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Comment by adam12 | Hacker News Reader

A $550 video card on top of the price of the device itself? If that is the case, I'm going to have to wait for a device to come out like Hololens that can stand on its own.

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As someone mentioned earlier, today's $550 video card is tomorrow's $250 video card. Either way, there's gonna be some expense if you want to be an early adopter. This will be easiest to swing for people who already have a decent desktop computer (recent-ish i5 or better, 8GB RAM or better). Then you either buy a $500 GPU and a HMD or you buy a $400 PS4 and a Morpheus. Lots more early content and tools will be available for Win/Lin/OSX but if you already own a PS4 it will be a lot less additional expense.

Then again, if you already have a decent GPU you can still do quite a bit. When I got my DK2 it ran many things just fine on an older GPU. I only upgraded to a GTX980 because I hadn't splurged on anything in a while and it helped a lot with un-optimized, demanding programs like Elite: Dangerous. I could have kept using my existing card if I just wanted to mess with less demanding content or make stuff in UE4.

If you are a gamer, you should already have that to play current gen games at max settings. I'm on $1000 worth of GPU right now for 4k, and the 4k screen itself was about $500.

Don't make it sound like Oculus is more expensive than what gamer already have to pay to get the best experience.

Lots of people game without playing everything on max. The difference here is that the oculus WON'T work with the max setup. Most other games work just fine. I play lots of games on my iMac I use for work, but it obviously can't run the oculus. I'd have to buy another 1500-2000 machine just for it, and that is tough to swallow.

You're not wrong re: best experience, but your $1000 of GPU + $500 screen puts you in like the top 1% of gamers. Most ppl are gaming on cheap rigs, laptops, etc. It's possible that FB/Oculus are trying to make something that will only appeal to the big spending "prestige-rig" gamer set, but I'd think that they would be trying to make a product that will be compelling to a bigger audience.

You can't really expect to run two 4k screen along with head tracking and all the other VR magic on a laptop or on a $100 graphic card.

That being said, I'm sure you could play games on the lowest setting without the need for $1000 worth of GPU.

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