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Research budget

Jerrsh
Honored Guest
Hello! 

My school has a 2k budget for VR, and I was hoping to get some thoughts on what to get. We will be using it for student research as they build and learn language through VR.

Thanks!
2 REPLIES 2

Dreamwriter
Rising Star
Kinda depends on what you want, and what you have. The minimum you need is an Oculus Rift and a PC - the Rift comes with the VR headset (with built-in headphones), a camera sensor that can track the headset's motion, a wireless Xbox One gaming controller, and a simple handheld remote that's really just for selecting things and controlling volume. That costs $600.

If you want to work with handheld motion controllers, so you have virtual hands instead of using the a standard gamepad controller, that's an extra $200; Oculus Touch comes with two hand controllers and a second camera sensor. This package also allows for a larger VR area, so rather than just sitting or standing in a virtual world, you can walk around a little.

Of course you need a PC to control this - If you already have computers, you may just need to buy a new graphics card for them - the new minimum system requires an nVidia GTX 1050 Ti / GTX 960 or greater. Other than that it requires 8GB RAM, Windows 10 64-bit, Intel i3-6100 or better, a USB 3.0 port and a USB 2.0 port (or two USB 2.0 ports if you get Oculus Touch). If you need to buy whole new computers for the VR project, then there are two things you can do: Wait a little bit, and CyberPowerPC will be selling a new Rift-ready PC for $500. Or you can build your own for about the same price.

If you want to develop VR applications, you need a game engine - Unity is very easy to learn and use, is what the majority of VR applications are written in, and is free for academic institutions

Synthetic
Rising Star
Local schools around here have Minecraft in VR.... suppose thats a start to get that working and all set up