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Answer some questions to me about VR if you could?
9 years ago
So, I'm developing games for VR. Specifically the HTC Vive. Sorry, it's not porn and it's not furry :P I do have a life and ambitions outside heavy pendulous balls ya know. But as a guy who got a free vive and couldn't otherwise afford one and has studio space that gives us the max 15x15 room scale area, i'm wondering what the rest of you plebs have and how much you might be interested in the VR in general?
1. Do you have any interest in VR? (if no just say no and don't worry about the other questions)
2. Do you own a vr system? if yes, which one?
3. Are you interested in the Vive specifically?
4. How much space do you have available for room scale movement?
5. do you get motion sickness from 3d stuff?
5.5. Have you tried VR games with independent motion (traditional movement, not room scale) and do THEY make you motion sick?
6. What kind of games would you like to see being made for vr. (Our first thing is horror. Going to be making horror/action/shooter stuff in general for the core audience.)
As for my opinion on vr if you're wondering. It's a revelation, seriously. At least the vive is. the sheer level of immersion makes even completely mundane scenarios absolutely nerve wracking in intense games and there really isn't a whole lot of compelling software out for it yet which i'll be changing soon, but despite the very few things to do on it, it's insanely fun and fresh.
I honestly only consider the Vive to be VR. I've played around with the oculus at a developer thingy i went to and it's well....a 3d tv you strap to your face while you sit there with an xbox controller, it was incredibly uninteresting compared to the vive which is just incredibly immersive and really amazing tech and really feels like you're in a virtual reality.
I don't get motion sickness like at all, but my programmer does, and it took him a few hours to fully adjust to traditional movement in vr, now it's second nature to him. It took me about a minute to adjust. I find a lot of the negative hype over motion sickness is just that, negative hype, haters, sure some people will have issues with it but from my experience with many others who've used our setup, you just gotta get your "VR legs" and then it's as natural as playing a fps on a monitor.
But yeah, if you could answer these questions I would appreciate it. It might help future decisions we make. Also gonna auction a couple originals soon! If you want some of my original pencil work i'm gonna be putting some up for auction but i'm going to try it right here on FA in the comment's section just to see how it turns out so keep an eye out for that!
1. Do you have any interest in VR? (if no just say no and don't worry about the other questions)
2. Do you own a vr system? if yes, which one?
3. Are you interested in the Vive specifically?
4. How much space do you have available for room scale movement?
5. do you get motion sickness from 3d stuff?
5.5. Have you tried VR games with independent motion (traditional movement, not room scale) and do THEY make you motion sick?
6. What kind of games would you like to see being made for vr. (Our first thing is horror. Going to be making horror/action/shooter stuff in general for the core audience.)
As for my opinion on vr if you're wondering. It's a revelation, seriously. At least the vive is. the sheer level of immersion makes even completely mundane scenarios absolutely nerve wracking in intense games and there really isn't a whole lot of compelling software out for it yet which i'll be changing soon, but despite the very few things to do on it, it's insanely fun and fresh.
I honestly only consider the Vive to be VR. I've played around with the oculus at a developer thingy i went to and it's well....a 3d tv you strap to your face while you sit there with an xbox controller, it was incredibly uninteresting compared to the vive which is just incredibly immersive and really amazing tech and really feels like you're in a virtual reality.
I don't get motion sickness like at all, but my programmer does, and it took him a few hours to fully adjust to traditional movement in vr, now it's second nature to him. It took me about a minute to adjust. I find a lot of the negative hype over motion sickness is just that, negative hype, haters, sure some people will have issues with it but from my experience with many others who've used our setup, you just gotta get your "VR legs" and then it's as natural as playing a fps on a monitor.
But yeah, if you could answer these questions I would appreciate it. It might help future decisions we make. Also gonna auction a couple originals soon! If you want some of my original pencil work i'm gonna be putting some up for auction but i'm going to try it right here on FA in the comment's section just to see how it turns out so keep an eye out for that!
2) No.
3) I am. While the Oculus was impressive, the Vive just blows it out of the water.
4) Very little, which is one of the reason I shan't buy one yet.
5a) Not that I've ever noticed.
5b) Again, no, but I've not done many VR simulations before.
6) Exploration games would be amazing, although I think there'd be a great market for flight/star ship simulators too.
http://kste.iheart.com/media/play/27028003/
Will be interested once the price comes down quite a bit, they seemed to think it'll be ubiquitous within a couple years, talked about all sorts of insane applications far beyond gaming (though of course gaming is driving its development)
I would enjoy open-ended exploration simulations, not so much "solve this mission" or "zombie fighter" as walking through the Indiana Jones jungle traps, or just cruising through space on auto-pilot, or Taj Mahal, or Beethoven conducting Beethoven!
Also first-person Mario64 or Banjo Kazooie would be pretty dope
2) Naw, and I don't even know which one I'd want, which is better than the other at what things. I may wait until 2nd Gen (if you exclude the attempts in the 90's) for all the kinks to be worked out.
3) I dunno, should I be? See #2
4) Plenty. I got one of those desks that's in three parts and shaped like a chevron to fit in a room corner.
5) Nope. People told me Descent would make me throw up, that never happened. I even read in the car!
5.b) Yes and nope. The biggest problem I had was the synchronisation of movements. Trying to convince my brain that the arms I was looking at in the visor were -my- arms, etc. Immersion is hard for me.... -_-
6) Walking sims. I actually had this discussion with
2. The Vive
3. I own it don't I? :p
4. About 6x5. It works for most games but I have bumped the wall a few times.
5. The first time left me a bit out of sorts, but nothing since.
5.5. Yes and yes. I tried spell fighter vr and altspace and both messed with me. Spell fighter was an instant reaction that left me A bit nauseous for a few hours, likely because of the sudden acceleration. Altspace wasn't as bad but still had an uneasy feeling. I also noticed it some in elite dangerous when I had something relatively close as a point of reference. I may need to test some more to see if I can overcome it.
6. I would love to see some asymmetric multiplayer between vr and traditional controls to involve friends without vr. In the vein of horror, maybe others controlling ghosts or something messing with the vr player.
Far as i know, we're the first team that's figured out how to do room scale and independent movement in UE4, we're trying to work on the most motion sick friendly movement system that allows you to switch between both seamlessly.
1. Do you have any interest in VR? (if no just say no and don't worry about the other questions) - Yes. As a game developer and not.
2. Do you own a vr system? if yes, which one? - The HTC Vive.
3. Are you interested in the Vive specifically? Yes. Interaction is a key part of VR, and I think the Oculus us lacking (honestly)
4. How much space do you have available for room scale movement? ~ 12x12?
5. do you get motion sickness from 3d stuff? No.
5.5. Have you tried VR games with independent motion (traditional movement, not room scale) and do THEY make you motion sick? - I need an example, I don't know what you mean.
6. What kind of games would you like to see being made for vr. (Our first thing is horror. Going to be making horror/action/shooter stuff in general for the core audience.) - 3rd person god games would be amazing. 3rd person anything, if possible. Multiplayer experiences, too.
Independent movement is when you like, hit forward on the control disc and move in the game world while you're physically standing still.
2. Yes. Oculus Rift CV1.
3. Not at the moment. I don't have enough space in my apartment for room-scale. It was awesome when I tried it elsewhere, though.
4. Effectively none. My VR experiences are all seated or standing.
5 No.
5.5 I have tried lots of artificial locomotion games. They make me motion sick only in extreme circumstances. Omega Agent while making hard maneuvers and looking away from the direction of movement makes me break out in a cold sweat and feel odd. Using the thumbstick to turn smoothly in Mind: Path to Thalamus feels immediately wrong, and I have to stop. Everything else I've played, I can go for hours at a time.
6. I refuse to play horror games in VR. I would be very upset about being flash-framed or screamer-ed in a game that didn't bill itself as horror, and would likely never play the game again (and refund it if possible). I'm otherwise interested in pretty much anything, especially in a sci-fi setting.
If by VR games with independent motion you mean something like the Oculus then no; and I doubt it would make me sick.
I definitely want to see more action games. So far Hover Junkers is all I have really found. And budget cuts is amazing. I love the stealth of that game. Action, stealth, puzzle solving and maybe some horror. Do some of that.
We're about to send one of ours back because one of the control discs has a large dead zone.
As for movement, i totally agree, VR is all about immersion and the teleportation movement really takes me out of it.
We're currently developing a motion system that allows you to use roomscale AND independent movement (push forward to move forward) in ue4 which till now was impossible, and we're making it as motion sick friendly as possible. LIke in our game you can walk in circles to ascend a spiral staircase, it's working really well.
And finally, if still nothing works, just in case you didn't know you can wire the controllers to the HMD instead of the PC: it has a built in USB port by pushing the front lid outwards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MigWitzU_oE
Also, I do wonder, given the amount of tailoring games seem to need for it, if it will be rather limited in the amount/genre of games for it. Why bother spending $$$$$$ making a VR only game when you could just tack an (ultimately unsatisfactory) VR mode onto your existing 2-d game, and why buy VR when you're just going to get a tacked on 3-d mode.
Also also, space is a real issue for me (and many other people in the UK!) since house/rent prices are so high here that so many people are crammed into small living spaces.
I want to play games, but that doesn't mean I want to be IN the game.
So yeah, nothing but negativity from me.
I"m honestly confused why you think it would be a good idea to put a 2d game on vr to begin with lol.
As for why would you want to make games for vr. Both shipments of hte vive sold out in under 10 seconds, HTC has suspended sales to the US because they can't make them fast enough to fulfill orders. There's a lot of people out there with the vive and not a lot to do on it and far more desperate to get one. Valve is incentivizing the shit out of people who can develop for vr and throwing a ton of money at it, promoting the shit out of it (hence why i'm here) as is epic. It's literally the least crowded market out there.
As for making a 2d game. Good luck getting noticed among the 8 billion other 2d games that come out every month.
'The VFX1 was developed in the early 1990s by Forte Technologies, Incorporated. It was released in 1995 with an MSRP of US$695 and an average retail price of $599, and was sold in the US in retail stores including CompUSA and Babbage's. It was superseded by Interactive Imaging Systems' VFX3D in 2000.'
^
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VFX1_Headgear
It had head tracking too. Various reviews of it on youtube if you ever fancy a look.
Consumer VR devices have existed for over 20 years at this point and none of them have succeeded so far, of course there is always 'this time is different'.
With respect to sales, it's easy to get loads of sales at the start, but then they tend to taper off over the long term when the novelty wears off. The Kinect sold over 8 million units in its first 60 days on sale, which apparently made it the fastest selling consumer electronics device ever. Microsoft spent over $500 million on advertising alone, sold over 24 million units and it's not been much of a success.
>throwing a ton of money at it, promoting the shit out of it (hence why i'm here)
I suppose people are going to want to scoop up that, so there will be money in the short term from corporate subsidy, but the long term prognosis may well be different.
Yes, the current kind of VR never existed before. Especially with tracked controllers. And at least with games designed for it with a good enough level of polish for a very recent gen 1.
Kinect is just shit. Latency is too high for almost any kind of game. Other than dancing games you can't get any kind of immersive experience with it. I think it was interesting as a low cost mocap device, but there's not much you can do with it for gaming.
About controls and about room space, I said this in another comment: Also having virtual hands/tools is a big deal for VR. After having the oculus devkits I would be very hesitant to buy another HMD without them. Rotating 360 degrees is also a big deal, much more than "room scale" which is just a nice thing to have (just like regular games don't require a 40" screen but it's a very nice thing to have).
About cost: the Vive has some very expensive electronics (FPGAs and a too high count of discrete components) because it's almost a devkit but with nicer appearance and polish. I can see it easily drop prices (and size) after a year or two, when they use the optimized and reduced versions of the sensors, ASICs and much bigger runs of the screens.
kinda edited to be a bit ironic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ0JTkBZdyw
but a good view. it shows how easily can a vr game be dull.
so far, VR is just a cool expensive gimmick imho, just a platform to experiment with, and not the next revolutionary gaming and entertaining peripheal that they are marketing around.
maybe in 5-10 years, when technology becomes much cheaper, and hardware necessary to run it kind of mid-level and not high end, we can see a nice platform to work on.
but so far, it's only an early experimenting land. don't bet too much on it.
That video is 20 minutes of comments about games, some of which I played with absolute delight and awe, telling how they suck in some way. E.g. it says "droops off the face when I look downwards and everything is blurry", but it happened to me and all I had to do is find a better position of the head straps for it to stop happening. They have frame rate issues in places I didn't have, and I have minimum specs (and below for the CPU). Etc.
It's a gen 1 product it was released literally a couple of months ago, with most good-enough games being made by a few devs that got free kits and decided to invest resources into making a game. Of course you're going to find problems if you're looking for them! Also having virtual hands/tools is a big deal for VR. After having the oculus devkits I would be very hesitant to buy another HMD without them. Rotating 360 degrees is also a big deal, much more than "room scale" which is just a nice thing to have (just like regular games don't require a 40" screen but it's a very nice thing to have).