Oculus Moving Away From Supporting Windows 7 & 8.1

Posted by Doug Dobbins at 12:21 pm on June 28, 2018

Oculus is now recommending that Rift owners upgrade their PCs to Windows 10, if they haven’t already, in order to enjoy the “full Rift experience.” Otherwise, they may miss out on certain features when Rift Core 2.0 (and later versions) roll out.

“As of today, we’re updating our minimum and recommended spec OS to Windows 10 to power the full Rift experience. Windows 7 and 8.1 users are still supported for the Rift features they know and love today, but they may not be able to use many new and upcoming features and apps. We encourage everyone who isn’t already running Windows 10 to upgrade now to avoid missing out on what’s next,” Oculus states in a blog post.

Oculus says Windows 10 is integral to supporting some of the resource-heavy features in its Rift Core 2.0 update, which is currently in beta. Rift owners who choose to stick with Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 will still be able to download the update when it arrives in polished form later this year, but Oculus warns there will be “some limitations.”

Specifically, the Oculus Desktop and the ability to run Dash will only be available in Windows 10.

The other reason for pushing Windows 10 as both the minimum and recommended OS is because Microsoft has deprecated mainstream support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. According to Oculus, the vast majority of the active Rift owners (95 percent) run Windows 10 anyway.