Actually, I think Oculus said there was no project cancellation that prompted that departure.
Edit: Well, the only thing I just turned up was a statement that they wouldn’t comment on their roadmap, but they are still pursuing high-power, pc-based vr products.
I’ll believe it when I see a Rift 2.
I also don’t think there is actual resources on a Rift 2. I’m sure there is a project somewhere and probably some TPM or others on it just to keep it on life support but with Facebook I think the push is definitely more consumer level designs.
I really am hoping for the next generation of headsets. I want wireless, room scale, high resolution, high FOV and a fan!
Prices have dropped for the current generation headsets at least, by 200 and 300 for the Rift and Vive respectively.
I’m not sure there’s much more that can be done to improve the devices until tech like eye tracking and foveated rendering arrive, which are still several years away. There’s resolution and fov bumps, but that requires even greater hardware to power them. The Pimax 5k is available to preorder now, but you’re probably going to want at least a 1080ti for it.
They should be higher resolution, lighter, less cumbersome, cheaper, and wireless.
Yeah, I don’t think the tech bump is there for a Rift 2 or Vive 2 yet. I’m pretty happy with my Rift, and I wouldn’t upgrade for just wireless or better resolution. How many people here got that wireless dongle? How many people upgraded to VIve Pro (I think just a couple on Qt3?) It would definitely take something like eye tracking for me to consider putting a few extra hundred bucks down.
FOV is another one.
Give me a half dozen really cool games to play that play ok on Occulus Go and I’ll jump in.
My understanding is most people use it to watch netflix and porn.
Sure but you’ll just move the yardsticks again. You would have said a similar story with a $2,000 set four years ago, and the current version would have seemed like the promised land.
The real issues are that it costs more than zero dollars (seriously, THAT is the threshold for mass adoption, even then it’s a maybe e.g. 3D TV, 4K TV). It’s also incredibly isolating, demanding of hardware, and the ‘full immersion experience’ is not what most people want. Most people want to sit on their couch and watch football or play Call of Duty - not ‘transport into another world’.
I guess I’m a late joiner since I only got mine in the summer. The novelty has worn off so I’m less about trying everything I can but I still enjoy it and I think it will be a part of my suite of things to do from now on. I think it has great potential for educational experiences, interior design, previewing renders or architecture or infrastructure, and games. But the games will be a niche of a niche market - e.g. the subset of higher-end graphics card owners who also have space and time and budget and a willingness to disappear from planet earth for awhile. And I’m one of them :)
But even I am somewhat budget tapped out at $80 for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, plus my various other entertainment expenses. So they’re probably not making enough money off me, I think so far $5 in October. Maxed out in money and time too, I should add.
It will stay a niche, a better version that ya’ll are calling for won’t help, the reason why we were all excited 2 years ago is because the current version really is (finally) good enough.
The hardware may be good enough but the software isn’t there. It remains to be seen if it’s even a platform for mass market gaming. It’s certainly cool for cockpit games but what else is there that really wows people so that a month later they are still wowed when playing?
Even if Blizzard could make it work for WoW there would probably be a big jump in sales, but after a month or two how many players would take the goggles off and go back to playing the old-fashioned way?
I still get wowed pretty much any time I load up Skyrim VR, or play Onward, or Beat Saber. It’s not as new feeling any more, but VR hasn’t stopped being amazing and there’s plenty of good games available for it.
As for going back to play the old-fasioned way… One of the dilemmas I have with VR is that I think I’m becoming increasingly uninterested in playing certain genres in non-VR. The thought of playing an FPS on a 2d monitor is kind of depressing now. Imagine going back to canned weapon reload animations? Or not being able to reach down and grab that grenade that’s rolling towards your feet, or toss a spare clip of ammo to a friend, or actually aiming your weapon instead of just moving a crosshair or ironsight with a mouse/stick. Gross!
I also loaded up Elite Dangerous on my TV not long ago and was shocked at how bad it felt to not have the depth perception and sense of being in my cockpit. I felt horribly limited. Even something as simple as the radar somehow seemed so wrong in 2d, with contacts stuck to this flat disc instead of hovering around in 3d space.
That doesn’t mean VR would work for everything though. WoW would need to be radically changed in order for it to be a good VR game.
For me it’s open world games. After playing Fallout and Skyrim VR, the “first person” actions (ie. seeing Henry’s hand reach out to grab an apple) in Kingdom Come feels a bit gimmicky and not very immersive.
VR makes games like Elite Dangerous and Skyrim feel like completely different experiences for me. I could spend all day in those worlds, if the Rift wasn’t so uncomfortably hot.
Yeah. I have a good floor fan in front of me for longer play sessions and thankfully even on the lowest setting it generally prevents me from getting hot, unless I’m playing something physically demanding like Beat Saber.
The funny thing about playing Skyrim VR with the fan is that I still have these brief moments where my brain forgets about the fan in the real world and thinks that the breeze is from the wind inside the game world. It’s difficult to describe how convincing it can be.
You really can get lost in a VR world. I was playing Budget Cuts and was crouching behind a desk. Being older with wonky knees I tried to grab the desk to help me get up. Ended up sprawled across the floor.
Heh, been there and done that. More than once!
Also punched my ceiling while instinctively jumping to catch a virtual frisbee on multiple occasions, because for some reason I just don’t learn.
what is the netflix appeal? why would anyone want to watch low resolution, crap sound, no Dolbyvision image quality, etc.
My view on VR is that the experience is still cool and was exactly evolved enough to launch as a consumer product, but it should have evolved since then to be wireless, higher res, less cumbersome and cheaper.
But the main problem is that it doesn’t work as a substitute gaming experience - there are two few “real” games like Skyrim and Fallout 4, and those are old - and more importantly, I just can’t play the VR versions of those games for more than an hour (at most), while I could play the PC versions for 8 hours and not be negatively affected other than the rest of my life experiencing entropy through disengagement.
For some folks, the IMAX sense of scale is a worthy trade-off for those things. And completely tuning out the real world around you has some value, especially in the horror genre. It’s not a replacement for traditional viewing but it can be a fun, new way to watch shows or movies at home.
Yeah, it’s a huge-ass virtual screen. You can take it on an airplane or whatever and watch shows on a 20 foot screen. It’s also supposed to be great lying down in bed.