As Apple preps VR support in High Sierra, Facebook slashes Oculus Rift price to $400 in su...
Facebook has launched a six-week summer sale on the Oculus Rift headset -- and while there is no official support for it from the company, it can be used in conjunction with High Sierra and the SteamVR beta.
The headset and set of two Touch controllers normally retail for $500 for just the headset and $100 for the controllers. The "Summer of Rift" promotion, launched on Monday, cuts this price to $400 for the set.
"What we learned with the [March] price cuts is that price matters," Oculus vice president of content Jason Rubin told Fortune on Monday. "This is a good time to test a mass-market price."
Valve's preferred VR hardware, isn't the Oculus Rift, but the HTC Vive -- developed by the company in cooperation with HTC. But, AppleInsider has confirmed both from a Valve FAQ page, and some preliminary testing, that the Oculus Rift functions in the SteamVR beta with the eGPU Developer's Kit connected to a Mac running the High Sierra beta.
Apple's $600 External GPU Developer's Kit is intended to test VR content creation on any Mac with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. The product includes a Sonnet external GPU chassis with Thunderbolt 3 and 350-watt power supply, AMD Radeon RX 580 8-gigabyte graphics cards, Belkin USB-C to 4-port USB-A hub, and a promo code for $100 towards the purchase of an HTC Vive VR headset.
Full support for external GPUs in High Sierra will launch in the spring of 2018.
The headset and set of two Touch controllers normally retail for $500 for just the headset and $100 for the controllers. The "Summer of Rift" promotion, launched on Monday, cuts this price to $400 for the set.
"What we learned with the [March] price cuts is that price matters," Oculus vice president of content Jason Rubin told Fortune on Monday. "This is a good time to test a mass-market price."
Valve's preferred VR hardware, isn't the Oculus Rift, but the HTC Vive -- developed by the company in cooperation with HTC. But, AppleInsider has confirmed both from a Valve FAQ page, and some preliminary testing, that the Oculus Rift functions in the SteamVR beta with the eGPU Developer's Kit connected to a Mac running the High Sierra beta.
Apple's $600 External GPU Developer's Kit is intended to test VR content creation on any Mac with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. The product includes a Sonnet external GPU chassis with Thunderbolt 3 and 350-watt power supply, AMD Radeon RX 580 8-gigabyte graphics cards, Belkin USB-C to 4-port USB-A hub, and a promo code for $100 towards the purchase of an HTC Vive VR headset.
Full support for external GPUs in High Sierra will launch in the spring of 2018.
Comments
Firesale anyone?
Did FB buy a lemon/load of hot air?
Interesting times indeed.
For a company like Facebook, blowing stock money on Oculus doesn't affect them, and perhaps is "good enough value" in the long run as an expanded R&D arm to keep up on the developments. If looking at such a transaction in the general sense of value-for-money, it likely has (and will) bleed red ink for years.
Yes, it is a fire sale, no matter how cheap you make them, the average Joe, or Jane will not buy these which happens to be about 90% of the population. All Facebook did was to piss of the people who spent way too much when they first came out.
It's for another topic on AI I know, but perhaps you experts could look at the following points and shine a light on these issue.
My 2 cents is it would be nice if Apple brought their AMD drivers up to par with Windows releases for the dual GPU machines (and maybe other Macs but that's not an area I know much about these days) and also added support for Catalyst in macOS i.e. using both GPUs in tandem where this is of use (it isn't in all cases even with games). As we all know, Apple in macOS only uses one of the GPUs for actually driving the monitor, the other for things like filters in FCPro X which is fine but why not offer both options? Catalyst itself has a by Application specific settings built right in so FCPro X et alia could turn off tandem functionality at launch automatically. Also, release dates ... As it is I can only get as far as Crimson 15.3 via the AMD website directly, Bootcamp was still at 15.1 last time I checked. Meanwhile Windows versions are way beyond those releases. There are hacks out there but I am wary of them due to potential damage by deliberate over clocking and excess heat.
I would add, if unbeknownst to me, Apple already has plans for GPUs that are so powerful they make dual AMD GPUs redundant then I'm fine with that of course, but one of the main reasons Apple has been slaughtered in the games market is its refusal to support the higher end GPUs, dual GPUs and drivers the driver part is simply idiotic. Gamer rigs cost as much if not more than a mid to high range Mac Pro so price isn't the issue and it maybe a smallish market I know but it is prestigious and in the mean time we are talking about drivers making the difference not something I would have thought was exactly beyond Apple and AMD to sort out at minimal R&D costs. From 2013 to today Apple has done nothing with Mac Pro graphics drivers.