Tuesday, March 15th 2016

AMD Takes 83% Share of Global VR System Market

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Mar 15th, 2016 06:49 Discuss (31 Comments)

AMD announced today at the 2016 Game Developer Conference that the company will underscore its dominance of the global virtual reality systems market. It revealed new advances in hardware and software to further the reach of VR, and unveiled its new GPU certified program that simplifies adoption of VR technology for consumers and content creators.

"AMD continues to be a driving force in virtual reality," said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. "We're bringing the technology to more people around the world through our efforts to expand the VR ecosystem with VR i-Cafés in China, new Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets, and a wide variety of content partners in gaming, entertainment, education, science, medicine, journalism and several other exciting fields."

AMD is also making VR more easily accessible to consumers and content creators with its GPU certified program featuring the new "Radeon VR Ready Premium" and "Radeon VR Ready Creator" tiers. Its forthcoming Polaris GPUs and award-winning AMD LiquidVR technology will simultaneously advance groundbreaking VR-optimized graphics.

Expanding the VR ecosystem

Leading market share - AMD is powering the overwhelming majority of home entertainment VR systems around the world, with an estimated 83 percent market share.1 This share is driven in part by AMD technology powering VR-capable game consoles installed in millions of homes globally.
Powering the premium VR headsets of 2016 - AMD is partnering with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive Pre headset manufacturers to ensure the Radeon ecosystem is ready to take advantage of their hugely anticipated launches this year.
Collaborating to develop new form factors - AMD is working with Sulon Technologies Inc. on the Sulon Q headset, the world's first and only all-in-one, tether-free, "wear and play" headset for virtual reality, augmented reality, and spatial computing. Powered by Radeon graphics and leveraging AMD's LiquidVR technology for smooth and responsive AR and VR experiences, the Sulon Q headset allows users to effortlessly enhance the real world through augmented reality applications, and seamlessly transitions from the real world to virtual worlds.
Powering premium VR experiences beyond gaming - AMD is collaborating with leading organizations to illustrate the power of VR outside of gaming, working with companies in healthcare, entertainment, education, media, training and simulation, among others. AMD is already seeing fruits of the efforts in projects including General Electric's "The Neuro VR Experience" experience simulating brain activity, The Smithsonian Museum's "First: The Story of Orville and Wilbur" experience, and incredible storytelling in VR through a recently announced collaboration with the Associated Press.

Advancing technology to power premium VR experiences

Showcasing next-generation VR-optimized GPU hardware - AMD today demonstrated for the first time ever the company's forthcoming Polaris 10 GPU running Valve's Aperture Science Robot Repair demo powered by the HTC Vive Pre. The sample GPU features the recently announced Polaris GPU architecture designed for 14nm FinFET, optimized for DirectX 12 and VR, and boasts significant architectural improvements over previous AMD architectures including HDR monitor support, industry-leading performance-per-watt2, and AMD's 4th generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture.
Growing adoption of GPUOpen's LiquidVR technology - AMD LiquidVR technology helps address obstacles in content, comfort and compatibility that together take the industry a step closer to true, life-like presence in VR games, applications and experiences. Today AMD LiquidVR technology is being used across the VR software stack by headset manufacturers, including Oculus, HTC, game engine developers and content creators.

Simplifying VR adoption for consumers and content creators
AMD will today announce its new GPU certified program for VR, allowing OEMs, system builders, and AIB partners to instantly communicate to consumers which certified Radeon products can be used to deliver exceptional VR experiences with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets.

"Radeon VR Ready Premium" solutions for exceptional VR experiences - Certified Radeon R9 290-class graphics cards and higher, and systems built using those cards, are now eligible for the "Radeon VR Ready Premium" seal. "VR-optimized systems like the HP ENVY Phoenix is specifically configured with the quality, performance and computing power to enable amazing virtual experiences," said Kevin Frost, vice president and general manager, consumer personal systems, HP Inc. "HP is working with AMD to deliver the VR-ready HP ENVY Phoenix tower for a seamless out-of-the-box experience. With the Radeon VR Ready Premium program, it will help customers to take the guess work out of selecting the right VR capable graphics."
"Radeon VR Ready Creator" solutions for VR professionals, experience designers, and developers - The "Radeon VR Ready Creator" seal signifies unprecedented performance and industry-leading innovation that empowers VR content creators and experience designers with incredibly powerful and capable development tools. Featuring an upcoming graphics card with AMD's LiquidVR SDK (software developer kit), the "Radeon VR Ready Creator" designation signifies the ultimate performance for both content creation and consumption for VR professionals.

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31 Comments on AMD Takes 83% Share of Global VR System Market

RCoon

btarunrThis share is driven in part by AMD technology powering VR-capable game consoles

This is basically the only reason they can make this rather empty, arbitrary claim. Their hardware is in every console, but is by no means VR-optimal. Claiming an XBox One/PS4 is VR-"capable" is one thing, actually making a decent experience of VR is something entirely different, something which I sincerely doubt the current gen of consoles can achieve well.

ne6togadno

RCoonThis is basically the only reason they can make this rather empty, arbitrary claim. Their hardware is in every console, but is by no means VR-optimal. Claiming an XBox One/PS4 is VR-"capable" is one thing, actually making a decent experience of VR is something entirely different, something which I sincerely doubt the current gen of consoles can achieve well.

and why not. if thay are capable to run 1080p they wont have problems to run 1080p vr.
key point here is 1080p vr =/= 2x1080p. it is 1080p splitted 2 parts that desplay literaly same image so apu will need to render half 1080p image. i dont see this to be such problem for current gen consoles.
at the end it will be up to devs to make proper implementation of dx12 so the can squize max possible juice from consoles' metal.

64K

ne6togadnoand why not. if thay are capable to run 1080p they wont have problems to run 1080p vr.
key point here is 1080p vr =/= 2x1080p. it is 1080p splitted 2 parts that desplay literaly same image so apu will need to render half 1080p image. i dont see this to be such problem for current gen consoles.
at the end it will be up to devs to make proper implementation of dx12 so the can squize max possible juice from consoles' metal.

I thought the way VR worked was that it renders a slightly different image for each eye simultaneously. So in order to achieve 30 FPS the console would have to generate 60 FPS total. With Xbox One struggling to upscale some titles to 1080p at over 30 FPS then I don't see how it would be possible to achieve 60 FPS minimum.

xela333

ne6togadnoand why not. if thay are capable to run 1080p they wont have problems to run 1080p vr.
key point here is 1080p vr =/= 2x1080p. it is 1080p splitted 2 parts that desplay literaly same image so apu will need to render half 1080p image. i dont see this to be such problem for current gen consoles.
at the end it will be up to devs to make proper implementation of dx12 so the can squize max possible juice from consoles' metal.

Your forgetting that current gen consoles struggle to even hit 1080p in AAA titles, let alone 1080p for VR at a smooth 60hz to make it an enjoyable experience.

There is a reason Occulas are stating an nVidia 970 minimum for PC's

looniam

this begs the question:
just how big is the VR market right now?

RejZoR

While there is an awesome immersion factor since you only see in-game world with VR headsets, they are still hugely impractical, clumsy, expensive and I bet also don't have as good image quality. There is also a headache factor and we'll be killing our eyes even more than having fixed distance of 1 meter from monitor.

ne6togadno

64KI thought the way VR worked was that it renders a slightly different image for each eye simultaneously. So in order to achieve 30 FPS the console would have to generate 60 FPS total. With Xbox One struggling to upscale some titles to 1080p at over 30 FPS then I don't see how it would be possible to achieve 60 FPS minimum.

it is brute force apporach but true it is 2x30fps. but you make a very common mistake in calculations. yes for 30fps gpu need to render 2x30fps in order both eyes to see 30fps BUT those 30fps are not 1920x1080 frames even thou since specs of vr sets are given as 1080p, 1440p etc and everyone assumes that it is 2x1XXXp. In real those are 960x1080 (for 1080p) and 2x30fps of them is equal to 30fps@1080p (xbox may be strugle to maitane em but ps4 is doing it fine most of the time).
i myself noticed exact wording for vr sets res in today's article about sulon q and then i've checked oculus' specs and it says

This headset works with 2160 x 1200 resolution - that's one resolution over two OLED displays, working at 233 million pixels per second.

which is just 240pixels over 1920x1200 hance 290/970 are recomended hardware for it.

but if you think how human eyes work you will see that acctual difference in the image comes from differece in lighting effects shadows etc. base part of the scene however is constnat (poligon mesh of the scene, materials, textures etc for one frame is the same for both eyes). so in order to get 2 slightly different images for both eyes you need to render scene up to the textures once and then to apply light effects, shadows etc 2 times. this way you will have much more efficient use of available hardware but i am not programer and cant say if this is possible to be acheaved or not.

EarthDog

Always trying to dominate the future, and never the present...........

alucasa

EarthDogAlways trying to dominate the future, and never the present...........

Hah! Quite an ironic statement. But appears to be true indeed...

#10

EarthDog

It breaks my heart. I would love to jump back to AMD.. but its been since s754/s939 days.

#11

geon2k2

ne6togadnobut if you think how human eys work you will see that acctual difference in the image comes from differece in lighting effects shadows etc. base part of the scene however is constnat (poligon mesh of the scene, materials, textures etc for one frame is the same for both eyes). so in order to get 2 slightly different images for both eyes you need to render scene up to the textures once and then to apply light effects, shadows etc 2 times. this way you will have much more efficient use of available hardware but i am not programer and cant say if this is possible to be acheaved or not.

The logic for the FPS and reduced resolution seems fair, and I agree with you, however the difference between left and right eye is not only shadows and lightning. One of the images must be rotated with 6 degrees or so and then applying lightning and so on. Anyway even this rotation should be less computational intensive than regenerating the whole frame again, but the questions is if the games/drivers do it like this, or if they just redraw and recalculate the whole thing again?

#12

xvi

Isn't it about resolution with VR? AMD hardware handles higher resolution a little better than nVidia, so it would seem that it'd generally be better for VR.

#13

medi01

RCoonThis is basically the only reason they can make this rather empty, arbitrary claim. Their hardware is in every console, but is by no means VR-optimal. Claiming an XBox One/PS4 is VR-"capable" is one thing, actually making a decent experience of VR is something entirely different, something which I sincerely doubt the current gen of consoles can achieve well.

One word for ya: Morpheus.

EarthDogAlways trying to dominate the future, and never the present...........

BS. VR is now.

#14

EarthDog

Ohh, you mean that rift, vive, and Samsung thing in everyone's house next to their 4k monitors and $500 gpus required to drive it well? My apologies, you were correct....

#15

swaaye

I'm a bit amused by how the internet sentiment works on VR. I imagine some of you were around in the '90s when consumer VR was originally being pushed and 3D hardware was simple shaded polygons or badly distorted texture maps. I played around with a Forte VFX-1 once or twice. It was neat and I think that was like dual 320x200 LCDs.

Now we are complaining that a super futuristic XBO or PS4 can't handle VR. Oh really. Obviously this belief can never end because then you will stop spending money on more hyped up stuff. :)

#16

EarthDog

xviIsn't it about resolution with VR? AMD hardware handles higher resolution a little better than nVidia, so it would seem that it'd generally be better for VR.

latency on NVIDIA, wasn't(isn't?) up to snuff as well. Not sure if that has changed or not.

#17

Caring1

RCoonThis is basically the only reason they can make this rather empty, arbitrary claim. Their hardware is in every console, but is by no means VR-optimal. Claiming an XBox One/PS4 is VR-"capable" is one thing, actually making a decent experience of VR is something entirely different, something which I sincerely doubt the current gen of consoles can achieve well.

Hopefully we will start seeing some revues once the PS4 VR headsets hit the stands.
www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/4akgwp/playstation_vr_released_october_2016_cost_399/
They are also reported to allow others to see what you are experiencing via a connected TV, so your friends are not just sitting around watching you nodding away with heavy goggles strapped to your head.

#18

FordGT90Concept

"I go fast!1!11!1!"

ne6togadnoand why not. if thay are capable to run 1080p they wont have problems to run 1080p vr.

Need 2 x 1080p (renders a separate view point for each eye--no, they aren't the same) and preferrably 90 frames per second...not 30 which is all consoles usually target. That's 373.248 million pixels to update every second or here comes the motion sickness.

PlayStation VR already announced their hardware is quite a ways below the Vive and Rift.

#19

medi01

xela333Your forgetting that current gen consoles struggle to even hit 1080p in AAA titles, let alone 1080p for VR at a smooth 60hz to make it an enjoyable experience.

There is a reason Occulas are stating an nVidia 970 minimum for PC's

Well, but you can get to nearly any resolution (having enough RAM) by just reducing sceen complexity.
Last time I've checked, lot's of Steam users were on... iGPUs FROM INTEL. Which, last time I've chekced, were way slower than 7850/7870 in XBone/PS4.
Consoles also have optimization advantage, games are optimized for that particular hardware configuration.
.
This clip was done on PS4 is rendered on the fly and I find it pretty impressive:

FordGT90ConceptPlayStation VR already announced their hardware is quite a ways below the Vive and Rift.

Care to post a link?
PS
Nvm, got this from wiki:

Playstation VR (Morpheus) (Oct 2016)
960x1080 per eye (basically half of 1980p)
120Hz (33% higher refresh rate)
FOV 100°
399$

Oculus Rift (28th March 2016)
1080x1200 per eye (25% more pixels, than PS4)
90Hz
FOV ?
599$

HTC Vive (5th April 2016)
1080x1200 per eye (25% more pixels, than PS4)
90Hz
FOV 110° (+10 compared to PS4)
799$

Bjorn_Of_IcelandWith PS2 era like level of graphical detail

Yea, right. Here is 1080p game for ya.
And 1080p is all PS VR needs.
And, since I anticipate "OMG, low resolution": it's merely 25% less pixels, than in OR/Vive. Oh, and with 33% higher refresh rate.

#20

Bjorn_Of_Iceland

xela333Your forgetting that current gen consoles struggle to even hit 1080p in AAA titles, let alone 1080p for VR at a smooth 60hz to make it an enjoyable experience.

There is a reason Occulas are stating an nVidia 970 minimum for PC's

With PS2 era like level of graphical detail, they can.

#21

FordGT90Concept

"I go fast!1!11!1!"

medi01Yea, right. Here is 1080p game for ya.
And 1080p is all PS VR needs.
And, since I anticipate "OMG, low resolution": it's merely 25% less pixels, than in OR/Vive. Oh, and with 33% higher refresh rate.

That's not actual game footage. It's pre-rendered for a press event. Here's actual gameplay footage:

This is the multiplayer which runs at up to 60 frames per second in theory, but...
a) that doesn't look like 60 FPS to me.
b) that really looks like shit compared to PC titles (which will look even worse an inch away from your eye)
c) even if they're constantly hitting 60 FPS, they need at least another 30 (90 FPS), if not 60 (120 FPS) more frames on top of that

Something has to give to make it work with the PlayStation 4. Then again, I think the design target is PlayStation 5 more than 4. Some titles may be made to work with the PlayStation 4 and VR but the bulk will be for the next console which will presumably have a more robust GPU.

#22

medi01

FordGT90ConceptThat's not actual game footage. It's pre-rendered for a press event.

That's just speculations.

FordGT90Conceptthat really looks like shit compared to PC titles

Depends on titles, I guess. XCOM2 I've played recently on PC (with 380 OC and maxed settings) didn't look any better.

People with R9 390s cannot seriously demand consoles to match their GPU power.
7870 + optimization benefits ~= current mid range (380?) GPU PC level, isn't it?

FordGT90Conceptc) even if they're constantly hitting 60 FPS, they need at least another 30 (90 FPS), if not 60 (120 FPS) more frames on top of that

But we don't really know what framerates they are hitting, do we?
Sony's VR project is older than OR.
Sony has released "wearable TVs" quite some time ago (e.g. www.amazon.com/dp/B005SCYZGA/?tag=tec06d-20 )
Reducing nausea was one of the major points of their research, I'm pretty sure they are well aware of the frame rates they need to hit for comfortable VRing.
And last, but not least, there should be a reason, why they went with 120Hz, when competitors opted for 90.

#23

FordGT90Concept

"I go fast!1!11!1!"

medi01That's just speculations.

No, the perspective isn't attached to a player, it is rigged to transition between players. Player behavior is also extremely scripted. It may have been rendered on a PS4 but by merely slowing the perspective down, it makes it look a lot better than the live gameplay footage.

medi01Depends on titles, I guess. XCOM2 I've played recently on PC (with 380 OC and maxed settings) didn't look any better.

People with R9 390s cannot seriously demand consoles to match their GPU power.
7870 + optimization benefits ~= current mid range (380?) GPU PC level, isn't it?

It's substantially weaker than that--probably forgetting to take into consideration the fact the clockspeeds on the GPU are much lower than a discreet GPU.

Besides, that's not my point. VR has requirements which include high pixel density and high refresh rate (because it is so close to the eye). If discreet PC GPUs struggle to cope, the PlayStation 4 is going to fare worse. Corners have to be cut.

medi01But we don't really know what framerates they are hitting, do we?
Sony's VR project is older than OR.
Sony has released "wearable TVs" quite some time ago (e.g. www.amazon.com/dp/B005SCYZGA/?tag=tec06d-20 )
Reducing nausea was one of the major points of their research, I'm pretty sure they are well aware of the frame rates they need to hit for comfortable VRing.
And last, but not least, there should be a reason, why they went with 120Hz, when competitors opted for 90.

The GPU won't allow it unless the triangle count is reduced (especially if they're rendering the scene a third time to be displayed on a TV).

Reducing motion sickness and increasing immersion is the goal of all VR resarch out there.

They sacrificed pixels/inch to reach a higher refresh rate their console can't hit without cutting corners. See the problem? Both are important which is why Rift and Vive came to the same conclusion. In truth, Rift and Vive likely still aren't high enough especially as far as pixel count is concerned.

#24

64K

I think there are some titles that the current gen consoles are going to handle poorly in VR. If we accept that they have roughly the performance of a HD 7870 then I just had a look at some performance reviews here and the 970 and 390 are almost twice as fast as a 7870. Right now I would say that the 390 and 970 are solid mid range GPUs but when Polaris and Pascal come out I'm thinking they will drop down in comparative performance to entry level GPUs. Required GPU performance always goes up over time. Even taking into consideration the better optimization afforded the consoles then what are these new gen consoles going to look like with VR in a couple of years with roughly 1/2 to 3/4 the performance of an entry level PC GPU.

#25

rtwjunkie

PC Gaming Enthusiast

medi01BS. VR is now.

My hat is off to AMD, I'm glad to see them leading by a large margin in something.

However, VR isn't now. VR is a niche market, and likely will be for many years.

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AMD Takes 83% Share of Global VR System Market

31 Comments on AMD Takes 83% Share of Global VR System Market

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