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I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

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Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#251
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cable thing is pretty solved with the Quest 2. Zero cables there.

Yeah, if you want to play a subset of games that Facebook has deemed you can play. Still salty that Pavlov isn’t native to quest. Air Link solves this, but boy is it annoying in practice. Setting down the headset always pushes the floor just out of reach when you come back to it. Which is frustrating in a game that makes you pick things up, like shooters.

Why is SideQuest and AppLab not sufficient for “unapproved” games?

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#252

I wanted to love VR. I dreamed of having a headset when I was younger and kickedstarted the oculus rift. I imagined a million worlds that would be within virtual reach. It would be the coolest! VR has been nothing but a complete disappointment to me. Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. Never played a VR game that wasn’t better without it, somewhat like 3D movies. I have my doubts this will eve…

I'm exactly the opposite. I love VR and I now find non-VR games boring and old like trying the play NES or C64 games (which I used to love).

Half Life Alyx is arguably the best Half Life experience to date. No Man's Sky is amazing in VR but zero interest outside of VR. In VR I'm actually in a spaceship or actually on another planet. Outside VR I'm just looking at someone else's travel photos. Seeing vista's in VR is like the difference between looking at a picture of the Grand Canyon and actually being at the Grand Canyon. The first is a pretty picture. The second you actually feel it's 20 miles the other side and a mile deep. Seeing a smoking volcano in Farpoint, again outside vR is just a picture, inside VR the mountain actually feels 1-2 miles high with 7-10 mile plum of smoke. So now non-VR games that don't get then sense of presence fill like something is missing.

Further, well made VR games (which is definitely not all) are often way more intuitive than non. The 19 buttons on a dualshock or a mouse and 101 buttons of a keyboard, a good VR game you should reach out and touch stuff in the game.

There are also experiences like Jet Island or Eye of the Temple you just can't have outside VR.

VR Rhythm games actually force me to dance, vr non-VR rhythm games which rarely do that.

As for AR, I used to be more excited, but I suspect reality will be tracking, constant ads, and distractions. And further, it's kind of hard to turn reality into any setting, something VR can do easily. In AR, in my living room, maybe I could have an AR pet that runs around my furniture. In VR I can escape my living room for another planet, an underwater adventure, a dragon's lair, a space station, a secret lab, a zombie infested factory, etc...

The biggest problem with VR is just lack of great content. Looking forward to Horizon Forbidden West as the next true AAA VR title.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've not played the right games, then. I mean, take Robo Recall, which is one of the first things that came out. Sure, you can do a shooting game without VR, but then you don't get the experience of tearing a robot apart with your own hands and punching another's head off with a torn off arm. Or Elite Dangerous is quite the experience in VR too. Less so than Robo Recall, but it works out extremely well if you have…

The tech works extremely well at making me feel sick. I enjoyed subnautica sans VR. ED is less interesting than Euro truck simulator. :-) I get the physical games like table tenis and beat saber, but how is this not a fad? The wii was cool at the time too. Nintendo didn’t retain the ideas in later hardware. VR chat is about as interesting as second life, and any metaverse that follows will follow the same path.

The physical games are barely VR games imo. Everything is in front of you. You don't physically move where you're standing too much. Beat Saber is great fun but it can be done pretty much the same without VR, and is done, at arcades.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#254

I bought an Oculus a couple of years ago out of curiosity and because I wanted to support the technology. My disappointment is that it essentially a gaming platform. I've never been attracted to games, not IRL, not in early PC's and now not in VR. There are 360 degree videos on YouTube, but accessing them is awkward and they aren't that good. The screen door effect and view not extending to the periphery detracts fro…

The biggest problem with most of the 360 videos on YT is their resolution. They have to be a certain minimum otherwise it looks horrible, like not just bad, but horrible and not watchable on a VR headset.

I've only found one great video so far, and it is unbelievable.

I would pay money for great 360 content like that.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#255

SimulaVR [1] is introducing a new class of products (virtual reality computer or VRC) that aims to develop a full linux desktop in a headset. I'm excited about using this with Stardust XR [2] and my NixOS configuration. We're obviously in a very early stage of consumer VR hardware and I agree with most people that AR (passthrough or glasses) would be preferable to VR. There are a lot of open problems in this space -…

> full linux desktop in a headset

Is the intersection of people who like VR and people who like the Linux desktop big enough to support a commercial product?

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#256
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the frontier of transmigration to the digital realm which opens up whole new possibilities for mankind, especially immortality.

If this were isolation in a digital universe you'd end up with eternity in a questing/grinding RPG or something similar. That sounds like hell if it's even a form of consciousness. Eventually something happening in the outside world would destroy this system and everyone would die. There are open, growing, learning upward ascending futures and closed, repetitive, conflict-ridden downward spiral futures. Some kind of…

> If this were isolation in a digital universe you'd end up with eternity in a questing/grinding RPG or something similar. It's not set in stone that the digital universe with trash content for the lowest denominator audience (MMO RPGS), the same way that Mars colonists aren't doomed to spend their time on the red planet sucking Elon Musks dick.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#257
post #91

I wanted to love VR. I dreamed of having a headset when I was younger and kickedstarted the oculus rift. I imagined a million worlds that would be within virtual reach. It would be the coolest! VR has been nothing but a complete disappointment to me. Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. Never played a VR game that wasn’t better without it, somewhat like 3D movies. I have my doubts this will eve…

> Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. I've bought a Vive when Half Life: Alyx came out and was completely blown away by the first impressions and immersions of that game. Since then however and after the first "whoa!"-effects faded, every game was exactly what you've just described: Pure disappointment, and my body completely stressed out/sick after half an hour, at best. The only exception is…

I was pretty disappointed with Alyx. Little manual interactions like the healing stations and the markers and the reloading felt novel. But the actual meat of the game, the combat, was just not very good. Teleport movement breaks immersion. The hardest enemies in the game were the electric dogs. They did this thing where they drastically over commit to shooting in a specific direction and all you needed to do was click to move somewhere else and you were fine. It was super lame, but, at the same time, not actually super easy to execute. It's like we've taken a step forward on graphical immersion and three steps back on game design immersion.

Valve did a good job working with the constraints they had, but my takeaway is that the constraints are just too vast to make a game that isn't clearly hand holding you because your controls and situational awareness are just kind of bad.

I played on an index and would do multiple hours at a time, with no sickness.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#258

I wanted to love VR. I dreamed of having a headset when I was younger and kickedstarted the oculus rift. I imagined a million worlds that would be within virtual reach. It would be the coolest! VR has been nothing but a complete disappointment to me. Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. Never played a VR game that wasn’t better without it, somewhat like 3D movies. I have my doubts this will eve…

It would be useful to include what headset you tried in your comment. Consumer VR has progressed a lot in the last few years wrt resolution, refresh rate, and form factor.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#259

I wanted to love VR. I dreamed of having a headset when I was younger and kickedstarted the oculus rift. I imagined a million worlds that would be within virtual reach. It would be the coolest! VR has been nothing but a complete disappointment to me. Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. Never played a VR game that wasn’t better without it, somewhat like 3D movies. I have my doubts this will eve…

Things I like: Immersed.com (second computer screen): I wish the Quest 2 had 4000x4000 per eye to make this work beautifully but I suppose that will be the future. Eleven Table Tennis: I practice smashing in this game, the skill transferred. Now I am beating all my friends with real actual table tennis (at an amateur level). Thrill of the Fight: awesome shadowboxing on steroids workout. Walkabout minigolf: feels like…

The lack of resistance and extremely fast feedback loop give me really bad RSI—which I'm not particularly prone to—if I play Wii Sports for more than a few minutes and try to do the motions as if they were real, rather than just waggling with my wrist. Is that not a problem with VR rigs and "real" sports activities? I've yet to use one.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech works extremely well at making me feel sick. I enjoyed subnautica sans VR. ED is less interesting than Euro truck simulator. :-) I get the physical games like table tenis and beat saber, but how is this not a fad? The wii was cool at the time too. Nintendo didn’t retain the ideas in later hardware. VR chat is about as interesting as second life, and any metaverse that follows will follow the same path.

The physical games are barely VR games imo. Everything is in front of you. You don't physically move where you're standing too much. Beat Saber is great fun but it can be done pretty much the same without VR, and is done, at arcades.

No it can't? There are other rhythm games at the arcade, but they're not Beat Saber.
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