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Ideal hardware for Unity + Oculus?

jashan
Protege
Are there any graphics boards / configurations that work "best" when using Unity as development environment and targeting DK2 (or whatever better dev kit might become available until late summer 2015)?

One thing I need this for is my own high end testing rig, the other is for a presentation / gallery. So for these cases, I completely don't care how well (or terrible) the thing runs on anybody else's machine - the only thing that matters is getting the best possible output at reasonable cost (for other projects, I have my usual dev equipment and more low-end machines).

With "reasonable cost" I mean: paying 50% more (on the whole system) to get 10% better framerate is not an option. But if paying $2000 for the whole machine instead of $1000 gives me a huge improvement in possible quality while still getting constant 90FPS (assuming I'm not messing up things with garbage collection 😉 ), I'd be happy to pay $2000. However, if going from $2000 to $3000 just gets me from 80FPS to 90FPS at same quality, I'd rather spend some time optimizing or sacrificing a little bit of quality 😉

Those machines would really only run the standalones ... I might have Unity running for quicker dev cycles but those wouldn't be my primary dev machines.

I would assume that the best OS would be Windows ... are there experiences with different gfx-performance using different versions of Windows? If someone tells me Linux would be better and can prove it, I'd consider that, though 😉
8 REPLIES 8

haagch
Explorer
As for your question whether linux is better for unity: Thanks to oculus and the unity developers, it isn't.

There never was oculus rift unity integration for 32 bit on linux, only 64 bit. Most people run 64 bit linux, but not all unity developers got the memo and still released only a 32 bit build. Which obviously never worked.

With the oculus rift unity integration accompanying the 0.5.0.1 SDK they completely dropped the linux plugin. I asked about it, but oculus being oculus they did not reply at all: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=21712&p=257891#p257891

But as this video (https://youtu.be/fmu6rzYDt1w?t=3795) shows, there is a unity 5 beta supposed to come that has "built in support". But of course they did not say whether this will come with linux support.

And of course, the unity editor has no linux version. If you look in their feedback system and sort by "most voted" you can see how it is by far the most voted for feature of all time and I don't think unity has even acknowledged any of this in the last 4.5 years this has been open for: http://feedback.unity3d.com/forums/unit ... most_voted. It runs with wine, but not perfect.

That should answer your question...

cybereality
Grand Champion
I don't want to get into what OS is better or not, everyone has their opinion. I'd recommend Windows, only because most developers target that, so you will find more apps to play (and more support on the driver side, etc.).

The Unity Linux build I believe was working, but somehow got left out of the build. I think this will be fixed shortly, not sure how soon though.

Strange that the Unity editor Linux version has gotten 18k votes and they haven't made it yet. UE4 shipped without a Linux version but people in the community have done the work to support it. I still think it's experimental at this stage, but it's at least something. However, I would not recommend doing production work on "experimental" software, so you may want to consider Windows (or Mac).

As haagch mentions, if you want to do development on Unity, you'll have to use Windows or Mac.

jashan
Protege
Well, I've got my development environment set up with Unity and an iMac - so that's all fine. Maybe the title of the thread was a bit misleading (and I probably shouldn't have joked about Linux 😉 ).

What I'm interested in is finding out what would be an ideal high-end testing / presentation machine. Of course, I'll use Windows for that machine because Mac is really restricted when it comes to hardware (I just really like working on the OS).

I guess it primarily boils down to: What's the "best" graphics cards for running VR-experiences these days? Of course "best" is subjective, that's why I outlined that I'm willing to pay for performance but not a lot of money for little gain (see the original posting for details 😉 ).

cybereality
Grand Champion
"Best"? Hmm, probably Titan X (if you don't mind spending the dough).

jashan
Protege
Ok, seems like Titan X is the one that maxes out both performance and price - but it's certainly worth a thought 😉

GTX980 costs only about half as much as Titan X and should be quite sufficient - probably even the GTX970.

Since I need two testing systems, I could probably spend about 2 days optimizing for the money I save by taking the GTX980 instead of Titan X. I need to meditate on that 😉

tedfordteddy
Honored Guest
I've gone through the same quest for my home and business PC's.

December: I started using a 2013 iMac with 32gb ram and noticed right away it wasn't brilliant.
Jan: Decided to get a PC built and put in a 970 and it's great
Feb: Needed to get another kit my developer, so I went with a 980 and could immediately tell it was finally where it needs to be. Even just the config demo scene worked much nicer. Having the two side by side, I would say that the 980 is definitely the way to go.
March 30th: I now needed an addition kit for customer projects. So I went all out and got a monster PC with a Titan X.

I would say, there is no doubt in my mind that any commercial business should use a Titan. Now don't get me wrong, you will be hard pressed to tell the difference between a 980 and a Titan when you play demo's. But I'm building complex scenes in Unity and UE4 and I can tell you, that Titan is out of this world. - pretty damn expensive tho 😞

jashan
Protege
Thank you - that's quite helpful! As I need two systems, I guess I'll probably take one 980 and one Titan X. That way, I have the highest end covered, and the very high end covered.

Did you build the machine from scratch or buy a complete rig?

I'm currently looking at Alienware (which seems to be the gaming division of Dell) and they seem to build pretty good machines - but at a rather intense price (and they don't seem to have the Titan X, yet).

cybereality
Grand Champion
For events, we usually use Falcon Northwest Tiki's, which are pretty solid systems.