• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

PlayStation VR Thread 2: Reloaded

joeblow

Member
Solus Project is already supporting Pro, they opted for the higher FPS in Pro upgrade.
Not good enough. Allowing the Pro to auto-solidify frame rates does not make use of all of the unit's power (half is closed off with that method, if I remember correctly). That means a developer can get that benefit while also polishing the game in other areas if they even bother to try.
 

MattAces

Member
I will give a pretty full detail of my experience in Solus Project.

Story Begins.
I bought it, downloaded it, excited about it. Booted up the game, chose VR mode, loads forever, crash.
Okay, that's interesting. Try again, same step, loads forever, crash. Fuck.Third time, I got in!

Graphic heavily reminds me of Spider-Man VR experience for some reason, environment is very similar to Farpoint but texture quality is lower, not the worst graphic, no where near the best. Close up stuff are pretty clear though.
Tracking is actually surprisingly good, nothing to talk about it here.
Gameplay, oh boy. What the hell is up with the Move controller as a pair of hands, they couldn't make a pair of hands? Gah, minor complaints. I began in a trapped area, no idea what the hell is going on, controls is surprisingly confusing coming from someone who REALLY enjoyed Arizona Sunshine with Move. So I kept pushing the crouch button, I'm sure I will get used to it very quickly though, but doing stuff is a challenge. I stuck in the beginning area for like 10 minutes because there's no control tutorial or anything at all, no idea how to craft, somehow manage to crack a rock to cut my way out of the starting area. Walking around the beach area, still no idea what the hell is going on. It's a pretty atmospheric game, spooky and mysterious but the graphic is *pretty below average* to the point where I couldn't enjoy the scenery, unlike Farpoint. The game is very dark, the feeling of being lost depressed the hell out of me and that is when I decided to exit the game. The game is supposed to be linear but the directionless gameplay is not enjoyable for me, which is weird because I love games that throws me into the world without telling me a thing.

So I went to Sony customer support chat US, talk to them super nicely, told them about the game crashes and stuff. I actually refunded EVE Valkyrie previously and they told me it was strictly a one-time thing. So the support told me to contact PSVR specialist in their hotline and refer to their guide, which I reply I'm pretty experienced with PSVR stuff and own a whole lot of VR games, so can I request a refund. He told me to wait while he do some checking. He came back and said I'm a loyal customer who bought a lot of stuff in the recent month, therefore I'm eligible for a refund.

The end.

TL;DR: technical issues, mixed feeling about the port, couldn't experience the real game at all, refund.
 

SomTervo

Member
Hi all, I'm part of the team on The Solus Project (although I didn't have a huge part in the game dev - i.e. programming and design - and had nothing to do with the PS4/PSVR port).

Here is a Reddit post by one of my colleagues about PSVR and how this version works.

PLZ USE THE MOVE CONTROLLER ROTATION SETTING. If you are not you are missing out. Walk in the direction the PDA is pointing. Easy peasy.

I wanted to make a quick post giving you some information on the game and straightening out some stuff I have read in other posts. I want to preface this by saying I have not played the PSVR version myself, but I know the game inside out and have gotten some info from the porting studio, so expect some of this to be second hand information.

How long is it?

It's about 15 hours of story gameplay when play in VR at least. From the footage I have seen of people playing it so far on PSVR I would not be surprised if many people doubled that. If you wanna 100%. well don't. Or do. But it's gonna take forever.

What are the controls?

See this graphic for reference

  • The game in VR is Move only.
  • You can play it either using blink teleportation, or with Walking locomotion using the Moves, with two different approaches.
  • #1 You press the right Move button to move forwards toward the camera, you are free to look around, and turn using snap turn with buttons.
  • #2 You press the right Move button and move forward toward which ever direction the other Move controller (the in game PDA) is pointing. This allows you to strafe or go backwards, and is highly recommended! Turn this setting on in the options. (Use Move controller rotation)
  • There is an in game teleportation gun/device which is used for puzzles. Do no get the controls confused between this and the teleportation locomotion.
  • There is a small use timer, so the use button and dropp button needs to be held for half a second for stuff to change.
  • When you point at stuff info about said stuff will be displayed on the PDA.

Gee, what's with all these convoluted buttons and stuff?

Well, the game was designed for flat screen PC gameplay. VR as we now it did not exist when most of the game was made. We are aware that the implementation when it comes to controls can feel a bit.. awful at first. But once you get past that hurdle, most people really enjoy or even love the game. Had the game been designed for VR from the ground up we surely would have done differently, but it would also have been 3 hours and 40 bucks instead. :)

How do I save?

Saving happens when you sleep, load a new area, or when you use a save tablet found scattered in the ruins.

I am not into crafting and survival

That's fine. You can set the difficulty to 0% at any time and those are turned off. You can set it to whatever number you feel comfortable with.

So what's the deal with the gawddamn dualshock!?

So, while the game has gamepad support built into it, unfortunately at this stage there are no plans to add DS4 support for VR. This is not because we nor the porting team are stupid in the head, but rather (from what I understand) because of a game engine/hardware problem that causes things to render erroneously when attached to the camera. It does not make it unplayable per se, but the lower frame rate would easily cause motion sickness and the certification process from Sony is super strict with those kinds of things and would never allow this. The hardware is already struggling to run the game as is. What do I know though I make sounds you know?

And Pro support?

The game already runs at higher FPS on the Pro compared to the standard PS4. Personally I am surprised that the standard can run Solus in VR at all. You could always ask the porting studio to up the graphics quality and sacrifice some FPS, but there is probably a good reason why they did not.

So is the game poorly optimised or something?

Oh no, not at all. It actually runs amazingly well on lower end laptops, and this is a game that is originally meant to be played on a flat screen with a beefy computer with everything on Ultra and it looks absolutely beautiful when doing so.

Then VR became a thing and suddenly and the fancy things we made became very expensive to render. In fact a new i5 with a GTX970 will have problems running Solus on the Vive unless most settings are set to low. A 1080Ti cannot run it at Ultra without dropping frames.

But Sir, I have seen games that looked crisper and better that ran better too in VR!

No need to call me sir, and secondly, sure of course. But there are a few things that sets a game like Solus apart from those. Such as the maps are huge and draw distance is as well We use almost no baked lighting due to having an actual day-and-night system, this means almost all light in the whole game is dynamic OMG. There is a procedural weather system, and the tide even moves in and out as the moons fly by in the distance. All of this is super taxing to render in VR, since you essentially need to do it twice, and at a higher FPS.

Another thing is that we use something called a deferred renderer. Deferred rendering allows us to do a bunch of cool things with Unreal engine that would not be possible otherwise, however this comes at a price in both performance and most noticeable in terms of aliasing. On a flat screen Temporal AA would solve this nicely, or even rendering at a higher resolution and then scaling down. But obviously that is not an option in VR. These new and shorter VR experiences that we have been seeing for the past year use something called Forward rendering. This type works much better for VR because it simplifies a lot of the rendering, and most importantly it allows for MSAA which is a type of anti aliasing which works really well in VR. Bottom line is, if you have the power you wanna go with Deferred but for VR Forward is the better choice. And no, you cannot change the rendering pipeline afterwards because the visuals would break throughout the whole game and needed to be retweaks and fixed.

TLDR: Use the Move controller rotation and point with the PDA in the direction you want to move. No DS4 support for now sorry. Don't get cold, don't get wet when cold, expect to die if you do. This also applies to the game.

Edit: Having read MattAces unfortunate account of his experience, I'd also like to add that when we built-on VR support originally, we recommended people play the game non-VR for about an hour (up until you leave the game's first area). Non-VR has a different tutorial and story flow for the opening 30 minutes and this would let you get familiar with the game/world. VR will be a much easier step after that.
 

black070

Member
Had my first PSVR and VR gaming experience in general today playing over at my brothers placed. Tried Thumper, Super Stardust, Driveclub, Rush for Blood, RIGS and Star Trek Bridge Crew and got to say, I loved my time with it !

Rush for Blood was too damn scary for me though, in a good way - I chose not to try Resident Evil 7 knowing I probably wouldn't be able to keep the headset on for more then a couple of minutes.

RIGS was the only game to make me feel sick, I braced myself when starting up Driveclub after hearing all the horror stories, but felt absolutly fine playing it - I'd go as far as to say it was the most immersive of the bunch.
 

MattAces

Member
Hi all, I'm part of the team on The Solus Project (although I didn't have a huge part in the game dev - i.e. programming and design - and had nothing to do with the PS4/PSVR port).

Here is a Reddit post by one of my colleagues about PSVR and how this version works.



Edit: Having read MattAces unfortunate account of his experience, I'd also like to add that when we built-on VR support originally, we recommended people play the game non-VR for about an hour (up until you leave the game's first area). Non-VR has a different tutorial and story flow for the opening 30 minutes and this would let you get familiar with the game/world. VR will be a much easier step after that.

Just want to point out, my experience only reflects on the PSVR port, unfortunately I didn't get to experience the potentially wonderful game.
 

TheMan

Member
Any impressions on end space USA Gaf? Really looking forward to this when it hits UK

I haven't seen any on reddit yet. Haven't checked psn but my guess is it won't be released till late morning when psn usually updates. I'd check for more impressions this afternoon.
 

MattAces

Member
So as of right the the definitive PSVR experience can be found in Farpoint right?

My personal
Top tier full game
- Standing game: Farpoint with Aim
- Seating game: RE7, Rigs

Top tier indie game
- Standing game: Dick Wilde, Arizona Sunshine with Aim
- Seating game: Statik

Note worthy game: I Expect You To Die, Mortal Blitz, Dino Frontier
 

black070

Member
My personal
Top tier full game
- Standing game: Farpoint with Aim
- Seating game: RE7, Rigs

Top tier indie game
- Standing game: Dick Wilde, Arizona Sunshine with Aim
- Seating game: Statik

Note worthy game: I Expect You To Die, Mortal Blitz, Dino Frontier

How scary is RE7 considered to be, I'm really keen on trying it - but I'm a complete wuss when it comes to horror.
 

MattAces

Member
How scary is RE7 considered to be, I'm really keen on trying it - but I'm a complete wuss when it comes to horror.

It's the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life. Worst as in scary.
And trust me, i'm a bigger wuss than you, I couldn't get through dark places in VR games even if they aren't supposed to be horror.
But RE7 VR is so good, it's worth getting scared.
I will say though, the game doesn't have too many cheap jumpscare, it's extremely well paced, where you will feel weak and scary at the beginning but you slowly adapt it, you can brave through everything, then it became scary again and lastly back to kicking ass.
 

cakely

Member
How scary is RE7 considered to be, I'm really keen on trying it - but I'm a complete wuss when it comes to horror.

Really scary. I don't normally get frightened by movies or games (jump scares make me jump, of course) but RE7 VR was rough. It is by far the scariest game experience I've had.

The game goes full camp at times, and then it's not so bad, but moving through the house waiting for awful stuff to happen is pretty intense.
 

black070

Member
It's the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life. Worst as in scary.
And trust me, i'm a bigger wuss than you, I couldn't get through dark places in VR games even if they aren't supposed to be horror.
But RE7 VR is so good, it's worth getting scared.
I will say though, the game doesn't have too many cheap jumpscare, it's extremely well paced, where you will feel weak and scary at the beginning but you slowly adapt it, you can brave through everything, then it became scary again and lastly back to kicking ass.
Really scary. I don't normally get frightened by movies or games (jump scares make me jump, of course) but RE7 VR was rough. It is by far the scariest game experience I've had.

The game goes full camp at times, and then it's not so bad, but moving through the house waiting for awful stuff to happen is pretty intense.

That's pretty much exactly how my brother put it, which had me conflicted - I think I may as well try it, I know I'll regret it if I don't. Thanks for the impressions. :)
 

wapplew

Member
How scary is RE7 considered to be, I'm really keen on trying it - but I'm a complete wuss when it comes to horror.

Really scary but get less so overtime especially when you have shotgun in hand.
But really great experience like no other, you owe it to yourself if you don't get RE7 if you own PSVR.
I can't imagine Fatal Frame in VR.
 
My personal
Top tier full game
- Standing game: Farpoint with Aim
- Seating game: RE7, Rigs

Top tier indie game
- Standing game: Dick Wilde, Arizona Sunshine with Aim
- Seating game: Statik

Note worthy game: I Expect You To Die, Mortal Blitz, Dino Frontier
I'd add GNOG to the list of Note-worthy games. Super fun puzzle game that lends itself nicely to VR.
 
Really enjoying The Solus Project. Played it for about two hours so far and in the middle of spelunking and died once due to falling.

I didn't really have any problems with the controls took me about 5 mins to adapt, I still get a few buttons mixed up from time to time but apart from that I haven't had a problem, I do wish there was an option for smooth turning though as I prefer it to snap but I adapted very quickly to it anyway. As said in the post above the rotation setting is a must. The atmosphere is excellent and even though the motion controls are simple they do a good job of engaging you more, being able to hold out the torch to light more of your path or above your head to stop it from getting wet works really well . It's not scary but it has made me jump a few times due to the spikey things and creeped out a few times thinking a rock mound is a figure watching me. Graphics wise I'm fine with it, not the prettiest looking game but it isn't awful either, looks last gen and have seen far worse in VR.

There was a part I played just recently where you are in a ruins like area with alters and traps, it reminded me a hell of a lot like the tombs in Skyrim, visually, tonally and exploration wise and really liked it so if Skyrim is similar to that I'd be very pleased.
 

MattAces

Member
ABC preview Skyrim VR (Great preview, worth watching)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYqb0f553OU

- PSMove will support free movement. He confirmed it twice at 6:40 and 9:40.
- Every features and UI are disabled in this demo, but looting and everything will be in.
- You will be looking up at the heaven to spend your skill points.
- World map is redesigned to display in front of you, something like in sci-fi movies AR map.
- You can wave at NPC.
 
I recently tried out VR for the first time at a local mall. The hardware was setup was a HTC Vive, GTX 1070, and two of the HTC motion controllers. I only played a bit of a shooting game where I have to shoot flying drones out of the air while dodging incoming fire, can't remember the name though. At any rate, I thought it was an interesting experience, but I wasn't completely blown away. It worked as advertised for sure, but I wasn't wouldn't cal myself a convert. I also tend to get really bad motion sickness so I limited myself to about 10 minutes. At any rate, I'm interested in a few VR games like ZoE, Rez, Battlezone, RE7. Mostly controller based stuff as I don't have the room for motion based stuff. That being said, my hardware includes a PS4 Pro and a gaming PC with a GTX 970 and 4690k. I'm leaning towards PSVR due to price. What say you?
 
ABC preview Skyrim VR (Great preview, worth watching)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYqb0f553OU

- PSMove will support free movement. He confirmed it twice at 6:40 and 9:40.
- Every features and UI are disabled in this demo, but looting and everything will be in.
- You will be looking up at the heaven to spend your skill points.
- World map is redesigned to display in front of you, something like in sci-fi movies AR map.
- You can wave at NPC.

in addition

-''for all those titles(Doom, Fallout, Skyrim) we are looking how we can support the other VR platforms in 2018''
 

Patch13

Member
At any rate, I'm interested in a few VR games like ZoE, Rez, Battlezone, RE7.

Strangely, Rez wasn't enhanced that much for me by being translated to VR. There's nothing wrong with the port, and it's cool to look up and see some of the structures towering over you. But my sense of synesthesia wasn't any stronger than when I first played it on my 360.

(The same goes for Thumper, which I actually prefer on the Switch -- I find myself more immersed when I can just curl up on the couch and cuddle my game console; holding my head in the right position to make the Playstation camera happy doesn't actually make the experience better.)

All that said ...

It sounds like PSVR has the right library for you, especially with Zone of the Enders coming out (I'm looking forward to that, too). You're not going to be missing out on much if you just skip the VR, and play the games the traditional way, though ...
 

joeblow

Member
And Pro support?

The game already runs at higher FPS on the Pro compared to the standard PS4. Personally I am surprised that the standard can run Solus in VR at all. You could always ask the porting studio to up the graphics quality and sacrifice some FPS, but there is probably a good reason why they did not.
Well, that makes it clear to me that I should wait for proper Pro support or skip it. Since the standard PSVR version is forced to play at minimum 60fps (Sony requirement), whatever extra framerate above 60fps provided by the Pro is not as big of a deal when visual details, resolution, and/or special effects could provide a bigger impact.

This is especially true since manual implementaiton of the Pro's extra power allows use of everything the machine can offer, instead of the merely +50% power that "Boost Mode" provides for frame rates when a developer does nothing with it.
 
Well, that makes it clear to me that I should wait for proper Pro support or skip it. Since the standard PSVR version is forced to play at minimum 60fps (Sony requirement), whatever extra framerate above 60fps provided by the Pro is not as big of a deal when visual details, resolution, and/or special effects could provide a bigger impact.

This is especially true since manual implementaiton of the Pro's extra power allows use of everything the machine can offer, instead of the merely +50% power that "Boost Mode" provides for frame rates when a developer does nothing with it.

Improving the visuals with the specs of the pro wouldn't bring much of an improvement to the game overall besides looking marginally nicer. The draw distances are already impressive as is the lighting, skyboxes and weather which all work well with the gameplay. For the budget price they have their priorities straight by focusing on performance (it had issues on PC at the lower end). and from what I have seen so far (four hours) it's rock solid and the sound design is great which is where the game really excels. Saying that nicer textures would be great.
 

Hazanko

Banned
Well, that makes it clear to me that I should wait for proper Pro support or skip it. Since the standard PSVR version is forced to play at minimum 60fps (Sony requirement), whatever extra framerate above 60fps provided by the Pro is not as big of a deal when visual details, resolution, and/or special effects could provide a bigger impact.

This is especially true since manual implementaiton of the Pro's extra power allows use of everything the machine can offer, instead of the merely +50% power that "Boost Mode" provides for frame rates when a developer does nothing with it.

Yeah, boost mode isn't using the pro properly. Hate when devs say it supports pro but don't actually patch it to make use of it.
 

Joystick

Member
Hi all, I'm part of the team on The Solus Project (although I didn't have a huge part in the game dev - i.e. programming and design - and had nothing to do with the PS4/PSVR port).

Here is a Reddit post by one of my colleagues about PSVR and how this version works

Thanks for taking the time to post this info here. I'll certainly use it when I pick up The Solus Project.
 

SomTervo

Member
Thanks for taking the time to post this info here. I'll certainly use it when I pick up The Solus Project.

A pleasure - hope it helps.

Well, that makes it clear to me that I should wait for proper Pro support or skip it. Since the standard PSVR version is forced to play at minimum 60fps (Sony requirement), whatever extra framerate above 60fps provided by the Pro is not as big of a deal when visual details, resolution, and/or special effects could provide a bigger impact.

This is especially true since manual implementaiton of the Pro's extra power allows use of everything the machine can offer, instead of the merely +50% power that "Boost Mode" provides for frame rates when a developer does nothing with it.

Fair enough - feel free to ping Grip Digital (the guys who made the Xbox and PS4/PSVR ports) about this if you like.
 

FlyinJ

Douchebag. Yes, me.
What happened to End Space? I saw it on the web store at work but I can't find it on the console store, even through search...

(Just checked the web store, it's gone there as well)
 
ABC preview Skyrim VR (Great preview, worth watching)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYqb0f553OU

- PSMove will support free movement. He confirmed it twice at 6:40 and 9:40.
- Every features and UI are disabled in this demo, but looting and everything will be in.
- You will be looking up at the heaven to spend your skill points.
- World map is redesigned to display in front of you, something like in sci-fi movies AR map.
- You can wave at NPC.


Ok. This looks good.

Faith restored.
 

Briarios

Member
Regarding End Space, a dev just posted this on Reddit:

Dev here: I've just emailed Sony about this so we'll see what's going on! Hopefully it's just a glitch and we can get it resolved soon!
 
Top Bottom