[SOLVED] Hardware for mobile VR

[davide445]

Looking for a solution able to show in mobility a VR project, being GPU streaming not suitable seems real hardware is the only option. Target so far HTC Vive Pro level headset.

Not wanting to go for bulky gaming laptop I have two options

- eGPU on TB3 port of mine Lenovo X380 laptop, with i5 8350U, 8GB RAM

- SFF PC with all desktop grade components (seen there are <10L cases that can stay in a backpack) 

Of course the second solve the problem but it's also more bulky, the first my concern is might become thermally limited from the cpu throttling in the thin case. 

Any experience on that setup. I used an eGPU solution a while ago, but was before my Unigine times. 

Edited December 16, 2019 by davide445

[silent]

Hi Davide,

You can use either an eGPU or any modern laptop with GTX20xx series GPU buiilt-in. Such laptops are usually have the normal sizes. But the main issue here is the CPU TDP and very limited performance due that fact (compared to the regular desktop CPUs).

So I would recommend to find out the laptop with the advanced CPU cooling (no throttling at the max load for a long time) first and then see if it will have an dedicated GPU or you can simply plug the eGPU soluton to it.

Thanks!

[davide445]

Thanks Silent 

I'm not so keen in having another laptop lying around used only for this task, so try first to understand if mine will be enough. 

i5 8350U it's about the same as the desktop i5 6600k in passmark, how much is Unigine in VR is pushing on the CPU (i.e. Considering the oil refinery Demo)? 

[silent]

CPU is the main bottleneck right now for VR, so the fastest CPU you can find - the better will be the final performance.

6600K has pretty much average score in benchmarks (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html), so it may be a good option to search for a more powerful CPU.

[davide445]

To understand better I tested using Unigine superposition VR bench my current machine, Ryzen 5 2600X, 32GB RAM 3200Mhz, GTX 1070.

In VR maximum settings with medium detail textures got a score in the yellow territory, with about 60fps min. 

The CPU utilization was not detailed, so might my rig be more CPU or GPU constrained? What correspond to medium texture quality, 2k textures?

EDIT: just seen there is the Superposition demo project, so in fact can verify by myself.

Edited December 13, 2019 by davide445

[silent]

Davide,

VR Ready is not taking in account the CPU and GPU overhead provided by Oculus runtime or SteamVR runtime, so the real results will be even lower. Also, the content itself matters a lot, so putting some high poly building with thousands of surfaces will result in a significant performance impact (especially in VR where CPU is already being busy).

[davide445]

Started supplying the headset for testing various conditions first hand. For sure my laptop CPU will be not enough.

In current office PC motherboard I can accommodate up to Ryzen 9 3950X 16c/32t so I suppose I can always upgrade CPU and GPU when needed.

Another topic is having a compact hw to be used on customer site, this is my shopping list so far

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 33.84 CFM CPU Cooler
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Storage: HP EX900 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11 GB Turbo Video Card
Case: DAN Cases A4-SFXv4.1 Mini ITX Desktop Case
Power Supply: Corsair SF 600 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply

Will test various options and report if there is any useful information.

Edited December 16, 2019 by davide445

[davide445]

There is any leaderboard / score database for VR superposition benchmark? 

1080Ti and 2070 super seems to have about the same cost and performance, but having the first more ram I consider it better also using for ML tasks. Didn't know what can be best for VR. 

Edited January 11, 2020 by davide445

[binstream]

You can use the regular leaderboard as a guide:

https://benchmark.unigine.com/leaderboards/superposition/1.x/1080p-extreme/single-gpu/page-1

[davide445]

To evaluate the computational load for an HTC Cosmos on Unigine respect the standard 2D benchmarks, need to consider a 2880x1700 or 2880x3400 resolution?

Not sure how is managed the different views, if just two completely separate renders or the superimposition of the views allow to optimize some computation in the pipeline. 

[silent]

You can simply enable VR emulation in Editor options and set it to Vive Pro (both HMDs have the same resolution - 2016 x 2240):

You can further increase the rendering resolution by adjusting the supersampling.

It will not give you 100% the same result with a real HMD due to additional performance loss in drivers.

[davide445]

I was already testing with this emulation, and got today the HTC Cosmos to test on (when I will finish to solve some setup troubles). 

My concern was mostly about future GPU upgrade, so how to know what performances (in term of SS quality) I can get with the various 5700XT, 1080Ti, 2070S, 2080.

So far the Oil Refinery demo work at 50fps on the 1070 on HTC Vive Pro emulation, so for sure I will not be able to benefit from the Cosmos resolution since SteamVR will set me back to about 60% quality to achieve 90fps on the headset. 

Edited January 13, 2020 by davide445