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Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

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Re: Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

#61

Post by jdashg »

grumbel wrote: post #47
jncfhnb wrote: post #33

There is some irony in one of the largest companies in the world changing their name to Meta; and hordes of people preaching about the metaverse and the brilliance of Neal Stephenson and Snowcrash and then all at the end of the day paying basically no attention to the part of the book where he explains the thing that made the meta verse popular in universe (it was high fidelity facial expression copying).

Meta is working on that with their Codec Avatars[1], but since their focus is on affordable self contained VR headsets, and PCVR support is all but abandoned, they'll likely remain R&D experiments for quite a few more years. They just don't have enough compute in their current hardware offering. Apple with their VisionPro is quite a bit further along and their Persona[2] are available to consumer, though the price ta…

I'm too much of a transhumanist to understand why, when you can choose to look like anything you could imagine, you would choose to look like your default human self!

Re: Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

#62

Post by crooked-v »

dylan604 wrote: post #18
JKCalhoun wrote: post #2

I don't know. Author complains devs are targeting "hard core" game culture with violent games. But my instinct is that only "hard core" gamers are going to want to stick a thing on their head (that they had to pony up large amounts of dosh for, BTW). I also believe in The Market. With the number of years VR headsets have been one the market I am quite confident no one somehow missed a lucrative genre. I see a lot of…

It's interesting to me that you compare VR and Guitar Hero as they are very different. VR is nothing but isolation. Guitar Hero and the other Band game at least made it where more people could participate at the same time in the same location. One pulls you away, while the other attempted to include more people.

> VR is nothing but isolation.

The most popular VR app of all time is a 3D chat room.

Re: Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

#63

Post by gxd »

VR is interesting; we think we want VR, and we probably do, but this is like saying we wanted airliners before we actually had the technology to build one. Most recent VR headsets feel, relatively speaking, like those crazy early flying contraptions that simply couldn't deliver on the promise. At best, the state of the art is equivalent to the Wright Flyer - amazing demo, not quite ready for mass adoption.

Until VR headsets provide a seamless, pleasant experience, they will remain in the hands of early adopters and enthusiasts.

Re: Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

#64

Post by crooked-v »

throwawa14223 wrote: post #53

Until they solve the vertigo issue it's a non-starter for me and several of my friends who would otherwise be the target market.

Most nausea issues come down to bad/unimaginative design, rather than being inherent to the headset. For an example, try out Gorilla Tag, which uses arm-swing movement instead of making you use a joystick.

Re: Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

#65

Post by tyhali »

Background: I spent a few years commercially designing and building VR and AR headsets.

Biggest challenge with VR is the design philosophy for headsets. No matter how much I and others pushed against it - many VR folk are intent on sticking all the hardware on people's heads and faces.

Instead, we need more walkman like designs, where the compute and batteries sit on a user's hip, and the tethered headset is as light as physically possible. Cables for tethering can be a pain, but not as much as putting 500+ grams on your face.

Light headsets are amazing, and yes, I've worn prototypes. Ideally, get headsets down to 80-100 grams and the experience is radically improved.

There are a few small companies pushing on the design, but not main stream enough.

Re: Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

#66

Post by crooked-v »

phkahler wrote: post #22

Well, they canceled EchoVR which was by far my favorite. Also, the cheap plastic headband clips on my Oculus broke so I can't wear it any more because it's loose without them.

The good news is that the developers of Gorilla Tag and Echo Arena are working on a spiritual successor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xjnw_skc9g

Re: Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

#67

Post by numpad0 »

Not sure what the author is getting at, VR gaming has taken off[1]. I assume the author means all of VR except provocative ones, and that indeed had not taken off, but non-provocative entertainment is just logical contradiction.

There's no way around including stimulating elements in making of entertainment content; contents lacking in those never take off, just as SIE's CONCORD had proven earlier this month. I am of the opinion that this has nothing to do with diversity or equity or inclusion as those words are defined despite how cheaply these terms are thrown around, to be clear. The problem has to be lack of avid and neutral pursuit of engineered enjoyment.

  1: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=VRChat,Boba%20tea,Beat%20Saber

Re: Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

#68

Post by grumbel »

I think it simply comes down to price and the fractured VR market. Be it Rift CV1, HTC Vive, Index, PSVR2, QuestPro or Quest3, they just straight up put the price too high for the average gamer. $500 or more just doesn't work with technology that is as unfinished as the current VR devices are. Quest2 is the one device that sold well, thanks to it's $300 price tag, though even there Meta couldn't hesitate to mess it up the momentum with a short lived price increase.

The other issue is just the amount of incompatible VR ecosystems out there, Cardboard, Daydream, PSVR1, PSVR2, Rift, Go, Quest are all separate system with little or no compatibility. That means you constantly end up with good content that only a fraction of the VR market can access, which is a huge problem when VR is already short on content.

Finally, VR never managed to integrate with the rest of the gaming world. Ports of regular games into VR were actively discouraged in the early days and only a few of them ever happened. That meant the whole promise of VR allowing you to "step into your games" fell flat very early on. None of your favorite games could be revisited in VR, instead you where stuck with a lot low budget indie tech demos. Lately that has been changing with UEVR, which allows to mod VR support into Unreal Engine games, but that still is just an unofficial hack, not a feature embraced by any of the VR companies.

There is of course also the big "motion sickness" bogeyman in the corner and while that can certainly be an issue, most people just get used to it. I think the efforts to mitigate the issue (don't port games to VR, make everything slow and boring) have done far more damage to VR than they helped, since it simply means we are stuck with a whole lot of games in VR that simply can't compete with what's available in the world of non-VR gaming. That's kind of a big problem when VR was always supposed to be the "next-level" of gaming and yet it feels like a step backwards.

Re: Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

#69

Post by GuB-42 »

wpietri wrote: post #36

I think there's a much simpler explanation here, one that covers all of the other failed stereoscopic 3D products: It's a cool novelty effect, but people's brains are already pretty good at reconstructing 3D from 2D, so there's little lasting value. Once the novelty wears off, most people stop caring. I believe that explanation also covers the Brewster Stereoscope (500k units sold in the 1850s), the ViewMaster (the U…

VR is not that much about stereoscopic 3D, it is more about the 360° environment. You can get most of the immersive effect of VR with a large enough 2D display. 3D is an improvement, but not the most important one.

A VR headset works by putting small displays very close to the eyes to achieve a wide field of view, which is cheaper and more convenient than using large displays further away (like in CAVE system). But for that, one needs one set of optics per eye, as our eyes can't focus that close, and since we need one set per eye, we might as well show different pictures and support stereoscopic 3D.

In other words, VR headsets are a convenient way of displaying a wide field of view, and you get 3D for free.

Re: Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off

#70

Post by wpietri »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #49
wpietri wrote: post #36

I think there's a much simpler explanation here, one that covers all of the other failed stereoscopic 3D products: It's a cool novelty effect, but people's brains are already pretty good at reconstructing 3D from 2D, so there's little lasting value. Once the novelty wears off, most people stop caring. I believe that explanation also covers the Brewster Stereoscope (500k units sold in the 1850s), the ViewMaster (the U…

> there's little lasting value. Once the novelty wears off, most people stop caring. i disagree. if we got half-life alyx level games as often as flatscreens people would still be playing. I do think we need lighter cooler headsets (at least compared to valve index) for longer play sessions. the big trend now on PC is flat2vr. UEVR and luke ross have been carrying pcvr on their back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q…

I believe you would. But I'm confident I wouldn't. And I think the experience of 3D movies and 3D TV indicates most people are more like me in this. Or we might look at the rise in mobile and handheld gaming, which I think is a step away from VR. As anybody who has tried to get a child to put down a Switch or a mobile game knows, 2D is plenty immersive already.
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