Autodesk VRED HTC Vive demo.
Nvidia is getting serious about Virtual Reality (VR) for professionals, today launching its VR Ready programme to help ensure its partners have the right technologies to deliver the ‘best possible VR experience’.
With Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) requiring 90 frames per second, with a display for each eye, VR has exceedingly high-end graphics requirements. Therefore for a desktop workstation to be ‘VR Ready’ it needs to have one or two Nvidia Quadro M5000 or M6000 GPUs, together with an Intel Core i5-490 / Intel Xeon E3-1240 v3 or greater and a HTC Vive (Recommended) or Oculus Rift HMD.
Workstation manufacturers Dell, HP and Lenovo have all announced ‘Nvidia VR Ready’ professional workstations. The HP Z240, Z640 and Z840, Dell Precision T5810, T7810, T7910, R7910, and the Lenovo P500, P710, and P910 all come with Nvidia-recommended configurations.
HP ‘VR Ready’ Z840 workstation with HTC Vive HMD.
MSI has also announced the first ‘Nvidia VR Ready’ mobile workstation, the MSI WT72, designed to handle VR-powered design reviews. It features the new Quadro M5500, which is said to be the world’s fastest mobile GPU.
The machine has already been tested and optimised for 3D visualization software, Autodesk VRED. “We’ve certified the MSI professional ‘VR Ready’ laptop with the Nvidia Quadro M5500 mobile GPU because it delivers an amazing Autodesk VRED VR experience wherever our customers need it,” said Lukas Faeth, product manager, Autodesk VRED.
With professional VR, architects like those at McCarthy Building Companies Inc. can let customers visualize concepts and designs and walk through complete virtual buildings.
“Providing customers with a high-fidelity VR experience during design review allows them to realistically visualize and make informed decisions, which can prevent costly design changes after construction has started,” said Alex Cunningham, VDC engineer at McCarthy Building Companies. “With Nvidia Quadro driving VR at high frame rates, the VR Ready MSI laptop lets us bring virtual reality to our clients’ locations and communicate designs more effectively.”
