Oculus Rift Support for Macs Not 'Currently on the Roadmap'

[MacRumors]

Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell recently sat down with TechCrunch for an interview discussing the future of the Oculus Rift, where he said that while Mac support is something the company would like to implement, it's not currently in the works.

According to Mitchell, while Mac support is "near-and-dear" to his heart, Oculus is "just not quite there yet." Mac integration is, in fact, so far off that it's not even on the Oculus roadmap for the next six months.

"We do want to do OS X (macOS) support for Rift, it's not something that's currently on the roadmap for-- I can even say-- the next six months," Mitchell tells me. "We will continue to revisit it, the real challenge for us is just how much we invest into that space because it does require a lot of our time and energy to get it right and to deliver a great experience."

Early versions of the Oculus Rift did work with some higher-end Mac machines, but during the product's development period, Oculus was forced to drop Mac support. Mac development was put on hold in order to focus on "delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience," on Windows machines with more robust hardware.

Last year, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey made headlines when he said the Oculus Rift wouldn't offer Mac support until Apple releases a "good computer." He said Oculus Rift support was ultimately "up to Apple," and that the company needed to "prioritize higher-end GPUs."

Hardware requirements for the Rift became less stringent in October thanks to software advancements and will now run on any machine equipped with an Nvidia 960 or greater, an Intel i3-6100 or greater, or an AMD FX4350 or greater. With the changes, some Macs, including the latest MacBook Pro, could potentially work with the Rift, but Oculus isn't yet prepared to delve into Mac development.

Starting today, Oculus is dropping the price of the Rift and Touch controllers by $100, dropping the price to $598 for both products, a much more affordable price point. Individually, the Rift is now priced at $499 and the Touch controllers are now priced at $99.

Article Link: Oculus Rift Support for Macs Not 'Currently on the Roadmap'

 

[macsplusmacs]

Well after their current legal loss and their upcoming one, and the lousy sales figures of VR games in general, Occulus themselves may not be on the Occullus roadmap.

heck of a job Facebook.

 

[aaronhead14]

If Apple would just freaking make a Mac Pro with a powerful NVIDIA GPU (like the new 1080ti or Titan Pascal), then maybe Oculus would!

 

[WinstonRumfoord]

You mean the ultra thin computers with traditionally questionable cooling and mobile graphics cards can't hack it? Color me shocked.

This is what happens when you trade function for form.

 

[macsrcool1234]

Makes sense since no mac machine is capable of a playable VR experience.

 

[cppguy]

There has never been a Mac powerful enough for Oculus. It requires a proper water-cooled box with dual video cards, not these ultra thin portables.

 

[cardfan]

Is this really news? I'd like to see more Mac support too but this is niche anyways. Heck, there's a crapload of software i use in my field that I'd love to see target Macs but that isn't happening either. No hardware issues there either.

Maybe Apple should pull a string or two and see where it takes them since that became a hobby for them.

 

[gretafour]

Well, he's not wrong about Apple. They need to be more aggressive on graphics.

 

[Wowereit]

Well after their current legal loss and their upcoming one, and the lousy sales figures of VR games in general, Occulus themselves may not be on the Occullus roadmap.

heck of a job Facebook.

Oculus is a loss leader, that's nothing new.
But as VR hype is over and Apple doesn't even produce computers capable of doing proper VR, macOS support doesn't seem very important to me.

I mean: let's say Apple does a Mac Pro refresh.
So what? A single device with negligible market share is still not worth it.

 

[soupcan]

Captain obvious is in the house it seems. The strongest Mac by GPU power is the Mac Pro and it's the only one with actual desktop GPUs. After that every single Mac with a dGPU has mobile parts that underperform horrendously and thermal throttle like nothing else because Apple likes to be the form-over-function guy in the industry.

 

[Red Oak]

You mean the ultra thin computers with traditionally questionable cooling and mobile graphics cards can't hack it? Color me shocked.

This is what happens when you trade function for form.

Please tell me Mr Snark you are at least using Windows

 

[fitshaced]

They should just bring support to major consoles. The high end PC market won't be enough to keep this afloat.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

Not in the pipeline, eh?

 

[sputnikv]

If Apple would just freaking make a Mac Pro with a powerful NVIDIA GPU (like the new 1080ti or Titan Pascal), then maybe Oculus would!

you seem to be under the impression that droves of people would buy said mac pro, enough to warrant millions towards the development of oculus for mac. you also seem to be under the impression that apple doesn't know what does and doesn't sell and that you know better

 

[ImperialForces]

As long as Apple pushes integrated GPUs and uses obsolete Open GL standards, I don't see this trend reversing. Ever.

 

[Kiro]

To play which games on macOS?

 

[Plutonius]

If Apple would just freaking make a Mac Pro with a powerful NVIDIA GPU (like the new 1080ti or Titan Pascal), then maybe Oculus would!

Who would buy a Mac Pro just to get a Oculus ?

 

[Chupa Chupa]

OK by me. Buying an Oculus headset is not on my purchasing roadmap so all is good from here.

 

[pat500000]

-Walks out the room-
(Slams the door)

"Wait a minute"

(Opens the door)
-walks in to the room-

No Mac Pro huh?

 

[mistasopz]

Apple doesn't make powerful computers so I don't blame them. The only thing that comes close is the Mac Pro and it's long been outdated and you could build a more powerful Windows machine (graphics wise) for a quarter of the price.

 

[WestonHarvey1]

There has never been a Mac powerful enough for Oculus. It requires a proper water-cooled box with dual video cards, not these ultra thin portables.

First sentence is basically correct. Second sentence is absurd.

 

[macsrcool1234]

First sentence is basically correct. Second sentence is absurd.

Yeah I don't know what he's smoking. I run a Vive with a single air cooled GPU with SS enabled.

 

[julesme]

Oculus who?

Seriously, though, earlier this week Tim said Apple will focus more on creative pros, so perhaps graphics support will improve going forward...

 

[NoNothing]

You mean the ultra thin computers with traditionally questionable cooling and mobile graphics cards can't hack it? Color me shocked.

This is what happens when you trade function for form.

"Hardware requirements for the Rift became less stringent in October thanks to software advancements and will now run on any machine equipped with an Nvidia 960 or greater, an Intel i3-6100 or greater, or an AMD FX4350 or greater. With the changes, some Macs, including the latest MacBook Pro, could potentially work with the Rift, but Oculus isn't yet prepared to delve into Mac development."

You mean you were unable to read the actual article before you complained about stuff (apparently) you know nothing about? Color me shocked. What I find interesting is after software improvements, Occulus was able to support lower-end hardware. So, basically, they had high end spec requirements because of incompetence in original design.

 

[alexgowers]

Well after their current legal loss and their upcoming one, and the lousy sales figures of VR games in general, Occulus themselves may not be on the Occullus roadmap.

heck of a job Facebook.

Exactly what I was about to say. VR was DOA. I have no desire to use it and most people don't no matter the immersion it's still requires huge headsets and is not acceptable to use unless alone. Even instagram glasses won't be around in a year. No one wants to wear something on their face, people with glasses don't and I should know I paid thousands of pounds for intrusive laser eye surgery just to get rid of them!