As a pilot, I use VR with the XPlane flight simulator and it seriously feels like I'm in a real Cessna. True, the flight controls are a little off (for example, stalls and landings don't feel like a real plane), but other than that, everything is absolutely spot on.
It's a great way to scratch my aviation itch and is also great for practicing procedures, especially when paired with a live air traffic control network like PilotEdge. My brain seriously forgets that it's a simulation when I'm in it.
This could be a way to revolutionize flight training, and make it more accessible. The entire cost of my PC build including VR gear and software is a fraction of what real-life flight training costs.
Since the release of the original Oculus I’ve been curious about this. I fly for a living which is a very rewarding and satisfying way to earn a paycheck but it does come with some monotony and takes away some of the ‘fun’ that can really only be had from GA flying low and slow and taking in the scenery. I’m not able to afford an actual aircraft yet but I’m wondering if a good VR simulator set up could scratch that itch.
I guess it depends what kind of flying you do in the sim but do you find it still provides a fun factor? Like is it immersive enough to go fly around in the mountains? Or hop around some lakes in a seaplane? Is manipulating switches and buttons other than the primary controls cumbersome within VR? I remember the original ‘virtual cockpits’ in MS Flight Sim and planning around go find the right switches and buttons to click really took away from the experience.
I’m really interested in this idea but haven’t found a setup to try out and I’m hesitant to spend a bunch on it just to test it out.
You don't get any of the "seat of the pants" feeling of course, and the graphics, while super impressive, don't compare to real-life low and slow VFR flying (although hopefully MS Flight Sim 2020 changes that). It doesn't replace the real thing.
BUT I enjoy flying VFR in busy airspace with the PilotEdge network, and also IFR flying. For the communications and IFR flying, the mental tasks you do in the sim are identical to what you do for real. After an ILS approach to minimums in the sim, I feel like I got a workout. It definitely keeps my head in the game.
I think this is where I diverge from the Flight Sim community. Most sim-ers are searching for realistic IFR, busy airspace, ATC, and airline/commercial type operations because it’s something that is basically not an option without a career in the field. This means most of the development work focuses on that type of flying. Plus it has commercial applications, like use in training simulators.
As someone who has a career in all of this I just want a way to fly low and slow without dropping $20k+ on an aircraft plus all of the other ongoing expenses and time that incurs.
MSFS2020 certainly looks promising but so did FSX. I suppose I’ll just have to continue waiting until the VFR experience improves or I can afford an aircraft.
Briefly, VFR = Visual Flight Rules. You control the aircraft by looking outside. IFR = Instrument Flight Rules. You control the aircraft strictly by reference to instruments (you need to do this in clouds, for example, when you can't see the horizon).
As iguanayou already pointed out it’s the type of rules a flight is flown under. As you might imagine it’s far easier to simulate IFR flying because it’s largely technical and about animating gauges as there’s little to look at outside when you’re in the clouds or even just high altitude.
VFR on the other hand is all about visual reference to what’s outside. To truly have a VFR experience in a sim you would need incredibly detailed rendering of the outside world which is very graphics and memory intensive. FSX from Microsoft came close but at the time it brought most hardware to a crawl with the settings dialed up and then MS abandoned the franchise.
If MS pulls off their new sim well we might finally be there where a decent VFR flying experience can be simulated when combined with a head mounted display that lets you easily look around out the windows. Time will tell though. I just read something today saying 40 FPS at 4K on a GTX2080. That’s pretty intense.
Sure, it's a scratch-built PC (i7 / 2070 Super) with an HP Reverb, which is a lightweight VR headset. I use a physical yoke (Honeycomb), rudder pedals (Thrustmaster), and throttle quandrant (Saitek), but everything else in the cockpit can be manipulated with the VR controllers that come with the headset.
You just interact with the cockpit as you normally would, pressing buttons, pulling levers, and twisting knobs.
In the virtual cockpit, there is a tablet app that displays all of your maps/charts/checklists/reference materials. Works pretty slick.
How is the resolution/screen door effect of that headset? I use an original Vive with VTOL VR and other games and while they are still very fun and serviceable, I just built a new PC so I could purchase an Index when they go back on sale. I'm hoping the bump in resolution is as significant as I've heard
The resolution is good enough to read all of the gauges easily. It won't look as nice as a good monitor, but the immersion more than makes up for it. I do notice a screen door with the Reverb. Not bad, but it's there.
I find that playing a game in VR is like listing to music in 5.1: It requires a lot of physical space and setup, which then limits the audience to a dedicated niche.
The limitation, in this case, is being affluent enough to have a large empty indoor space to dedicate to VR so you don't bump into things as you walk around; and the desire to calibrate the thing correctly. It's like setting up a really good sound system to listen to music in 5.1; really fun if you like that kind of thing, but "meh" to most people who are happy with a smart speaker.
In my case, when I played a friend's VR setup, he had to have his entire living room completely empty and the system calibrated correctly. Even though his living room was rather large for a Boston-area apartment, it just wasn't large enough, and I kept bumping into a specific wall where his system was miscalibrated.
Such a system will never work in a typical tiny Tokyo, NYC, or Hong Kong apartment; but I could see it selling being a good niche in suburban areas where it's common to have large basements.
I think you have it exactly backwards. VR might not catch on as readily among affluent folks who can afford to have all these great experiences in real life, but will be a great escape for others (yes, I'm aware some will see that as dystopian, but to me it's just a better TV).
The Oculus Quest isn't like 5.1 sound at all. I kickstarted the original Oculus and would agree with your characterization there, but the Quest is entirely different. It's self contained, not needing to be tethered to a computer, and the boundary configuration is a snap. You do it from within the VR, observing your own room with its cameras, and just draw the boundary walls. Many games you can even do seated but "room scale" ones only need about 6ft x 6ft, which most people even in tiny apartments can put together.
I have an Oculus Quest. I like beat saber, but my office doesn't have enough room for it. The kids like Job/Vacation simulator, which sort of works seated, but is much better if you give it some room.
We have enough space if we move a table in the living room, but we have to do that every time we want to play. So to me it seems worse than the 5.1 setup, because you only have to do that once.
(Additionally, I don't want the lenses to get dusty, so I keep the Quest in a travel case -- so I have to remember to take it out of its case and charge it during the day if I plan to use it in the evening. The whole thing feels like a bunch of hassle)
Even if you're very affluent, VR can give you some experiences at much lower risk. E.g. flight simulators and racing simulators let you learn planes, cars, airports, tracks, etc. much more cost effectively and without the risk that missing the takeoff or missing a turn will end your life or career.
I don't know if they use VR, but all Formula 1 racing teams have simulators set up, not only for learning the cars and tracks, but also for working on car setups before the race weekends. Same with flight schools -- they're all throwing you in a simulator before the real deal. I can say from experience the crummy "simulator" I got as part of my $150 Groupon "flight experience" package paled in comparison to the realism of $300 worth of Oculus, a $100 joystick, and $100 worth of simulator software. Especially for helicopters, I'd say, you really need the sense of depth.
This is a great analogy. VR takes effort to set up and to get into and it's not as seamless as just launching a game on your computer.
I have a VR setup and I absolutely love VR gaming, and yet I'm sitting here on a Friday night on my desktop computer playing a 2D game because I can't be bothered to go and get my laptop (which is VR capable, where my desktop is not) and clear floor space and plug in my VR headset.
It's not just that it's a universal pursuit which currently has niche appeal. It's a niche pursuit. It's not just about floor space, it's about floor space in which you can relax into your VR space and know you're not going to be interrupted.
The only disagreement I have is the space argument. Once you have your "vr legs" and can stomach free locomotion, you basically never move your feet again and so "roomscale VR" shrinks down to a 1m x 3m window. That's about the space I have available in my office and these days it's generally sufficient for anything I want to play.
This. One of the many misconceptions people have is that you need a lot of space. No longer true with Quest. For those who have not experienced it, initial setup shows you the room you are in through the headset cam and you draw a boundary around the available space which can be as little as 2m x 2m. Then in use if you approach the edge of the space it gives you excellent visible cues (a wireframe wall around the play area) to show you are infringing on the boundary. It's very well implemented and makes playing in a small, non-dedicated VR space completely viable now.
Furthermore, it remembers setup for each space very accurately so setup is a one-time operation for each new space.
Can you project what you see on the headset only Oculus Quest to another screen? For example, if I am playing Beat Saber, can I project my view to TV so that family can watch? Or to a Chromecast/Alex/similar tech?
Yes, you can cast to the phone or to a chromecast (which still needs the phone).
However, the stream is delayed quite a bit so we do this with the TV muted -- otherwise the experience in VR is annoying (especially with music games like Beat Saber).
You could perhaps work around that by using some good isolating head phones, but then it would be impossible to have a conversation between the folks on the couch and the person in VR. (in which case, why are you streaming to the TV then?).
Yes and no - unfortunately the individual apps have to allow it, and Beat Saber doesn't allow it yet. It works for other apps, though (with Chromecast).
I really don't know why Beat Saber doesn't allow it, it would make so much sense.
As someone that lives in a "small nyc apartment" I'd say the blanket statement around vr and small spaces doesn't hold.
There's potential for extremely immersive experiences even in the Vive's smallest play area. Right now, as I see it, the bigger barriers to VR adpoption are cost of equipment and social norms. Right now VR tends to be an isolating experience, and there aren't a lot of experiences that allow for VR and non VR people to interact, let alone have multiple participants in the same space.
I live in a tiny Cambridge apartment and I can set up a small play space just fine without external equipment (inside out tracking through Windows MR). Though I do agree, the activation energy of putting on a bulky headset does prevent me from getting into a game at the drop of a hat.
I own a PSVR, and even though that probably has the weakest software library, the most compelling VR experiences on that platform have all either been sitting or standing -- nothing that involves walking around (this may be due to the limits of the hardware, given that the headset must always face front).
I used to be a casual PC gamer, with a fairly good spec build. Then one day I played some VR games at a friend’s house on PSVR, which blew my mind - not only how much fun I had, but how much fun our non gamer friends had!
After that my wife and me got a second hand Vive for 350, and it’s been amazing. I never play regular games any more, and even she (who never played any games) now enjoys it a lot and plays with me from time to time.
All this is to say that I do think VR is here to stay, it just blows regular gaming out of the water... but it definitely is at its infancy - games look and feel the way PC games did 10 years ago..
The most accurate description that I've heard is that we're at the point where GUIs were in the 80s. The tech was just good enough for it and there were already several products on the market, but designers were still exploring the space and had not agreed on common metaphors yet. Which is exciting to witness, but shows that we're still squarely in the "early-adopter" phase of the curve.
(As for myself, I tried a friend's Oculus Quest extensively two weeks ago. Now I'm sitting at home, drawing up plans in Inkscape for how to rearrange my furniture to accommodate a room-scale VR area.)
VR-devices are good but still not good enough. New generations are much better than last that it completely ruins the experience with older hardware.
I tested VR-headset directed at professional use: VR-2 Pro https://varjo.com/products/vr-2-pro/
Now every VR headset directed at consumers feels like utter crap. PSVR and Vive experience is ruined.
If you are willing to cough up €5995, you get really blown away until something better comes along and there is still long way to go. Field of view is just 87 degrees for example.
The vive is so non casual though. I always felt like it was a big production to clear the space, launch steamvr, often wait for updates. Plus I’m moving around when I’d prefer to be relaxed on the couch.
On the other hand VR is amazing. I’ve since switched to the quest which helps with most of those issues I mentioned.
"Why we've never fallen in love with 3-d glasses" -fixed the title.
Science fiction predictions of the future are almost universally comically bad. People should know this by now; we completely lack positronic brains, warp drives, moon bases and tricorders. VR is a science fiction prediction of the future, just like positronic brains. The fact that people won't pay lots of money for a cheesy 3-d glasses experience as a proxy for science fiction VR shouldn't surprise anyone.
Well, if the current trend of battery improvements holds, and considering the unfathomable amounts of money and time thrown at the problem, we're hopefully about 10 years away from devices that can last 1 week on a single charge. Not quite Captain Kirk material, but we have about 240 years to get there.
> nor fiddling with it when he was bored
Do you consider this a minus? Most people consider it a huge plus :-)
The iPhone 11 Pro Max has a 15 watt-hour battery. If it lasted a week on a single charge, it would need a 105 watt-hour battery. That's the same amount of energy in 90 grams of TNT.
>it would need a 105 watt-hour battery. That's the same amount of energy in 90 grams of TNT.
It's the same amount of energy as 11 milliliters of gasoline or a third of an ounce of fat on a piece of steak. Batteries (and explosives) are shitty at storing energy compared to hydrocarbons.
Danger comes from energy density and ability to release that energy quickly. Fat doesn't explode. Neither does gasoline, though I wouldn't be comfortable carrying 11ml of gasoline in my pocket. Existing batteries sometimes do explode and cause injury. The problem would be far worse if they had 7x more energy in them.
I did use the example of gasoline, but I don't know why you'd be uncomfortable carrying 11ml of it in your pocket. Let's change it to 11ml of ethanol which is basically the same energy density. In principle you should be able to extract the energy using a fuel cell or even a heat engine. Since we're talking about futuristic cell phones, it seems more than possible to squeeze more energy into Captain Kirk's federationphone.
"The iPhone 11 Pro Max beats that estimate by some margin, lasting just minutes shy of a full 48 hours between charges."
For 1 full week we need 3.5x capacity.
Plus, at a certain point, the gap between (weak) explosives and batteries becomes really small. After all, the main difference is how they release that energy :-)
Meh, my Mi Max 3 usually lasts 72 hours under moderate use (RSS, browsing, periodic navigation), and closer to 90 when I spend most of the time at home, only reading from it in the morning or late night.
Not really. I can't just speak to communicator expecting it to understand me and only me in a fraction of a second and connect me to the right person. At least not without "ok google" or "alexa" or "hey siri".
> ...at least not without "ok google" or "alexa" or "hey siri".
I think it was pretty clear that you had to press a button (or tap a badge) for the thing to start listening. Not sure how Android works, but Apple does have such a button, where you can talk to Siri without saying 'Hey Siri'.
> I can't just speak to communicator expecting it to... connect me to the right person.
I've been watching ST:OS on Netflix recently, and this seemed like something that was written by someone who obviously had never had anything like the technology they were working with. At any random time, Kirk just says, "Captain to medical. Bones, are you there?" And McCoy never says, "Sorry Jim, I'm in the can; I'll get back to you when I'm done." Or even, "Sorry Jim, I'm in the middle of removing this piece of shrapnel from a red-shirt's knee; I'll have to get back to you in an hour." Nobody is ever going to the bathroom, or eating, or sleeping, or having sex, or even just busy doing something else; they're immediately available to talk to you, 24/7, right where you expect them to be.
That's obviously an unworkable nightmare. One way or another, you're always going to have to request a connection, and wait for the person to accept or reject it.
Actually tricorders kinda exist, in that we have personal hand held computers with access to large databases of knowledge and a good number of environmental sensors.
We're just missing all of the sensors (and the accompanying data), but I imagine that's only a matter of time. We're already seeing the basics of biometrics being added in.
> A major issue is that the price of headsets has remained very expensive.
They mention it in passing in a later paragraph, but the cost of the headset is peanuts compared to the cost of a system that can provide a consistent, high-framerate, high-quality image. While cheaper options exist (Daydream/Gear VR, Oculus Quest, PSVR) they just don't have the quality or framerate to really send home the "future of gaming" VR has been sold as.
I'd argue we're still minimum three years away from seeing mass adoption of VR in the household/consumer market. With raytracing still being in its infancy and software optimizations for many-core CPUs just beginning, it'll still be some time before mid-level <$800 systems are capable of providing a good VR experience.
> they just don't have the quality or framerate to really send home the "future of gaming" VR has been sold as
Have you actually played with the Quest? I've had many people use mine, also people who used Vive or Rift before and nobody was disappointed with the quality of it. If realism and frame rate were the most important part of gaming, then Pokemon Go and Candy Crush wouldn't be as profitable as they are. The majority of people want simple, arcade style entertainment, not hyper realistic sagas that take hours to finish.
> The majority of people want [X current product] not [Y under active development].
I've lost count of the number of times people have used that template and turned out to be humerously wrong. My favourite is probably when people tried to use it for Japanese phones > iPhones then the next generation iPhone wiped the competition in Japan.
People want good entertainment more than they want their senses stimulated, but it seems very likely that good entertainment which stimulates the senses more effectively will have a massive market.
We're dealing with something where the output can be strictly better than video in a fairly meaningful way. It'll turn out people want that when someone makes a compelling and high quality game/app. Sure, nobody is going to move over just because the visuals are good; but there is artistic space in VR that hasn't been touched before and some of it is going to be amazing.
I suppose the short version is you are right but we've seen people say that before and it presaged massive changes.
I'm not predicting though, I'm just observing. The most popular free games on mobile are consistently low quality arcade games. Also, I'm not saying it's the only thing people play, GTA and RDR are super high grossing franchises and they are high quality sagas. I'm mostly rebutting against the notion that lack of quality is holding back consumer grade VR.
I think performance in terms of keeping things consistent and smooth is really important, but visual realism or duplicating reality is overrated. Not only do you get into uncanny valley territory but more stylized art is often more compelling than imitation of reality. Beat Saber, Superhot, Sprint Vector, or I Expect You To Die for example have varying levels of unrealistic stabilization but are still immersive.
Call of Duty on consoles has long been described as feeling better than other shooters, partially because of it's 60fps target since Call of Duty 2. At the time few people would care if "60fps!" was a feature printed on the box, it was more behind the curtain magic.
Good VR isn't just about graphics quality. Mobile phone GPUs can deliver a high enough frame rate to deliver an immersive experience. The Oculus Quest is proof of that.
The only downside is that the graphical content has to be stylized. But in games, stylized looks can be a boon instead of a hindrance. A typical good gaming experience is extremely stylized and over the top, anyway (especially in these "realistic" militaristic FPS games).
This is he first time for me where an emergent new technology in the gaming world feels like a proper thing with actual potential, and not a just a novelty gimmick like motion controls, 3D and previous attempts at "VR" were. I had the chance to try the new Oculus Rift S and the HTC Vive over the holidays with some Beat Saber and Superhot and it was a really amazing experience. I have honestly never felt such awe for a game since my childhood days where I'd witness a brand new graphics engine like Source for the first time.
There is definitely a bright future for VR as the technology will only get better, cheaper and more accessible with time.
Yes, really, You are the exception. By now there is quite a few people who have tried VR in some place or another and the market has clearly shown sales are not skyrocketing at all. It's a very slow growth, we are talking about a few millions headsets per year, which is just pocket money market wise compared to smartphones or even PCs at large. Also, most of the software is utter crap (with a few exceptions like Beat Saber, Tetris Effect) and not convincing enough for anyone who cares about their spending.
The Altair 8080 is considered the first PC and it was released in 1974. The IBM PC was released in 1981 and PCs became widespread only in the 1990's, when they started adding multimedia features. So about 20 years for mass adoption.
The first touchscreen phone was introduced in 1994, the IBM Simon. Yet the first true modern smartphone to get mass adoption was the iPhone, 2007. And truly massive adoption worldwide happened after iOS and especially Android took off, a few years later.
VR has been around as a purely techie idea for 30 years but we haven't really had the tech for something worthwhile until recently. I'd say that we're probably 5-10 years from mass adoption, once we have some lighter high-performance headsets.
Early VR is 1960s ... it's been around longer than personal computers.
(oh sure, for military and experimental applications for the most part for a long time - and with a really high price tag - but it existed!)
If we're stretching things to go with the earliest examples of the tech, then computers go back even further with ENIAC in the 1940s. Even earlier if you count electromechanical devices.
Well, we're talking about mass market adoption. If they make 1% of people feel sick, that's tens if not hundreds of millions of people who will be actively campaigning against your product. This is definitely into early adopter territory.
Then you need super high graphical fidelity (resolution, refresh rate, field of view, etc.) and super portable equipment.
The current VR devices aren't the first commercially available ones. My first VR experience was in the late 80's and I think it was driven by an Amiga. Thirty years has passed since then and I think that maybe the market is what it's going to be.
AR has a ton of potential though (e.g. windshield HUDs).
Obviously, we're still at very early stages with this tech. It's silly to compare it with smartphones and PCs, since it's a very different class of product. There are some barriers for entry but, as I said they will eventually get ironed out. The price of a full set with a fidelity grade matching the current high end sets shouldn't exceed the price of a games console in a few years.
There has definitely been a huge increase in interest with titles like Boneworks and the upcoming HL Alyx. The Valve index has been sold out almost instantly and there's reportedly a huge backlog of pre-orders for it.
Your first paragraph has been the goto defense for VR for a decade now. I used it myself five years ago. But it's gotten old now. Tech is supposed to solve these problems faster than this.
The Valve index sold out because it is the only way to play one of the most anticipated games of all time.
there is no space for gaming to evolve at the moment without VR. The only thing that next generation consoles are bringing to the table is more advanced graphics. VR offers a truly innovative space for gaming to move into and whilst its not there yet in terms of hardware and software, I can see it being 'the future' as it were.
I think there's potential for things like Apple's U1 chip and Google's Soli chip to add cheap and accurate gesture control to consoles without the need to hold controllers at all. Add an array of mics and the next gen of Guitar Hero can be based on a group's singing and dancing but graded on a per-voice / per-body basis.
Because of a console's placement in front of a group instead of attached to a single person's head, I think it's better positioned for a wide variety of entertainment experiences.
Large TVs are now cheap enough that they can fill an entire group's field of vision with a shared experience as opposed to having to buy 1 headset per person. Obviously turning your head ruins the immersion of a TV, but I would argue that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes it's fun to be "trapped" in VR, but sometimes it just makes the experience more isolating and difficult to operate (eg how do I watch my kids playing on the other side of the room while I have a headset on?).
That same argument could have been made for 3D tech in TVs a few years ago, and we all know how well that technology took off. It seems most people seem to want an incrementally “better” experience, not a fundamentally different one.
I'd prefer physically accurate skeletal animation because even with all the mocap, animations still look sooo fake. Maybe neural network post processing step would do some good? Maybe some life-like flexibility in interactions instead of everything being little finite state machines?
Maybe some neural network game optimisation to be more fun for given player?
Sim racing, or for those unaware of it: basically racing games with realistic physics and usually a competitive online racing field, is incredible in VR.
The sense of speed and immersion with a good wheel and pedal setup in VR is unmatched by a monitor based setup. I tried it at a VR arcade and kept adding time to my session to keep playing.
I have a fairly nice and expensive sim racing setup at home right now, but my PC cant run any of the current sims in VR well enough for me to justify getting a headset. Between PC upgrades and headset im looking at $500+ in upgrades that I just haven't gotten around to doing, but you can bet its on my list
Same for flight simulations (I'm using X-Plane and DCS World [DCS World has much better VR, better overall X-Plane is more fun]) with VR headset. With VR headset, it crushes any other simulators I've used, as the immersion increases and it becomes much more natural.
VR simracing can be hit and miss i.e. rf2 looks amazing but is rough around the edges (Hungaroring in the wet in a GT3 car is amazing in VR) but assetto Corsa looks awful.
Don't bother with anything worse than an Index these days, the Vive is amazing in beat Sabre but awful if you want to read the dials.
My experience is quite the opposite, I think it looks excellent, and the only one which looks better in my experience is project cars 2 (but is inferior on every other aspect).
Sure, the text might be a bit blurry (like on every other game), and the dials look worse than desirable but driving at speed I think the immersion is unmatched.
I have a gtx 1080 and oculus rift s. I haven't tested yet ACC.
Haven't got it I'm afraid. I enjoy racing gt3s and do most of my online races in them but I wouldn't want to spend (or do I? If it's on sale...) that much money just on GT3 cars.
RF2 is so good - the only time i really leave for other Sims is if there isn't content for RF2. The big thing rfactor lacks right now is hybrid modelling unfortunately.
assetto corsa is great because of the modding community. there are some hybrid fantasy/real life maps that are amazing. You can have these great casual drives through "California" mountains that are inspired by real life. I had a blast playing it with a wheel setup
If you want a more realistic sim, iRacing is supposedly top dog, but it's subscription based.
I have both assetto corsa and iracing and high end equipment (fanatec highest end pedals, fanatec DD2 wheel and fanatec gearbox) and I'm not going to renew iRacing.
I enjoy Asetto Corsa better, regarding the physics, I consider they are about as good, graphics are so much better. The good thing of iRacing is the online competition, which is simply superior on every single aspect, but not worth the subscription model nor the costs.
It may make sense if you run ovals, dirt ovals or rally cross, but since I only run on circuits, it's not worth the money to me.
Truly immersive VR experiences are great. The park I went to in Tokyo recently had some fun licensed ones:
+ A Shin Godzilla themed helicopter raid which required a customized "cockpit" to ride in with rumble capabilities,
+ A Dragon Quest free-roaming VR adventure which required a LOT of space to enable
+ A Mario Kart race which, again, required a customized "kart" to ride in which simulated the physics of every sharp turn I took.
The first and third attractions were about five minutes long each. I don't doubt that there was a lot of engineering effort required to even get to that much content nor the fact that I would likely grow very tired of having to play an extended version of each for, say, an hour or two.
I think for at least the time being, this is how VR is going to be adopted: As a theme park experience where short novelty experiences people want to have is made available with the space and props already provided to enjoy it.
Stuff like The Void[1], where a complete arena is built to supplement the visuals, with physical features that match the VR ones (like physical buttons on walls that match the VR projected ones, moving platforms), smells, wind, sounds, etc.
The future of this is going to be incredibly cool, I think. Just subtle stuff like blowing cold air on your face when you're standing on top of a VR mountain, will do wonders for the immersion.
While the graphics and sensor capabilities have undoubtedly come a very long way ...
I'm pretty sure I played a VR racing game in a similar sort of setup in the 80s! There were only ever a handful of games, and they were only found in a very few places, but foir my birthday one year when I was a kid I was taken to the Trocadero centre in London where they had a few of these machines. They weren't massively responsive but they were good fun and for the time they were amazing.
But given just how long VR tech has been around, I do wonder if it will ever be mainstream in any way.
I had a GearVR and it was pretty fun for a while but the battery life, overheating and lack of great apps made me lose interest.
I then got a mixed reality headset and Beat Saber was a game-changer for me. The controls are so simple and are perfectly suited to VR. No motion sickness etc. It's a great game. I've picked up loads of the best selling VR games on Steam and although some have been fun, none quite match up to Beat Saber.
Google Earth with room-scale VR is stunning. Being able to walk around your hometown as if you were a couple of hundred feet tall is an incredible experience.
I'm looking forward to MS Flight Simulator 2020 and it looks like the devs are making VR a priority. This could be a winner for me.
Yeah, the evidence they cite for VR declining seems to be entirely within the space of 3DoF VR, like Google's Daydream and VR video:
> Many big name adopters have abandoned their VR projects. Google recently halted sales of Daydream, its VR headset, admitting that "there just hasn't been the broad consumer or developer adoption we had hoped".
> Meanwhile, the BBC has announced it is ending the funding for its VR hub, less than two years after it was founded.
6DoF VR with tracked controllers (Quest, Valve Index) is a whole different beast, and actually seems to be gaining momentum lately.
> Yeah, the evidence they cite for VR declining seems to be entirely within the space of 3DoF VR, like Google's Daydream and VR video:
If VR were such a hot market surely you would not see the Google Daydream news and Samsung killing off GearVR. You have to take in account all news, positive and negative, to get an actual view of how the market is doing. And also the investment. And investment in VR has been in the decline for a couple of years now after an initial peak.
To me, Google killing off Daydream and Samsung killing off GearVR is akin to TV manufacturers killing off their black-and-white TV models because everyone has moved on to colour.
Also, Valve will release Half-Life: Alyx [1] in March 2020. It's the first game in the much-loved HL series released since Portal 2 in 2011.
I don't own a VR headset and I don't intend to any time soon - it's too expensive and nothing looks enjoyable enough to justify the cost. But once enough big-name games like Alyx get released, gamers previously on the fence (like me) will start to purchase VR headsets, and VR will eventually become the new gaming platform that publishers wants to release on.
> and VR will eventually become the new gaming platform that publishers wants to release on.
I predict the opposite. It will sell a few headsets maybe (a peak), but that alone will not change the course of the technology at all in 2020. Plus, Half Life's popularity in 2020 has nothing to do with its popularity 20 years ago.
It pretty much stole social media headlines with just a post saying "tune in a few days for our next VR game". Valve have plenty of clout still, and Half-Life still draws plenty of eyes.
So they say, anyway. It's best to take any Valve announcements about actual games with a grain of salt.
Some YouTube streamers that I watch did a big run of VR games over the past year or so, and without exception they were gimmicky experiences that would have been better with a more conventional setup. Of course needing the equivalent of a GTX 1080 is a big barrier too.
My prediction is that when and if this new Half-Life game comes out, there won't be enough of a user-base actually using VR gear to sustain it; I hope that they have planned for that case and will release it as a normal PC shooter as well.
Valve has started taking money for the game and given a concrete release date. I think you can count on it actually being released with little if any schedule slippage.
Yeah, I'm not even a gamer, but a relative got a Quest for Christmas, I tried it, and I was like "OK, this is pretty awesome." Without being too cliche it felt like the holodeck to me. Could easily imagine me playing games on it frequently, let alone a true gamer.
A first gen product has more than 10% of the sales of a eight gen product? That's absolutely amazing. I expected it to be a failure because it has limited performance.
How is the quest 1st gen? There have been headsets for VR for quite a while already, including phone-based VR prior to that, so it's hardly a "first gen" product at all unless you narrow down the definition to mean exactly what you want it to mean.
Most people in the VR industry would strongly argue (myself included) that the Quest is the first legit attempt at a consumer VR headset. Before the Quest I never told anyone to go out and buy a VR headset. Now, if they ask, I recommend buying it. The one rough edge with the Quest is the weight. If they knock it down a few ounces I'd argue the Quest is basically the MVP for some startup to create a breakout killer app for VR.
What killer app for VR though? It is not like nobody tried to do VR games yet. The lack of any real worthy software after years of developing games is a sign that it is probably far from obvious that VR games will be a thing beyond a gimmick.
Quest may as well be the first VR headset ever, PC VR was never ever going to take off. Normal people don't want tower PCs in their homes in 2020 and VR needs 6DOF headset and controller tracking to actually be good anyway.
Silly to compare it to literally the most prolific games console manufacturer ever.
Really surprised that neither the article nor the comments here mention the #1 barrier to entry. Your average person doesn’t want to strap a big, heavy, sweaty contraption on their face that blocks their vision entirely. Analysts and enthusiasts seem to miss this point constantly.
Got my neither analyst or enthusiast sister the quest this christmas, she and the kids were constantly playing beat saber and pistol whip without stopping.
The quest 100% is less bulky and sweaty, and it includes cameras if people are in your field of control or need to do setup.
It really is much better than the last generation in terms of UX and I have the vive and the entire setup.
That's the entire point. At least for me, it doesn't make sense if my vision isn't entirely blocked and my input from "reality" isn't completely replaced for a virtual reality; That's the point;
People will do things that they aren't used to if the benefits outweigh the costs.
And of the list of things preventing people from doing VR right now, I doubt strapping the headset on is anywhere near the top (things like cost, PC, space, etc are).
> I doubt strapping the headset on is anywhere near the top
For me personally, a side effect of that is the reason I'm not excited about VR: it's anti-social. I'm shutting myself off from anyone else in my apartment in a way a normal video game doesn't do. It makes me way, way less excited about the potential of VR.
Interestingly, I've had the most impressive social experience in VR. I got the Oculus Go when it came out and bought Catan (the board game, but in VR). I then launched a game online, and ended up playing for an hour with a finish kid and a canadian dude. We talked like we were all together, and at the end I couldn't just leave without saying goodbye (usually I just quit a game, but here I felt some social pressure to do the right thing). We even shook hand.
Sure but don’t you do the same when you are watching a movie or playing a videogame?
There are games to interact with other people in the room btw and they are super fun as well! Check “keep talking and nobody explodes” and “acron: attack of the squirels ”.
You’re talking about a very specific type of game: single player games. Not to mention most people don’t play games the way you are describing and the appeal of games certainly isn’t just to be able to talk to people in the room with you while you’re playing (even if it is appealing for some).
I agree with everyone here who is praising the Quest.
How they’d write an article like this and not mention the Oculus Quest even once is beyond me. It is a game changer and two of my friends have bought one after trying it out once. No cables, no PC, minimal setup, and incredibly immersive.
Yep. I have a friend who simply mocked my Gear VR who was looking up the price on Amazon minutes after trying out the Quest. Anybody trashing VR needs to try the Quest. Trash it afterwards if you like, but don't trash it based on the previous gen (either high end or low end) because they are not comparable.
What I think virtual reality would be immediately useful right now: for anyone working on 3D modeling/animating/CAD. It is very finicky to view and manipulate 3d data on a flat 2d monitor, VR headsets and manipulation devices should be a godsend to those professions. (Also, they have a lot more money to throw than ordinary consumers, they would be willing to pay thousands on a superior workflow.) If VR software developers would focus on those programs first, I would see VR being a must-buy for certain niche groups of people (which would be a solid foundation for the VR industry.) Too bad that many of the VR developers are tunnel-visioned and only care about flashy games/entertainment, where the real gold might be somewhere else.
I currently hack together a mini mesh modelling tool in VR for very specific reasons. I find that creating a UI for something moderately complex isn't all that easy. The common idiom is to treat your controllers as laser pointers, but precision is limited. So you need big UI elements to have easy to hit targets. With the number of simultaneous UI elements thus limited, you need to create hierarchies and menus fast, making interaction cumbersome.
Also, using VR controllers in thin air for a prolonged time becomes a workout. The human body isn't quite made for keeping arms in these poses for extended periods of time.
However, being able to view and manipulate a virtual object directly in 3d space is pretty darn sweet. Just bending your head or moving your hand beats manipulating virtual canera perspectives and gizmos for precision 3d interaction on a screen.
I nearly forgot: the Unreal Engine editor has a VR mode that brings in the nornal 2D GUI as floating windows. I didn't like that very much, but people seem to be OK with it. I don't know any other DCC software that has VR support.
Good observations. CAD users typically have one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse or 3D mouse. If you took out the mouse-screen translation and directly manipulated the object/scene with your mouse hand, I think you'd have the best of old and new. This calls for mixed reality, or visibility of your keyboard in VR.
I'm going to get the Valve Index with the new knuckles controllers, and do some UI experiments with these. It's pretty cool if you can use the individual finger movements to extend hand gestures. I'm also sure it will take years until the UI converges to something optimal..
I will admit that I am not a professional, but in my spare time I have designed some parts in CAD software (Fusion 360) which I've then 3D printed. My experience was once I understood the key bindings to manipulate the view, it was very easy to spacially understand what was going on, even with parts that had layers hidden below other layers (you just turn off the layers you don't care about). I'm not really sure how a VR headset would have helped in my case, but as I said, maybe this is just because the work I was doing was simple.
Back in the ol' cyberpunk 90s, the vision of VR always included gloves for fine-grained manipulation of the virtual space.
I still believe that the combination of VR goggles and gloves (can't forget the wrist keyboard!) with the right software would lead to a quantum leap in 3D modeling. Guess we'll see what happens.
The price. That's the only reason for me. Other than that it's wonderful; Once the prices reach affordable for the masses level, it will surely blow up, given the right apps come with it. People yearn to fantasize, break away from reality, new sensorial experiences etc. If VR offers that at good prices it'll be an explosion. That's my view on it.
Yeah, it's weird how everyone is talking like it's a multi-thousand dollar investment. Even TFA, it closes with:
> "Mass adoption remains impeded by the hardware required to run it, in my opinion. Take videogames - you need a very powerful PC, a good amount of space, sensors set up around it, and of course the VR helmet itself.
> "The cost runs to thousands and for most it is completely impractical not to mention too expensive.
I appreciate the space concern (I live with others in a condo), but the cost is 1/5th or 1/10th of what they suggest, and they are completely ignoring inside-out tracking with obviates the need for a dedicated room with a sensor setup.
I bought an Oculus Go for $100 during a black friday sale last year just to see what this VR thing is all about. I think you can get one today for around $130.
We've definitely gotten $100 worth of fun out of the thing.
100% this for me. Every 6 months or so I go and price out a VR capable desktop machine along with a headset. It's hard not to spend close to $2000 and still have confidence the rig will hold up in 2-3 years. I've seen builds out there around the $1000 price point with people marketing it as "VR-ready", but honestly I'm skeptical of what exactly that means and whether or not it's durable towards upcoming content. The price to (good) content ratio is awful as well.
$2000 is enough for me to get a brand new Index, an RX 5700xt, and a ryzen 3600. For reference, my previous VR capable machine was an i5 4440 and an RX 580 8gb with an original Vive. You are misrepresenting what is required to play VR. All you need is a mid range processor newer than 6 years, and a $180 RX 580 or nividia comparable GPU. Vives are selling used for around $300 as people upgrade
VR is fine (with lots of upscaling) on my 1070 which isn't cheap but equally is years old.
Keep in mind you'll probably be playing beat saber for the most part so graphics don't mean fuck all (some people on Reddit claim to play on integrated graphics) for the game to be as addictive as crack cocaine.
For me personally I have tried it, and it gives me a headache and makes me feel bad. Now this could be like anything else that causes motion sickness where one would get accustomed to it, but I am not prepared to spend a lot of money on a headset not knowing if it ever would not give me a headache.
Also the experience isn't really mind-blowing either. We are still in a physical space where I'll walk into a wall. Virtual reality is far from reality and constrained by reality at the same time. I'd rather game with a large HD screen and use input devices so I still have my senses if I have to respond to the real world.
Sensationalist article that is completely out of touch with reality on both social and technical levels. Oculus quest is a game changer - obvious to anyone that puts it on - and the fact that it’s not even mentioned says a lot. I doubt she has even tried it.
On a social level, it is comical how myopic her vision for VR is and how far off the mark the focus on VR arcades lies. The big selling point of VR in the near and not so near future is not expensive social experiences on somebody else’s commercial infrastructure but escapism and social experiences including work in the comfort of your own home.
Global warming, rising populations, terrorist attacks, widespread decoherence, pollution and decay in our urban centers are all powerful accelerators and extremely synergistic for the future of VR.
Most people can reportedly get used to the discrepancy between the vision and balance senses and be rid of the motion sickness (with some training: keep playing until you start feeling uncomfortable, wait until the next day, go again).
Ginger can also help delay onset.
It can also be noted that motion sickness really only is a problem where the game character moves while you stand still physically (e.g. using a joystick to move around). Other forms of locomotion (like teleportation) are usually fine.
I get sick and feel dead for the entire day if I play an FPS on a typical screen for more than 5 minutes. I've tried getting over this for years, even beating a few games like Deus Ex and Half Life in intervals of a few minutes at a time.
I've got no hope of ever adapting to VR. Just thinking about it raises my heart rate.
I've had very different experiences with different games too. I thought playing sims or Jet Island and being fine was proof I'd gotten my VR legs, but Boneworks and it's bouncy camera got me pretty good.
These are, unfortunately, falsehoods that keep getting perpetuated despite efforts to the contrary.
While you can become slightly more tolerant with repeated exposure (as you can with anything noxious), the the discomfort never goes away.
And it's not just game character motion. Any camera movement can trigger it, at different levels for different people. If you don't get triggered, count yourself lucky, and don't tell the rest of us to "just practice" or attempt to explain away that it's only X and not ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWYZ. Listen to what we're actually SAYING.
I still remember Valve responding to complaints of motion sickness in Half Life 2 with the lame excuse "It's because our technology is so amazingly lifelike." I wanted to punch the guy in the face and ask him if that was lifelike enough for him.
> I still remember Valve responding to complaints of motion sickness in Half Life 2 with the lame excuse "It's because our technology is so amazingly lifelike."
That's interesting you bring adaptation and immersion together. I do feel motion sickness in VR in extreme cases. Interestingly I managed to become more tolerant of it but it came with a significant loss of immersion.
Oh and the "amazingly lifelike" argument for justifying motion sickness is indeed complete bullshit. If you experience motion sickness, it is because it is not lifelike. Bad framerates, high latency, unnatural camera movement, etc... all contribute to motion sickness.
I think there isn't any recent scientific research on how many people are affected and how many of those see improvement after they get their 'vr legs'. I would like to see some rather than anecdotal evidence.
I get nauseous watching handheld video footage for just a few minutes, if the screen is big enough. Obviously VR is going to be a problem (I've tried it, Project Cars in a dedicated VR cabinet setup at a mall, was sick as a dog within minutes).
Yup. Borrowed a PSVR, no one in my family could play for more than 15-30 min. We had a stack of different games to try so it's not just one particular title.
(a) even with latest gen headsets (eg: Occulus Quest)
(b) even with applications where you are completely stationary?
I ask because I've shown my quest to probably 15 people now and nobody has had a problem with it in any of the applications where there is no motion of the external frame.
I tried the Dirt Rally game with my Lenovo VR kit.
Super, super fun ... until my stomach revolted.
As opposed to Elite Dangerous where I could go on for hours, I merely lasted 10 minutes before I had to stop.
There are so many problems in this article.I don't know where to begin. Obviously she doesn't mention the Oculus Quest and Obviously she doesn't even mention popular VR games that everybody is actually buying.
There are VR devices for everyone and she seems to be basing her entire article on the shoddy VR mall experience she once got to try out.
The Quest is the best VR experience today for casual and semi-hardcore users and it changes the game entirely.
I own an Oculus Quest, and it's not bad. But it does take up too much room to play, it's isolating, there's not enough content yet besides glorified tech demos, and both the hardware and the games are too expensive.
Personally, I'd love to get a group of people together and play a DND campaign or something with it, but other than that, I don't have any interest in VR games.
If anything, these days, I prefer quicker, less immersive games I can pick up and play and put down again. VR's the opposite of that in just about every way.
Personally, I find Elite: Dangerous to be the best, most immersive VR game I've played. It's a 6DOF space sim set in a 1:1 scale version of the Milky Way that puts you in the pilot's seat, with a few dozen ships to choose from. The insides of the cockpit (or bridge on the larger ships) are fully modeled. Paired with a decent HOTAS or dual-stick setup, it's about as close as you're going to get to flying a futuristic spaceship. The game offers combat, trading, exploration, mining, rescue missions, surface exploration and you can have friends join you on your ship as either a gunner or ship-launched fighter pilot.
Development has stalled somewhat over the last 6 months -- the developer is actively releasing updates, but mostly catching up on bugfixes in anticipation of a new expansion later this year. But if you're new to the game, there are easily 100+ hours of gameplay available as long as you're ok that it's not a narrative-driven game. The community is very active, with player factions driving many of the activities in the game from public Discord servers, so the lack of content updates isn't necessarily as bad as it would be in other games. Only like 0.5% of the systems in the galaxy have been explored, so plenty left to discover!
I have to admit, a vr space sim could be pretty awesome. I've played a lot of oolite and I used to play another space Sim pretty heavily the name which escapes me right now.
>surface exploration and you can have friends join you on your ship as either a gunner or ship-launched fighter pilot.
This seems like it would be pretty fun. I find space Sims get boring though, they tend to get really repetitive. How does elite dangerous do with mission and system variety? I find in the end, with most games like that, different systems tend to boil down to different numbers on the trade screen, maybe a random event or two and a lot of flying around empty space to get to a planet or stations, load up on some trade goods or get a mission, head to the next system, repeat. Maybe mine an asteroid or two for minerals in between.
These things would definitely be prettier and more immersive in VR, but are they any more fun?
System variety is great; you can fly between the various stars / planets in a system, you can land on any rocky / ice planets without an atmosphere. They're all randomly generated when you get outside the "bubble" (a few hundred LY around Sol), but bound by the currently-understood laws of physics. I can't tell you how cool it feels to zoom around various star types in hyperspace or supercharge your jump drive in the jet cone of a neutron star. Asteroid mining is also really cool and engaging, especially in VR.
Mission variety is not-so-great, but I haven't taken an official mission in over a year. There is plenty to do if you're self-directed or you participate in community-driven content.
But yeah, ultimately it is a space sim and it can be played without VR (though a significant percentage of players do use VR). It's still by far the most immersive VR game I've ever played. It's also really pretty, especially with some of the shader mods applied (look up some screenshots for an idea).
E:D is more realistic in the sense that space is "boring". Missions are shoot things, deliver this, patrol that. Systems are far apart (to scale, actually) and travel and navigation is important and takes time. The game has nearly no actual goals/story to speak of, but as a space nerd man it is awesome in VR. I love it!
If you want a game in VR thats more like the old-school Wing Commander Privateer where its less realistic but more focused on the fun/hollywood version of space sci-fi, check out X-Rebirth VR.
I spend about 10 hours a week in VR, and my experience is that I mostly play quick games in it: a round of Beat Saber, a level of Pistol Whip, a couple of tracks in Synth Rider, a level of Super Hot. 5-10 minutes in most cases. I do have days where I'll do a more intense workout in Beat Saber or Thrill of the Fight and that can be 45 minutes, but that's not the most common case for me.
Why can’t VR people understand that humans are used to ultra wide vision angle? Peeping into a VR headset removes all peripheral vision, meaning you have to rotate your head all over to see things. It’s like playing quake with your neck.
Make a 180 angle headset and maybe people will feel transported to another place. Right now it’s more like looking into a doll’s house.
The Valve Index is actually pretty good at this. It's not quite 180, but somewhere around 130 which is good enough to give you decent peripheral vision. I feel like the next generation of VR will be a lot closer.
Also, the main thing holding back VR right now is the amount of graphics horsepower required to run complex games at high resolutions and refresh rates of 90-120fps. I don't think there are any cards on the market that can run the Index at native resolution in most games (the software will scale the resolution to your hardware).
VR is still new, and with a 180 degree field of view, either the pixel-per-degrees would be painfully low (very low-resolution) or it would be high-resolution, but no computer would be able to push all the pixels.
Something about vr systems makes it not feel real to me. I’m thinking it’s that I can’t change the focus of my eyes. Everything is in the same focus. I forget what that’s called but it makes it feel fake to me.
Varifocal VR headsets are in the R&D stage. A year or two ago Oculus showed off a headset called Half-dome that had varifocal displays. It'll get there.
Magic Leap said they had solved this for their device (maybe they did, not that it makes up for the rest).
Probably not solveable unless we do eye tracking and adapt the screen content to that or change the model from being small screens in front of your eyes altogether.
I agree though. I cannot relate at all to people who say VR is immersive.
I agree. I bought the Gear VR and actually only got the quest because Samsung stopped supporting Gear VR on new phones. I didn't expect to be much better but it solves every single high order problem with the low end headsets. It's a completely different thing.
Same here, the Quest is a game changer. It seems like most comments here have tried some limited or light VR gears, when everybody I demo the Quest to is amazed at the thing.
it evens transmits telemetry to facebook 24x7 when you are not using the headset itself. I have no idea what it is saying, but since I got an oculus, I can see traffic to graph.oculus.com more or less constantly.
I think everyone's experience has been ruined by crappy. The 90s had a VR far but they sucked. Of you're putting a phone across your face, it sucks. The market was spoiled by crappy imitators and gimicks.
Anytime someone tries a real VR headset for the first time, they are usually amazed. I have personally sold 3 headsets just by having friends of mine try mine for a few minutes.
The problem I have is motion sickness. I can only play for very short periods of time, and I feel sick after playing.
I've had the Rift for about a year, and despite people telling me I would get used to it, I still get motion sickness.
Because I've had the experience so many times, now just thinking about playing the game will trigger the sensation of nausea, which prevents me from even wanting to play.
I have the Quest and an empty basement set up for it. The games are all still too indie feeling but with the focus dialed in the experience is truly remarkable. Oculus is pushing in the right places too - standalone device with PC support, hands free capability (for older/elderly), and hopefully guardian-less mode (outside play).
I've had a number of friends and family members of different ages try it. The older ones struggled with the controls but once they got into Beat Saber they enjoyed it. With better content and games I see it finally taking off. I dream of the day we have parking lots/warehouses where people play MMOs on VR and stay fit.
The PSVR is the lowest-resolution "high end" VR headset out there, and is on the underpowered PS4 hardware, with poor controller tracking and lots of motion blur and downsampling to make the games even run.
You really ought to try an Oculus Quest or Rift S/Vive Pro. PSVR has 1080 vertical pixels, Quest has 1600 vertical pixels, much better lenses, and much better controllers. Not to mention the games run much more smoothly
Alright thanks for that! My hopes for an impending VR future are no longer as dim. I didn't realize the PSVR came out in 2016 when I tried it. I figured it was brand new this year.
I know it's natural to pick on the resolution as the reason it doesn't feel right, but our brains are more sensitive to other things when it comes to the feeling of "being there". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_sickness#Techn... I don't think it's going to take 20 years to address these, not with the amount of R&D being thrown at it.
It seems like a bulky novelty. Like something we would very much enjoy but because of the cost and involved setup I'd rather go to an arcade to experience VR than throw it into a room and turn gaming into an even more socially isolated thing than it already is. I also don't know how often I'd use it past. Seems fun for racing and flight games, but I also can't justify keeping a ton of simulation racing/flight gear around in my house. A simple handheld controller seems "good enough" for achieving 90% of the fun.
I do wish there'd be more VR availability in arcade-style places.
> "Mass adoption remains impeded by the hardware required to run it, in my opinion. Take videogames - you need a very powerful PC, a good amount of space, sensors set up around it, and of course the VR helmet itself.
> "The cost runs to thousands and for most it is completely impractical not to mention too expensive.
The Oculus Quest is about 50$ more than a PS4 Pro / Xbox X at launch. Still expensive but not in the thousands.
I think it's the same issue that's happening with electric cars. People remember only the disadvantages of old technology and aren't aware of new tech being much better and more user friendly. With VR, people think it's cables, bulky PC's and complex setup, because that's their first and only experience with it. With electric cars, it's range anxiety, slow charging and degrading batteries. Meanwhile, the media tends to strengthen this bias with articles like this one and reporting every single incident with a Tesla.
The only way to change people's minds is to let them experience the alternative, I see this both with my Quest and my Tesla. We recently had a game night at work, where multiple people brought VR headsets, but mine was the only tetherless one. I let people play Tea for God, which is a procedurally generated game that lets people walk a long distance in a restricted play area. Many of them had played VR games before, but nobody experienced anything like this and many people asked me more about it, even days later, because they weren't aware that the technology existed.
I hope to build a system primarily for a Valve Index this year. I think VR is here to stay, and it reminds of the early days of PC's and pc gaming, when a PC could be 4k (I mean they still can be, but you get what I am saying), and games required the top level hardware and didn't always try to run on yesterdays potato, an artificial limitation put on way to many things today.
For example, it's tough to beat Wipeout VR as a future racing experience. The fact that you can look around/through the corners the way you do in the real world when you're driving a vehicle really changes the way the game plays and makes it much more immersive.
OTOH some games do seem to cause quite severe motion sickness (I forget the name of the one I'm particularly thinking of because I haven't played it in ages, for obvious reasons).
The other problem is that ergonomically it's an absolute arse-ache. I have the first gen PSVR which is just an festooning nightmare of cables. The lenses are also way too prone to fogging.
I believe the second gen headsets are better but there are still cable management issues.
It's also, frankly, not that comfortable to wear. It's not painful or anything like that, but I'm no fan of wearing hats because they tend to make me feel too hot, so you can imagine what having a bulky conglomeration of plastic and electronics strapped to my face for long periods feels like.
Really these things need to be wireless and rechargeable but then, of course, you open the system up to more latency issues.
One area I haven't had so many issues, which is touched on in the article, is the drop in quality, and in particular graphical fidelity.
Wipeout VR, I think, runs at 4K on a PS4 Pro but only 1080P with PSVR. I haven't found this to be something that bothers me at all, or at least not with this game.
On the other hand I have found the drop in quality with Driveclub VR to be noticeable to the point where it does detract from the experience.
It really does very much depend on the game though.
Still, overall impressions of the experiences on offer are fairly positive.
The PSVR is basically the worst "high end" VR headset out there, and is on the underpowered PS4 hardware, with poor controller tracking and lots of motion blur and downsampling to make the games even run.
You really ought to try an Oculus Quest or Rift S/Vive Pro. PSVR has 1080 vertical pixels, Quest has 1600 vertical pixels, much better lenses, and much better controllers. Not to mention the games run much more smoothly
I suspect the software has an effect too. There's certainly some neat stuff you can experience with VR headsets now, and apps have been made for it, but none of the things released so far have been a big enough hit to make people want go out and buy the systems to experiece them.
They just don't have their Super Mario Bros/Tetris/Wii Sports/Minecraft/whatever equivalent yet, the thing that'll set the world on fire enough that people will be all like "I'll have to buy a VR headset now, to experience this product everyone else is talking about"
>They just don't have their Super Mario Bros/Tetris/Wii Sports/Minecraft/whatever equivalent yet, the thing that'll set the world on fire enough that people will be all like "I'll have to buy a VR headset now, to experience this product everyone else is talking about"
The Valve Index (by Steam) has been sold out in December after they announced Half-Life Alyx which is included with every Index. This is won't be the time everyone goes VR yet but the market is expanding.
Yeah, the market certainly is. And Valve making a Half-Life game for their system was probably the best move they could make as far as increasing demand goes too.
It isn't ready yet. We have come a very long way, but the hype always sets expectations - too soon for the quality and price consumers demand.
Compare what was an amazing experience in 1995 with MechWarrior 2 VR ($3000 headset + $3000 PC in 1995 dollars) to the experience that Sony offers with the PS4 for less than 1/6th the cost today. I am still excited to see what comes next.
IMHO nothing matches the truly immersive experience of Battletech that they had at North Pier in Chicago when I was growing up.
It was a fully themed space and you'd walk into a room full of pods (cockpits) and they'd slide the hatch closed on you. Then lights and multiple monitors would come on and you had a joystick, throttle, foot pedals for rotating your turret, and a massive array of switches, buttons, and their associated little red digital displays for weapon assignments, etc.
It was unbelievable and at the end you all went into a room to watch a spectator view of the match and got a printout with every blow of the match described in log format.
I think I still have my membership card somewhere.
These comments (and inevitably, anywhere else there's discussions of VR) always find themselves with a 50/50 split on:
"Most people I know (love it / hate it / don't get motion sick / get motion sick), those who (hate it / love it / get motion sick / don't get motion sick) are the minority."
Does anyone have real data on this, or just anecdata?
vr is just expensive and requires fairly high end hardware still. There are also are all kinds of software issues with it. like when i was playing a well known racing game, very often the camera would be somewhere other than the driver's seat. And those are the kind of games that really are quite heavy on vr adoption and are the natural fit for this type of control.
many games do not naturally lend themself to vr, and by those i mean the most popular genres, like fps, rpg, action-adventure. Basically every game that requires your feet to move about in a virtual world. I don't think it is suitable for strategy or management games either. So that leaves simulation, racing and some very old genres like on-rails-shooters. which is a sizeable market, but not the mainstream gaming market.
Not exactly sure why you are being downvoted here.
Oculus Quest really does not require an external computer (ie High-End Hardware), and it _is_ a really good experience (it's also really cheap compared to alternatives), specially the "tetherless" part of it. [You can see a lot of people in this exact thread talk about their experiences with it]
While there is still a lot to improve in terms of quality, not every game needs to look realistic (see: Fortinite - cartoon style).
FPS is actually the one amazing genre in VR... when it works right.
Maybe someone will finally revive the First/Third Person RPG/RTS niche (not top down), which I really loved in BattleZone 1/2. I think it will work great in VR.
But yeah, really resource intensive, Pimax says you'll need 2 GPUs (one per eye) to get the most performance out of their 8K headset.
Since we're in the early days theres quite a bit of experimentation. While there is usually traditional move/strafe on the left joystick, some games have options like:
Point-to-teleport (worst option, IMO, but good for people really sensitive to motion sickness)
Arm waving - Basically move your arms back and forth like you would when running.
Head-directed, or hand-directed movement direction.
Physical movement in your room with no artificial movement option. This is typically in genres like wave shooters where you can move to dodge and such but not really expected to navigate a whole level.
Some games combine multiples of the above. From a game design perspective, still very much the wild west in VR.
this is what i meant. to me these feel like somewhat of a hack, breaking the vr promise of natural movement through a game world. but i suppose it could still be enjoyable.
Being downvoted for an uncontroversial opinion is also boring and quite shitty, and becoming quite typical of this site. Wish the site would finally get rid of the fucking downvote system. If people disagree, they should actually comment and talk about it, instead of blindly downvoting whatever opinion they happen to disagree with.
I can understand being upset by downvotes. It irks me from time to time too. But you just have to accept that perhaps you didn't formulate your argument clearly enough, or that not enough people agreed with you to upvote and cancel out the downvotes ...
Downvotes can be a little cruel but they do work well at helping to eliminate noise. It's not an ideal system but it is simple and effective.
i personally do not see the value in downvotes affecting your karma either. i agree with having a system to prevent some fanatical minority opinion from dominating, but right now it's just encouraging bullying.
(See, there could actually be something wrong/worth of critics with this downvote system but discussions about that are always downvoted.)
edit: This comment will also most likely be seen as unsubstantial as most of the HN user base is not capable of understanding and reacting to satiric comments.
> the HN user base is not capable of understanding and reacting to satiric comments.
"the HN user base" comprises people from many different walks of life and many different cultural backgrounds, not all of which jive with your idea of "fun".
Add to that our medium is static text, a format which is widely known to cause misunderstanding. Back when I was young in the 90s we had a term for respecting this kind of thing, it was called "netiquette".
Perhaps, rather than demanding that everybody else jump on board your boat, you should just familiarise yourself with the house rules (there aren't many) and simply abide by them!
For me personally VR it feels still weird, too cartoonish, not an immersive experience as expected. What I'd argue people would want is AR instead. That one is way more fun when done right
One big problem is what people expect, and what VR advocates describe, is basically the Holodeck from Star Trek. The immersivity of the experience is basically like being there. That's what people want, to jack in to the Matrix or some kind of old-school cyberpunk experience.
Except your brain knows it's looking at a display and not an actual 3D space, and the cognitive dissonance between what it sees and proprioception are always going to limit how immersive VR can be. And that's not even getting into the other senses that VR can't simulate. Sight and sound are actually less important in terms of immersion than taste, touch and smell.
I think this depends upon the system you use and what you're viewing. I was underwhelmed by a couple of VR headsets (Samsung Gear plus something I forget) but changed my mind after using a Rift, as that was so much better. The media/game matters too. Anything trying to look real does indeed still look cartoonish, but it's a different story for games where looking like the real world isn't the goal. Then you can enjoy the immersion without comparing to reality.
Rez Infinite was, alone, enough to sell me on having a VR headset. But Rez Infinite and maybe Tetris Effect were the only applications so far to really hold my interest in VR also.
Saying it’s just a screen on your face is an oversimplification. While that may be a somewhat accurate physical description, it doesn’t capture the actual experience, anymore than saying a smart phone is just a phone in your pocket.
I’ve had vr sets since the oculus dk2, and admit that I probably haven’t used it in over a year, because it’s a bit cumbersome, locks you into a single experience, removes you from your environment, and the relatively lower quality of applications that are available.
There are some really great immersive applications though such as subnautica, google earth, and elite dangerous.
"This could be a way to revolutionize flight training, and make it more accessible. "
I rather think this could revolutionize any expensive training. Everything with heavy machines would benefit. And every other sector where a beginner misstake can literaly blow something up.
Uncomfortable to the point of sickening. Space and price are valid point but for me its the sickening impression of fake motion, staring at screen so close to your eyes, burrliness, wheight of the headset and silly looks.
Looking silly is the one critique of VR I just don't get. Your in the safety of your own home and either A) live alone or B) live with a significant other/parents/roommates. In which case, who cares what they think you might look like while enjoying yourself?
Years ago i remember working at a company where a vr presentation was cancelled because some high level automotive management folks refused to wear a headset because it might mess with their hair. Thats just one example. I personally dont like to put on these headsets too.
The very main reason VR isn't taking off is because it has no killer app, that is, an app that other platforms can't have, and that people love. End-of-story.
What's to understand here is that it's not said that this killer app "exists". If VR is only a cooler screen, then it will sell like cooler screens. Now maybe it's a killer screen, that is a screen that everybody wants. I guess there is a competitive advantage of thinking like that, but right now, vendors think they are making a software/hardware platform when they have no killer app.
I don't know if it will happen, but a killer app that ought to exist is exercise. I've never found anything that gamified exercise the way the Occulus Quest does. The kind of
full body workout I get from ducking, weaving, dodging and swinging at fast
moving opponents, all at 6:30am in the morning without leaving my home,
is simply amazing.
You don't need VR for that, only motion controls. Some people have exercise streaks that go on for years on Nintendo's Wii Fit, and Ring Fit Adventure is on the same path.
I've never managed to stick with exercise until the Beat Saber (upper body) and Pistol Whip (lower body) combo. There's something particularly compelling about it - I can get my heart rate waaaaaay up without really noticing I'm working hard.
I'm gonna argue that VR does have a killer-app: Beat Saber. It was a top seller on Steam in 2019 and it's only just been overtaken by Asgarth's Wrath in terms of popularity, after about a year and a half. It has also sold more than a million copies and is multi platform. I've seen kids play it, adults, even seniors: everybody can do this. If you wouldn't consider that a killer app, what would be in your eyes? :)
> [killer app] an app that other platforms can't have, and that people love.
Thinking about art. VR has spatial painting and animation, things completely impossible on non-VR platforms. And, this is where many people fail to grasp what VR killer app really means, they are not a VR way of doing something we used to do on flat screens. Painting in VR is as much a different art form as painting is from sculpting in the real world.
Thus it may not interest ALL existing artists, because it has a learning curve. Just like painters aren't necessarily drawn to try sculpture, not all artists want to invest time discovering what painting in space can unlock.
What will happen in my opinion is that a number of young people that haven't picked their preferred art form yet will decide to spend their 10 000 hours of training in VR, and develop their expertise there. This hasn't happened yet simply because it has only been a few years and in constant flux.
The same may be true in other areas. The very first VR-native people are just growing up.
Beat Saber has been a killer app for a lot of people.
VR still has a lot of room to improve tech-wise before it's a mature platform, though. Resolution remains not that great, ditto for FoV, physical feedback is meh, most headsets are pretty bulky, etc.
I have a Rift CV1 and a Quest, they're fun platforms for enthusiasts, but it doesn't feel ready to go fully mainstream yet.
Far from a gimmick. You need to try it. My girlfriend who is not even a gamer has put down hundreds of hours and she didn't even want to try it at first.
When the first ps3 motion controllers came out, we played <that game with the swords and shields> until our hands hurt. I'm still surprised we didn't break any furniture or the controllers.
Lasted like 3 days though.
The fact that I do actual sports, including stuff with swords occasionally, might contribute to my "gimmick" opinion :)
VR won’t ever be more than niche because there is no way to fake tactile feedback or motion. Games need to design around this. Beat Sanger is the best selling VR game because your character doesn’t move and there is nothing to touch. God games, like black and white or the sims, and 4x games might work well too. Also if graphics get better people can set up virtual desk spaces and get rid of screens. Ultimately though the reason most games don’t work is the tactile feedback and motion issues, which I can’t imagine ways of solving at the moment.
The haptic feedback on some VR controllers (think Iphone 7 home button or switch joycons) is surprisingly good at imitating resistance or passing through something. Games with dedicated peripherals (racing wheels, flight/mech sticks) work really well too.
Haptic feedback might have been the wrong phrase. I meant that there is a lack of literally anything physical to interact with despite your eyes constantly telling you otherwise. You can’t rest your arm on a table, put your hand on a wall, lock swords with an enemy, etc. You have to constantly remind yourself that what you see isn’t real so that you can stop your hand from swinging wildly in real life while your in game hand just locks in place.
This would actually be pretty solvable in a well-done VR arcade, but I agree that in-home true haptics are a big barrier for certain game genres and interaction types. Any direct-contact/resistance based interaction is going to feel weird and need some form of workaround that can hurt immersion. However anything with indirect interaction is generally very good (shooting arrows/guns, throwing/catching objects, etc)
The Void experiences do a pretty good job of this, with a mix of physical props/effects like switches and heat fans and hand and body tracking. Another fun one is the skyscraper plank at VR Zone Shinjuku, complete with wobbling and a prop cat. VR Star Park is worth a look too.
Designing around it is possible in some cases too. In Gorn your weapons are floppy so it makes sense when they bend when hitting an enemy, and in Superhot VR you punch through or shatter enemies when hitting them giving more of a sense of being really powerful than hitting air.
VR is the uncanny valley of immersion. Visually everything works so well that you are constantly jarred back to reality every time you try and interact with something. Traditional games work well because they require minimal movement to get what you’re thinking to happen on screen. So once you’re focused, there is not much that can happen to bring you out of it.
>there is no way to fake tactile feedback or motion
Why not? There are quite a few companies working on these with some success. Virtuix for example (disclosure: I'm an investor) are seeing some steady commercial success in regards to addressing motion[0]. And in terms of feedback, there's a lot of interesting work done Fl around gloves in particular, including by Apple [1].
On this note I also feel inclined to mention Teslasuit [0].
I recently learned about this company and their product, they are developing (I think some of it is even already available) a full-body tracking suit with feedback zones. Pairing this with a VR headset and immersion would go way up compared to most (if not all) things we have nowadays.
I meant more like swinging a sword will never meet another sword. Punching someone in the face will never hurt your hand, etc. and then when you swing through air as your in-game hand stops, it feels kinda lame.
I don't quite understand what you mean. I can come up with several different engineering approaches to make a sword controlle suddenly stop. And I can come up with even more ways to inflict mild pain (e.g. electrical stimulation).
What makes you say "never"? If there are people willing to pay for better immersion, I believe the technology won't be that far behind.
How would you make a "sword" stop mid-air? A companion sword-fighting robot that mimics the movements of the enemy you're seeing? I'm not saying never, just without nano-bots and a fully mutable IRL environment to go with the headset. Electrical stimulation wouldn't stop your hand moving forward, nor would it simulate hitting something in any way (unless it was stimulating your brain's pain and motor centers I guess).
How about this as a very early idea: start with something like the Virtuix Omni that allows the player to freely move and rotate. Add 3 thin metallic pillars surrounding the device, going up to about 2m, which would rotate with the player. At 2 different heights on each of these pillars there would be a pully controlling a slightly elastic cord via fast acting actuators. The other end of each of these ropes would be connected to the sword controller.
Most of the time, there wouldn't be much tension coming from the cords (other than perhaps representing gravity pulling on the sword's mass), but when a hit needs to be simulated, the right cords would rapidly tense, according to the simulated properties of the object being hit.
I am concered about the upcoming accessibility disaster. Granted, most games are likely not really essential for say, blind people, to play. But the future will bring UIs to VR. And I doubt that companies will think about accessibility from the start. It is already hard to maintain screen readers for typical GUIs. But it will be almost impossible to have meaningful assistive technologies in VR as long as they are designed as add-ons.
Anyone coming up with a Ted like teddy bear conversational experience in AR. Cracking jokes at consumed content at hand will make a killing and will silence all critics. This is an article from a conservative that could have written an article like why the Electronic vehicle will never be a car 5 years ago. We know nay sayers do not have the power of imagination they just consume the fruit when it's ripe.
If I could pay $200 to get the full experience, I'd already have paid. I can't, so I haven't. Unless they can get the price for the whole package including a game to below $500, it won't reach the masses and unless they get below $200 they won't reach me, because I'm a cheapskate that is satisfied with playing 30 year old games.
It'll get there. Oculus Quest is $400 and games can be had for pretty reasonable prices. In a few years I wouldn't be surprised to see an even more streamlined Quest reintroduced at $200.
i have an oculus go that I got for christmas. the one that got me: vr porn. it is very immersive. next level when your partner gets involved. having only been with my one partner, it is like experiencing other people and that is very exciting.
It's a great way to scratch my aviation itch and is also great for practicing procedures, especially when paired with a live air traffic control network like PilotEdge. My brain seriously forgets that it's a simulation when I'm in it.
This could be a way to revolutionize flight training, and make it more accessible. The entire cost of my PC build including VR gear and software is a fraction of what real-life flight training costs.