It has been coming for some time now, but Apple finally announced VR support. To be more specific, the technology giant will enable VR support for its new line of iMacs. This will be great news for everyone who likes the Mac OS ecosystem, but wants to enjoy virtual reality as well. This is quite an intriguing development, to say the least.
Apple Finally Gets On The VR Train
The long wait is finally over for VR enthusiasts using a Macintosh desktop system these days. Although the current generation of hardware will not support virtual reality, the next line of hardware certainly will. This is of great news to Macintosh enthusiasts, to say the least. It has always been a bit strange to see Apple not officially supporting desktop VR. That always seemed a bit unusual, but things are finally coming to change.
Do keep in mind the new line of iMacs will not necessarily be cheap by any means. Then again, quality hardware rarely is cheap, but it lasts long enough. Hardware support for VR was not the only announcement the technology giant made either. Apple also announced a new version of Metal, which will support VR content creation. That is another major notch in the belt for content creators and enthusiasts.
More specifically, the Metal 2 environment will support external graphics cards. An external GPU can be connected through a Thunderbolt port, which allows for more computing power. Do keep in mind this external GPU solution is not consumer-friendly by any means. In fact, it may give the average consumer quite a few headaches. Them again, this problem is not native to Mac OS, but it is a common problem where external GPUs are concerned.
Last but not least, Apple also announced they will bring SteamVR SDK support to the Mac in the future. This is great news for owners of the HTC Vive and other HMDs using the SteamVR platform. It also appears the top VR game engines will receive optimization updates for Mac OS later this year as well. All of this goes to show things are finally coming together for the virtual realty industry.
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