Rift / Vive / VR General

[Jigawatt]

Following from some stuff in Steam thread...

Any other codexers got their VR device yet? It's only a matter of time for you all, I'm sure. Since I'm a mixed reality researcher, in the lab we've got Rift DK1s, DK2s, and now a CV since last week, a Vive, couple of Gear VRs, Google Cardboard etc. Some random thoughts so far...

Gear VR, Cardboard etc are interesting but I think will have a pretty limited time to find a market. Once more people have tried headsets with 6 DoF, it's going to be very hard to convince them to go back to rotation tracking only (and it's not perfectly stable rotation tracking at that). It's sole benefit, portability, is rather blunted by the fact you can't use it on the move without bumping into things. Perhaps it has a niche for long plane rides where you just want to blank out the world.

The Rift has by a decent margin the best display. It's the same res and FoV as the Vive, but the lenses themselves have a narrower FoV looking at a smaller display, making for a noticeably better pixel density. Unfortunately, even though it ordered a while before the Vive, it didn't show up until nearly a full month later, and by then I was spoiled by the ability to get up and walk around. Tracking is rock solid, but the actual tracking space is just too small (besides the room-scale thing, I mean even just sitting in a chair and looking around can lose tracking). Apparently you can add additional IR cameras for a larger tracking space, but they're not sold separately yet.
Because I have a bit too much 'work' to do at the moment, haven't had a proper play around yet, but I really want to try it for non-VR apps just as a regular display. I think having the real-world blocked out might be interesting playing something like Dark Souls even though its third person. This is definitely the HMD to get for your VR porn needs though.

Vive is awesome. It's hard to convey with words - you've just got to try it. I'm not a fan of the 'teleportation' style of moving around the 'The Lab' demo uses (and many of the early games have copied) - but I think as more people try different control styles there will be convergence on something better. If you position the lighthouses correctly and do proper calibration tracking is good (a touch more coarse than Rift), and you can still use it as a sit down device just like Rift. I think Oculus might be sweating a bit given how quickly Valve got a superset of their functionality to market.

Welp, haven't really mentioned games at all, since I've been having a very busy period the last few months, but unsurprisingly I'm bullish on VR and expect that within a year or two there will some really cool (though admittedly, probably popamole) stuff for it.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

It's too expensive for now, don't have a way to try it either.

 

[Dexter]

I've got the Oculus DK1, DK2, CV, a Gear VR and a Vive and tried several of the Standard Games and Applications for each, although I haven't had ample time to play around with the Consumer Versions lately and I need to wait for hardware upgrades before I do, I did a few things using a combination of these.

I've also recently built a new gaming PC and am waiting for the 1080 OC cards to arrive (hopefully) end of June and the Summer Sale on Steam to start this week to purchase a whole bunch of Vive/Oculus titles so that I can hopefully dive into it next month.

The most promising, impressive and technologically advanced is obviously the Vive (the Oculus CV1 and Vive have the same two Samsung screens btw., just different optics), but it's strengths (being able to move around in a limited space and interact with stuff) is one of its biggest drawbacks, because it's inherently constricting to games designed for the Vive. While Oculus already offers fuller experiences and AA titles, the first "games" presented for the Vive are all developed in somewhat over 12 months by Indies and come off as gimmicks reminiscient of Kinect and Wii Motion from a gameplay perspective.

You've got stuff like Minigolf and cutting virtual fruit with a sword that might hold ones attention for a few hours or is nice to play with friends. There's largely stationary experiences like Job Simulator or Fantastic Contraption and Arcade shooters like Arizona Sunshine or Space Pirate Trainer and there's games where the entire gameworld moves around the player instead of the other way around. Till someone finds a proper way to simulate Walking Simulators like Skyrim, GTA V, Twitcher or Fallout 4 and similar fully with it it's a large downside to the system and even simple controller/joystick games might be prefferable.

The few games that are trying to do larger worlds to explore in look intentionally crippled by having to teleport all over the place:


All the while the more "stationary" HMDs offer fuller cockpit experiences like Elite: Dangerous, Assetto Corsa, Project CARS, EVE: Valkyrie or more classic third/first person games like Edge of Nowhere, Chronos, ADR1FT, Lucky's Tale, The Assembly and so on.

I think short term the most likely to succeed commercially are Samsung GearVR and PSVR due to price point ($99 and $399) and platform of choice, one being mobile and useable with late Samsung mobile phones that million of people own and even added for free as a package deal and the other being subsidized and simplified for the console market.

Oculus/Facebook is pissing me off increasingly with most of my concerns since Facebook bought them quickly becoming a reality in the way they are handling their ecosystem with Apple-like walled gardens and Microsoft-like exclusivity shenanigans, I don't think I'd use their Store any time soon:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/...tys-brewing-piracy-and-exclusivity-arms-race/
http://uploadvr.com/serious-sam-oculus-offered-shitton-money-rift-exclusivity/ https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/wiki/vr_games

The toughest sell for people on VR is going to be experiencing it for themselves, since some/many people without any experience seem to have strange ideas of what it is or is not or what they can expect and proper Software/Games support, SONY for instance seems to be trying hard: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...june-14th-to-16th.109168/page-15#post-4586118 and if what the Valve thread says is true they're finally trying to step it up too.

Over long term, in the absolute worst case scenario that none of these would become commercially successful (which I doubt very much and most early indications point towards the opposite) VR still won't go away, because the wish for being immersed in a fantastical Virtual environment or being able to enter one's own private "Holodeck" and experience stuff otherwise only seen in movies or TV series is too enticing to give up on and would still remain alive in Fiction and Sci-Fi for decades to come: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1677720/

The concept would at worst just go dormant or continue in a low-key way among enthusiasts for another decade or two till new technological obstacles are overcome and it'd become even more viable for mass market appeal. But again, the way most large hardware and software vendors (e.g. Samsung, SONY, Facebook, Valve, Microsoft, NVIDIA, AMD and even Google and Apple) are pushing it and likely need it as a market for the next few decades, since "Personal Computers" are on the decline I really wouldn't bet on it.

There's a long thread about VR in the "SCIENCE" section btw.: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/oculus-rift.79590/

 

[AN4RCHID]

Got the Rift CV a couple months back. It's very cool, but it doesn't have the games yet to keep me coming back daily. Elite Dangerous is probably the best thing out for it right now, although maybe if I had a steering wheel + pedals I would be more into the driving games.

I think a Myst-like could be the perfect type of game given the current state of the technology. Maybe Obduction will be the breakthrough.

 

[sullynathan]

I tried the cheap Samsung VR. It was decent, the shark demo looked low res but it did feel like I was there without all the water and shit.

 

[NeoKino]

A friend of mine has a Vive VR, he is enjoying the finest high quality tech demos mankind has Imagine.

On a serious note messing around with the thing kind of felt like the wii and all its novelty, the tech demoey wii-sports like games where very fun. Heck maybe even more fun then some modern titles but the titles lack substance to hold someone over for more than a few hours at a party.

As of now skeptical, but still routing for the tech to take off in a big way and more importantly get cheaper So I don't have to waste two days salary on it.

 

[Astral Rag]

I can understand wanting to play sims with these but what I can't understand is why casuals are interested in buying these sets. Is it just for the weird POV pron or do neurotypicals actually enjoy these gimmicky garbage games?



Can you VR fanboys list 15 good VR games or even regular games that become better with VR?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Can you VR fanboys please list 10 good VR games or even regular games that become better with VR?

Every 3D Hentai game.

 

[Steve]

Unless you're a sim enthusiast there is really no reason to get any VR headsets, yet. 1000€ + possible PC upgrades just to play gimmicky tech demos? No thanks. Maybe in a year or two if anyone still cares enough to develop proper games for them.

 

[Don Peste]

I wonder how long this thread will last without the NSFW tag...

 

[Haba]

This is probably the future:

 

[Spectacle]

I just got a Vive last week and have been trying out some games. The steam summer sale has excellent timing for me this year

Space Pirate Trainer is probably my favorite VR game so far, great action, cool music an splending use of room scale vr.

I gave the Brookhaven Experiment demo a go but quit after the first wave of zombies. This shit is far too tense, I guess other people may find it fun but I don't.

I tried playing Elite:dangerous and Project Cars but couldn't get them to work properly. So far I haven't had any success with games that have VR patched in.

 

[Dexter]

Yeah, I also used the Summer Sale to stock up on VR games on Steam, so far I got:
Cloudlands: VR Minigolf
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter VR
Vanishing Realms
MIND: Path to Thalamus
Hover Junkers
Subnautica
FATED: The Silent Oath
iOMoon
Pool Nation VR
Space Pirate Trainer
Monstrum

There's also some upcoming titles that aren't purchaseable yet, but are already listed like:
Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope
Arizona Sunshine
Thunderbird
Skyworld
Budget Cuts
Crazy Machines 3

Older ones I already had include the ones that come with the Vive (Job Simulator/Fantastic Contraption) and some others like The Solus Project, Descent: Underground, Euclidian, Water Bears VR and ADR1FT

Elite: Dangerous should work with the Vive: https://support.frontier.co.uk/kb/faq.php?id=206 not sure about Project Cars. Both require a really beefy PC.

There's also some older stuff that might potentially be updated like Lunar Flight, Kairo, The Town of Light but a lot of titles will likely not be updated beyond DK2 support, some others could release on Steam/for the Vive once the Facebook-Exclusivity money period is over like Shufflepuck Cantina Deluxe or Obduction.

And there's a lot of short Free/Experimental shit if you Browse the VR categories on Steam (it's all the stuff that says "Free" or is without a price): http://store.steampowered.com/search/?vrsupport=101,102

I will hopefully get to submerge and play most of these this summer when my new GPUs I ordered (1080GTX OC) arrive and I got more time, unfortunately they've been pushed back due to shortages from an initial date of 04.06 three times to 08.07 now with potentially further delays...

From the Oculus side I mainly want to play Edge of Nowhere, Chronos and The Climb so far (which aren't multiplatform and aren't available on Steam) but I really don't want to give Facebook money.

 

[Metro]

It's utterly laughable how low tech the shit they've come up with is to date. As I said it's going to take a loooooooooooooong time for them to produce something worthwhile.

 

[Mr. Pink]

I feel like an answer to the movement problem is simply locked third person perspective. controlling a character as an "eye on the ceiling" makes more sense to me than teleporting everywhere.

i think devs going for the first person experience is a mistake. it lacks creativity. why do first person when you can create the coolest virtual reality tabletop rpg ever made, or be a god and look down upon thousands of little soldiers fighting in formation?

 

[A horse of course]

A Magic Carpet-esque game might be interesting.

 

[Dexter]

I feel like an answer to the movement problem is simply locked third person perspective. controlling a character as an "eye on the ceiling" makes more sense to me than teleporting everywhere.

i think devs going for the first person experience is a mistake. it lacks creativity. why do first person when you can create the coolest virtual reality tabletop rpg ever made, or be a god and look down upon thousands of little soldiers fighting in formation?

Both Chronos (by the guys that made Darksiders) and Edge of Nowhere (Insomniac Studios), financed by Oculus actually feature fixed/moving 3rd person cameras:



Although especially on the Vive, where you actually have a room as a space where you can move around in and inspect/interact with stuff it lends itself very well for first person experiences and the "sit-down and look into a world" stuff especially lends itself to cockpit stuff. I'd like to see someone make an old-school Point&Click that way, since they only had limited rooms/screens you had to pixelhunt in anyway, something like Broken Sword. Or indeed a "Black & White".

There's some other stuff that goes in the way you are talking about in a limited capacity:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6zdOixScfQ

The main problem so far is likely the lack of serious investment into the market without already having an established userbase to make money off of e.g. chicken & egg problem, so most of the releases in the near future will be Indies and Shovelware (with a few titles sprinkled in financed by SONY, Facebook or Valve). The company investing the most into it at this stage seems to be SONY: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/e3-2016-thread-–-june-14th-to-16th.109168/page-15#post-4586118

A Magic Carpet-esque game might be interesting.

Well... there's this, but it's a simplistic low-budget GearVR/Mobile port: http://store.steampowered.com/app/455230/

 

[ManjuShri]

Polybius now on PS4 VR, coming to PC later.

 

[Dexter]

If anyone cares, Oculus Rift + Oculus Touch Bundle (Oculus Rift, Touch Controllers + 2 Cameras) is still available for the duration of Summer for $399 in the US, £399 in the UK, €449 in the EU. It comes with Lucky's Tale, Robo Recall, Dead and Buried and Medium, ToyBox, Quill (although the last three aren't games, but more Tools).

 

[fantadomat]

Dangerous tech that should be forbidden if it gathers popularity.Thank god that only small minority have it and there aren't any games for it.Only thing of use that could come from it is vr porn/hentai.Most people that tried it get tired after a few hours of repetitive demos.

 

[Ezekiel]

Not interested.

• Too expensive.
  
• I've tried the Rift. It's too pixelated for 3D gaming. 2060x1280 isn't enough when the pixels are so close to your eyes. If you go much higher, the games become too demanding.
  
• I play just as many third person games as first person games, and in some ways I prefer third person. But VR in third person defeats the purpose. I'd have no use for VR during most of my gaming time.
  
• Watching a monitor is just easier and quicker than configuring one of these things and putting it off and on.
  
• The support just isn't there.
  
• Too expensive.

 

[AN4RCHID]

I would advise people to wait for the next gen at this point, and then only if there are some big improvements. At a minimum it needs to be wireless, better FOV and significantly higher resolution.

 

[Heresiarch]

I have bought the Vive since January. It has been eating dust since June or so but I do not regret buying it, since the experience was very interesting.

Games like Raw Data and Arizona Sunshine are amazing arcade experiences. As someone who used to go to arcade to play House of the Dead 1-4 frequently, shooting zombies in VR is a just so satisfying for me. Dual wielding pistols shooting at two directions in Raw Data is the closest Hollywood badass roleplay experience I've ever had. I used to play Airsoft so Onward was also a genuine exciting experience. My heart would bump super fast and my palms would always get wet when I play it.

The most time I have spent are on Elite: Dangerous. After playing on VR, it's impossible to go back to play on the monitor anymore. The comparison is even more than watching a movie in IMAX vs on your smartphone.

As of VR porn/hentai, VR porn is to be honest terrible. The POV in most are static and often in awkward positions. You also have bad interaction possibilities if any. The worst part is that, the current resolution and pixels makes real-life humans look...unrealistic. When I watch porn in low-res it is fine because I am watching it, not experiencing it. But in VR porn, it is difficult to really experience it because the pixels.

VR hentai on the other hand is fantastic. Being able to walk around with the characters' eyes really follow you and LOOK into yours is amazing. You can also do all kinds of interactions and you can watch/experience in different angles and/or positions. Control is terrible though and it's a PITA to set up, with lots of technical hurdles (patches, glitches, etc.) and no official support at all.

The current limitations of VR IMO are:

- The current gen HMD resolutions are lackluster. I have played a couple hundreds of hours in VR and still have not reached the stage to completely ignore the pixels. It is especially bad when playing games such as Onward because you need to aim with some precision and enemies can be quite far away, yet the current resolution cannot render things past 50 meters clearly. Just imagine playing Counterstrike on 320*240. When I play Elite, I could even COUNT the pixels of the star/planet I am staring at.

- It is expensive, not just due to the hardware itself, but also it demands a powerful PC to drive it.

- You would really need a nice, big room to enjoy it. I have set up a 2*2m space in my gaming room of my apartment and it is adequate, but the chaperone still pop up all the time especially when I move around a lot due to excitement.

- Investment and development in VR are comparably slow and/or lackluster. VR market is still very young though.

- Too much effort to set up. Many casual players are already too lazy to build a good PC battlestation and playing with KB. Now imagine asking them to move furnitures, set up lighthouses, calibrate them, deal with the long cords, etc. etc. Even hardcore gamers may not stomach the procedures on a daily basis.

So I would recommend if you have spare cash laying around, already a beefy PC, a big enough room, and just some new toys to mess around with, then yeah you can get a Vive and see how it goes. Otherwise waiting for the next gen is a better choice, with higher res, better control and more games/applications it will be much more worth it.

 

[Dexter]

As of VR porn, VR porn is to be honest terrible. The POV in most are static and often in awkward positions. You also have bad interaction possibilities if any. The worst part is that, the current resolution and pixels makes real-life humans look...unrealistic. When I watch porn in low-res it is fine because I am watching it, not experiencing it. But in VR porn, it is difficult to really experience it because the pixels.

It heavily depends on the content you're using and how you're playing it back, a lot of it is indeed terrible, the best are most likely: http://www.naughtyamericavr.com/ and some of the newest: https://badoinkvr.com/

The current gen HMD resolutions are lackluster. I have played a couple hundreds of hours in VR and still have not reached the stage to completely ignore the pixels. It is especially bad when playing games such as Onward because you need to aim with some precision and enemies can be quite far away, yet the current resolution cannot render things past 50 meters clearly. Just imagine playing Counterstrike on 320*240. When I play Elite, I could even COUNT the pixels of the star/planet I am staring at.

Supersampling does show a lot of difference as discussed here, and surprisingly few people know about it: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/sooo-i-bought-vr-psvr-for-pc.116244/#post-5191814

If you have the proper hardware and haven't done this already, try setting it to 1.5/1.75 or even 2.0 and see the results:

So I would recommend if you have spare cash laying around, already a beefy PC, a big enough room, and just some new toys to mess around with, then yeah you can get a Vive and see how it goes. Otherwise waiting for the next gen is a better choice, with higher res, better control and more games/applications it will be much more worth it.

I would advise people to wait for the next gen at this point, and then only if there are some big improvements. At a minimum it needs to be wireless, better FOV and significantly higher resolution.

There won't be a "Next Gen" at any point soon, maybe in 3+ years, but for the time being this is largely "it" from the big companies. There won't be a new PSVR (the most successful big VR HMD) till Late 2019/2020 with the PlayStation 5 (if at all).

The next product Oculus is throwing on the market is a relatively inexpensive Standalone HMD for watching movies and mobile style Apps in 2018 to compete on the Low-price ($200) Mobile/Social market: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-plan-200-wireless-oculus-vr-headset-for-2018

And on the SteamVR/Vive front LG is going to hit the market (likely at some point in 2018) with a better model, but it's more a side-grade Update than a revolution: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3176...arro-vive-with-a-high-res-flip-up-screen.html - It's Wireless, Resolution is slightly higher (2560x1440 instead of 2160x1200) and it'll have a slightly higher FoV (120° instead of 110°).

Summed up, if the decision is PSVR or Oculus Rift, there will likely not be any "Next Gen" Updates on the Mid-price market (~$400) any time soon (think 2020+), and they'll hardly get much cheaper any time soon. If the decision is a Vive (~$800+), it's likely worth waiting for the LG version with slightly better Tech and Lighthouse V2. Some competition on the High-price market segment is also likely to lower the price of the Vive itself somewhat, but for people who already own a Vive it's hardly worth upgrading.

Having both the Vive and Rift, I find the Rift more comfortable and convenient for day-to-day use, both talking about the headset that comes with pre-attached headphones and the Touch controllers, that are built smarter than the Vive Controllers and have additional features regarding hand gestures and finger tracking, they certainly invested well when they acquired Carbon Design back in 2014, the company that previously worked on the product design for the Xbox 360 Controller and Kinect among other things. On the other hand the Lighthouse system and "Roomscale VR" is a big plus for the Vive, if you have the room and propensity to want to actually walk around in a Virtual space. I hope LG iterates on all of that for their SteamVR HMD to make it more comfortable and on par with its half as expensive competitor.

Meanwhile Valve is working on Prototypes for their "Knuckles" Controllers able to track all hand and finger movements separately and they'll likely replace the current Controllers when ready:


Overall I wouldn't expect any big leaps in technology for the next ~3 years or so, especially since properly enjoying VR "As It's Meant To Be Played" easily requires a 1080 GTX, so without a big breakthrough regarding Foveated Rendering or similar, I wouldn't expect 4K VR to be mainstreamed until whatever comes after Nvidia's Volta architecture comes out at the earliest.

 

[Heresiarch]

The current VR HMD market reminds me a lot of the iPad. I started with the original iPad 1 and it was honestly trash - terrible pixels, heavy as fuck, and most of the apps are crappy ports. It took them almost 1.5 years to finally bring out a hi-res iPad, and another 1.5 years to finally deal with issues such a overheating and lack of good apps. I had the iPad 1, 2, 3 and the Air (yeah I was such an appletard) so it was interesting to see how it improved over all the years.

The SteamVR Knuckles and better headstraps are something I will definitely buy when they come out. Ultra-hi-res screens are probably quite far away. Supersampling helps, but even at 2.0 and destroying my FPS it won't bring out crystal clear graphics until the fundamental hardware - the HMD screen - is updated. It is a good patchwork solution, but the true solution is superhigh DPI (which I have heard that LG has something in work already).