Can you use Oculus Rift with Mac?

Can you use Oculus Rift with Mac?

The Oculus Rift is one of the most popular virtual reality headsets in the world at the moment, with the company, arguably, being responsible for the virtual reality boom that were witnessing at the moment. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey created the prototype Oculus Rift in his parents garage back in 2011 when he was only 18 years old, and when it hit Kickstarter, he got $2.5 million in funding. Since then, a number of other virtual reality headsets haveappeared, from the more budget (Homido VR headset) to the more extravagant (HTC Vive).

Oculus even got for an eye-watering $2bn, which should give you some idea of how important virtual reality is, and not just in the gaming world. But with the Oculus Riftnow readily available in the UK, the question is can you use Oculus Rift with your ? Here is where we explain all you need to know about Oculus Rift Mac support.

While once upon a time the notion of using the Oculus Rift on a Mac was nothing more than a novelty, a recent announcement at . But before we get to the exciting announcement, let us first give you a brief history of Oculus Rift Mac support. For a while, it was assumed that the Oculus Rift would work with Mac just as it was intended to work with Windows, but back in May 2015, the company cleared up the confusion in a .

Sadly, it wasnt the news that VR fans with a Mac were waiting for in fact, the blog post informed users that development for both and Linux had been paused to concentrate efforts on the PC release. Atman Binstock of Oculus wrote: Now, admittedly, the selection of games available for Mac users is nowhere near as big as whats available on Windows, but it seems that it may not be a lack of games that forced Oculus hand on suspending Macsupport in fact, it seems to be more about spec than anything else.

In the same , Atman Binstock went on to explain that the graphical power required to power a full VR experience wasn't available on any Mac or laptop (apart from one or two, maybe). Binstock noted. This is definitely true of the Mac mini, MacBook Air and the 13in MacBook Pro as they all feature Intel integrated graphics cards, which doesnt even come close to being able to power the Rift.

The Mac Pro boasts dual AMD FirePro cards, although these arent optimised for gaming and without the software support to go along with the hardware, it couldnt power the Rift anyway. The full recommended spec for the Oculus Rift as is follows: During an IGN Live interview with Luckey Palmer, ex-CEO of Oculus, back at E3 2015, he suggested that it may not work with Macs anytime soon. , Palmer said, .

He followed up the remark with . Luckey continued to explain. It looks as if Luckey Palmer may have to live up to his words (or at least his colleagues at Oculus will, anyway) as Apple recently made a number of hardware-related announcements at WWDC 2017 that directly involve virtual reality. For one, Apple announced the iMac Pro, a VR-ready Mac powerful enough to render high-end graphics thanks to its discrete graphics card.

While it's not out until the end of the year, it's a sign of graphically powerful Macs to come. In fact, Apple didn't stop there; the company also offersdiscrete graphics cards in many variants of iMac available right now, ranging from the Radeon Pro 555 or 560 with up to 4GB VRAM inthe 21.5in iMac with 4K display, tothe27in range that boasts aRadeon Pro 570, 575 or 580 with up to 8GB VRAM. Along with the more powerful hardware, Apple announced that SteamVR will be macOS compatible, meaning those with a powerful enough Mac can create or play VR games without a PC. Now, while SteamVR support suggests that the Oculus Rift will work on Mac, we're yet to have confirmation from Oculus.

Yes, SteamVR fully supports the Oculus Rift, but Oculus will still need to develop macOS-compatible drivers to power the headset. On the other hand, HTC and Valve have confirmed that the HTC Vive will be fully compatible with macOS later this year. Great news! So, while users can't currently use the Oculus Rift on a Mac, we expect that to change in the very near future.Well update this article with new information as soon as we receive it, so check back periodically for updates on Oculus Rift Mac support.