]

Yes, the the point is that for 1080p you don't need the latest and greatest for excellent performance anymore.

[leplubodeslapin]

With a 1070/1080, you'll get better performances with any resolutions. You just get such a high framerate on 1080p that it's not useful with current games (a GTX 970 would probably already have 60+ fps).

(at least that's how i understood it, same thing that Buddy said)

But in the future, it might be useful if you keep your 1080p resolution. Plus, you can also superscale your resolution (make your GPU compute a 3840x2160 (4k UHD) and display it on your 1920x1080 display, it will look cleaner and sharper)

[blackdog]

I understand what you guys mean and on paper seems straightforward. Might be the right moment to recycle or get bargains on 980s and build a PC for the living room.

Not sure if I misunderstood the comments, saying that for the price these cards are coming out, it wouldn't be convenient to buy a 980 today. Also consumption+noise+heat that always improves… so I guess I'd rather have a bottle necked card rely on longer by upgrading CPU when they catch up, unless this causes worst performances now.

Im still curious to understand how they manage to highly improve performances for multi screens/VR… in the end is simply higher resolution, but they were presenting it like they've found some secret sauce to make this happen. Unfortunately haven't had the time to watch the whole nVidia event yet

[laminutederire]

@blackdog I'd look into the RX 480 instead of a 980. It will be cheaper, with the same peperformances overall, but with less consumption and with better VR performance.

I think the gain in performance comes from the way they're handling the computing. Because yes you just double the resolution, but you have to display two images which are close to one another, so there may be ways to share resources more easily

[blackdog]

True, for VR there might be tricks available, unlikely with multi-monitor setups.

For the "deal setup" I was just spitballing, the new ATI sounds great. My only thing is that a lot of games support nVidia specific features and I'm a bit a sucker for that. Dunno if ATI has any workaround, but this small differences are quite annoying. It'd be nice they all standardize these effects.