The idea that games need to be 60hr AAA open world hybrids to count as “real” games is a little sad to me, but I realise that perception isn’t going to change any time soon and a lot of people are going to dismiss VR based on it.
Some of my favourite game experiences ever have come from recent VR titles, and VR is easily the biggest (and most exciting) change in gaming that I can remember. That’s worth more to me than pretty much any of the full price AAA releases to have come out this year.
That wasn’t my intention - those were just the only two games I picked off the top of my head. Could have picked Resident Evil 7 or Elite as well.
But I was trying to exclude stuff like the Eve game, or Battlezone, Batman, “Worlds” like the shark cage experience – and I’m not negative on those experience either; I like them all. They’re just very brief, shallow experiences compared to the types of games I typically play. Even for the style of game, they are shallow – there’s no reason an arcadish game like Battlezone couldn’t have the depth and challenge of arcadish console games like Resogun, for instance.
I do really like VR and don’t think it’s fair to say it’s not “here” yet, or it’s a dud - it’s too amazing to be a dud, even if certain consumer products may be, and it faces a lot of challenges because of cost/convenience and time delays with developing for platforms, etc.
Much as I like games, I think VR (if it had the convenience of augmented reality products) could really transform a lot of industries and offer amazing educational, travel, sports, theatrical experiences. It’d be pretty cool to just be immersed as if you were front row at a concert, or watching a UFC fight from ringside, or just having a picnic in the Alps, experiencing a space walk, etc.
It would be nice if they offered the experience on the rift. You can use something like bigscreen watch something, but a nice polished experience would be nice.
Don’t ask me. Tried it a couple of times, never again. I love proper VR movies, where you can move around the scene, but just watching an ordinary movie in VR has no appeal to me. I guess if you don’t have a decent home cinema setup it makes more sense, but then why are you spending your money on a VR headset?
Because a decent home cinema setup lets you watch Maverick & Goose, while a vr headset lets you be Maverick & Goose? :)
I mean if you’re interested in watching movies. Given $400-$600 to spend on something to watch movies, you’re way better off improving your home cinema than buying a Rift. And if you’re into DCS, when are you going to have the time to watch movies?
I definitely wouldn’t do it for the express purpose of watching movies. The only reason I could see is if you don’t really have the space for a decent home cinema setup, but even then you are probably better off with a nice bluetooth headset and a laptop. I’ve never tried on a Go, so I don’t know how it feels wearing it.
yeah, but you cant watch star trek discovery, in space, with your VR-enabled internet friends on bigscreen, using your $600 projector!
Not a thing that appeals to me. I’m very much a solo film viewer. TV’s different, I suppose, but I’d still rather watch it on a good telly with proper speakers. Disco’s HDR is really nice.
I don’t get the appeal either, but then I don’t actually own one, so I can’t really speak to it. Lots of people do enjoy watching movies on their Oculus Gos-- that is one of the two primary use-cases, the other as I noted being porno.
Sure, but there’s also games like Astrobot, Onward, Beat Saber, Brass Tactics, Polybius, Vox Machinae, Lone Echo, From Other Suns, Arizona Sunshine, Eleven, Ironwolf VR and so on. They may not be AAA games, but they also aren’t the Wii shovelware that a lot of people seem to think is all that currently exists on VR.
I guess my response wasn’t directed specifically at you though (sorry!), it’s just something I’ve been seeing a lot of in other places since the Rift 2 cancellation rumour made news and it bums me out a bit.
Doesn’t help that the gaming media just ignores any VR game that isn’t funded by Sony.
If VR is the big leap ahead, I’d expect the early adopters to be evangelists for it, yet I don’t see that. What I see more of is people saying they bought it and don’t play it as much as they used to. That’s not a good signal.
So maybe it’s as simple as VR being really cool but the game designers haven’t yet figured out how to make games that take advantage of VR and really make it take off.
The weird thing to me is Facebook, Sony, and even Microsoft, who are all invested in VR or AR. All have pretty deep pockets. Are they pouring money into VR/AR game development? If not, why not? Why can’t Facebook set aside $500M for VR game development? They will spend billions to buy a company, so why not a fraction of that to develop games for the platform they purchased?
Facebook/Oculus funded some titles, like Brass Tactics. I don’t know if they still are or not.
I guess we’re hanging out in different places then.
Again, there’s plenty of cool games that take advantage of VR already out there. The problems are that they aren’t the AAA blockbuster titles that core gamers demand of a new platform, while being very hard to demo what’s so cool about them without having someone actually try them and experience it themselves. And most of all there’s the steep costs and hardware requirements involved.
Cost is absolutely the biggest factor (though not the only) holding VR back right now.
Yes, Sony and Oculus have both funded a bunch of VR exclusive titles. Including titles like Lone Echo, Astro Bot, Firewall: Zero Hour, Robo Recall and more. Or the upcoming Stormland from Insomniac (funded by Oculus).
MS is betting a lot more on AR, Augmented Reality. Apple is, too.
You just haven’t heard about MS lately because instead of shipping version 2.0 of their WIndows Holographic headset, they purposely decided to skip 2.0 for a much larger leap coming next year. Probably smaller, lighter, more powerful, with a much wider field-of-view.
The advantage of AR is that it doesn’t take you out of the world and isolate you as VR does. This photo probably did a bit to damage VR’s perception.
But AR is more useful for all sorts of real-world applications rather than games, as a game designer wouldn’t be able to control the environment as they do in a 3D world.
i think that ultimately, it’s only a matter of time before VR and AR converge into singular devices. Both have some way to go first though.
Don’t you have to wear some kind of goggles for AR? I admit to not knowing a lot about it.
Probably. I only check this thread, and I don’t see a ton of exuberance here.
VR is completely game changing in a way that I’ve rarely experienced. The level of immersion is something to behold, but there’s real no way of describing it that does it any justice. Playing games on a flat 2D screen after being in VR for a while almost seems comical.
That being said, I haven’t been using it as much as I’d like for logistical reasons. The room my computer was in was cluttered and just not large enough for room scale. It was also in a room that got overly warm in the summers, and given my height and the immersion factor of VR, I’d have to turn the ceiling fan off or I’d forget where I’m really at and put my hand through the fan. All that combined left it a less than ideal experience for a lot of titles. I’ve moved into a new home though and I’m planning for VR specifically in my basement.
The tech is definitely 1.0. The headsets are too bulky, the setup is too finicky, and it’s all too expensive. That is going to leave it as a niche for the early adopters right now, but the experience itself? It blows me away. The first time I grabbed a robot in Robo Recall and threw it at a droid, all on instinct and not even knowing I could do it? Amazing. Hard to go back to “press B to grab” or “right thumbstick to look around” after that. It all just feels so… detached. VR makes you feel like you’re there, in the game.
You do, but those goggles aren’t closed off like VR goggles. They’re basically like Google Glasses. That’s the goal; instead of goggles it’ll be more like glasses. You’re not shutting yourself off to the world around you.
Hell, my alma matter pioneered some tech waaaaaay back on laser drawing graphics on the eyeball itself, instead of projecting it onto a glass surface.