NVIDIA 4x Quadro P6000 Multi-User VR Environment at GTC 2017

NVIDIA has an impressive system on display at GTC 2017 powered by four Quadro P6000 GPUs. Each Quadro P6000 hooked up to an HTC Vive Business Edition headset with a Lighthouse tracking system. This project is meant to be a proof-of-concept for what NVIDIA envision is a shared VR experience on a single machine. Multiple people can collaborate and interact within the same space; which is somewhat of an unfulfilled promise of VR up to this point.

Can You Build This Quadro P6000 System at Home?

Technically, you can build a similar system yourself, but it is not going to be cheap. Each NVIDIA Quadro P600 GPU costs more than most high-end PCs already at £4,150.00 each. Multiply this number by four, and it would cost approximately £16,600 just for the GPUs alone. Each HTC Vive Business Edition headset costs £1,251.84 via Amazon.co.uk, so four of those is an additional £5007.36.

Although NVIDIA did not disclose the remainder of the hardware used in their blog post, the photo shows that they are using server-level hardware. This includes multiple 1U power supplies for each GPU, server processors, ECC RAM and storage which would cost several thousand more. The entire system costs approximately £25,000 to £30,000.

This amount is of course far from the reach of any consumer. According to NVIDIA however, a multi-VR single-system like this has plenty of uses in commercial, military and entertainment industries. “The possibilities are endless,” adds Tom Kaye, a senior solutions architect at NVIDIA. These industries can easily afford and invest in this system and are relatively low-cost compared to what they deliver.

More Virtual Reality Showcase at GTC

This four-user virtual reality system is on display currently at GTC inside the VR village. Users can try the demo out themselves if they are in the area.

MonsterVR, a community-driven VR development studio, will demo the system with its multi-VR application for the architecture, engineering and construction industry in HTC’s booth 700.

And CAVRNUS, a VR company offering solutions for collaborative design, engineering, training and education, will show in-the-field training with multi-user VR in booth 934.