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.
Why we've never fallen in love with virtual reality
61–70 of 285 posts
Re: Why we've never fallen in love with virtual reality
#62I 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…
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.
Re: Why we've never fallen in love with virtual reality
#63I 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…
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.)
Re: Why we've never fallen in love with virtual reality
#64Something 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.
Re: Why we've never fallen in love with virtual reality
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hmm I looked it up on youtube and it looks like a nice gimmick, but nothing to justify the price of a VR headset.
Watching a video of something and using VR personally are two hugely different experiences.
If you're genuinely interested in forming an opinion, some of the larger computer stores will have the Oculus Quest available for customers to demo.
Re: Why we've never fallen in love with virtual reality
#66VR 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…
>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].
[0] https://www.virtuix.com/ [1] https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2020/01/apple-a...
Re: Why we've never fallen in love with virtual reality
#67We need these[0], but better.
[0] https://www.slashgear.com/panasonic-vr-glasses-are-a-steampu...
Re: Why we've never fallen in love with virtual reality
#68Something 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.
It also could be that you are looking through odd glasses that have black cones around them instead of fully encompassed video space.
Re: Why we've never fallen in love with virtual reality
#69Something 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.
Infinite depth of field.
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.
Re: Why we've never fallen in love with virtual reality
#70VR 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…
>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]. [0] https://www.virtuix.com/ [1] https://w…
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.