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Your second to last point seems to be the biggest problem right now, and that's not going to change until requirements have come down to what the average pc gamer can reasonably be expected to have available. No one wants to make games for a platform with such a low adoption rate.

Your comment got killed for some reason, so I vouched for it. I completely agree. VR seems to be a gimmick right now. Too many technical challenges and not fast enough adoption.

I think his first three points are the main problem. Image quality, latency and systems requirements. They are all linked.

VR hardware is great step-up from the common gaming setups, where you only have to render a single scene @ 30-60 FPS and display it on a monitor @ >1080p. VR is much more involved than that. Not only do you need to render the scene twice, but you have to do it at a resolution >4k per eye (which probably isn't even enough to satisfy all users), and on top of you should do it in <20ms or something in that order, to be sure nobody gets sick. _including_ position tracking.

The rest of your points can be solved, once we can mass-produce hardware that meets the specs.

> you should do it in <20ms

I've heard perfection needs less than 7ms latency. That's over 140 FPS, possibly higher if you have any kind of double buffering.

> you have to do it at a resolution >4k per eye

I'm sure there's someone working on a headset that tracks eye movements and adjusts the rendered resolution of the image on the fly. The human eye has something like 4-5 megapixels worth of photo receptors, but the absolute majority of them are located in a relatively tiny area of your FOV where your eyes focus on.

On the other hand, I've also seen forum threads about blockbuster games like FFXV that are getting VR support, and many of the comments are "why bother? 3D wouldn't add anything to this sort of game anyway."

Which is complementary to the point about it being anti-social. If everyone got into it, it'd be worth it and wouldn't be so anti-social, within certain aggregates (like a family that games together). Whether those aggregates are worth it or not to the individuals depends on the quality, or aesthetic, of the experience.

>It's very anti-social. Honestly my SO does not like it when I use a VR device because it completely shuts her out.

I considered getting a VR headset just to stay current with technology but decided not to largely for this reason. With a wife and kid it's hard enough to occasionally play games but at least if I do I can still have a casual conversation while I play.

You can always mirror the display to a TV so they can see what you're doing.

>Very little worthwhile content.

You don't play Onward? Everyone should play Onward.

I don't get sick from movement because the ground textures are plain. Running in place while moving is also wonderful for acclimation to artificial movement.

If Onward was the only VR game in existence, I would pay roughly half of the Vive's sticker price for just that. I am very excited for later iterations of that game, as well as higher budget knockoffs that may come in the future. But I could play the current version for years if necessary.

With you on most of your points though. I wish the built in camera wasn't attached to the virtual controller - it makes it hard to use and thus very antisocial.

Onward is a fairly intense multiplayer military sim. Unfortunately, that's just not for everyone. I don't enjoy that sort of game in VR or not.

I agree though that I unfairly overlooked Onward due to my personal lack of interest in it.

It occurs to me that "prosumer" military sims will probably prop up continued VR development even if the consumer-gaming market stops caring. Just like the US Interstate is mostly there to be a military logistics system, and smart-phone GPS is a pure "side-effect" of ICBM guidance systems, I could imagine that we get cheap VR mostly as a side-effect of the military demanding cheaper and higher-fidelity training simulation software. Stuff like http://www.prepar3d.com fits VR so well it's crazy.

>US Interstate is mostly there to be a military logistics system

Eisenhower certainly played the military need card. It's unclear to what degree that was actually his primary motivation.

>smart-phone GPS is a pure "side-effect" of ICBM guidance systems

Military, yes, to a large degree but not ICBMs specifically. If ICBMs are going off you can't depend on GPS still being operational. ICBMs rely primarily on inertial guidance with a star sight around apogee to provide any corrections.

There's a chicken and the egg situation with content and the sets. They haven't sold enough to make it worth it financially to build AAA game titles. Part of the recent Valve news is them announcing that they're going to try and fix that situation by releasing 3 games of their own for VR (and not caring necessarily if they are "failures").

Two incredible things to look at with respect to the promise of VR:

1. Multiplayer Climbey - multiple people in VR jumping and trying to grab each others hands, not fall off the building, etc. hilarious and very social. Should also mention, that's a user created building.

https://youtu.be/extNh3Z-ikk?t=294

2. Google Earth VR - this video is from the Giant Bomb crew who are typically a little cynical and have been fairly underwhelmed with VR in general for games. But they all LOVED this: "...it might not work for the folks at home, but this shit is profound and crazy."

https://youtu.be/X_zEHzZern8?t=253

VR right now is the worst it's every going to be, a year from now it'll be better and cheaper and in 5 to 10 unrecognizably better.

I can't believe I'd never thought of Google Earth in VR. That looks amazing.

There's a Google Earth demo for Cardboard you might like then.

It's very similar, you tap the screen (or you can plug a computer mouse into your phone) to start flying in the direction you're looking.

https://i.imgur.com/0NUacn2h.jpg

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.sam...

Most of the points brought up are things that I am particularly watching the "Windows Holographic" efforts for, in the hopes they pull it off as well as they seem to be implying that they can. Microsoft seems to be prioritizing social and locomotion and room-scale issues, both for HoloLens AR and also the opaque MR headsets expected to release soon.

As you point out, it can be tough to clear out entire rooms for room-scale, so recognition of real world obstacles seems paramount to proper enjoyment (regardless of how much you think that is immersion breaking).

Socially sharing the same spaces together with friends/family I think is more important than a lot of people at first realize. It's especially important for business applications and things that aren't games, but even in games, cooperative sharing of spaces may be the defining difference between good games and great games.

Even projects like "Spectator Mode" allowing cameras to share in the spaces seems like important baby steps to breaking VR/AR/MR out of its shell and more to something that enriches the spaces around us rather than locks us in and closes us out.

I for one think that's the direction all of this needs to go in order to be more than just a toy, more than just the flavor of the month ViewMaster for adults with big enough budgets.

> Image quality is bad

> Rift+Touch tracking is bad and more or less completely broken for many users

Interesting. Admittedly I've only had the opportunity to try the Rift/Vive for around an hour or so total, but I've never really experienced either of these issues, at least in the games I tried (Fantastic Contraption and The Unspoken). The tracking was flawless (except during the one or two times I got outside the range of cameras/lighthouses, but that only happened because the demos were using a 2-sensor configuration, so my body could block the line-of-sight if I turned the wrong way), and image quality was good enough to not be noticeable. Did you only start noticing these problems after using the headsets for a long time, or was it an issue for you right out of the gate?

> The locomotion problem is not being solved.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the big issue with that that it's easy to get motion sick if you move around at all in VR? Don't most games solve the problem by letting you teleport instead? How do you feel about the titles which don't require you to move around at all in-game?

> It's very anti-social.

This has been true in my experience, but only to the extent that any other type of video game is. Are there no good local multiplayer experiences in VR yet?

Personally I'm still thinking of getting myself a Vive or Rift, but probably not for a year or so. My plan is to wait and see what the second-generation devices look like.

"There's very little worthwhile content."

This is what I'm waiting for. Easy bar to set for any new gaming tech.

I thought maybe some existing games like War Thunder would be best for taking advantage of VR: a plane simulation where being able to easily look around you would be exhilarating and useful. Here's one guy's experience with a Vive:

https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/336758-a-user-...

So, beautiful but flawed. I've played and burned out on War Thunder already, so it's not a selling point, but I was hoping there would be more by now. Doesn't seem like there is, and it sounds like the resolution and refined experience isn't quite there yet.

VR is for porn. Then the isolating antisocial part of it is a feature, not a bug.

To be honest I think the image quality on VR video content is far too low for this right now.

Perhaps there's something wrong with me, but even if the image quality was great I can't really see why looking at sex in VR is all that much different to watching a video. Are we imagining some kind of scary tactile peripherals?

> a plane simulation where being able to easily look around you would be exhilarating and useful.

You can do that with FSX, X Plane, Elite Dangerous.

The hardware requirements are just ridiculous.

For a number of reasons, VR arguably works best today (and maybe tomorrow) if you're basically sitting in a chair and looking around. (Otherwise, you need a lot of space and still lack the sort of physical feedback that a fully immersive experience would ideally have.) But then, are you really improving much over a good multi-monitor setup?

When my brother showed me his Google Daydream headset, he told me the best way to experience it was to sit in an office chair capable of swiveling.

For Elite dangerous multi monitor is not enough. You need vertical visibility too for dogfights - gives serious advantage over monitor only players.

Interesting though that in War Thunder the reviewer said it didn't give you an overall advantage, and it was probably a detriment. Maybe it's different with Elite dangerous; I guess vertical threats are more likely when climbing against gravity isn't an issue?

Worth noting that experienced players even one one monitor will use mouse freelook anyway to see where they need to go

I'm an experienced player using HOTAS setup and its not enough. You need eye/head tracking if you are doing complex manouvers, I run sometimes out of fingers/buttons :D

Yeah - well you can find multiple videos on YT that show you how it helps to position your ship against an enemy that tries to get on your tail using all the vectors that are not possible for planes :-)