Actually, the same thing can be true for 3D games, especially early FPS games. I had an uncle who loved gaming, but could never play any FPS games in the 90s because they made him sick.
I think much fewer people are getting sick from VR now that technology has improved and developers gaining more experience. I’m not sure how Half Life Alyx will be in terms of motion sickness, but I’m sure Valve are doing everything they can to minimize it.
It’s not the technology improving so much as developers figuring out how to save gamers from puking. Basically, there’s no free first-person movement, you teleport or shift instead, except when you’re in a cockpit. It’s unclear if there’s any way to fix this, it may be an inherent limitation in the human brain, that disconnection between your eyes telling you you’re moving while your inner ear and body awareness say you aren’t.
This game has me excited. I’m sure the main story will be good, and if it is reviewed well I will probably buy it. But this bit at the bottom of the steam store page:
“A set of Source 2 tools for building new environments will ship with the game, enabling any player to build and contribute new environments for the community to enjoy. Hammer, Valve’s level authoring tool, has been updated with all of the game’s virtual reality gameplay tools and components.”
This could be big for VR gaming on multiple levels.
Nausea in VR is almost entirely a problem to be solved by game design and hardware. Sure there will be some people who will always get nauseous no matter what but the same could be said for any other form of interactive media.
Most people who’ve experienced nausea in VR did so at cheap horrible mall kiosks, shitty phone cardboard-like docks, and other early hardware before quality stuff like the Quest and better. And/or games which had poor traversal mechanics.
My understanding is the vast majority of people are nauseated by free first-person movement in VR, even on modern hardware.
For sure, which is why it’s awesome Valve is offering so many different traversal mechanisms.
For people who can handle smooth motion it’s there, for those who can’t there are other options for snapping turns, teleportation movement, etc.
Right, there’s just no way around it. And that really sucks.
Hell Wolfenstein 3D made people sick.
In regards to free traversal, there are certainly better ways of doing it than others. I remember when Valve ported a test version of TF2 to the Rift and the fast-paced movement in that made people really sick. However, more and more games nowadays use free traversal, and many VR fans are even upset when it is not an option.
Also, it seems like it is possible to become acclimated to VR movement to a certain degree. It makes me wonder if the the next generation (who start playing VR when they’re younger) will be much better suited physically for it than older generations with less-adaptable brains.
And, y’know, the whole having to strap on a headset and sometimes wave your arms around like a maniac thing.
Free traversal can also be improved by things like foveated rendering or narrowing field of view when moving.
It’s actually going the other direction. Most games (in my experience) nowadays offer free movement in addition to the old standards of teleport and shift. Early on when I had the original Rift, options for free movement were fewer and further between.
Yes, and that’s nice for people with iron stomachs, but most people will probably yak.
Yeah, frantically moving a mouse and tapping the WASD keys is a much more natural way of interacting with your environment. VR is much better for your body as it actually uses leg and arm muscles. Any perceived weirdness is just from inertia.
Wow man, the “It’s good for you” argument? Seriously? Why don’t you just equate VR with broccoli already.
You’re right, a species of sedentary slobs probably isn’t the best market for VR as a medium.
I’ll admit, the pain of getting out of the chair and getting it set up is the biggest barrier to me using VR regularly, the game must be pretty exciting to break through that and I am hoping Alyx will be it.
Yes there is, but like most things related to VR it’s not exactly cheap (well, all told it’s another $240 on top of your standard VR setup). It’s starts with a steam app called Natural Locomotion and it’s amazing.
[And yes, this stuff is expensive and I’m not saying everyone in the world should rush to VR. But for those of us who have a kit here’s a way to get more out of it than some games will normally allow.]
I tried to play Skyrim VR last year and was almost instantly put off by the movement options. Teleporting is garbage for me. It completely ruins immersion and I just get sick of constantly aiming where I want to go. And of course free movement was a one way ticket to pukesville.
Natural Locomotion is a $10 Steam app that you run in the background and is compatible with a lot of VR games. Essentially it lets you walk by holding in the grip button and swinging your arms at your side the same way you’d do when you’re walking naturally. To walk backwards you bend your arms and hold your hands at about chest level and move them back and forth (it sounds odd but it works pretty well). To make things feel more natural I’d just walk in place and swing my arms normally and all of a sudden I was walking in game and not feeling nauseous. It was so cool!
Here’s the expensive part, though. After a few sessions I was definitely more interested in Skyrim VR because of the walking stuff but I was getting tired of holding the grip all the time when I walk. Then I found out you can buy VR sensors and strap them on your ankles and NL will just read those. So I bought 2. They’re $100 each. And then two ankle straps that were like $15 each. Now when I walk in place I walk in game and my arms are completely free to do whatever. In fact depending on what I’m doing in game I can go a while with the controllers hanging from the wrist straps. And this is a 9 year old game that basically had this support bolted onto it. There’s so much possibility for new games written with this kind of thing in mind from the beginning (I have no idea if Alyx does this, btw).
We keep saying that VR is so hard for people to adjust to but like, in the end it’s more natural than a controller. Give a Dual Shock controller to someone who doesn’t play games often and they always struggle with basic movement and camera controls. With VR and something like Natural Locomotion you are doing movement and camera control just like you do in real life, there’s almost nothing to learn other than “walk in place instead of actually walking forward.” How cool is that?
Oh right, so not exactly the topic at hand but since I’m talking about Skyrim VR…
Then I found a few mods for Skyrim VR that make use of the built in headset microphone. You can program in keywords for doing basic tasks. So when you walk up to an NPC instead of pressing the interact button you can just say “hello” and the dialog options pop up. And then you literally say the line out loud and the npc responds. And you finish the conversation by saying “bye” (or whatever phrase you want). So now you can walk and look around town and have dialogs with NPCs and you haven’t even touched a controller. You just walk in place and move your head naturally.
It is. The coolest.
The voice control mods will even do things like equip weapons or spells so you spend less time digging through menus. And yeah, it’s basically the 2020 version of the star wars kid when you’ve got a VR rig on and you’re yelling “Fus ro dah! Sparks left, flame right!” and then pointing the control sticks at two enemies to pop off some spells. But fuck it I live alone and it feels goddamn awesome when you’re firing magic out of your own hands. Oh, at 2 separate targets simultaneously. So take that, mouse nerds.
Even though it looks super cool, I have not played Skyrim VR because of one simple reason: spiders! They freaked me out in the regular version and they’d probably give me a heart attack in the VR one. If I’m being honest, I’m kind of worried about VR head crabs as well…
This is just the age-old usability vs learnability problem in interface design. Sure, body tracking is more immediately intuitive, but it’s also an inherently less precise and more physically taxing form of control than a mouse or gamepad. That’s not going to change, no matter how much the technology advances.
Personally after playing Superhot VR, I’m practically frothing thinking of the amazing things Valve could do with that kind of interactivity.
The first time I shot a dude in Superhot VR, threw my empty weapon at a 2nd guy, reached out in front of me to grab the first guy’s weapon, shot a third guy with it, and then threw that weapon at a 4th guy, all without needing to think about it, all while ducking between cover and physically moving around, I was sold on VR forever.