Hardware Recommendations

What hardware is best for graphics applications using VR-Vantage, VR-Engage & VR-Forces?

At MAK, we used the following specification for our 2018 IITSEC demonstration computers and our engineering staff builds and tests on this configuration. You know your specific needs better than we do, so scale up or down from here, based on cost and performance tradeoffs.

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Redhat Enterprise Linux

Core Processor (CPU):

Intel Core i7/i9 (Recommend a minimum of 8 cores)

Use Intel Xeons for Virtual Machines (Recommend a minimum of 8 cores per Virtual Machine (VM))

Hardware for VR-Forces Simulation Engine (non-graphics) applications

Follow the recommendation for graphics applications except that no particular GPU is required in back-end only applications.

The following input devices have been tested for use in VR-Engage

Other devices can be configured through MAK’s software interface.

Gamepad:
Logitech Gamepad F310
Joysticks:
Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog™ Flight Stick with HOTAS Warthog™ Dual Throttles
Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X
Steering Wheel:
Logitech G29 Racing Wheel with pedals

Virtual Reality Devices for VR-Vantage/VR-Engage.

Varjo
Vive
Oculus Rift

Virtual Machine Setups

Public Cloud - We have tested VR-Forces, VR-Vantage, and VR-Engage on the Amazon cloud using the following configurations.

Instance Types:

AWS - G3 Instance - g3.4xlarge (Graphics Card: NVidia M60)
AWS - G4dn Instance - g4dn.4xlarge (Graphics Card: NVidia T4)
Using Microsoft Windows Server 2019

Private Cloud - We have tested a private cloud system with virtual machines with full 3D graphics performance using NVidia GRID based technology running VR-Forces, VR-Vantage, and VR-Engage.

Computer:

2x - Xeon® Gold 6242 Processor 22M Cache, 2.8-3.9GHz, 16C/32T, 150W
8x - 64GB 4Rx4 8G x 72-Bit PC4-2933 CL21 Load Reduced w/Parity 288-Pin DIMM
3x - Quadro RTX 6000 24GB GDDR6 384-bit PCI-E 3.0 x16, 295W
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro

Virtual Machine Software:

VMware vSphere/ESXi
VMware vCenter
VMware Horizon Client - Desktop Virtualization Client

What hardware is required for VR-TheWorld Server?

VR-TheWorldServer is built on the Docker platform. This allows you to use Linux or Windows as platforms to run VR-TheWorldServer.

A VR-TheWorldServer installation has the following software and hardware components:

Docker: A web-based application used to deliver the VR-TheWorld Server database structure and data.

VR-TheWorldServer software.

VR-TheWorldServer database structure and data files. The database provided by MAK is optional. You can create your own database and use your own data files. You can also add your data files to those provided by MAK.

Hard drive. MAK provides a hard drive with installation scripts and data files.

The minimum recommended hardware configuration for running VR-TheWorld Server is:

Server:

– Quad core

– 32 GB RAM

– 250 GB hard drive

Data storage:

– 4 TB of usable space (after configuration).

Operating system:

– Red Hat 7

– CentOS 7

– Windows 10

Picking Appropriate Hardware for MAK Products

We are often asked for minimum hardware requirements for MAK products. MAK doesn’t publish specific requirements and people often wonder why. The primary reason is the requirements are different for each product, and often highly dependent on how you want to use the product. To know what hardware to buy when using MAK products you should understand the following.

Commercial Providers of Hardware

MAK sells products that are designed to work on a wide range of COTS hardware as provided by a long list of manufactures: Dell, HP, etc. We occasionally port our products to obscure hardware like SPARC, PowerPC, or MIPS, but that is beyond the scope of this document. There are also a number of companies that will produce “Gaming PCs” which are just slightly tweaked PCs designed to optimize performance for playing games. We will typically work very well with hardware provided by those vendors; at heart, MAK is producing game quality software and many of the enhancements provided by gaming vendors will help you achieve the most from MAK tools.

Graphics Cards

For all MAK products with 3D Visualization such as VR-Forces and VR-Vantage, the graphics card is important. MAK builds and tests with NVidia GeForce cards. Additionally, we do some rudimentary testing on NVidia Quadro cards. Quadro cards are marketed as being for “professional workstations” with a focus on reliability and driver upgrade compatibility. These cards are considerably more expensive than their GeForce equivalents. So, you’ll have to judge if those attributes are compelling enough to justify the cost. Basically, Quadro is expensive and not needed to get awesome graphics, but if you're building a multi-channel IG with frame-lock and edge blending and you plan to support it years to come, you might fall into that segment Nvidia designed for Quadro and have to pay the inflated price. If you really have to use a Quadro, rest assured our product will very likely work on them. If you want to go completely off-script and try an AMD or Intel graphics card, you may not be successful, and we will unlikely be able to help you.

Once you have picked your NVidia card, you might ask: “What version of the card do I require?” The minimum supported card must support OpenGL 4.5 (anything released since approximately 2015, with a minimum of 9xx-series GPU). With this card, you can generate a basic 3D scene. If you want beautiful graphics with all the bells and whistles, we suggest you buy the latest NVidia graphics card. The latest card will not only give you the best performance, but it will also support the complete set of 3D functionality. If you don’t get the latest card you may discover some of the advanced 3D features may not run. MAK’s policy is not to limit the quality or performance of the 3D scene to the oldest supported hardware. To this end, we design our software to use high-end visualization techniques requiring the latest OpenGL version. However, for customers with a card that only supports 4.5, some features may not work. We allow those customers, using older cards, to disable those features and still render a basic 3D scene. At the time of this writing, no features exist that won’t work in OpenGL 4.5, but going forward that may change.

It is worth making a special note that VR-Forces is actually two applications that do not need to be on the same machine: The VR-Forces Front End (FE) and the VR-Forces SIM Engine (or Back End – BE). While the FE requires a video card, the BE does not require any special video card.

Graphics Cards and Virtual Machines; MAK Products and Virtual Machines

In general MAK products are designed to work well on virtual machines. Most MAK products are regularly used on both public and private cloud installations without problems. The only issues with virtual installations arise due to graphics card requirements. For years, virtual machine operating systems, such as VMWare, did not offer access to a graphics card. The problem was graphics cards were designed to be used for a single OS instance, and VMs would run multiple OS instances on the same hardware – if you had three users of a blade, for example, which one could control the graphics card? VMs were designed to run back-end applications, so solving this problem wasn’t high on anyone’s list.

Today, all of that has changed. VM’s and Graphics card manufacturers have developed products that are designed to work together. VMWare and NVidia Grid cards (http://www.nvidia.com/object/grid-boards.html) have been proven to work together to allow for remote high-end graphics applications to run in virtual environments.

MAK continues to work with customers and vendors as they experiment and start to deploy with this new hardware. We now have several customers who have successfully used virtual environments to host MAK 3d Products; we have also conducted tests successfully using the AWS Servers to drive 3D Scenes. These configurations still aren’t simple, but they are possible. Please feel free to contact us for more details and advice.

32-Bit or 64-Bit

Use a 64-bit OS and compiler options. If you are limited to 32 bit due to legacy libraries, some MAK products still support 32-bit library versions; however, this is not recommended.

Number of CPUs

All MAK products are multi-threaded. People often confuse multi-threading with one particular strategy of multi-threading; just because VR-Forces doesn’t scale the total number of entities based on the number of CPUs doesn’t make it single-threaded. VR-Forces and VR-Vantage use separate threads to load bits of terrain, sort lights for complex night scenes, and run the GUI, to name a few.

Having many CPUs/cores may be a major benefit to your program. A typical VR-Forces install will have all the above threads for the GUI process in addition to a good number of threads for the BE doing everything from network packet processing, to route planning, and terrain loading in different threads. This means the more CPUs/cores the better, though real benefits will likely not be achieved beyond 16 cores per MAK Application. We recommend a minimum of 8 cores for VR-Forces and VR-Vantage. Other products have no such requirement.

Disk Space

Please read the release notes for the products you intend to use. The release notes will tell you two important things: how much hard drive space product installs will take. This is a bare minimum, often the true HD space requirement is a function of what kind of terrain you want to load, and in the case of streaming terrain how much you want to cache. Fundamentally, our installs usually take a 10G+ out of the box. Adding another 100-200G is probably a good investment if you do not fully understand the requirements of your terrain. With modern disks, this is seldom a problem. An ideal recommendation is to have approximately 500G free for a machine dedicated to distributed simulation components such as VR-Forces or VR-Vantage.

SSD Drives

Solid State Drives are not a requirement for MAK products. However, using them, particularly to store your terrain, often speeds up terrain loading and product start time. This remains a recommended but not required feature.

Memory

MAK products typically require about 8 to 12 GBs of RAM. This is a pretty low amount and any hardware you could have purchased in the last 10 years likely supports it. However, that isn’t the end of the story. The limits of MAK product’s memory consumption is typically a function of the terrain/database you use. If you have a very large terrain and it’s not page-able (like FLT) you should assume the entire terrain will need to be loaded into memory. How much will it use? If it’s a big terrain, it can use a lot. An additional 4 GBs is not uncommon for some poorly made terrains. With OS requirements and additional programs on the machine, you will typically need—at a minimum—16 GB on your machine. For deployed systems or development systems, 32 GB or 64 GB may be more appropriate.

Off Support Hardware/Operating Systems

It should be noted that in many cases MAK software will continue to function well on systems that do not even meet the minimum requirements above. You may be able to get good 3D visualization with a different video card, or discover that VR-Forces runs well on some version of Windows or Linux not listed as an officially supported platform. In general, we only list systems as supported when we have hardware that we have the ability to test on. If you decide to use hardware or an operating system that isn’t officially supported, things may just work out. We will even continue to help you through tech support to the best of our abilities. However, if you run into a problem that we cannot reproduce on a piece of supported hardware, it’s likely you will be referred to sales for a premium (by the hour) tech support contract.

Hardware Requirements in Summary

Your minimal hardware requirements should meet the Video Card requirements specified by your release notes (if you are using VR-Forces or VR-Vantage). Your operating system needs to be a supported version as listed here (http://www.MAK.com/support/product-versions.html), and the hardware needs to be the best hardware you can afford for the specific requirements of your program. Those requirements include things like the number and type of entities being simulated, and the frame rate and quality of 3D visuals needed in your scene. If you have very high expectations for visuals, entity count, and performance, you should buy the best machine you can afford.