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

Wednesday March 1, 2017 11:22 am PST by Juli Clover
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.

Tag: Oculus Rift
[ 216 comments ]


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WinstonRumfoord
33 months ago
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.
Rating: 71 Votes
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aaronhead14
33 months ago
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!
Rating: 46 Votes
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macsplusmacs
33 months ago
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.
Rating: 40 Votes
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macsrcool1234
33 months ago
Makes sense since no mac machine is capable of a playable VR experience.
Rating: 27 Votes
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gretafour
33 months ago
Well, he's not wrong about Apple. They need to be more aggressive on graphics.
Rating: 22 Votes
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WestonHarvey1
33 months ago

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.
Rating: 17 Votes
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NoNothing
33 months ago

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 ('https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/oculus-lowers-minimum-rift-specs-using-asynchronous-spacewarp-tech/') 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.
Rating: 15 Votes
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mistasopz
33 months ago
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.
Rating: 9 Votes
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ImperialForces
33 months ago
As long as Apple pushes integrated GPUs and uses obsolete Open GL standards, I don't see this trend reversing. Ever.
Rating: 9 Votes
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soupcan
33 months ago
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.
Rating: 8 Votes

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