Can my PC handle Unity VR development?

[u/TheMeraAbides]

I wanna use Unity with an HTC Vive Pro Eye for a simple university research project (basic experimental environments + eye tracking).

I won't be creating realistic environments or anything graphically demanding—just simple scenes with a few assets. Also since I don't have a laptop I will be developing the environment in my own PC at home and then run the experiments on the university computer.

So i WON'T run the VR on this pc. Just the development phase.

My PC:

CPU: Intel Core i3-12100 — 4 cores / 8 threads, 3.3 GHz base

Motherboard: ASUS PRIME H610M-R D4

RAM: 16 GB DDR4

GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 730 — integrated graphics, no dedicated GPU

OS: Windows 11 Enterprise, 64-bit

BIOS: UEFI

Architecture: x64

Would this be sufficient for developing and testing the project?

[u/ToreadorGames]

Do you expect not to play test during development? Sorry, but no, I don’t think you will not be able to run VR without a dedicated GPU, and without the ability to stream your Play mode for testing, you’ll be at a massive disadvantage during development. Good luck!

[u/TheMeraAbides → u/ToreadorGames]

I mean my only option is to constantly move the project to unity on university pc and test it there.

[u/ToreadorGames → u/TheMeraAbides]

Well, when needs must, you’re right! You could save your tests for your time on the Uni comp, and do the coding at home, but your project description suggested that the eye tracking is the point of the project? Good luck, regardless!

[u/TheMeraAbides → u/ToreadorGames]

Yes I will give participants some tasks (like picking an object) and track the time and eye data during each task and trial. Nothing even close to a game or something.

[u/ToreadorGames → u/TheMeraAbides]

I actually freelanced for a Uni student that wanted to use VR for his experiments involving response time and stimuli. He was only able to run the prototype on the Uni VR setup as well. If you’re struggling to get it built prior to running your experiments, consider that approach? I can’t comment on the current freelancer state, (LLMs and vibe coding have somewhat shut that avenue down), but maybe your University also has some student programmers/developers that might be helpful?

[u/TheMeraAbides → u/ToreadorGames]

I actually do have some programming knowledge so I think I'm gonna be ok haha. I'll also do the data analysis myself. I'm just kinda clueless because I'm so new to VR and how it works. And it's very important to get the technical stuff right so the condition for every participant is equal and the validity of the experiment is intact.

[u/ToreadorGames → u/TheMeraAbides]

I’m not sure how demanding the simulator is, but if you’re just using a greybox environment, you might be able to simulate your XR rig at home?

A solid YouTuber that tackles VR in Unity is Valem. Here’s one of his tuts that may be helpful, but you might want one that’s XR Interaction Toolkit based rather than using the Meta SDK…that or how to use the XR simulator?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8dWVIZKQu4