Oculus Rift news and updates: VR headset to soon work with low-end systems

Last week, Oculus announced the Asynchronous Spacewarp — a technology it has in the works — that will enable the Oculus virtual reality (VR) headset to finally work with PC systems that have lower specifications.

VR gaming is slowly making its way to the higher stratosphere of the market. And it can be a little bit disappointing for some because VR gaming used to require PCs with whopping specifications that don't come cheap. Luckily, Oculus found a way to address the issue.

So far, the recommended PC specs for Oculus Rift include Nvidia GTX 970 or Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) R9 290, at least 8 GB random-access memory (RAM) and Intel i5-4590 or higher.

According to Oculus' official blog, "Oculus is releasing a new technology aimed at reducing system hardware requirements while maintaining content quality across a wider array of hardware. Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW) is a frame-rate smoothing technique that almost halves the CPU/GPU time required to produce nearly the same output from the same content."

Once the ASW is completed, Oculus promised that it will not require extra effort from developers before it can be used. The ASW technology will practically lower the graphics requirement. Before, Oculus Rift requires PC rigs that have graphics support of 90 frames per second (fps). With ASW, games will get almost exactly the same performance even when a PC is only able to run at 45 fps.

Oculus noted that "The hardware requirements for ASW are modest. This functionality has been enabled on all current-generation AMD GPUs (RX 400 series) and previous- or current-generation Nvidia GPUs (GTX 900 or 1000 series)."

Although ASW will let the Oculus Rift function with a Windows 8 PC, the VR company still recommends a Windows 10 rig for better performance. Oculus also noted that ASW will only naturally work when the VR headset detects a lower system than what it was originally built for. Therefore, ASW should not be expected to work in PCs with higher systems already.

Oculus promised that ASW will soon be available with the release of Oculus 1.10 update.