In other virtual reality-related news, there’s yet another contender in the VR market rearing its vastly promising head at us, the Sulon Q powered by AMD. As anyone probably knows by now, the mere idea of virtual reality requires a lot more investment than we were hoping for initially. First there’s the price of the headset alone, which so far seems to range between $599 for the Oculus Rift and $3,000 for the more augmented reality-oriented Microsoft HoloLens. But on top of that, you require hardware to power up the technology to begin with.
More explicitly, you require a PC or a console that has the necessary juice to get things flowing. And that’s a good couple of gallons of juice that you need. It is estimated that roughly only 1% of the consumer-owned computers in the world have got what it takes to run virtual reality applications and hardware at the current time. Getting a computer that is capable of running VR games will probably cost you another $1,000 at least, so that needs to be added to the expense list if you’re thinking of trying out the next big thing.
But some developers are thinking about that aspect of VR too, and as a result, try to find a way to compensate the high cost of owning a virtual reality device. So comes the savior of the situation – Sulon Q, a VR headset that is powered by AMD – one of the largest hardware producers in the world, famous for its line of Radeon graphics processing units. Through the partnership that the startup Sulon Technologies made with the tech giant resulted in a VR headset that promises not to require a thoroughly equipped gaming monster computer behind it on order to run virtual reality applications.
The Sulon Q uses an AMD FX-8800P processor and the Radeon R7 graphics card, naturally in a form that is adapted for something as small as a VR headset, along with a 256 GB SSD hard drive and 8 GB of RAM. Along with them, AMD also plans to add its LiquidVR technology which is responsible for giving developers the freedom of creating very well detailed graphics for VR applications. Graphics which would afterwards be projected on a 2560 x 1440 OLED display that is existent inside the headset and enhanced thanks to a pair of AstoundSound ear buds that excel in spatial audio.
So far this is only a concept of a VR headset that Sulon and AMD are working on. However, with all that hardware packed in, there is a slight concern regarding how much the Sulon Q would weigh and where all the pieces would fit in. I suppose the first showcase of the prototype will tell.
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