'Ark Park' Features Steep Minimum Hardware Requirements, Pushes Visual Fidelity In VR

[kewlguy239]

We had the opportunity to take a stroll through "Ark Park" at GDC, and we were impressed by the sheer detail of the dinosaurs and environment in the game.

'Ark Park' Features Steep Minimum Hardware Requirements, Pushes Visual Fidelity In VR : Read more

 

[uglyduckling81]

Also they could just implement some graphics options in a later build so anyone can play at what ever detail level is suitable to their machine. Right now it's showing just the best it has to offer. The fact that it requires bleeding edge to run top end graphics is a great thing in my opinion.
I'm always sad to see recommended stats as a 970. No one is game to push the boundaries for fear of loss of potential sales.
The beauty of the PC is it's diversity to accommodate all budgets with hardware options and graphics settings.

 

[bit_user]

Also they could just implement some graphics options in a later build so anyone can play at what ever detail level is suitable to their machine.

This is the right way to go, IMO. I wonder what game engine they're using, because most are pretty good about providing quality options to utilize high-end hardware, without locking out lower-spec systems.

Right now it's showing just the best it has to offer. The fact that it requires bleeding edge to run top end graphics is a great thing in my opinion.

Didn't sound like it. He quoted their minimum requirements spec, not just reporting what hardware they were using to demo it.

However, with AMD Vega on the way, and the GTX 1080 Ti offering a considerable performance boost over its predecessor, perhaps Ark Park will find a home in the game libraries of top-tier hardware enthusiasts.

Would be interesting to know if it supports multi-GPU. If you get a chance, please ask. I'm interested in how many VR games start enabling this avenue.

 

[gamebrigada]

Ark uses UE4 which I would assume is what Ark Park will use since they are recycling a TON of work from it. UE4 is also a pretty natural choice in VR for high fidelity games.

I doubt they will have much trouble running it on PSVR, UE4 allows Ark to run on basically anything including a potato with reasonable graphics, although the harder you push it the more beautiful it looks. Don't forget that UE4 can scale as far back as an iphone/android phone and still look decent.

Ark also has a bit to go in terms of optimization, they are really struggling with the balance of beauty and long range in Ark. UE4 wasn't quite the best choice for such an incredible open world game.

 

[cryoburner]

"we will optimize it fully to PSVR."

As opposed to not optimizing it at all for the PC? >_>

Really, if the minimum requirements include a $500 graphics card and a $350 processor on top of an expensive VR headset, I can't help but think they're going to have a hard time selling the game on the PC. Especially since this seems to be more of a casual gaming experience than something targeting the more "core" gaming audience that might be more likely to own that kind of hardware. If they can optimize the game to run in VR at 60+fps on a PS4, there's no excuse for them to not provide similar graphics options to enable sub-$200 "vr capable" CPUs and GPUs to run the game on the PC. Maybe they are intending to enable lower graphics settings, and were just listing the requirements to run the game using ideal settings, but they didn't make it sound that way.

And of course, the recommended requirements include a $1000+, 8-core i7-5960X, something very few gaming PCs will actually have. It does make me wonder if the game will be optimized to make use of more cores though. If that's the case, then the newly-launched 8-core Ryzen CPUs might see some advantage at a markedly lower price, as could the upcoming 6-core Ryzens.

 

[bak0n]

The hardware requirements are probably higher than that, but since better GPU hardware didn't exist they just put it in. It probably runs like crap on a 4 way SLI 1080 set up as well. ARK isn't known for being well optimized.

 

[Dejey]

Likely with my 980 I can't even try this right now, and won't for 16-24 months(when my planed GPU upgrade is) still I am super happy to see VR get its limits pushed. Even if I flops I can see this being the "crysis" of PCVR. How many fps can you dig get!? Haha

 

[pegnose]

With NVidia VR Works and particularly VR SLI, many more users could experience this!

 

[grimfox]

I've yet to see a game support multiGPU VR. I'd get it if this game were a year or two out and their minimum spec was that high today. But it seems like they are closer to launch than that.