VR-Ready Workstations and GPUs: Get Ready, Here They Come

The hype about virtual reality (VR) is at an all-time high with the recent releases of the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift headsets, in addition to Facebook’s announcements underscoring the importance of creating a “true social presence,” and VR lip-reading in addition to making virtual reality indistinguishable from reality. Besides the press hype and the lofty, detached-from-reality goals at Facebook, all of this VR development is going to require some serious hardware, especially when it comes to graphics processing. Accordingly, VR-ready graphics processing units (GPUs) are starting to hit the market and their manufacturers want you to know that they’re ready and willing to fuel the home VR experience. 

NVIDIA, for example, recently let loose a press release loaded with three Quadro GPUs that are VR ready. They are the NVIDIA Quadro M5000, the M6000 and the beastly 24 GB M6000. These are the GPUs that three workstation manufacturers — HP, Dell and Lenovo — are including in three separate workstations each.  

But maybe VR-ready is a bit misleading, since in order for any of the released workstations to run VR and take advantage of these new GPUs, every workstation configuration requires a head-mounted display (HMD) as well as a DisplayPort 1.2 to HDMI 1.4 type II adapter or a DisplayPort to mini DisplayPort cable. All of these are sold separately.

Converting 3D model data into VR data depends on a lot of things, but having access to a great VR workstation is becoming more crucial for designers, engineers and anyone else interested in designing a killer app for VR. But any type of future in which people are developing killer apps for VR will have to jump over a few nagging hurdles. For one, there is no definitive VR data format. For each brand of headset coming out, there is a proprietary translator, which will create annoying bottlenecks and difficult decisions based on bets for one headset’s popularity versus another. 

Many people are recommending the HTC Vive as the go-to headset in terms of overall VR performance (largely due to the lack of lag compared to the Oculus). Given the current “demo” nature of many of the HTC apps, and the clunky but required Xbox controller required to use Oculus Rift, my advice right now is to just hold off your urge to consume unless you have a great idea for a VR game. 

Gaming is one application, but since VR is about viewing and interacting with 3D models, the potential killer engineering applications for VR are beginning to pop up with increasing regularity. If you look at the maker of the IrisVR, for example, the whole company was founded to provide VR applications for architecture, design and engineering. Right now, IrisVR gives users access to an app, which allows you to transfer your own 3D models and view them in VR.  

They have a great questionnaire to get you started. It poses three questions:

1. What headset are you using? Then you select from Oculus’s DK1 or DK2, Samsung’s Gear, Microsoft’s HoloLens, Google’s Cardboard or HTC’s Vive.
2. Then it prompts you to enter which 3D file formats you use most often from a selection of the following: SKP, RVT, ARC, 3DS, C4D, maya, 3DM, VWX, FBX and OBJ.
3. Next you select your GPU from a massive list. 

For these three questions, I entered “Google Cardboard,” chose only “OBJ” for my 3D format and selected the GeForce GTX 980 as my GPU.  

Besides prompting me to download “OculusCompatCheck.exe” from Oculus, which scans your system and lets you know if you need to upgrade any components, I am also informed that I am on the waiting list for IrisVR Prospect, the program lynchpin to transfer models and view them in VR.

IrisVR then recommends the following minimum requirements.

It’s interesting that IrisVR chose to include the Microsoft HoloLens AR headset among its options. 

Keep in mind that AR for engineering is quietly getting ready to make its entrance. And the arrival date may be sooner than you think. But be prepared to shell out for it.  At least initially.