Windows Holographic: A Familiar Battle Between Minimum and Recommended Specs (Premium)

Yesterday, Brad revealed that the latest Insider build of Windows 10 includes an app that explains the minimum specs required to run the coming Windows Holographic shell and its VR/AR applications. But don’t be fooled: As is always the cast, Microsoft’s minimum requirements in no way map to what you really need to run this software.

We’ve been dealing with this strange dichotomy since the dawn of the Windows age in the mid-1980’s. Microsoft sets minimum requirements that are usually hard-coded into a Setup routine in order to prevent customers from even installing something that won’t work on their particular mix of hardware. But the experience will still be terrible, especially for those who come in at the low-end of the spectrum.

To understand why the Windows Holographic minimum requirements are a complete smoke-screen, let’s look at two things: The minimum requirements for Windows itself. And the minimum requirements for a full-featured VR solution like Oculus Rift. (And let’s do so with the understanding that even the highest-end VR solutions today cannot display the holograms we’ll see in Windows Holographic, which is technically an augmented reality, or AR, solution, and not “just” VR.)

According to Microsoft, Windows 10 requires the following:

• 1 GHz microprocessor or SoC (system on a chip)
• 2 GB of RAM (or 1 GB of RAM for an upgrade from Windows 7/8.1)
• 16 GB of storage for 32-bit Windows 10, or 32 GB for 64-bit
• DirectX 9-compatible graphics card
• 800 x 600 resolution display

I challenge any human being to run Windows 10 on such a system an have an acceptable experience from a performance and reliability perspective. Such a PC will boot and run Windows, slowly, and will struggle to run even a single app at a time. Yes, it “runs.” But it does so very poorly.

A closer reading of Microsoft’s Windows 10 specifications page will also reveal some disturbing additional information that further undercuts the believability of these specs. For example, several specific Windows 10 features like Windows Hello, Continuum, Cortana, and more require other hardware support. And there are a lot of caveats that have to be seen to be believed, including the need for additional storage to upgrade PCs with 32 GB or less of storage, the complexity of driver availability for all of your devices on an upgrade, and much more.

Beyond that, Microsoft no longer provides recommended specs for Windows for some reason, as it used to. (In fact the word “recommended” doesn’t even appear once on this page.) So I will turn to my own recommendations from the Windows 10 Field Guide, which read as follows:

RAM. For all but the most casual of users, 2 GB is woefully inadequate for Windows 10. I recommend 4 GB as a more realistic minimum, and I recommend at least 8 GB of RAM for getting real work done on a real PC.

Disk space and technologies. I recommend a minimum of 64 GB of storage for mini-tablets, tablets, 2-in-1s and other PCs. Smaller and less expensive devices tend to utilize eMMC flash storage, which is based on an older version of the technology used in microSD cards, so it is slower than real SSD storage. If possible, use SSD. Even traditional hard drive (HDD) technology is better in some ways than eMMC (and of course provides more storage). Power users often use an SSD for the system disk—with the operating system and applications—and a larger HDD for data on desktop PCs, but this is a complex set up.

Special requirements. Key Windows 10 features like Windows Hello, Continuum, Cortana, BitLocker, Client Hyper-V, and Miracast (among others) either require special hardware or a specific, more expensive version of Windows 10.

Point being, Microsoft’s minimum requirements are ludicrous. As they always are.

So let’s look at the minimum requirements for Oculus Rift, a VR headset solution that not only requires much more powerful hardware than does Windows 10, but is in fact very specific about what it requires. The specs are as follows:

• Intel Core i5 4590
• 8GB of RAM
• GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 290 graphics with an HDMI 1.3 connection
• Two USB 3.0 ports

(Another leading VR solution, HTC Vive, has similar minimum requirements, but with two differences: Vive only “requires” 4 GB of RAM and one USB 3.0 port.)

One might assume that the Oculus Rift minimum requirements are as ludicrous as those of Windows, but I don’t believe that to be the case: Were one to outfit a PC with these specs, I suspect you would have a perfectly acceptable VR experience. Note, however, that no matter how much hardware you throw at Oculus Rift—or HTC Vive, or any other VR solution—you will never gain the holographic capabilities that Microsoft promises.

So let’s look at the minimum requirements for Windows Holographic, which we can accurately describe as the minimum requirements for a Windows 10 PC running Windows Holographic. They are:

• A four core CPU (really two core with hyperthreading)
• 4 GB of RAM
• DirectX 12-compatible graphics card
• Two USB 3.0 ports

(Interesting side note: A standalone Surface Pro 4 is not compatible with Windows Holographic as it has only one USB 3.0 port. Oh, Microsoft.)

These specifications are, of course, ludicrous. And I think they’re set as they are for the same reasons that Windows 10 has similarly silly minimum specs: Microsoft intends to support a wide range of hardware types—both PCs and VR solutions—and expects that customers will mix and match. And as is the case with PCs today, the hardware you purchase will determine the experience you receive. That is, lower-end solutions that support Windows Holographic and hit that $299 price point will provide only basic VR capabilities, much like we see today on phone- and video game console-based VR. And more capable and expensive solutions will improve the clarity and performance and, as we move up the price chain, will add true holographic capabilities too.

Since we have no idea what the range of Windows Holographic hardware will even look like yet, it’s not possible here in late 2016 to come up with a list of recommended specifications. But I think a middle ground between Windows Holographics’ and Oculus Rift’s minimum requirements is in fact the real entry point here. Meaning, if you want a good experience, you’re going to need a good PC and spend more than $299.

So let’s guess at what such a PC would look like.

• An Intel Core i5 processor (Skylake or newer) with two processor cores and hyperthreading support
• 8 GB of RAM
• DirectX 12-compatible graphics card with a dedicated GPU, as opposed to integrated graphics
• Two USB 3.0 ports

But we’ll see. In the meantime, I recommend that anyone interested in Windows Holographic look into achieving those specs above or, better yet, the minimum specs for Oculus Rift. That is a far more realistic VR/AR rig than what Microsoft claims.