So what happened to VR games?

[Vengance_01]

There were some really solid titles in 2024 and 2025 is shaping up to be another good year. Mix or PCVR and stand-alone. Wireless PCVR is great so long as you have good wifi and an ethernet connection for the host PC. I got my Quest 2 used and it works great. Just another option. Super easy to jump into VR with Virtual Desktop and Wireless. Its not just a fad... but its still very much niche atm.

 

[learners permit]

Patiently awaiting the UEVR profile for Stalker 2 so I can revisit the zone in VR this time. There are a few vids on you tube of guys with incomplete profiles that are working fairly well but every game patch breaks something in the profile. I've waited this long a bit more won't hurt as It'll be worth the wait.

 

[Advil]

The most impressive novel gaming idea I ever saw was a concept art take on playing Minecraft around a coffee table where everyone had AR glasses and could all participate in real time... Everyone interacts, the real world is still there... And blocks are built on and around it.

That game concept was absolutely amazing and I have been waiting for AR to get to a point where that is possible with basic lightweight glasses that can show the image without any kind of full headset and where the real world is still just as fully there as the overlayed game.

I want to see those kinds of games and uses. Not full headset. Bring it on please.

 

[sharknice]

The most impressive novel gaming idea I ever saw was a concept art take on playing Minecraft around a coffee table where everyone had AR glasses and could all participate in real time... Everyone interacts, the real world is still there... And blocks are built on and around it.

That game concept was absolutely amazing and I have been waiting for AR to get to a point where that is possible with basic lightweight glasses that can show the image without any kind of full headset and where the real world is still just as fully there as the overlayed game.

I want to see those kinds of games and uses. Not full headset. Bring it on please.

Did you see the Meta Orion glasses? That's basically what you're asking for, but they cost $10k to make so they aren't going to sell them. I think they said they plan on having an actual consumer version in late 2027.

What you're asking for is what a bunch of companies have been working towards for years. The tech just isn't there yet, at least not at realistic prices.

 

[Vengance_01]

I am having the most fun in a while playing through HL2 Alyx. Honestly I get way more enjoyment out of VR FPSs vs flat. Looking forward to more titles. But really looking forward to Aces of Thunder

 

[NamelessPFG]

All you "just a fad" doomsayers out there can suck it, because there is no better way to play cockpit sims than VR. TrackIR ain't even close with how readily it loses tracking if just one of the three points exceeds camera FoV, and how you don't have any sense of depth or scale from looking at a monitor. It's the difference between looking at a window into the game, and being IN the game. Pancake gaming just doesn't cut it any more, and I've been waiting for the tech to get to this level ever since I played Quake on a Forte VFX1 in the late 1990s.

The problem is that PC VR is a niche of a niche, more than anything, and those titles that really cater to that niche aren't always the best optimized by a long shot. Elite: Dangerous was reasonably optimized - it was likely developed with VR as a consideration from the very start - but DCS World was absolutely not, to the point that you pretty much need an RTX 4080 as a minimum requirement for a good experience. No Man's Sky wasn't really any better off there. Still need to bench IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles, but that was also pretty rough when I only had a GTX 980.

Let that sink in for a moment - needing a $1,000+ GPU to get an acceptable VR experience in some of the best titles to show off the tech that aren't Half-Life: Alyx, BONEWORKS or DiRT Rally, especially in a time where such powerful GPUs are consistently sold out and being scalped. The standalone headsets like the Quest have no chance of getting ports of these titles because of the system requirements being that lofty.

4K gaming is easy by comparison, you can cheat a bit with DLSS and framerates roughly around 60 Hz won't make you nauseous, but VR needs at least a consistent 80 Hz to be viable. If the framerate dips below your HMD's refresh rate even for an instant, spacewarp/reprojection kicks in, your framerate gets HALVED from your refresh rate and it starts faking frames in between to at least provide an illusion of smoothness and low latency - which looks atrocious with how cockpit elements get smeared, so your only choice is to just brute force it with more GPU. It's also a fundamentally incompatible approach with the kind of frame gen that NVIDIA's trying to shove down our throats lately.

This is before you sink in $1,000 for a Valve Index full kit, or $1,500 for a Bigscreen Beyond that requires an iPhone Face ID scan, has an audio strap as an extra, and still doesn't include the Lighthouse base stations or "Knuckles" controllers you get with the Index, which adds hundreds more to the total cost. I can't blame people for going for the relatively affordable Quest 2 or 3 setups instead when it's only $300-500 and either a USB-C cable or Virtual Desktop away from getting them into PCVR at a basic level.

Given all of this, I understand why it's not mainstream. The hardware is just too expensive and the HMDs themselves can be a bit weary after a while (Index in particular is front-heavy and warms your face, Rift CV1 wasn't much better), but if it fits your particular niche, there's nothing better out there. (And when that niche is flight simulation, well, those guys are already used to spending thousands on HOTAS + pedal and simpit setups on top of building gaming PCs with RTX 4090s and AMD X3D CPUs. Ask me how I know.)

 

[learners permit]

The price of a good PC VR experience has fallen to levels that most mid range and above PC owners will find palatable with the Quest 3. They can regularly be found used on ebay for around $300 US. I recently bought one from a forum member here at that price and I couldn't be happier with it. I run it on my guest PC that has a 7800X3D/6800XT to run it via a $20 link cable from Amazon. I like the setup so much I bought another($300.00) off ebay added the same comfort head strap ,face pad ,link cable and charger pack ($120 total add ons) for a birthday gift for a friend who served as Medic during Desert Storm who deals with PTSD. No shooter games for him though for obvious reasons. That VR set up is a real bargain for anyone thinking of trying PC VR and doesn't require selling kidney to finance it.

 

[Vengance_01]

The price of a good PC VR experience has fallen to levels that most mid range and above PC owners will find palatable with the Quest 3. They can regularly be found used on ebay for around $300 US. I recently bought one from a forum member here at that price and I couldn't be happier with it. I run it on my guest PC that has a 7800X3D/6800XT to run it via a $20 link cable from Amazon. I like the setup so much I bought another($300.00) off ebay added the same comfort head strap ,face pad ,link cable and charger pack ($120 total add ons) for a birthday gift for a friend who served as Medic during Desert Storm who deals with PTSD. No shooter games for him though for obvious reasons. That VR set up is a real bargain for anyone thinking of trying PC VR and doesn't require selling kidney to finance it.

agreed. with virtual desktop and wireless VR gaming is insane

 

[sharknice]

All you "just a fad" doomsayers out there can suck it, because there is no better way to play cockpit sims than VR. TrackIR ain't even close with how readily it loses tracking if just one of the three points exceeds camera FoV, and how you don't have any sense of depth or scale from looking at a monitor. It's the difference between looking at a window into the game, and being IN the game. Pancake gaming just doesn't cut it any more, and I've been waiting for the tech to get to this level ever since I played Quake on a Forte VFX1 in the late 1990s.

The problem is that PC VR is a niche of a niche, more than anything, and those titles that really cater to that niche aren't always the best optimized by a long shot. Elite: Dangerous was reasonably optimized - it was likely developed with VR as a consideration from the very start - but DCS World was absolutely not, to the point that you pretty much need an RTX 4080 as a minimum requirement for a good experience. No Man's Sky wasn't really any better off there. Still need to bench IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles, but that was also pretty rough when I only had a GTX 980.

Let that sink in for a moment - needing a $1,000+ GPU to get an acceptable VR experience in some of the best titles to show off the tech that aren't Half-Life: Alyx, BONEWORKS or DiRT Rally, especially in a time where such powerful GPUs are consistently sold out and being scalped. The standalone headsets like the Quest have no chance of getting ports of these titles because of the system requirements being that lofty.

4K gaming is easy by comparison, you can cheat a bit with DLSS and framerates roughly around 60 Hz won't make you nauseous, but VR needs at least a consistent 80 Hz to be viable. If the framerate dips below your HMD's refresh rate even for an instant, spacewarp/reprojection kicks in, your framerate gets HALVED from your refresh rate and it starts faking frames in between to at least provide an illusion of smoothness and low latency - which looks atrocious with how cockpit elements get smeared, so your only choice is to just brute force it with more GPU. It's also a fundamentally incompatible approach with the kind of frame gen that NVIDIA's trying to shove down our throats lately.

This is before you sink in $1,000 for a Valve Index full kit, or $1,500 for a Bigscreen Beyond that requires an iPhone Face ID scan, has an audio strap as an extra, and still doesn't include the Lighthouse base stations or "Knuckles" controllers you get with the Index, which adds hundreds more to the total cost. I can't blame people for going for the relatively affordable Quest 2 or 3 setups instead when it's only $300-500 and either a USB-C cable or Virtual Desktop away from getting them into PCVR at a basic level.

Given all of this, I understand why it's not mainstream. The hardware is just too expensive and the HMDs themselves can be a bit weary after a while (Index in particular is front-heavy and warms your face, Rift CV1 wasn't much better), but if it fits your particular niche, there's nothing better out there. (And when that niche is flight simulation, well, those guys are already used to spending thousands on HOTAS + pedal and simpit setups on top of building gaming PCs with RTX 4090s and AMD X3D CPUs. Ask me how I know.)

PCVR may be niche, but it is definitely not a fad, it's been around for a decade now and is slowly growing.

But Quests are popular enough I don't consider VR in general as niche. I know plenty of normies that have Quests. It's actually very popular among teenagers. The Quest 2 outsold the Xbox X/S. That isn't niche at all.

 

[Dan_D]

Same thing that happened with 3D HDTV's. It's a novelty that quickly wears off, because most have realized for at least 30 years that VR is never going to take off until you get rid of the headset. Steve Jobs realized this. Tim Apple doesn't..

Well said. Currently, 3D TV's and VR is a novelty at best. One that typically wears off with most people fairly quickly.

 

[polonyc2]

people get hyped up during the initial adrenaline rush but the novelty wears off real fast...I liked 3D and owned a Panasonic 3DTV but even then I barely watched any 3D movies at home...it was a cool experience but overall I preferred non-3D movies

 

[learners permit]

10,000 mAh battery belt.

 

[pendragon1]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dcXE9j8abc

 

[polonyc2]