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Where are we on VR?
SEANMCAD
Member EpicPosts: 16,775
I know long before the first releases of VR it was between 'will never even get to retail' to 'it will be a total failure'
So I am curious what the communities view is now on VR now, also It would be nice to know if one as ever tried it or not, 1993 doesnt count
So I am curious what the communities view is now on VR now, also It would be nice to know if one as ever tried it or not, 1993 doesnt count
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Comments
Just like any new console something like VR needs good games to encourage people to buy it.
I sadly havn't tried any of the modern glasses myself, I might buy a pair if something worthwhile releases for it.
My conclusion as it pertains to my personal needs is call me when its 4k and I'll check it out again but I think it will need to be 4k per eye before I'll be happy with it.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
We still haven't seen a second generation hardware set, and it's been over a year since Occulus and Vive first released. I haven't even heard news of a second generation yet, either bringing better technology or lower price points.
My gut tells me it's neat, and it will find a few niche uses, but it will never catch on generally. The same reason 3D didn't catch on - people don't wanna wear glasses/strap crap to their heads.
I feel like a device like this has for better applications for everything outside of gaming. I think they are pitching the wrong audience. Maybe go towards simulations for Nasa, such as, flight training, etc. Or even Schools, where kids can use the device to walk through a 3d representation of old China or the Wild West.
Either way. This wasn't a good idea for gaming when it was introduced 2 decades ago and it isn't one now.
All the hype started just a few years ago when we heard it could be marketed cheaper than ever before. Now that a few years have passed there are still few games and the hype is gone. As Coated said "At the end of the day, you still have a big ass contraption strapped to your head."
Now that we see where things have come to I think most of us will wait another year or two for smaller headgear and more content before embracing VR.
I've got a feevah, and the only prescription... is more cowbell.
1) Standardization. There is very little in the way of standardized hardware, drivers, and technology surrounding the VR marketplace right now. With a good amount of the content being from differing open source groups and the opposite side being that of larger companies developing their own interpretations, we can see the current marketplace a little confused about what standards to aim for.
2) Capability and cost. As a result of there being little in the way of standardization yet, there is also a very unpredictable nature to the cost of it all as well. With it ranging from somewhat hacked cheap setups using DIY hardware and open source drivers, to the interim of phone alternatives, up to $700+ sets of equipment, not to mention the cost of the hardware required to operate some of it. This is still cutting out a good amount of it's market viability because you have a lot of people waiting for something more "reliable" in terms of cost-to-value to finally come out.
3) Titles. There's still only a handful of meaningful VR experiences to have presently. While the list is growing and we do have a few AAA projects on the horizon, it's still rather sparse, and in a large part due to the previously mentioned reasons. Developers are in a scenario where they have t figure out which platforms they want to develop for, because each one pretty much requires it's own setup for controls, and then how they want to set the controls themselves up after that, plus identifying what makes for a good/comfortable VR experience.
While we have some examples of this stuff being done right, it's not uniform or common practice yet for developers nor hardware designers, and as a result it's still up in the air as a thing to watch, but not buy into yet for anyone other than early adopters.
It's kind of like that phase consoles went through where you got things like the Jaguar with it's massive keypad in the middle of the controller and the arbitrary peripherals and designs that Nintendo threw at people with each system. There's still a lot of guesswork being dealt with right now and we can't really expect a stable "regular consumer" iteration of VR for another few years.
Won't stop me from collecting every headset available until then...
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I've tried the Vive, but only with job simulator, and that sucked.
I still maintain that VR is a gimmick in relation to games. It's very nature seems to prevent it from having a universally positive effect on the game experience. It works great in games where your avatar doesn't have to move - so racing games, flight sims etc - because the movements of your head and body actually mirror what is happening in game and the 3D vision makes your depth perception much better, allowing you to race better.
However, for almost every other genre, VR seems to offer a sub-par experience compared to playing on a TV / monitor. The 3D vision is still nice, but becomes very jarring because your character's ingame motions don't sync with your body in real life. Even when you use motion controllers and stuff to get better syncronisation between game movements and real life movements, the resultant gameplay is still really shallow so it has no staying power.
I do have a lot of friends that bought into VR. The majority bought into the Oculus Rift during the early stages, a few went Vive more recently, but none of my friends went GearVR or PSVR.
Without fail, every single one of my friends regrets their purchase. They all had to go out and buy newer, powerful PCs as well as the expensive headsets, but the resulting gameplay has fallen short almost every time. They tend to only bother getting out their headsets when they have friends round, so it has become more about showing off and desperately trying to get some use out of it rather than actually enjoying the experience.
So, my opinion remains as it always has: it's an expensive gimmick that has yet to find it's stride. In my opinion, I don't think it will ever hit it's stride and become properly mainstream because the technology is too limiting when it comes to gaming, however I may simply be too limited by my own imagination. If the costs came down a lot (£200 max) then I would probably consider getting VR, just for racing games, but it would still be a gimmick.
I feel for VR to not be a gimmick, we either need some new sort of input device that extends VR from just your sight, to your whole body (so that sight and movement in game are properly synchronised with real life), or we need that killer game to release that actually delivers on a totally superior gaming experience compared to TV / monitor. My imagination prevents me from seeing how the latter is possible, but I hope one day to be proved wrong because I love gaming, so anything that can enhance the experience would be welcome.
Doctors are already using it to simulate out-of-body-experiences in order to help patients overcome fear of dying:
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6fl241/scientists_reduce_fear_of_death_by_using_virtual/
It's about as revolutionary a technology as cinema, and the biggest reason I believe it's here to stay is that nothing else reproduces quite the same experience. It's not like using a computer with an extra big, super-sharp monitor; it's a completely different way to experience a computer program.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Microsoft will have the advantage of avoiding the teething pains and releasing a product much cheaper than the competition, so that seems like a good buy in point.
I am sooooo looking forward to losing my lunch flying around in a VR superhero sim!
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
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It's got great professional and educational applications.
My kids Oculus basically sits on his shelf now. His use has gone down to about 30 minutes every couple weeks and falling. His attitude went from "this is the greatest" to "meh"
This isn't a knock on VR. It's just not ready for mass appeal. The hit games will be a new style and genre of games developed from ground zero around VR . Traditional games IMHO don't really lend themselves well to VR, they're awkward.
I think we're still 5-10 years away from mass consumption. Probably when technology advances enough to get rid of the cables.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Perhaps it's because I'm getting older, and I'm just more easily impressed; however VR has never lost its luster for me. I don't need to spend hours and hours inside VR in order for it to feel worthwhile for me: in fact I'd prefer not to (although I sometimes do).
I'm old enough to remember a time before the world wide web; we were living in Tokyo and my dad had one of the very first Macintosh computers with a separate 1200 baud sitting on top of it he would use to subscribe to news groups overseas. I didn't grasp the utility of it back then, or even have a firm conceptual understanding of what a news group was or why it was important. I hadn't read Neuromancer. All I understood is that there was this "1200 baud" device allowed the Mac to talk to other computers.
I knew it was revolutionary, but try sitting me down in front of it and I would have been bored in about 30 seconds flat, probably (I say probably because I did soon grasp the utility of Hypercard and begin drafting my own elaborate adventure games at age 6 or so). I certainly could not have predicted the rise of the world wide web, then; I only saw the technology for what it did mechanically at that time, not for its potential uses and growth.
I have a 3 year old son, but I wouldn't let him use VR because of the warnings in the manual (not for children under age 13). This isn't because of content but because of concerns for developing eyesight.
However, even if the warnings weren't there and I thought it was fine for him to use VR, I wouldn't expect him to have the same understanding of it as me (obviously). I don't expect VR to replace any sort of conventional media we have today; I do expect it to continue developing in parallel or tangentially to current media.
I disagree that traditional games don't work in VR; in my experience, games that are available in standard format have the potential to be great in VR. Let's take the game BombSquad as an example; from a game design standpoint it's really not different from Bomberman64. However, the experience of playing it in VR is such that I can hardly go a session without bursting out into laughter and spontaneous glee. Would this be the case were I not playing it in VR? Possibly, but I would argue that the immersive level of VR provides an invitation to let go of inhibition on a deeper level than playing it on, say, a mobile device. When I play BombSquad in VR I am really there, watching these poor misguided creatures with their high pitched voices blow themselves to smithereens in all sorts of comical ways and without consequence. I don't think I would feel the same level of presence on any other platform.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Out of this list of 25 of 'the best' there is really only two titles (both of which I have as non-VR) that really would jump out. Everything else I would be intrested to try out as an experience but not at a deep game playing level like I normally look for.
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/15-best-vr-games-best-virtual-reality-games-for-pc-and-mobile-1300576
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
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"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Going out there and trying to find a other VR version of a game like Subnautica (I know its on the list but I couldnt get the VR part to even work!) would like a long time to look thru all the titles.
My eyes are watching this one though which I might end up getting
http://store.steampowered.com/app/598720/Country_of_One/
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
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I enjoy the OR but it hurts my eyes after a bit. I wear glasses so I ALSO need to wear my glasses in the OR. I wear these titanium frame ones that aren't conducive. I could only imagine if I wore a bigger frame how mad I'd be.
I like Elite:D on OR. It's fun and shows promise.
I have a couple of Parachute/gliding sims I play and I think the Climb was well done for touch. I think the carnival game gets the most "play" from my kid.
My issue with VR is that they've essentially become a "trash" platform. Soooooo much trash is being released it's clogging up my interest looking for gems. I am looking at Star Trek but for any long term VR I feel like I need my contacts in and, honestly, I don't put them in when I stare at the computer so I'd be putting them in specifically to VR and that's a PITA.
The only games I've ever gotten nauseous from were the 2 games I REALLY wanted to play in VR. World of Diving and Subnautica.