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[DarthBuzzer]

VR won't take off, hybrid AR systems will be viable and cheap by the time VR meets the power-price-production combo. One notch below the best of VR right now still requires an insane investment.

What does hybrid AR systems mean in this context? The investment for one of the best headsets, Oculus Quest 2, is as cheap as the cheapest console. Meanwhile AR glasses range from $1500-3500, mainly because they aren't consumer-priced yet.

 

[Matt_Fox]

OP, your thread title...

 

[digital_ghost]

 

[Alright]

I started with the DK2 and ended with the PSVR. I don't have a PC powerful enough to power the top of the range headset and i have no intention of doing so, even if Skyrim has made me really, really, really tempted.

I'll dive back in to VR with PSVR2. Now if only i had room for an omni-directional treadmill

 

[namekuseijin]

surprising, more people voted on psvr than being retro flat fan.

I wonder what's the number of actual owners rather than PlayStation fanbois or VR haters just pretending they have the headset to crap over it with an air of authority...

 

[namekuseijin]

I started with the DK2 and ended with the PSVR. I don't have a PC powerful enough to power the top of the range headset and i have no intention of doing so, even if Skyrim has made me really, really, really tempted.

I'll dive back in to VR with PSVR2. Now if only i had room for an omni-directional treadmill

VR can already be a pretty sweaty affair as is, I have no desire to replace analog stick walking with a treadmill...

 

[namekuseijin]

All achievements in SMB, every Street Fighter in arcades since the original, First Person Shooters since since Wolf. Even still, your comparison is too stupid for words but I'll try. With that brain dead logic, I'm guessing I've been gaming much longer than you've been alive or your just on the far left side of the intelligence bell curve. Congratulations.

nice straw man, but had you really played those you'd know those games are all but relaxation. I still remember callused thumbs...

I can accept a casual fan speaking about relaxing games, a pseudo hardened retro player? No, I'm revoking your gamer license.

 

[namekuseijin]

OP, your thread title...

there's nothing more nextgen in gaming than VR.

what? More pixels? Raytracing? That's graphics, not gameplay, not control.

 

[bender]

nice straw man, but had you really played those you'd know those games are all but relaxation. I still remember callused thumbs...

I can accept a casual fan speaking about relaxing games, a pseudo hardened retro player? No, I'm revoking your gamer license.

You can revoke my license but I'll have to fine you for stealing everyone's oxygen. Sense you are way too dense, the difficulty of a game has nothing to do with the comfort of playing games. I don't find motion controls or HMDs comfortable which is counter to why I've been in this hobby for the past 40 years, to relax.

 

[Paasei]

Only tried PSVR once, with some diving demo. It was pretty cool and it also scared me as I can't deal with deep water.
Never really looked back to it. Can't think of a game that I REALLY want to play so badly to get VR headset. It's cool technology but not a must for me.
Who knows when my opinion on it will change?

 

[namekuseijin]

.

Who knows when my opinion on it will change?

probably when you try an actual game rather than a non-interactive tech demo

 

[Wonko_C]

VR is not next-gen...

Spoiler

...It is beyond that. It's new-gen.

Seriously though, VR is a mostly indie-driven industry right now. I think for those of us who already are into indie games, VR as an investment is an easier pill to swallow. There are already hundreds of games, and even if most of them are shovelware (like with everything in life, 99% of things are crap), there's already a good amount of jewels that have great mechanics and an addictive gameplay loop, enough to make said investment easily worthwhile.

 

[Romulus]

I swear VR is the modern "this will be the year of Linux!", with every year/month people desperately trying to convince the absolute vast majority of the market that this is the only right way to go... Just let it go already. VR cool, but only when it's cool, just as motions controllers were, but for the very same reason a.k.a. limited application it will always be exactly that, limited where it can be applied, where it can be good/cool, meaning it will never replace traditional gaming but be just an interesting addition, not an alternative.

Did Linux ever have an explosion of users like VR? Literally, the newest Quest 2 outsold all other Oculus headsets combined in only a few months when those had been out years.


On OP's topic. It's literally not next gen, it's beyond a generational leap in traditional terms. It's not 3d bullshit or just motion controls, its literally being inside a videogame with a life-sized world and depth perception.

 

[Elysion]

For VR to really take off, it needs to be an option in the majority of AAA games. Resident Evil 7 does it the best; it's a game that's equally playable in VR and on TV. That should be the future of VR, imo (at least for most games).

Furthermore, I think the current focus on stuff like finger tracking is a bit of a dead end. No matter how accurate your hands or fingers are tracked, it will never feel 'real' due to the lack of physical feedback. If you swing a sword at an object in real life, then one of three things happen: the sword either bounces off (if the material is hard enough), or the sword penetrates the object but is slowed down in the process due to physical resistance, or the sword gets stuck. But in VR none of that happens; you just swing at empty air. Haptic/tactile feedback can alleviate some of this, but not entirely; because it can't simulate enough physical pushback to make it feel as if you're actually hitting something. And this can never be solved, at least not until we get full-body VR suits or something, which can physically restrict your movements to simulate this kind of physical feedback.

But I don't think VR really needs super-accurate finger tracking or physical feedback simulation to be successful and enjoyable. When VR was first introduced, I thought we would get optional VR modes where the controls are still more or less the same, except that we are 'in' the game and can look around. Motion controls make sense for things like aiming (and first person games), but I don't see why we can't play most 3rd person games in VR with (mostly) normal controls. They would still control like usual (except for aiming), but thanks to VR it would feel as if you are inside a floating camera that's following the character around. Is it really that hard to implement an optional VR mode like that in games like Assassin's Creed, for example?

I think finger tracking can still be fun for certain VR-exclusive experiences (like puzzle games), but for most games it's simply not necessary.

 

[Romulus]

"VR won't take off."

I mean fuck this is the worst time in VR's entire history to say that

Literally today:




That's like 5 headsets on the market for years(yes even the popular Quest1) it outsold all of them combined in no time.

 

[Wonko_C]

"VR won't take off."

I mean fuck that is this worst time in VR's entire history to say that

Literally today:




That's like 5 headsets on the market for years(yes even the popular Quest1) it outsold all of them combined in no time.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

I own the Quest 1 and I like it for what it is, but it's still not quite there for me. It's very uncomfortable, resolution is trash unless you link it to a PC, battery life is also quite trash... but when it works, it works really well. Playing games like Superhot or Beatsaber in VR is just on another level and not replicable on a flat screen.

So I'm definitely staying on the VR train, I'm just waiting for slightly better hardware. Maybe the Quest 3 will be it...

 

[Trimesh]

I said HTC Vive, although I was playing around with proto-VR using Kaiser HMDs, Ascension trackers and SGI machines long before there was any consumer VR.

 

[TheMay30thMan]

What? It's hardly been 5 months since next gen gaming starting...

 

[rofif]

5? Dk2 was released in 2013... Tuscany looked like the future back then. It's kinda surreal revisiting it in boneworks in 4k on hp g2.
That said. I don't have any vr now and I had all oculus headsets aside from q2... So

 

[Twinguistics]

I started with cardboard, then a year later got a gear be then a year later, this Christmas, I got myself a used rift cv1 for only £150 with both controllers and two sensors. It's fantastic and I'm sure it'll be the main way I consume games from now on.

There's something about not having the canned animations anymore, it's up to you to do what you want. Duck, crouch, lean, peek, fire backwards over your shoulder while running forward looking left,... It's all possible.

I didn't understand that this thing would track my whole body and I could actually sway, duck and dodge bullets (Superhot). It's insaine.

Each new game is a new place to visit, a different world to go to, regardless of genre. I pop the headset on and boom, I'm not in my living room anymore.

Yes, there's issues but I've lived through gaming from c64 and nes etc and things weren't perfect then either. The issues (mainly only lens fog) are a small price to pay for such a great experience. I'm not going to miss out on what I can get now just because it's not perfect.

Also, the range of games for it has been a pleasant surprise too, there's plenty to keep me going. All the great Oculus exclusives, plus massive games like Skyrim, fallout 4, Elite dangerous, no man's sky etc and tons of smaller, 10 hour experiences that I'm fine with. Back in the N64 era, ten hours wasn't considered a 'mini game'. Not everything has to be a thousand hour gaas.

So yeah, love it. Not going back.

Meet me in the population one battlefield. You've not done battle royale until you've done it in vr. It's amazing.

 

[ZywyPL]

Did Linux ever have an explosion of users like VR? Literally, the newest Quest 2 outsold all other Oculus headsets combined in only a few months when those had been out years.

"VR won't take off."

I mean fuck this is the worst time in VR's entire history to say that

Literally today:




That's like 5 headsets on the market for years(yes even the popular Quest1) it outsold all of them combined in no time.

What are the exact numbers tho? Because it's not hard to outsell something that hasn't even scratch the market's surface... I know that at the end of 2020 Quest 2 sold at merely 1MLN units, that's nothing, literally, nothing. The most successful VR set to date is unarguably PSVR, and even that one sits at mere 5MLN units. To put it into perspective, we're living in times where a single title can have tens or even hundreds of millions of people playing it on a daily basis, so few millions is nothing in the great scheme of things. Even Zuckerberg said in a recent interview that they need at least 10MLN units of a given VR set (not combined numbers), in order for it to be sustainable.

 

[longdi]

too expensive and uncomfortable and prone to motion sickness.

vr sux. maybe for short length porn, idk.

i had a samsung gear vr

 

[Romulus]

What are the exact numbers tho? Because it's not hard to outsell something that hasn't even scratch the market's surface... I know that at the end of 2020 Quest 2 sold at merely 1MLN units, that's nothing, literally, nothing. The most successful VR set to date is unarguably PSVR, and even that one sits at mere 5MLN units. To put it into perspective, we're living in times where a single title can have tens or even hundreds of millions of people playing it on a daily basis, so few millions is nothing in the great scheme of things. Even Zuckerberg said in a recent interview that they need at least 10MLN units of a given VR set (not combined numbers), in order for it to be sustainable.

Yeah, you definitely don't know the numbers at the end of 2020. Rec Room developer actually addresses the "1 million sales" estimate you got because it came from Superdata, which is widely known for inaccuracy.

'Rec Room' Studio Estimates Facebook Sold 2-3M Oculus Quest 2 Headsets in Q4

Rec Room isn’t just one of the best free social VR apps out there. In the absence of hard sales data, it makes for an excellent watermark for how things are moving in the industry. Now, according to Rec Room’s downloads on Quest 2, the developers estimate that Facebook has potentially sold...

www.roadtovr.com

Not only that, your PSVR point really drives home even further how far VR has come. PSVR was by far the most successful VR platform, but it took it 4 years to achieve 5 million. Quest 2 did half that(or more) in a few months. I don't think you're accounting for how short of a time period Quest 2 has been out. Zuckerberg said 10 million and that can easily be done in a couple of years or less. He even said in the link above that the Quest is on track to be the first mainstream headset, and that's considering Quest 2 software isn't that great currently and their bigger studios are just beginning to form. It's undeniable that it's growing. Zuckerberg said the launch window sales were 500% of the original Quest.


Oh, and one last point. Even though it smoked any other VR headset by a huge margin, it did so being sold out much of that time too. You literally couldn't get a Quest 2 for a month or more of that quarter, and the entire time it wasn't easy was scalpers selling it well over retail. So, we're literally judging it with a massive handicap.

Oculus Quest 2 Sold Out Through The End Of 2020 (Update)

Update 12/14/20: Facebook responded with a statement explaining that online shipping estimate dates are “dynamic” and change often, so make sure and check back in frequently since Oculus continues to ship new batches to retail outlets and for Oculus.com. Additionally, brick & mortar locations...

uploadvr.com

Probably would have done well over 3 million if supply was met and that's considering its brand new with very few big-name games.

 

[Wonko_C]

too expensive and uncomfortable and prone to motion sickness.

vr sux. maybe for short length porn, idk.

i had a samsung gear vr

You tried the most primitive and limited form of VR, of course it sux. Give a 6DOF PCVR headset a try. Too expensive? Check out the Oculus Quest 2, which is the same price as the Nintendo Switch. You might be pleasantly surprised.

 

[Stitch]

 

[MetalRain]

VR is kind of magic when it works, but you go through all that trouble setting your play area and those devices for playing maybe hour or so before you become exhausted.

In game like SUPERHOT where graphics and motions are relatively simple you can really get into good flow, kind of forget that you are playing in VR. But then there are more complex games where VR is kind of cool but you'd like more resolution and/or comfort. For games like Elite Dangerous or Flight Simulator I think TrackIR is better than VR, you can still have your 4K display with good framerates (maybe) and even better, be able to play for hours without any issues.

 

[Fess]

I'm sorry for everything internet! I've been so so sooo wrong.

Tried a Oculus Quest 2 today, and Moss.

I don't know what to say...

I'm essentially considering cancelling my 3080 order to buy a Quest 2 instead.

Resolution and raytracing etc means nothing compared to interacting in a VR world.

Started googling on how to best step into VR gaming. Learned that PSVR2 would have a cable, just one though so better than old PSVR but I still don't want that. Is there anything else besides Quest 2 where I don't have to be connected to a box with a cable?

 

[Wonko_C]

I'm sorry for everything internet! I've been so so sooo wrong.

Tried a Oculus Quest 2 today, and Moss.

I don't know what to say...

I'm essentially considering cancelling my 3080 order to buy a Quest 2 instead.

Resolution and raytracing etc means nothing compared to interacting in a VR world.

Started googling on how to best step into VR gaming. Learned that PSVR2 would have a cable, just one though so better than old PSVR but I still don't want that. Is there anything else besides Quest 2 where I don't have to be connected to a box with a cable?

Aside from maybe some expensive obscure chinese headsets, Quest 2 is the only one of its kind ATM.

 

[Fess]

Aside from maybe some expensive obscure chinese headsets, Quest 2 is the only one of its kind ATM.

Thanks okay then that's the one to get I assume. How important is the memory size? Just for storage? Is it worth the extra money to have the bigger memory unit? Are there games bigger than 64GB?

 

[Stitch]

Quest games are really small. like something between a few 100 MB and 3 GB.

64 GB was enough for me because the most important app for me is Virtual Desktop

 

[Fess]

VR is kind of magic when it works, but you go through all that trouble setting your play area and those devices for playing maybe hour or so before you become exhausted.

In game like SUPERHOT where graphics and motions are relatively simple you can really get into good flow, kind of forget that you are playing in VR. But then there are more complex games where VR is kind of cool but you'd like more resolution and/or comfort. For games like Elite Dangerous or Flight Simulator I think TrackIR is better than VR, you can still have your 4K display with good framerates (maybe) and even better, be able to play for hours without any issues.

Just tried Quest 2 today, the guy who set it up did it in maybe 2 minutes. He just did some minority report stuff with his fingers in the air and it looked like he drew a circle on the floor. Then he handed me the headset and I'm just blown away by all of it! I haven't been this excited about gaming since... I don't know... hmm... Nope, I have never been this excited! This is next gen!

 

[Fess]

Quest games are really small. like something between a few 100 MB and 3 GB.

64 GB was enough for me because the most important app for me is Virtual Desktop

Cool!
How big is Moss! That's the game I feel like I must have at the start.

 

[Twinguistics]

Just tried Quest 2 today, the guy WHO det it up DIF in maybe 2 minutes. He just did some minority report stuff with his fingers in the air and it looked like he drew a circle on the floor. Then he handed me the headset and I'm just blown away by all of it! I haven't been this excited about gaming since... I don't know... hmm... Nope, I have never been this excited! This is next gen!

Awesome, welcome to the club! Keep us updated on your journey into vr as it's always cool to read someone else seeing the light.

As for must haves, I'd say Superhot for sure. And beat saber.

 

[Stitch]

Cool!
How big is Moss! That's the game I feel like I must have at the start.

I only have the PC Version which is 7,97 GB big

Oculus Store says 2,64 GB on the Quest

Moss on Meta Quest | Quest VR Games | Meta Store

Discover the magic of VR with Moss, a timeless adventure game starring a tiny hero with a big heart. Moss is an action-adventure puzzle game handcrafted for VR play, combining components of classic gameplay—compelling characters, environmental puzzle-solving, and captivating world exploration...

www.oculus.com

 

[FunkMiller]

I find it ridiculous to hear people say that VR is a gimmick, and not that big a deal when I've been playing Alyx for the past week or so on my Quest 2. Even in current state of infancy, VR IS next gen gaming, simply because it's such a different and more immersive experience. Yes, a lot of current VR stuff is a bit shit, but when you play the really good stuff: Alyx, Boneworks, Resi 7, etc you're getting a good idea of what the actual future potential is of the medium.

Once VR units are fully wireless and able to easily push around graphics of an extremely high fidelity and fast frame rates, it will properly explode - and I doubt that is going to be all that many years away. Quest 4 is going to sell more units than the Wii.

 

[Fess]

Awesome, welcome to the club! Keep us updated on your journey into vr as it's always cool to read someone else seeing the light.

As for must haves, I'd say Superhot for sure. And beat saber.

Yeah he talked about both this too, I didn't try them though. I get motion sick super easy, from regular first person games, so I have to choose what I play wisely I think. But Moss was perfect! Felt like sitting in the middle of a diorama. I want a Warhammer game in VR! Different battle fields, diorama styled stationary camera.

 

[Shodan09]

Actually my first vr set was the gear vr for Samsung galaxy s7 and it absolutely blew me away. The netflix app where you could watch TV in a little alpine shack. Incredible. Then I moved on to the PSVR which upped the game again as it sensed more motion than the gear vr but was limited to facing the camera preventing full 360 degree games. Then last year I moved on the the Index and I honestly feel like this is what VR was supposed to be all along. Half Life Alyx was the equivalent of a new Mario 64 moment for me and I don't say that lightly.

Special mention to Astrobot rescue mission too. Second best VR game.

 

[Shodan09]

For VR to really take off, it needs to be an option in the majority of AAA games. Resident Evil 7 does it the best; it's a game that's equally playable in VR and on TV. That should be the future of VR, imo (at least for most games).

Furthermore, I think the current focus on stuff like finger tracking is a bit of a dead end. No matter how accurate your hands or fingers are tracked, it will never feel 'real' due to the lack of physical feedback. If you swing a sword at an object in real life, then one of three things happen: the sword either bounces off (if the material is hard enough), or the sword penetrates the object but is slowed down in the process due to physical resistance, or the sword gets stuck. But in VR none of that happens; you just swing at empty air. Haptic/tactile feedback can alleviate some of this, but not entirely; because it can't simulate enough physical pushback to make it feel as if you're actually hitting something. And this can never be solved, at least not until we get full-body VR suits or something, which can physically restrict your movements to simulate this kind of physical feedback.

But I don't think VR really needs super-accurate finger tracking or physical feedback simulation to be successful and enjoyable. When VR was first introduced, I thought we would get optional VR modes where the controls are still more or less the same, except that we are 'in' the game and can look around. Motion controls make sense for things like aiming (and first person games), but I don't see why we can't play most 3rd person games in VR with (mostly) normal controls. They would still control like usual (except for aiming), but thanks to VR it would feel as if you are inside a floating camera that's following the character around. Is it really that hard to implement an optional VR mode like that in games like Assassin's Creed, for example?

I think finger tracking can still be fun for certain VR-exclusive experiences (like puzzle games), but for most games it's simply not necessary.

Regarding your first point, would you not prefer VR to be exploring ways to make games and interactions that just aren't possible using a traditional setup?

 

[Fess]

I only have the PC Version which is 7,97 GB big

Oculus Store says 2,64 GB on the Quest

Moss on Meta Quest | Quest VR Games | Meta Store

Discover the magic of VR with Moss, a timeless adventure game starring a tiny hero with a big heart. Moss is an action-adventure puzzle game handcrafted for VR play, combining components of classic gameplay—compelling characters, environmental puzzle-solving, and captivating world exploration...

www.oculus.com

Woah that's tiny! Sounds like 64GB is well enough as a starting point.

 

[Shadowstar39]

Quest 2 Jan 2021. Not being able to get a ps5 or 3000 series card to go with my new Ryzen 3600 gaming pc build, I spent money on the quest 2. I was going to buy a rift s as it was on sale for 2 weeks at target for $299. I went to buy after self negotiating with myself for 2 weeks and hit order.. The price jumped up to $399. It must of just changed within a few minutes as the site still listed the sale after refresh. I said no but after researching was curious. I seen the quest 2 On Amazon but there was a month wait. Hit checkout and to my surprise got it 4 days later.

Been loving quest 2 with RacketNX. The best simple vr game imo. Full on fitness and immersion. You are in a sphere and you hit the ball against shapes on the walls of the sphere. It bounces and you can pull it to you. There are power ups, combos and skulls special ball physics and obstacles. Mix in full campaign, cop op, pvp and arcade. It's a ln amazing game for $20. Native on quest 2 as well. I just wish there was more like it.

Other good games to me are pirate fighting trainer, the $9 boxing game, beat sabers, twd saints and sinners, sinVR(lol.. had to try it, don't deny that you aren't a bit curious in how vr pron game would be...)

I have sidequest loaded with half life plus expansions, quake 1 and 2, return to Castle Wolfenstein, doom 1, 2 and 3. Did install NOLF but it doesn't recognize the quest. It says can't find rift (annoying as the modder hasn't updated it since 2018 so it doesn't work grrrr....)
These source ports are amazing. I started with half life and that ride on the team in black Mesa was incredible. Even with SD textures it's great(I could add HD textures but this is native quest port and I got the 64gb model.).

I also have skyrim, falloutvr,no man's sky, war thunder, elite dangerous, subnautica, everspace, space pirates and zombies 2, and bought project cars 2 for a 5er. I already owned all those outside of pc2, and the fallout/skyrim vr games. Kinda crappy that they weren't free mode updates like the other games. It's amazing to me that subnautica has more vr interaction than skyrim. They already have an object rendering and physics system in place all they would need is to rework controls to make it like hands touching objects but they couldn't be bothered. Lazy bethesda. A modder was able to do it. Probably added a few lines of code and a variable on each object. Wish I could get the mods to work though (so far no mod has worked on my vr skyrim or fallout).

2 nights ago I got Half life Alyxxx, what an amazing game so far. Just got to pick up the pistol. I spent two hours just messing around in the world. Drawing on the glass windows with markers and eraser. Throwing cans at the pigeons and trying to hit the pedestrians below. Amazing game. We probably won't see anything like it. The closest I have seen is asgards wrath made by sly4 and spyro remake devs. That game is amazing too.

My complaints are not enough native quest games. So many cool fitness games could be made and where are they. RacketNX mixes arcade with fitness and its my favorite feel good vr game. Also don't like how devs abandon vr games. Tertris effect is on quest 2 but it has psvr textures. How hard would it be for devs to put new textures in. This is even like it on pcvr. It's like they did the psvr and hired an intern to port it to the other headsets. More games and more support needed. Otherwise it's been fun so far.

 

[SScorpio]

I own the Quest 1 and I like it for what it is, but it's still not quite there for me. It's very uncomfortable, resolution is trash unless you link it to a PC, battery life is also quite trash... but when it works, it works really well. Playing games like Superhot or Beatsaber in VR is just on another level and not replicable on a flat screen.

So I'm definitely staying on the VR train, I'm just waiting for slightly better hardware. Maybe the Quest 3 will be it...

Even with a PC the Quest 1 still didn't look great. The Quest 2 is a huge improvement as the screen door effect is almost completely imperceivable. PC games do look better than on local headset versions, but not having the streaming layer when playing rhythm games is nice.

64GB on a Quest 2 is more than enough in my experience. Sure you might not be able to have every game every loaded on it, but I do purchase most of my games on a PC to not be locked into a single ecosystem. The Quest 2 is an amazing piece of hardware for what they are charging for it. It's not surprising it seems like other people agree and more Quest 2s have sold in six months than every other Oculus product to date combined.

 

[Fess]

too expensive and uncomfortable and prone to motion sickness.

vr sux. maybe for short length porn, idk.

i had a samsung gear vr

This was me up until a few hours ago.

Then I played a Quest 2...

Now I'm a believer 100%!

I won't sell my XSX or anything like that but I'm definitely jumping in, I'm completely blown away, haven't been able to think about anything else, I'm just googling reviews and looking at store pages at this point.

Devs just need to think about motion sickness and build games with that in mind, high framerates, maybe stationary cameras if needed. I want games like Moss! And turn based games, Gears Tactics would be aaawesome in VR with a diorama cam battle field, beat'em ups, side-scrolling platformers, metroidvanias, OMG imagine a metroidvania in VR with hidden stuff you have to lean around the world to find!

 

[Wonko_C]

I've wondered if the same people who are like the guy from the comic (I've a couple of friends who say they won't touch VR until it's like the Nervegear from Sword Art Online): Did they do the same with video games? of course not.

 

[BbMajor7th]

Is it bad that I did the maths before entering this thread to make sure I wouldn't be stumbling into another stealth BotW thread?

 

[RileyPust]

so you play games to be aware of your surroundings, needy kids, complaining wife, neighbors listening loud music. Cool man, cool.

But I'd say most of us play games for escapism, for escaping exactly from that boring reality. And headphones and 3 monitor setups and dark rooms have always been old means of getting better escapism by immersing ourselves more into the games. And now we come to VR, final immersion achieved.

But hey, I'd rather be listening to the loud neighbor and my loving complaining wife...

I'd say most people play games because they enjoy playing games, not because they're some sort of secret portal that allows you to flee your shitty sounding life.

 

[MiguelItUp]

I'd say most people play games because they enjoy playing games, not because they're some sort of secret portal that allows you to flee your shitty sounding life.

Yeaaaaaaah. Video games are an "escape" for a lot of people, but I don't necessarily think it's because their life is a living hell, lmao. I'd like to think the majority do it because they just enjoy them.

Really though, It's pretty wild how far VR has come, even if I don't think it's quite "taken off". Or that it ever really will. I got an Odyssey+ currently in my closet. Played it pretty consistently for a few weeks, but then I just didn't care enough about the games that were being released.

After playing Half-Life: Alyx, it felt like everything that was currently available or would be soon just didn't compete with that experience.

I figured I'll use it again soon enough, at least whenever another experience on-par with Alyx or even more impressive appears.

 

[Elysion]

Regarding your first point, would you not prefer VR to be exploring ways to make games and interactions that just aren't possible using a traditional setup?

As I said, unique VR experiences are fine, and can help move the medium forward, but I think it's a mistake to design all VR games in a way that make them impossible to play traditionally. If we look at the most popular games these days – stuff like Fortnite, CoD, GTA etc. – then I see no reason why these kinds of games couldn't have an optional VR mode from day one.

But we should also make a distinction between VR and motion controls – while they obviously compliment each other, they don't necessarily have to be combined all the time. I personally think it was a mistake for Sony to ship the PS5 with traditional controllers for example; imo they should've made the DualSense a motion controller made of two halves, that can be used as a traditional controller when combined, or be separated to be used as two motion controllers, one for each hand, similar to the joycons (they even filed a patent for such a concept back during the PS3 era). When it comes to shooters, be it first or third person, I think Wii-style pointer controls are vastly superior to twin-stick controls even without VR, and it is a shame that the industry abandoned this paradigm after the Wii. Motion controls shouldn't be relegated only to VR.

Having motion/pointer controls as an option for many games (especially shooters, one of the most popular genres) would've not only offered a superior control method for certain games, but could've also served as a bridge between traditional gaming and VR, since VR-ready controllers would be shipped with every console. As it is now, Sony has to sell people not only a new headset, but also totally new controllers that are probably incompatible with non-VR games (and vice versa), thus increasing the price for their upcoming VR solution. The original DualShock controller is still the poster child for how to introduce a new peripheral/control method in an elegant way without splitting the user base.

Overall, I think VR needs to be integrated into the gaming market much better, instead of treating it as a separate 'fourth pillar' of the industry (next to consoles, PC, and mobile).

 

[namekuseijin]

I'd say most people play games because they enjoy playing games, not because they're some sort of secret portal that allows you to flee your shitty sounding life.

my life is alright. Just won't ever be nearly as exciting as living in Tamriel or in Euclid Galaxy...

 

[namekuseijin]

I've wondered if the same people who are like the guy from the comic (I've a couple of friends who say they won't touch VR until it's like the Nervegear from Sword Art Online): Did they do the same with video games? of course not.

Lol

it's exactly that. People have been missing the atari age of VR, let's see if they miss the NES too...

I was born with no videogames around, save for a few prototypes behind closed doors at universities or research labs (like VR in the 90s, early 2k). I got an atari still late 70s, it was so beyond just regular ancient boardgames and cardgames. And yet boardgames and DnD were very early influences, with a lot of devs trying to port them over to the new medium, as well as sports with tennis simplistic recreation of Pong. Rings a bell?

VR still to find its own tone and idioms. While we wait, I don't mind ports of old boardgames, I mean, flat games.