Good morning!
I’m new to this world.
In the next months i want start to learning Unity, C# and blender.
I have realized that I need a new laptop (now i have an old asus that it’s obsolete).
I would like to work on vr games and so i think i will need a pc that support vr (maybe i will use my psvr with this new pc).
Like I said in the title I want to buy a laptop (so that i can use it anywhere).
I want to spend the right amount of money for a PC that can meet my needs (we can say that i want to spend less than 900$).
What can i take?
What are the technical characteristics that I have to look at?
Thank you very much. I hope to be on track as soon as possible
Won’t happen. That budget for a VR-ready laptop is simply not realistic. Both headsets recommend a GeForce GTX 1060 and a laptop with that card is typically in the $1,000 to $1,500 price range.
You’ve probably heard it before, but your best use of budget is to build a desktop pc. If you haven’t done that before it might be kind of intimidating… but it’s really easy. Actually Ryiah here gave me the info I needed to build my own and it’s been a great investment. I didn’t know nuffin bout combuters when I first started either. Nothing.
Also, just a forewarning, be ready to temper your expectations. Try out both programming and modeling for sure, but to get decent at either of those jobs you’ll need at least a year of super focused study. You can certainly manage to learn both but I’d venture to say they almost require like different hemispheres of your brain to be good at, so cycling between the two while going through the frustrations of learning all this for the first time will be extremely challenging.
Maybe I’m missing something here - where do you get a usable VR rig plus PC for 900? Or phrased differently: how much do you intend to spend on your VR rig vis-a-vis your PC?
Mind you, there are great solutions that work with Laptops, but there are a number of caveats:
Laptops are more expensive (bang for the buck) than Desktops
A great solution with Laptops are eGPU - but they make the Proposition even more expensive
when you design a VR game, expect to spend lots of time wearing the Headset. Trust me (I’ve spent in excess of 2’000 hours developing inside the goggles), you WANT the best VR set money can buy. That’ll be even more expensive, so don’t think for a second that saving money here is a smart move.
We currently use a Razer Core X (eGPU) with ATI Vega 64 plus a Vive PRO. Not at all cheap. But the headache and back pain went away instantly. Sure it’s now replaced by the worry what to eat, but I digress…
First generation Ryzen 8-core typically sells for less than second generation Ryzen 6-core. They overclock way better than second generation. Performance differences per core will be negligible and it will have two more cores too.
A GTX 1070 Ti didn’t use to cost that much, but depending on where you are in the world you might be paying way more for it than you would think. In the US they’re currently selling for $500 to 600. For that price you can pick up an RTX 2070.
Here in sweden the RTX 2070 is alot more expensive than the 1070 TI. The zen plus generation has a higher clock and memory clock so I would go with it, or wait for zen 2
My problem is that i’m a newbie, so at this point I don’t know what to do…
I know that I will have to invest much much time in this project, actually I can’t use blender and unity with my actual pc.
I wanted a laptop for the portability. I would like to develop for vr in the future.
Could it have sense to start learning blender and unity (no vr) with a medium laptop and only then (if I will gain some skills) buy a great laptop/pc and all the vr stuff?
My HP laptop has an Nvidia Quadro m2000m and it is perfectly acceptable for vr dev. Been using it for years. I use a Vive first gen - I can’t run the pro we have, but the first gen has no problems. You can certainly get a used machine for under a grand and new one for around $1200 - $1500…
A Quadro M2000M is roughly comparable to a GeForce GTX 1050. A quick search for laptops with the Quadro shows them selling for around $800 used, which sounds great until you look up laptops with the GeForce and see them selling for $750 new ($650 if you catch it before it goes off-sale).
That said I can’t recommend this laptop for the exact reason you gave. It won’t run newer headsets. VR enthusiasts are kinda like normal gaming enthusiasts. They migrate to newer hardware as it becomes available. We’re right on the cusp of new headsets from Oculus. This GTX 1050 laptop might last a while or it might need to be replaced six months from now.
If you’re on the fence about whether you want to become a game developer this is likely the best choice. You can purchase laptops that are fully capable of creating mobile games for a very low price. Below is a good example of one that has solid reviews while being very affordable. Just be aware it lacks dedicated graphics. For mobile that’s fine though.
Acer does offer a more expensive model but at the price point they sell it at the laptop I mentioned at the top of the post is a better deal. Once again though be aware that a laptop with a GTX 1050 or weaker has little to no future for VR.
Funny, I’m a fellow VR developer and I barely use the headset after the first months. Sometimes it isn’t even plugged since I already know what the result will be.
Forget Vr for now. This isn’t cheap and price are progressively dropping. By the time you’re ready for VR, you might need new hardware anyways.
Get a decent computer and make sure it has 16GB of ram, a decent SSD, disk space and a reasonable graphic card. Instead of a VR headset, get a secondary screen and a decent mouse.
Perhaps our development styles differ; the development-test-debug cycle in our house virtually guarantees that you spend 90% of your time in-game after we hit alpha. Or perhaps the type of game makes a difference. We tried using a non-VR (headless) version so we can test without using the HMD, but since the game heavily relies on gestures made by the players (which are interpreted as command sequences) we found we could not get by without it.
But then you also said this:
You do not seem to be convinced by the potential of VR. And you didn’t spend much time in VR during development. There is a high likelihood these two are connected. I’m not saying you are wrong, mind you. Perhaps VR isn’t going to ever be successful. But I believe that if you write a VR game and don’t spend much time in that game’s VR yourself, that’s probably a strike against the game, not VR.
You cant make a good VR game without spending alot of time in it. Sure I do not always put it on, but I hold it up with one hand and the other hand on the controller to test something. Good VR is all about the mechanics. And good mechanics need love and care
Great way to misunderstand that post (though not necessarily the first post they made). The OP has a budget of no more than $900. Between the requirements of game development and the requirements of VR that budget is just not realistic.
If they tried to invest into everything needed for VR development they would just end up with a very poor experience and hardware that would almost immediately be in need of replacement, but if they invest in just their computer and wait till they get more money they can have that good experience at a later date.
Remember potential doesn’t mean anything if you can’t afford it.
You do need the headset but at some point you’re making things you already did before and the more you repeat similar situations, the more you can fly blind.
In my case, I’ve been making VR content full time these last two and a half years. I made or worked on more than thirty VR experiences (product presentations, architecture,security training, advertising, games…) but since they all use the same stuff under the hood, I don’t need to spend that much time in VR. Putting the headset on and off, is very disruptive and time consuming so I use the pad alone or have a scene setup to test basic things without VR and only test it when I’m done putting every parts together.
I thought this was common practice, hence my reaction to your message.
That message wasn’t addressed to you but to a beginner asking for advice. Considering he has neither the money to afford VR hardware and neither the skills to create content for it, I told him to buy more relevant gear.
This is true for every discipline/hobby/job and has nothing to do with my previous message or what you thing I think about VR.
Depends on what you are doing. For example we are making AI right now. We havent touched the headset for months. But when making interaction it goes on and off
I count 4 times in this devlog I did. If I didnt do a devlog I would probably have done maybe 2 instead. But still. VR-interaction is a delicate thing. It needs lots of testing as you go
edit I could have done the same thing in a Unit test too we have high code coverage, but when doing interaction its a bit counterproductive in my experience.
I have decided to buy a medium laptop like the acer e15 that Ryiah recommend.
In this moment I need a new laptop because the one i have it’s obsolete.
With the new laptop I will be able to download and run unity and blender, i will start learning the fundamental in unity and blender, then after some months or a year if i will have become good in unity and blender I will evaluate an upgrade to start using vr.
My long term goal would be to create a vr racing game (not for comemrcial purpose, i just want to learn how to program the drive mechanics, how to design the cars, the tracks and the use of vr).
