New here & new to VM. I've got some questions.

[Solstice]

Hello. I'm very new to all of this and I have some questions. So far I'm really impressed with what this software can do (and has the potential to do) but unfortunately I'm running some older apple based hardware and I'll be building a PC soon. My first question is how high end should I go for the absolute best and more realistic experience?

Second, does VM support AR & is there compatibility issues with different kinds of headsets on both the VR & AR end of things?

Third, how can we integrate VM with AI/LLM's? I seen a recent thread about it but I don't know how this was done.

Last, how are things coming along with haptic technology in terms of gloves and other cool things to allow us to actually fully immerse ourselves for a full sensory experience?

That's all the questions I have for now & I'm sure there'll be more to come later. Thanks.

 

[mspeck01]

The one thing I will say is get the best gaming rig you can.
The faster the better. Good GPU and lots of fast SSD space. 2-4tb at least.
Maybe have VAM on a separate drive than the OS.
Always put VAM in the root of the drive and not in a protected folder like PROGRAM FILES
D:\VAM\

 

[Solstice]

The one thing I will say is get the best gaming rig you can.
The faster the better. Good GPU and lots of fast SSD space. 2-4tb at least.
Maybe have VAM on a separate drive than the OS.
Always put VAM in the root of the drive and not in a protected folder like PROGRAM FILES
D:\VAM\

Thanks for that info. I'm amazed at the level of horsepower required these days. Then again I haven't played a single game in forever.

 

[MacGruber]

The one thing I will say is get the best gaming rig you can.
The faster the better. Good GPU and lots of fast SSD space. 2-4tb at least.

VaM has somewhat different requirements than most games. Raw singlecore CPU power is a lot important than usually with games. Lots of cores do not help, you need fast cores. The GPU is "somewhat" less important, unless you want to run with very high resolution and still need high FPS (e.g. in VR).

Unless you are a "collector" who installs everything they can get their hands on, you do not need 2 TB of SSD space. Some 100GB of space are likely fine, my own VaM folder is just 60GB, although being a creator I have various backups and other files (350GB) on another slower SSD drive. Get one of those 1 or 2 TB NVMe SSDs for Windows, VaM and maybe some other games and you are good to go. Actually a cluttered up VaM install is significantly slower, for....reasons.....it severely affects FPS even if the content is not directly used, you WANT to keep your install clean of stuff you don't use.

There is a benchmark thread. You can check it, including the sub-results, so see what kind of performance to expect with what hardware. Note that there are 4 different versions of the Benchmark, be careful when comparing. Don't compare results of version 2 and older with version 3 and newer.

Benchmark Result Discussion

This thread is intended to share and discuss result from the MacGruber Benchmark plugin. As a side project, I was looking at PC components for upgrading my old machine. That made me browse through various forum threads on the Hub discussing FPS in VaM. Everyone is posting random FPS values, but...

hub.virtamate.com

 

[HolySchmidt]

Raw singlecore CPU power is a lot important than usually with games

100% agree, you want singlecore performance. If you go with Intel, a 13900K or at least a 13700K is the way to go, if you have the money. If you go with AMD, and you dont need multicore performance for other things, a 7800X3D should be your choice. If you need multicore for productivity, get a 7950X3D. "Low budget" would be a 5800X3D.
32GB DDR5 in the 6000 range with decent timings and you are safe regarding CPU/RAM.

GPU wise: get the best you can afford after you decided which CPU you want. 3080/6800XT would be minimum for me, 4080/4090/7900XTX is optimum. Unfortunately AMD still has trouble in VR, meaning: micro-stuttering. At least that's what I've read some weeks ago, again. Old problem, still no solution. Nvidia would be my advice without a doubt.

2TB of a fast SSD (read/write 5000MB/s and +) is more than enough. Even 1TB would be enough, easily.
Gloves or whatever is no satisfying experience right now from what I've read, until you spend a massive amount of money. And I mean thousands of $. So, a "dont do it" from my side. If you are rich and wanna try, tell us what it's like

VaM does support AR with the Quest 2 (?) I think, or some other headset, dont know really. But it is supported. I dont know if it's supported with every headset.
AI right now is in conceptual state so there will be some "plug & play" plugins in the near future but right now, you have to hustle a bit. Possible, but not like click and go, Blade Runner 2049 I'm coming.

I'd say if you are interested, get a good machine, get a good headset (make sure its comfortable), and spend you first 100 hours learning how this impressive piece of software works. And no, I'm not kidding. VaM is pretty complex and gives you all the creational space you can imagine, literally. But it's not like Super Mario: left, right, jump.
There are some very good tutorials on you tube, check them out.