The highly-anticipated Oculus Rift VR headset will soon begin shipping to PC owners. But what about those who remain committed to other platforms, like, maybe, the Mac? Shacknews put that question to Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey, and hoo boy, did he answer it.
“That is up to Apple, and if they ever release a good computer, we will do it,” Luckey said. Savage.
To be fair, Luckey quickly clarified that he was referring to Apple’s lack of high-end GPU support, even in its high-end systems, that the Rift is dependent upon. “You can buy a $6000 Mac Pro with a top-of-the-line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn’t match our recommended specs,” he continued. “So if they prioritize higher-end GPUs, like they used to for awhile back in the day, we’d love to support Mac. But right now, there’s just not a single machine out there that supports it. So even if we could support it on the software side, there’s just no audience of people that can run the vast majority of software out there.”
The Oculus Rift system requirements are steep, because as Luckey explained in 2014, VR requires a “much higher frame rate than you need on a typical screen” in order to function effectively. Dean Hall said something very similar just a few days ago on Reddit, warning, “If you drop any frames you can make the user sick.” The Rift is built to take advantage of a certain type of hardware, and Apple, for now, doesn’t make that kind of hardware.
I’ll have to take his word on the shortcomings of Apple systems, but assuming it’s accurate—and he would know—then it’s hard to argue with his assessment of the situation. The initial response, though? Yeah, that probably could have been phrased a little more gently.
