Performance-Enhancing Oculus PC SDK 0.7 Delayed Until Next Week
Oculus has delayed its PC SDK 0.7. We all must wait until next week for the performance boost.
If you were waiting anxiously for the new Oculus PC SDK 0.7 to come out for the PC, keep waiting. Its release has been postponed to next week. The VR headset maker tweeted this yesterday:
The SDK was supposed to be available yesterday, but for unannounced reasons it had to be postponed. The tweet doesn't clearly indicate on which day next week it will come out.
SDK 0.7 will come with a heap of new changes, including a new runtime to improve stability and reduce latency, as well as a new Direct Driver mode.
The reason why Direct Driver mode is particularly interesting is because it allows the headset to communicate directly with the GPU, rather than require the runtime software. The end result should be lower latency, leading to snappier performance and plug and play operation.
The new SDK isn't backwards-compatible with games built on older versions, so for developers it is of particular interest to switch over to the new SDK as soon as possible. Users will also need to install new Nvidia and AMD drivers to make use of the new SDK, although it should be a habit to keep those updated anyway.
You can read more about the new SDK here.
While we wait, sit tight. Oculus promised to keep us updated on the progress, so if you want the quickest updates you can subscribe to the company's Twitter handle. If you haven't read it yet, you can also read our interview with Oculus's founder, Palmer Luckey, which sheds some light on why we need every ounce of performance we can get.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.