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Oculus Rift and Laptops. - [April 2016 Update IT WORKS]

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hey all, I'm somewhat confused with the state of Oculus' software recently.

I own a DK1 and two DK2s. I used to have a desktop with an Intel 2500k @ 4.5GHZ, 8GB DDR3 and an MSI 7970 Lightning running Windows 7. Obviously the DK1 worked great with this.

I then sold my desktop about 6 months before the DK2 came out and I got a laptop with a Core i7 4710HQ, 8GB DDR3 and an nVidia 860m 2GB (Optimus) Running Windows 8.1. Again the DK1 worked perfectly with this and I had purchased a DK2 the second it became available and this also worked perfectly on the laptop.

I've now recently upgraded my laptop again, Core i7 4710MQ, 16GB DDR3, nvidia 970m (Optimus) running Windows 10. And for the first time I just can't get the Rift to work. My biggest issue seems to be that even though the Rift is plugged in, it's receiving power AND displaying an image, the Rift config utility says "HMD is not powered, check HDMI connection".

The way my laptop works is if anything is plugged into the HDMI port, the 970m is turned on and controls that output exclusively. So I'm very baffled to why it's returning this error. It seems like the Rift software has taken a huge step back in this regard?

I suppose my biggest question is, what is Oculus doing to remedy this? Is laptop support a priority? For people like myself with powerful gaming laptops it's a bit of a kick that it doesn't work.
29 REPLIES 29

FezDerp
Honored Guest
the other option is: external desktop gpu. I know alienware has graphics amplifiers, I'm not sure about msi

RapierRaptor
Honored Guest
Alienware does indeed offer an external GPU enclosure called the graphics amplifier. This should get you around the graphics card block. When installed your integrated graphics and m card don't even show up under hardware. Not sure of the cpu can be overcome quite as easily though, and most people will just blow your question off with "laptops are not supported" when in fact the alienware is rather niche, and deserves some proper examination.

Anonymous
Not applicable
Necro'ing my own thread here.

I'm happy to report that the same Optimus enabled laptop that didn't work with my DK2 and runtime 0.8, now works perfectly with the new Oculus Home Platform:



Full thread I made about it on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4dtomo/so_optimus_laptops_work_yes/

cybereality
Grand Champion
You're a hero!
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

Anonymous
Not applicable


You're a hero!


:smiley: 

Just been playing Luckeys Tale and man, even the DK2 has come a long way since I last used it!

I am hoping that as the DK2 works, the CV1 will also work, so I feel I will be putting in an order soon!

GBGraham
Honored Guest
The real heroes are your developers! I develop software for engineering and scientific visualization and exploring what VR could enable. The data does not push the rift to the extent the photo-realistic games do so the horse power of my MSI GT70 has been just fine in extended mode with the DK2. I've been stuck at 0.6.0.1 for some time now so it is really great to be working with the latest runtime in direct mode. My own apps are running well but I have found the commercial apps are a mixed bag. Luckeys Tale and Oculus Home run fine (showing it can be done). The 360-photo and video viewer apps fail, complaining that they require the GPU to directly drive the display (non-optimus). BlazeRush and ED time out with Oculus Home reporting that they failed to load (probably the same issue). Anyway, I'm just happy to be able to code against something more up to date. With the current runtime, the DK2 makes a great device for student projects. I hope it can continue to survive a while longer.

jbobo348
Honored Guest
It can't find my graphics card. I have a nvidia geforce gtx 970m. please help.

Pinballs
Honored Guest
I also have an nVidia GTX 970m in an expensive MSI laptop that doesn't work with OR. If this will never be supported by Rift then that's piss-poor. In hindsight I would NOT have bought a Rift, knowing this now. Roll on Playstation VR that will work fine in (hahaha) a console!

I wonder how many people with very high-end gaming laptops have ordered Rifts and are now disappointed? How many returns will result? Very many to both questions, I suspect, and that represents a failed launch. As I say, an extremely piss-poor effort from Rift. Shame on you.

Will this be patched or are people like me with laptops screwed? Last purchase I ever make from OR people.

AtlasP
Explorer
The lack of HMD support for laptops is a *hardware* problem with how Nvidia Optimus is designed--it is not fixable in software and not Oculus's fault. Basically, the way Optimus works your HDMI port is (always) connected to your integrated graphics card, and when your dedicated GPU kicks in it still has to pass the completed frames to your integrated graphics which outputs them to the HDMI port--this adds terrible latency for each frame from when it is finished to when it actually gets displayed. With how tightly Oculus needs to control motion-to-photon latency across the entire stack (sensors->engine->rendering->screens) to well below 20ms *in total/for everything* for the illusion of VR to work, this added latency is insurmountable and unacceptable.

xi11ix
Adventurer
You're not screwed, you just need a laptop with a video card without an 'm' in the name. They did release a compatibility checker. If you didn't check it's your own fault.