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Hardware for graphics applications using VR-Vantage, VR-Forces, or VR-Engage

At MAK, 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.

Operating Systems:

Windows 11 Pro 64-bit
Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Core Processors (CPU):

Intel Core i9: Intel® Core™ i9 processor 14,900K or better
Use Intel Xeons for Virtual Machines (Recommend a minimum of 8 cores per Virtual Machine (VM))

Memory (RAM): 32GB

Disk Storage: 1 TB Solid State Drive (SSD)

SSD drives are highly recommended because they have faster load times. Faster drives decrease intersection time and reduce frame stalls for paged terrains. Use a fast SSD drive when performance is important.

Graphics Processor (GPU):

Consumer grade: NVIDIA RTX 4090
Professional Grade: NVIDIA RTX 5000 ADA or greater.

GPU Memory: 16 GB VRAM (or greater)

Hardware for VR-Forces simulation engine (non-graphics) applications

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

Input devices tested for use in VR-Engage

Gamepad:

Xbox controller
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

You can configure other devices.

Virtual reality devices for VR-Vantage and VR-Engage applications

Oculus Rift
HTC Vive
Valve Index
Varjo
VRgineers XTAL
Windows Mixed Reality headsets

Virtual machine setups

Public Cloud

We have tested VR-Forces, VR-Vantage, and VR-Engage on the Amazon cloud using this configuration.

Instance Type:

AWS Virtual Server with Microsoft Windows Server 2019 OS, G4dn Instance - g4dn.4xlarge, and Graphics Card NVIDIA T4

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

VR-TheWorld Server

VR-TheWorld is provided as a Docker container. This allows you to use Linux or Windows as platforms to run VR-TheWorld.

VR-TheWorld is delivered as a hard drive, formatted either as XFS (Linux) or NTFS (Windows). It contains all required software, data, and documentation.

VR-TheWorld is comprised of:

Docker container for a web-based application used to manage the VR-TheWorld Server database structure and data.
VR-TheWorld Server software.
VR-TheWorld Server 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.

Required Operating Systems:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 or later
Ubuntu 20.04 or later
Windows 10 or later.  Version must support the latest Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2).

The choice of the operating system and hardware environment depends on the use case for the server. If it is to be a deployed server with a large number of concurrent users, MAK strongly recommends Linux. RHEL is often preferred due to a perception of better security and support, but either RHEL or Ubuntu is comparable for performance. Windows is useful for a small group or personal test server. Linux file I/O is much better than Windows for handling the many small files, and Linux has more capabilities to scale to better support throughput.

Specific hardware requirements also depend on the use case, but some considerations when choosing are:

We recommend a minimum of 5 TB hard drive space. More is necessary if you will add your own data.
CPU - You need a good CPU, but more cores are usually better than a faster CPU. More cores can support more concurrent requests.
RAM - Minimum 32 GB RAM, but more is better. More RAM is more important than more CPU power.
RAID0 is useful to configure large amounts of disk space across a number of smaller physical hard drives. Using RAID0 across multiple drives increases overall throughput as compared to a single large hard drive. Faster drives are better.
Choose a fast NIC. If you expect a large number of concurrent users, multiple NICs and the use of port bonding can expand the bandwidth in and out of the system.
No high-end graphics required. Some administrators will access the VRTW GUI, but mostly that will be done remotely.  Even if directly connected to the server, there are no extreme rendering requirements.

As guidance, MAK uses a Dell PowerEdge R450 rack server running RHEL9 for our internal master server, but customers have used comparable servers from HP, IBM, and others. That server uses RAID0 to configure storage across a number of smaller hard drives. MAK also uses an AWS-hosted VR-TheWorld online, which is a virtual Ubuntu system, and we have internal test servers that are smaller rack-mounted systems running RHEL as well as a mini-PC running Windows 11.

Picking Appropriate Hardware for MAK ONE products

We are often asked for minimum hardware requirements for MAK ONE products. MAK doesn’t publish specific requirements and people often wonder why. The primary reason is the requirements are different for each product, and are often highly dependent on how you want to use the product. To know what hardware to buy when using MAK ONE 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 manufacturers: 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” that are just slightly tweaked PCs designed to optimize performance for playing games. MAK ONE applications 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 ONE products with 3D visualization, such as VR-Forces, VR-Engage, and VR-Vantage, the graphics card is an important factor. MAK builds and tests primarily with NVIDIA GeForce cards. We also perform testing with NVIDIA’s workstation/pro-visualization cards (marketed as RTX/RTX Pro, formerly Quadro). These cards are positioned for “professional workstations” with an emphasis on 3D graphics, reliability, and long-term driver support. They are, however, considerably more expensive than comparable GeForce models.

In most cases, RTX/RTX Pro cards are not required to achieve high-quality graphics. But if you are building a multi-channel image generator with frame-lock and edge-blending and plan to maintain it for years, you may fall into the market segment NVIDIA targets with these cards—and need to pay the premium price. If you choose to use an RTX Pro, our products will work on them.

While any NVIDIA card capable of 3D graphics may work, NVIDIA is increasingly designing some product lines primarily for the AI market, where graphics support is secondary. MAK does not test on these other lines. Some customers have reported success using them, while others have experienced significant issues. Use these cards at your own risk.

If you choose to go outside the NVIDIA ecosystem and use AMD or Intel graphics cards, results may vary, and you will likely not have success using MAK products.

Once you have selected your NVIDIA card, the most important factor to consider is the amount of video RAM (VRAM). Many cards in the GeForce lineup—such as the RTX 4050, 4060, 4070, and 4070 Ti Super—are available with different VRAM capacities. More VRAM is always better. For example, the RTX 4050 laptop models often ship with only 6 GB of VRAM, which may be enough for a basic scene but can quickly run out when rendering detailed terrain or complex models. The RTX 4060 typically offers 8 GB, which is a more practical minimum but still limited in demanding scenarios. The RTX 4070 desktop models provide 12 GB, giving much more stability and headroom for rich visuals, while the RTX 4070 Ti Super comes with 16 GB, which is excellent for large terrains, multi-channel displays, and advanced effects.

The most common graphics problem reported by customers is insufficient VRAM. At the higher end of NVIDIA’s offerings, this is rarely an issue, but problems often arise when the lowest-cost variant of a given card is chosen. For stable performance and the ability to use advanced visual features, we strongly recommend selecting a card with ample VRAM rather than the minimum option in the range..

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 GUI (or front end) and the VR-Forces sim engine (or back end). While the GUI requires a video card, the sim engine does not require any special video card.

Graphics Cards and Virtual Machines; MAK ONE products and Virtual Machines

In general, MAK ONE products are designed to work well on virtual machines. Most MAK ONE 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. VMs 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 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 ONE products still support 32-bit library versions; however, this is not recommended.

Number of CPUs

All MAK ONE products are multithreaded. Having 8 to 12 cores for different threads is highly recommended.

Having many CPUs/cores may be a major benefit to your program. A typical VR-Forces installation will have all the above threads for the GUI process in addition to a good number of threads for the sim engine, 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 ONE 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 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 installations usually take 10+ GB out of the box. Adding another 100-200 GB 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 1 TB 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 ONE 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 ONE 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 pageable (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 ONE applications 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 can 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 noted above (if you are using VR-Vantage, VR-Forces, or VR-Engage). Your operating system must be a supported version as listed on the Product Specifications and Dependencies page (mak.com/mak-one-specs), and the hardware must 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 as well as 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.