The issue is caused by the way the Nvidia Optimus works - there's a physical connection which always goes to the onboard intel video, then the Nvidia video card outputs to the onboard video, which outputs to the physical connection.
The extra step of routing the 3d video through the onboard video adds very minor latency, but it's still enough to kill the VR experience and induce nausea etc so it's deliberately not supported.
And because the connection is physical it can not be changed with existing hardware. Next generation :)
I'm unsure about the AMD specifics but I expect it's exactly the same issue.
But this same issue is present on non-mac laptops too, right? Except some niche gaming/VR laptops that use desktop GPUs. It's waiting for GPU and laptop chipset vendors whto get their acts together (and hope they care about VR).
Yes this applies to all laptops using nvidia optimus, PC, Mac etc, the issue is the hardware, it's physically wired to the igpu to enable minimal power usage scenarios.
Agreed eGPUs are the near term future, although cloud gpus are also a possibility ..
Didn’t apple just ADD support for external, discrete GPUs? It’s certainly disheartening to see them drop support; I understand the latency demands, but the platform tie in is unnecessary.
The extra step of routing the 3d video through the onboard video adds very minor latency, but it's still enough to kill the VR experience and induce nausea etc so it's deliberately not supported.
And because the connection is physical it can not be changed with existing hardware. Next generation :)
I'm unsure about the AMD specifics but I expect it's exactly the same issue.