Virtual reality: to boldly game like we never gamed before...

No, it is all solid plastic, well, it was all a single solid plastic piece, now it’s two pieces :P.

Right now i’m talking with Meta support, to see if I can get a replacement (although I’m out of the warranty period…)

The other solution will be a BOBOVR M2 strap, where the weight is distributed in a another way and mostly rest on the forehead.

Please let me know what it’s like. Based on your linked video, I dove through the steam page and official website. It looks like, based on the Steam reviews, the developers may have pivoted or at least redesigned what a conductor VR game like this should look like a few times. With luck, they are dedicated and willing to incorporate feedback. And their occasional updates based on adding songs are nearly completely designed to catch my interest. (Me browsing through updates: …WOAH THIS GAME HAS VON SUPPÉ’S LIGHT CAVALRY OVERTURE???)

Potential drawback – earlier videos seemed to highlight that these songs were based on MIDI files, which greatly expands the potential additions to a conductor’s repertoire, BUT there’s not much sadder than hearing a MIDI file playing back through a cheap tinny MIDI soundcard.

There’s one feature that would make this a must-buy for me, no matter how early release quality it is. If you could cue the piccolo players to stand up during their solo in “Stars And Stripes Forever”, I would immediately buy the game. My late grandpa played flute and piccolo for the local big orchestra for over forty years, and him standing up during that solo was kind of his move. I love seeing other piccolo players doing the same thing in performances of the same piece, and it would be a real thrill to be a part of that in VR.

There’s probably a whole other potential game in there for Orchestra Management, dealing with the egos, tight salaries, waning audience interests, stunts, strikes, and suicides, but the conductor wouldn’t quite be in that position to deal with those situations, and that would be a heck of a lot of feature creep. Just piccolo players standing up, that’s all I ask for.

The Steam game is a different one!
Yes, that’s two different VR games with the same idea and almost the same title.

https://maestro-game.com/

by Double Jack devs (french studio?)

vs

by Symphonic Games.

Maestro: Masterclass is only a Quest 2 game using hand tracking, and has a more cartoony style.

I tried it and it’s very good! The hand tracking works surprisingly well (in others games it didn’t convince me), it looks and performs well enough with 3 dozens characters on screen and a convincing crowd; it has some decent production values (the tutorial npc has lip synching). I’s basically a rhythm game doing different hand gestures, and well, with a good track and good timing, it sells the idea you are conducting the orchestra, even if it’s all fake.
I liked it a lot.

Two different games?! No wonder I was confused. I thought the one with the markedly better (if more cartoony) graphics was just from a later build. Thank you for the clarification!

I wonder if the hand tracking would make it unsuitable to be sideloaded to a Reverb G2 and Windows Mixed Reality?

I will clarify that the Masterclass game is more… like a free demo right now, with a single song. It seems they are developing a full (paid?) game based on it now. I asked on twitter and they said they soon will make an announcement.

You cannot ‘sideload’ a Quest game to a pc headset that easily. One uses Android, with their own apis, the other Windows. You need a proper port, even if we forget the handtracking. Maybe for the full game they will make a real port to Steam.

On a whim I picked up Reflex Unit 2 on Applab. It’s really fun! Feels like a mix of the top-down levels in SNES Contra3, and SNES Mechwarrior 3050. I’m sure there are better examples that aren’t 30 years old, but hey. It works great in VR as a sofa based game, with a kind of platformer perspective that only draws a tactical layout of your close surrounding… it’s like a VR mecha console shooter. I’m really digging it.

Vr is doomed. But this time I don’t say totally as a joke. I hope Quest 3 doesn’t cheap out again with the included strap.

I don’t care for the daily use, I also don’t use it daily . But 14% weekly is bad, imo.

No shit, Sherlock.

“To us, the lukewarm usage demonstrates that VR remains ‘early days’”

I keep hearing this, but the tech’s gotten pretty good! The problem is that most people just don’t like using VR.

It’s a pretty stupid article, if you’re not going to compare it to comparable video game consoles. Obviously teens use their phones every day, all day, but it’s their computer, communications device, social network, etc.

I mean, what are teens excited about? My wife, working at a high school, says they’re excited about just about nothing, and that it’s kinda scary.

A tennis game coming later this month to Quest

Breachers is looking good if you are into R6 Siege

Crime seems an arcade swashbuckling romp

Also, a classic SW game now on Quest, thanks to TeamBeef

50% off dlc of Puzzling Places, only for two days
[url]https://www.reddit.com/r/PuzzlingPlaces/comments/12droi9/flash_sale_50_off_of_all_dlcs_todaytomorrow/[/url]

Another roguelike shooter, to be released on May. clearly with a bit of inspiration on nuDoom

Dammit, every time I get the itch to play some VR again I get turned off by how ridiculously hard it is to make work if I want to use my Quest 2 with Steam. Any advice on order of attack for launching the Oculus app on PC, starting the headset, turning off/on Airlink, and starting SteamVR? I went back into Alyx last night with seemingly not too much difficulty and today I’m completely stymied getting the SteamVR app to appear in the Oculus library.

That’s exactly what defeated me too :/

Funny thing, I’ve played on pc vr the last three days (Vertigo 2, I will write some impressions eventually) and I didn’t have issues. A pair of notes:
-You don’t even have to start the oculus app on pc, it’s automatic (as there is a oculus service running)
-I usually run whatever game directly from the desktop, the game itself will call SteamVr. That’s for the first time running it, successive times I launch it from the library thingie of Oculus that shows the last run programs.

So, Stellaris Ghost Signal, the action roguelike Quest exclusive, now has a 30 minute free trial option. Hard to believe this thread is empty so far of Ghost Signal impressions. Might I be the first . . . . reporting back later, unless someone beats me to it! :-P

Vertigo 2 impressions

With 2/3 (almost 3/4?) of the game done, it’s time to write about it. It’s a game very much in the game on Vertigo 1, a single indie dev trying to do a ‘Half Life-like’ experience, but Vertigo 2 is better as it’s longer and more varied. I really appreciate the latter, I really like when games that try to mix things up. In Vertigo 2 you go through a river of lava, you participate in a city battle helping communist robots, you are trapped in a giant whale, you fight archer centaurs in swampy areas, you have unexpected allies in your fight, you have a big Portal reference, you sail the open sea with a boat, or you have a creepy dark factory with mannequins everywhere, and more.

So, is Vertigo 2 worthy of the top scores I’ve seen in some places?
The short answer is: no. It’s more a 7.5/10 game.
I think it’s the type of game that a specific, older than average audience wants in VR (not a multiplayer game like lots of modern games, not a roguelike action game, not an arcade small experience, just a good traditional single player game with some meat on the bones). Because of it, I think some people are over praising it. Hell, I’m IN that audience. But that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize the weak parts of the game.

Because it’s still an indie game, and you can appreciate a series of issues because of it.
-The graphics are a few years outdated (although thanks to that, it doesn’t need a powerful computer)
-The entire art design, from character design to textures isn’t very good. This is less forgivable than the previous point. Some of the weapon sounds are pretty weak, too.
-It’s a bit buggy (I died twice by going through the floor and a third time respawning in a moving boat when loading a checkpoint)
-I feel the dev efforts has been spread too thin, so while at first it’s impressive he did all these levels, you can see how some areas didn’t have the user testing and iteration needed. The difficulty is uneven at places here and there, the controls of a vehicle you use briefly are pretty bad, some of the places you can’t use the teleport doesn’t make a lot of sense, and well, the typical jank you should expect from time to time.

But more importantly, I don’t like some of the core aspects of the FPS experience:
-The writing. Decent in parts, but my issue is that the tone is all over the place, from attempts of telling a serious straightforward scifi tale, even with some gravitas, to totally silly parts.
-Health regen. I hate it in FPS, although I will give it a pass as you only regen up to 50% of your total health, and it isn’t very fast. Still, I’d prefer to only use items to recover it.
-Ammo management. There is none. Ammo is infinite. I hate it. There is a small twist here in that while I said ammo in infinite, it needs a time for the magazines to regenerate, which in practical terms you can’t use a single weapon in a long engagement, you need to swap between two weapons.
-Level design. Not bad, but honestly, it isn’t very good. It’s very linear (not that being linear is bad, but other better games still know how to disguise it better), there is little effort in making interesting side areas, or levels inter connected in interesting ways, or levels where you have to get several objectives letting you decide how to do it, or using hub level, etc.
-Exploration. Bad. As I said it’s very linear, the game lots of times won’t let you go back to explore other areas once reached a point (and you aren’t warned in any way), and there are very few rewards for exploration, as there is no rare ammo pickups, only two items (health, grenades, the latter are kind of rare except for a single level), there isn’t armor, or consumables like rebreathers or shields or anything useful like that, nor permanent upgrades for your character, with the exception of briefcases that upgrade your weapons. In fact the briefcases are basically the single reason to explore. Alas they are rare and lots of times I wasted time exploring some areas for nothing.
-Weapons balance. This is about a complaint about a specific weapon. At first the balance it’s pretty good, but around the middle point of the game I got a ak-47 and man, why I would use any other weapon. It works both long and short range, the DPS is notably higher than the SMG with both rof and damage upgrades, and the magazines regenerate very fast.
-Encounter design. While there is a good variety of enemies, it doesn’t particularly try to use them mixing them up in creative or novel ways. It’s more ‘here are some robots’. Later, ‘here are some dinos’. Later ‘here are some centaurs’, etc.
edit: that said, the combat itself is more intense and dynamic than say, HL Alyx, with more enemies and they move around more, sometimes taking cover, others retreating, etc.

I’ve found that Virtual Desktop is a much smoother experience than standard AirLink for interacting with SteamVR. Once installed on PC and Quest 2, It Just Works. I did buy it before AirLink was available, so you might find it’s not as compelling a value proposition for you.

Looks pretty good too me. Please give impressions when you can!

Ghost Signal on Quest is worth trying, especially since you get to for 30 minutes free.

Within the 30 minutes free time, I managed to complete the nodes within two maps. Nodes and maps and encounters are very much like in FTL or a Slay-the-Spire like in that you have multiple paths leading to an end-zone boss encounter, with options for more or fewer of various types of encounter along the way. This looks and feels like an action roguelike which if you exclude the VR angle, is like a mash-up of Hands of Fate (action RPG + choose your adventure) with more familiar Slay-the-Spire like maps and nodes, in a sci-fi setting.

Gameplay feels vaguely similar to some of the VR RTS games, like Final Assault and Skyworld, but to me, a lot more elegant. Also, you are controlling just the one ship. It feels very cool, and probably over time natural, to just maneuver your ship around, shoot down incoming missiles, dodge attempted ship to ship ramming, and use your lasers, ballistic guns and missiles to variously take down enemies. Within the limited time I played, progression within a run seemed familiar. My first upgrade gave the option between drone ships that would help take fire from hostiles, and a freeze-ray upgrade to my laser. The next offered reduced laser recharge times or slight boost to all weapon damage. Looks like there could be a lot of variety.

Also feels like there could be a fair level of skill involved in the ship combat. I died on the final node of the second map, just before my time ran out, whilst trying to fight against a pair of capital ships that were launching missiles and fighters, with me just barely managing to kill those minor threats without taking care of the big ones. With better maneuvering and fire control I might have made it!

Moving and firing feels click. You kinda just point at what you want to fire at with one hand, and use thumbstick to toggle which weapon, then trigger. Maneuvering is also slick, you point towards a destination, or a chain of them, with time slowed down whilst you do so, and then once on track you can press a single button to boost speed.

I will be buying this, it is a very novel addition to the VR library.

I finished Vertigo 2. It’s really an impressive game given that when you see the credits, you see “Code, Art, Sound, Music, Story” all credited to a single dev. Still, as impressive as it is from that Renaissance man perspective, from a realistic pov it would have been a better game for the consumers with 3 or 4 devs instead of one, the dude has a limit. Maybe with the money of this game he can hire a few people for the next one.
The game has some cool boss fights and some chaotic, intense combat set pieces. He really likes to put AI fights where two factions fight between them. While that’s good, I’m still split in my opinion the combat, in fact in the last levels I was kinda wishing to reach the end already, as ultimately it feels a bit flat.
It’s also decently hard, some of the last level fights make you sweat bullets, and some of the boss fights are directly frustrating and need many attempts.

One pet peeve I forgot to mention before, it annoys me how the game dims your view as a warning of having low health, even when you are at 50% health (and you are at that threshold a lot, as that’s up to what you regen). In other words, that means you are in that state a lot.