Nvidia launches VR Ready program for PC and graphics card partners

If you had your heart set on experiencing some of the adventures promised by virtual reality, you may have to shell out some more money before you begin your journey. Well fortunately NVIDIA are here to tell you whether the system you’re looking at is VR ready or not.

According to Nvidia, just around 13 million computers or so will be powerful enough to run virtual reality in the most ideal setup: an enjoyable, high-frame-rate experience for the person under the headset. Starting now, new NVIDIA graphics cards will have a VR Ready logo placed on them if they are sufficiently powerful to run virtual reality games at the defined minimums.

General manager of emerging technologies Jason Paul said that navigating a new technology like virtual reality “can be daunting” for customers. That’s a lot of interest, but VR presents some issues, too. If you look at your typical PC gaming experience, 90 percent of the gamers out there play at 1080p. Are any of you planning on picking up a VR headset this year? All products that meet NVIDIA’s standards to run Virtual Reality will be assigned a “GeForce GTX VR Ready” badge on either the system itself or the graphics cards. On one hand, it’s a six-fold increase from past year (which accumulated total revenue of $540 million); it’s far lesser than the $2 billion cost that Facebook borne to acquire Oculus VR in 2014.

IHS, however, has these figures nearly completely reversed. Or is there a stretch being used to sell the Gameworks VR software to prospective buyers of Oculus Rift?

“I probably have a half-dozen research reports that have forecasts for next year to the end of the decade”.

Once confined to realm of science-fiction movies like Walt Disney’s “Tron”, virtual reality is expected to be a top attraction at the Consumer Electronics Show next week in Las Vegas.