How many of you think VR is the next "BIG THANG?"

[DRJ1014]

3D TVs were a big hit... oh wait. I dont see this lasting more than a couple of years before something else comes along. Google Glass anyone?

 

[SBSuperfly]

I agree the full room-scale VR is worlds better, but my original point still stands. A huge percentage of gamers like to play for hours at a time. And they don't want to be up on their feet flailing around when they could be sitting on their couch or chair.

Why do you think traditional gaming and VR gaming would exclude one another? I happily do a mixture of both. Also, by your logic, why do people play sports when they could just sit on the couch all day?

 

[Bandalo]

Why do you think traditional gaming and VR gaming would exclude one another? I happily do a mixture of both.

If the entry cost stays around $800 for the headset/controller, plus the cost of a VR-ready (TM) PC, you're going to exclude a lot of people. If they can get headset costs down to $200-300, then you might have a market for both. As it stands, the majority of your audience just doesn't have that much cash to spend.

Strictly based on cost, it's going to be hard for a developer to do both. They're going to do what they do now, which is design for the most common platform. The costs and time associated with taking a traditional mouse/keyboard/screen game into VR would probably be far too excessive for the expected return. If only 10% of your expected audience has VR, it's just not cost effective for them to add VR to the game.

Similarly, if only 10% of the "gaming" audience has a VR headset, there's just not enough money there to justify a AAA title. Especially when of that 10%, some of them use HTC, some have a Rift, etc.

 

[Cr4ckm0nk3y]

I don't get seasick...I wonder what causes it.

Most likely the loss of peripheral vision.

I have had a few pilots with thousands of hours get sick on me after an hour with a device called foggles that limits their vision to simulate instrument conditions. Its that sudden loss of the peripheral vision backing up the signals from forward vision and the inner ear.

You might just be one of those susceptible to it.

Back to topic.

I think VR will start becoming more mainstream with AAA titles launch. I am really excited to see Fallout 4 VR. Hopefully by gen 2 of both the OR and Vive we will see a few dozen AAA games with VR capabilities. Intel's new HMD has a bunch of exciting features that would make room scale better. Especially when someone enters your "space" while you are using a HMD. I don't like not knowing someone is there.

Like LurkerLito said, DCS is with the Vive is a completely different game. I like to use it as a demo for what VR can do.

Sitting vs room scale I think will be a draw. It really has to do with what games come down the pipe and what people play.

I can't imagine FO4 VR sitting down but I wouldn't dare play Star Citizen or DCS standing. OR seems to think a majority of players will remain seated so they don't have to move their furniture.

http://gizmodo.com/oculus-founders-explain-why-youll-likely-stay-seated-in-1713781989

 

[FrgMstr]

3D TVs were a big hit... oh wait. I dont see this lasting more than a couple of years before something else comes along. Google Glass anyone?

You never saw us spend time reviewing Rambus, 3D displays, NVIDIA Shield, other stupid fad stuff that I never saw being a true part of the market, I think VR is going to be very different.

 

[NickJames]

Yes and no, as much as I love VR it's not a replacement for the desktop. No one wants to wear a 3lb monitor strapped to their eyeballs in an enclosed hot air pocket while constantly having to focus your vision for 4+ hours straight. An implementation like Hololens is more the average consumer solution.

 

[pj-]

I can't touch type, and I forget which button my hands are pressing during intense fight scenes. You can imagine with a pain in the ass it would be using a controller in a VR game, where the whole POINT is to not see your hands.

In something as immersive as VR, I would get distracted constantly, and would throw the controller in frustration. So unless you can come up with a fully-immersive system that has no controls (just me), and fixes the problem of limited walking space, AND gets rid of the bulky tethered helmet, then I'll never be interested in VR.

There's plenty of other uses for this tech, but VR gaming at this point is only for the people who already like the complexity of their flight/car simulators.

I think you have this backwards. Old people take to motion controls in VR very well because a lot of the interaction with the world is the same as real life. How do you dodge in a normal game? You press the dodge button plus a direction on the joystick. How do you dodge something in VR? You dodge.

Many games do the vast majority of gameplay using just your physical movements and the trigger buttons. For example in Cosmic Trip you built robots and robot related buildings to harvest resources and defend against attackers. The UI for selecting what unit to build is a floating bar with large buttons that you "press" with your hand. It is incredibly intuitive and you begin doing it without thinking within minutes.

Yes and no, as much as I love VR it's not a replacement for the desktop. No one wants to wear a 3lb monitor strapped to their eyeballs in an enclosed hot air pocket while constantly having to focus your vision for 4+ hours straight. An implementation like Hololens is more the average consumer solution.

Or maybe we just need smaller VR headsets?

World's thinnest, lightest VR headset looks just like a pair of sunglasses

I don't know what you mean having to constantly focus your vision. Do you not focus your vision outside of VR? Everything in VR is a fixed focal length so if anything you are doing less focusing than in real life.

 

[Bandalo]

Yes and no, as much as I love VR it's not a replacement for the desktop. No one wants to wear a 3lb monitor strapped to their eyeballs in an enclosed hot air pocket while constantly having to focus your vision for 4+ hours straight. An implementation like Hololens is more the average consumer solution.

Give me a super-high res Hololens with 3 ultrawide virtual monitors for gaming. Or let me re-configure the virtual screens on the fly. Or how about just floating, resizeable, windows, with one window per app?

 

[MavericK]

I agree the full room-scale VR is worlds better, but my original point still stands. A huge percentage of gamers like to play for hours at a time. And they don't want to be up on their feet flailing around when they could be sitting on their couch or chair.

So get up off your ass and do it! I'm a fatass and I can still play VR for a couple hours while standing...a lot of the current games are actually pretty good exercise, so that's an added benefit IMO.

But I agree that room scale may not be for 100+ hour games like Skyrim. Or, maybe it is, but you only play a couple hours at a time. You know those old Nintendo messages telling you to take frequent breaks? Well...

 

[pj-]

It's going to be a while before the display technology and computing power exist for hololens to have more than a 30 degree FOV.

Not to mention since it's an overlay on your normal vision it won't be able to completely block out whatever is behind it. Not sure if I'd want to do gaming or productivity with that if I can see my dog walking around behind my virtual monitors

 

[NickJames]

I think you have this backwards. Old people take to motion controls in VR very well because a lot of the interaction with the world is the same as real life. How do you dodge in a normal game? You press the dodge button plus a direction on the joystick. How do you dodge something in VR? You dodge.

Many games do the vast majority of gameplay using just your physical movements and the trigger buttons. For example in Cosmic Trip you built robots and robot related buildings to harvest resources and defend against attackers. The UI for selecting what unit to build is a floating bar with large buttons that you "press" with your hand. It is incredibly intuitive and you begin doing it without thinking within minutes.



Or maybe we just need smaller VR headsets?


World's thinnest, lightest VR headset looks just like a pair of sunglasses

I don't know what you mean having to constantly focus your vision. Do you not focus your vision outside of VR? Everything in VR is a fixed focal length so if anything you are doing less focusing than in real life.

With my Vive I constantly have to refocus when lookin at the edge of my vision. There's definitely more strain on your eyes when using VR as opposed to just using a monitor. It could also just be a side effect of the low resolution but my vision just isn't crisp enough in VR to keep me wearing it for long periods.

 

[pj-]

With my Vive I constantly have to refocus when lookin at the edge of my vision. There's definitely more strain on your eyes when using VR as opposed to just using a monitor. It could also just be a side effect of the low resolution but my vision just isn't crisp enough in VR to keep me wearing it for long periods.

Oh, that is a shortcoming of the optics. The severity of it is dependent on how far your eyes are from the lenses. The closer you can get them, the less pronounced it is. The Rift has a "sweet spot" that is larger than the vive's so it is possible for it to be better. Hopefully all 2nd generation headsets will be better still.

It annoys me sometimes when I'm playing something where I have to look down a lot, but I am usually able to move the headset up or down a bit and things stay reasonably sharp.

Edit: A lot of people in this thread are saying VR won't be the next big thing because of flaws with current headsets. That is very short sighted. Do you guys think things won't improve? There will be self contained position tracked headsets. There will be wireless PC based headsets. There will be lighter headsets. There will be headsets with far higher resolution and far better optics and far higher FOV. There will be cheaper headsets. Obviously they aren't going to sell 100 million generation 1 vives or rifts. By gen 3 or 4, who knows.

 

[Bandalo]

So get up off your ass and do it! I'm a fatass and I can still play VR for a couple hours while standing...a lot of the current games are actually pretty good exercise, so that's an added benefit IMO.

But I agree that room scale may not be for 100+ hour games like Skyrim. Or, maybe it is, but you only play a couple hours at a time. You know those old Nintendo messages telling you to take frequent breaks? Well...

I'm a military dude, I get plenty of exercise at work. When I play games, I WANT to sit on my ass for a couple hours.

 

[Youn]

I guess most of the "no" votes are folks who feel it needs another 5-10 years before becoming usable enough... therefore not the "next" big thing

 

[MavericK]

Yes and no, as much as I love VR it's not a replacement for the desktop. No one wants to wear a 3lb monitor strapped to their eyeballs in an enclosed hot air pocket while constantly having to focus your vision for 4+ hours straight. An implementation like Hololens is more the average consumer solution.

Huh? The Vive weights ~1.2 lb and the Rift is right around 1 lb.

I've never had focus issues or eye strain using the Vive. You focus like you would normally in real life.

 

[NickJames]

Huh? The Vive weights ~1.2 lb and the Rift is right around 1 lb.

I've never had focus issues or eye strain using the Vive. You focus like you would normally in real life.

I was exaggerating but just like how some people don't like wearing glasses, wearing a pound worth of equipment strapped to your face for long periods of time isn't that appealing either. As for focus, its no where near real life, there just isn't enough pixel density in the display to give you a crisp image so that your eyes don't struggle thinking "Is it blurry because I am not focused or because the game just looks bad?".

 

[MavericK]

I was exaggerating but just like how some people don't like wearing glasses, wearing a pound worth of equipment strapped to your face for long periods of time isn't that appealing either. As for focus, its no where near real life, there just isn't enough pixel density in the display to give you a crisp image so that your eyes don't struggle thinking "Is it blurry because I am not focused or because the game just looks bad?".

For very distant objects I agree somewhat, it can look a bit pixellated (though Supersampling helps this a lot). But for short to medium range I disagree completely. I can hold a gun up to my face in H3VR and it looks practically real to me.

 

[NickJames]

For very distant objects I agree somewhat, it can look a bit pixellated (though Supersampling helps this a lot). But for short to medium range I disagree completely. I can hold a gun up to my face in H3VR and it looks practically real to me.

Then you try to read the text close up and goes out of focus. It just isn't natural enough to where I can replace a desktop.

 

[MavericK]

Then you try to read the text close up and goes out of focus. It just isn't natural enough to where I can replace a desktop.

I again have to disagree there, I can read text just fine up-close. The distant text is what can give you issues but again, Supersampling can help with that. I will admit that on the Vive the Fresnel lenses can have a bit of radial blurring and bloom depending on what you are looking at, but nothing that prevents you from focusing provided you have the headset on properly.

I agree that it's not a replacement for a real monitor - it's not really meant to be at this stage. It's a completely different experience (especially when you are talking Vive with room scale and the motion controllers) than sitting in front of a screen playing a game. You are INSIDE the game world.

 

[NickJames]

I again have to disagree there, I can read text just fine up-close. The distant text is what can give you issues but again, Supersampling can help with that. I will admit that on the Vive the Fresnel lenses can have a bit of radial blurring and bloom depending on what you are looking at, but nothing that prevents you from focusing provided you have the headset on properly.

I agree that it's not a replacement for a real monitor - it's not really meant to be at this stage. It's a completely different experience (especially when you are talking Vive with room scale and the motion controllers) than sitting in front of a screen playing a game. You are INSIDE the game world.

Small text like engravings on a gun in H3 are not legible on the Vive even at 1.5 super sampling, any higher any 980 TI wants to implode. The question is IF VR is the next big thing thus it would have to be big enough to want to replace game consoles or PCs in particular. I myself can't see that ever happening with the current iteration because it is just not comfortable enough to be used naturally. I give it about 4 generations before we see VR become a typical household entertainment item. Even then that would be with some major revisions.

 

[pj-]

Then you try to read the text close up and goes out of focus. It just isn't natural enough to where I can replace a desktop.

I think that is your eyes thinking they should refocus on a closer object, but since everything in VR is the same "distance", they are actually making it blurry

 

[Bandalo]

Want to make a little wager?

1 year from this date, if VR hasn't taken off, I get to pick my own title but If it has, you ban me from the forums for 3 months and give me the gayest title ever.

What if the title you pick IS the gayest title ever?

 

[FrgMstr]

Want to make a little wager?

1 year from this date, if VR hasn't taken off, I get to pick my own title but If it has, you ban me from the forums for 3 months and give me the gayest title ever.

Sure. Not sure of what you mean by "taken off" but I will roll with it. If we are not covering VR in a review context then, I will call that not taking off.

 

[Nenu]

Wheres the 'watch this episode' button?

 

[SomeGuy133]

only if we are talking about StarVR...all the others have way to low res and way to low field of view :/

 

[TFchris]

vr WILL be the next big thing... just not by strapping dumb ass brick sized blocks onto your face...

 

[jtm55]

Hi All

If they can reduce the size of it,make it less restrictive, then it might take off. Until then, in my opinion, niche product at best.

 

[dergreg]

I'm certainly biased from my experience, but I don't see how it COULDN'T be the next big thing. We have true first gen headsets in the CV1/Vive. With hardware getting smaller, cheaper, and faster with every iteration the stuff we're seeing now at the high end will be considered a low-end experience in a year's time. I expect cell phone headsets like the GearVR having optional sensors within the next generation or 2. Now whether it's VR or AR that becomes the true mainstream norm, I don't know. But both will have their uses and both will start to become incredibly popular.

The Dlodlo headset would be great as AR with positional tracking via stereo camera or sensors and a lower price tag, and I expect a product like that to be on the market within the next 2 years. I will be SHOCKED if I don't see AR headsets basically everywhere by 2020.

 

[LurkerLito]

Personally I think the Vive is basically the equivalent of the first Voodoo Card was to 3D graphics cards. I think the reaction from the poll is basically similar. Early adopters trying to show the benefits and everyone else complaining about price and convenience. Remember the Voodoo Card was not cheap and was not convenient to install. You had to use VGA pass through cables and required specially written software to take advantage of it. It will all work itself out and I am confident most people in the future will be saying how could you stand such a retro game like Deus Ex Mankind Divided, it's so retro and flat with no depth to it, kind of like what some say about pixelated 2D games of years past today.

Interestingly we have two major players HTC/Steam Vive and Occulus with several other competitors Google Cardboard, and the like for VR. In the beginning with 3d graphics cards we had two major players also Nvidia (who bought 3dfx interactive who made Voodoo) and ATI/AMD and there were also other competitors like Matrox. It's an interesting kind of repeating of history so far.

 

[SirMaster]

When I heard about the Oculus and Vive and stuff coming out my friends were always talking about them. I was always saying that I wasn't really interested in VR and completely didn't think I would be getting a headset. My friends definitely wanted one but they were willing to wait for future generations.

In April when the Vive came out my co worker got one and I still wanted to at least try it out. So I went over to his place for a couple hours to give it a try.

After that demo I was completely sold and bought one for myself the next day. I guess it just exceeded my expectations and was really fun.

So in the end I ended up being the first person in my group of friends to buy VR, even though I was seemingly uninterested before trying it.

I had all my friends over to demo the VR for them and now 2 of them have also bought Vives after the demo.

 

[Supercharged_Z06]

Quality post - reflects exactly my sentiment concerning VR as well. Yes, it still has a few warts and is far from perfect, but what it delivers right now is a very solid glimpse into a revolutionary new peripheral tech/interface, one that is going to grow and shakeup how we use and apply computers. Gaming has and will definitely continue to lead this charge, but I expect it will also grow to encompass many business and scientific application spaces as well. VR isn't a gimmick/novelty anymore, it's established a very credible foothold as the tech to deliver it properly is now here at a price point that while still high isn't outside the realm of consumers. It will be fun to ride this new wave and watch it evolve. What is going to be possible 5-10 years from now is going to be truly mind blowing.

 

[jkw]

If the VR vendors really want VR to succeed, they need to send a bunch of free Vive and Oculus headsets to Steve Hirsch. Steve drives emerging internet technology as much as any other single person.

 

[M76]

I haven't experienced modern VR yet, and I'd like to try it. But I think it's a gimmick. It surely won't replace desktop for me.

 

[gulguran]

In my view when this tech is smaller and can be had in a form factor like the hololens it will be huge. My dream is being able to sit on a plane and be fully immersed in a 4k per eye vr experience. Can you imagine?

 

[Dayaks]

I am going to buy a Vive this coming Christmas.

I don't see them becoming much smaller for a long, long time. I am sure the resolution might eventually improve but I am ok with DSR until then.

I like the idea of getting me and the kids off our asses this winter. We go outside but you can only do that for so long when it's 0*F.

 

[Nenu]

In my view when this tech is smaller and can be had in a form factor like the hololens it will be huge. My dream is being able to sit on a plane and be fully immersed in a 4k per eye vr experience. Can you imagine?

They will come with gags or mouth cages to limit wondrous noises.

 

[jiminator]

its gonna be awesome, exact same way 3D was the next big thing for movie theaters... in other words, NOT.

 

[pj-]

Everyone comparing VR to 3d is going to feel foolish in a few years.

The reason they aren't comparable is simple. 3d sucks, VR doesn't. Nothing can compare with the immersion that even these primitive first generation headsets provide.

 

[MavericK]

It's already miles ahead of 3D...even with first-wave consumer tech.

 

[ClariorHincHonos]

I don't want to wear anything while I game. I've worn glasses my whole life and that's enough as is.