Popularity of Sony’s PlayStation VR Surprises Even the Company
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
1. VR costs a lot
2. The technology needs to be better (higher resolution)
3. There's not a lot of VR content available yet.
Two weeks ago, Gabe Newell and his SteamVR team talked openly about these issues in an interview. [1]
They say:
- The price will go down and the tech will become better. He said VR will be a new reason for CPU/GPU manufacturers to up their game again. (2018/2019)
- Valve is currently making three different full VR games (2017/2018)
- There should be an open VR standard
Instead, it's not quite getting dumped in the sand the way Atari dumped ET in 1982, but it's not far off - major supporters are giving half-hearted statements, and the biggest application I've heard about receiving VR investment is a desktop replacement - not exactly something from which I'd expect a compelling VR experience. So far, my most mind-blowing VR experience has merely been Google Earth.
Where are the Wii-game clones? Where are the DDR-clones and, like, retro arcades? Where are the games that have co-op in the same space? Why can't you invite your friends into your Google Earth, to look at the same scenes?
We're roughly a year out, with multiple platforms, and almost every game is still a tech demo. Where are the news reports of people breaking their TV with their Vive-mote? - Nobody has been so preoccupied with a VR game that that they flung the controller into the TV yet. I'm worried that investors were so preoccupied with whether or not they could make money off of this, that they didn't stop to think if they should make it fun. How many consoles have successfully gone their first year without a compelling release, and later recovered?
Making a game with a really solid experience, to my knowledge, usually takes a few years to make. And that's true even when you're not trying to build entirely novel modes of interaction from the ground up.
> Where are the news reports of people breaking their TV with their Vive-mote?
Wii's were way, way cheaper, and not nearly so niche, leading to sales of 600,000 units in the very first week, you probably would have heard this about the Vive if it had that kind of market penetration that fast, because it definitely does happen to people.
> Where are the Wii-game clones? Where are the DDR-clones and, like, retro arcades?
I'd say multiple examples of all three are on Steam.
> Where are the games that have co-op in the same space?
Like local co-op? Probably waiting for the release of hardware that has more robust tracking because with multiple individuals in the same tracking space, the problem of occlusion crops up a lot more. Those improvements are planned, at least for the Vive, but they're not available yet to my knowledge.
> Why can't you invite your friends into your Google Earth, to look at the same scenes?
I'd guess licensing the imagery and data, although there are a handful of things like this for singleplayer (Including Google Earth VR), so it might have to do with the complexity of building a networked experience over a purely singleplayer one.
Fair point, but don't developers usually have significant lead time, so games are released soon after a new console or other hardware? Or is VR simply that much more complicated to develop for?
> Like local co-op? Probably waiting for the release of hardware that has more robust tracking because with multiple individuals in the same tracking space, the problem of occlusion crops up a lot more. Those improvements are planned, at least for the Vive, but they're not available yet to my knowledge.
So essentially, the technology isn't ready yet, and we're all using the Early Access version of the hardware?
> I'd guess licensing the imagery and data, although there are a handful of things like this for singleplayer (Including Google Earth VR), so it might have to do with the complexity of building a networked experience over a purely singleplayer one.
How much more network data is needed to coordinate a VR experience over another type of 3D game - is there usually more collision data, from all of the extra motion tracking? Will VR require gamers have 1 Gbps home internet connections?
I would say this is really close to being a stupid comment. The technology does exactly what it's supposed to do, and does it quite well. Just because it doesn't support features you want doesn't mean the tech isn't "ready".
In the same vein, the low-resolution, headache and nausea inspiring VR headsets of modern day aren't really ready, even though engineers are making the best of what they have.
>> Even though you can't get a decent cup of coffee before a firmware upgrade?
I don't even know what this means.
C-Pad was used like WASD and the stick to look.
The issues VR faces, especially around the lack of compelling content, aren't really specific to a headset model or brand. I agree with the previous post - VR as a consumer industry is pretty much a year old at this point.
It's increasingly my opinion that Valve/Facebook will need to lead by example to get the content off the ground to solve the 'chicken and egg' problems, and that leading is going to involve throwing good money into projects that simply won't make money, for the greater long term good of VR. Thankfully it looks like this is finally starting to happen, with Facebook stumping up 250 million dollars for original content and Valve's recently announced in house projects. This industry and install base isn't going to grow fast enough without this investment, especially if the past 12 months are anything to go by.
The only real solution is for the VR hardware manufacturers to invest in development of software until they get something good.
I own a vive and there are some really cool experiences, but in my library of games there is not really anything that i'm itching to come back to. It mostly just sits put away till something new releases, or I want to show it to a friend.
Further complicating the issue is the hardware split. Vive/Oculus can somewhat share things if you are dedicated and willing to accept poor control schemes, but PSVR is out on its own. Then you get into the whole seated/roomscale issue, and things like motion sickness from locomotion and you find that it is really hard to develop something that can apply to a large population right now.
But yes, software support is nowhere near where it needs to be to ensure the future of these platforms.
I completely disagree with this. A good desktop replacement is exactly what you'd want from a compelling VR experience.
1. It's a literal virtual reality that users would use to replace actual reality.
2. If you can make a compelling, usable desktop replacement, then you've successfully made a reason for many VR users to be happy with never taking off their headsets. Tired of a game? Go back to the desktop environment. Want to look up some tips? Go back to the desktop environment. Want to look at links from friends? Go back to the desktop environment.
3. A compelling desktop environment is probably far more technically greedy than an actual game since you need to have a high resolution headset to simulate the desktop with at least the fidelity of a real screen... and most people are going to want at least two of those high-resolution virtual screens in their field of vision.
But even my old (in VR-industry terms) Oculus dev unit from a couple years ago works much better. The mobile VR setups only track head orientation but the Rift, Vive, and similar devices also track your position in xyz space. This has a huge impact on how well your movements are mirrored in the virtual environment. Ultimately, getting as close to 1:1 mirroring is how you avoid motion sickness.
The other part of that is overall body position so a lot of the attempts to shoehorn traditional FPS games into VR are iffy because even if your head is tracked, your brain knows you're not running around even if your visual input tells you that you are.
It's a big part of why I don't think games (or at least many styles of games that work on 2D screens) are the end goal for VR. They seem obvious since they're already using complex and realistic environments but the VR applications that really work are the ones where your viewpoint matches your actual physical orientation (including the rest of your body).
I also think the big jump will come when someone sorts out how to get a few cheap depth cameras set up around a room to generate a real-time 3d model with video data used to texture the mesh. Send that data over networks and display in a VR headset and you're on your way to 3d/VR telepresence. The hardware still needs to improve and the software developed, but it reminds me of using early smartphones more than anything else.
When I had a Treo or an old Pocket PC I knew that technically these things could be as fluid and smooth as a desktop or laptop of the time. It just wasn't feasible to cram it into a tiny handset for a price anyone could pay. But now 10-15 years later you can spend a few hundred bucks and get something better than your old Playstation or laptop in your pocket.
If you watch the Gabe interview, he points out that cloning experiences is the wrong approach. The problem with VR is that nobody knows what its DOOM would look like. Elite: Dangerous gives a glimpse into what that could be, but it's not conclusive and is on the more expensive platforms.
> Nobody has been so preoccupied with a VR game that that they flung the controller into the TV yet.
With Leap Motion Orion, I've flung my hand into a wall - if that counts. The term is "presence," and Leap takes it to another level. Sadly, Leap consists of tech demos right now.
My retired dad tried the Vive tutorial where you can blow balloons using the controller, then hit them with your hands. He was so excited he tried to kick the balloons... And almost broke a chair. (Kicking doesn't work since there are no trackers on your feet, but the immersion was so strong he didn't realize that.)
It really doesn't. Anyone who has used VR knows how amazing it is. The main issue for games is getting the controls right.
The way I see it, sticking to a controller or keyboard/mouse and using the VR as a kind of stationary surround monitor is the best way to go for gaming.
Dual controllers and physically moving around in a room have too many issues and don't feel natural for games. It's great for tech demos, but I can't imagine playing through an 80-hour game like that. It's like the Nintendo Wii controllers that are only good for party games.
I'm not a gamer - not in the sense of today. But I do like to play games occasionally.
Back in the 90s, I remember playing Dactyl Nightmare - stand up, single controller, crappy (by today's standards - back then, it was different) HMD/res - but I loved it. Five minutes for 5 dollars - expensive, but I always liked that at the end of the game, I had gotten a great bit of exercise that was fun (I wasn't one of those "players" that just "derped" and looked around - I played the game).
Dodging, ducking, aiming and shooting - all of that "action" translated into a pretty good workout!
My future fantasy would be playing and exploring the Cyberpunk 2077 world (assuming its released); today, I would love to do the same with GTAV, but apparently it isn't something supported by default in the game (there are hacks to somewhat allow for it in the "freeform" or "single-player" mode (?) - but even those hacks don't work perfectly, from what I gather).
I'm one of those kinds of people who hates exercise - but has no problem getting it from a game or other "active" activities (I dislike competitive sports as well - but I love hiking).
I'd like a completely immersive experience, but current VR simply can't offer that.
To get there, full body tracking is required so that controllers are not needed anymore, and some kind of treadmill that allows you to walk in VR while physically staying in the same position, to avoid running into walls, having to re-adjust the connectors etc.
And even then, holding an object in VR when your hands are really empty or holding a controller feels weird.
Yep, it costs $2k minimum currently for decent VR, its like buying a computer in the 1990s. The cost to do VR will decrease as hardware improves and software is rewritten for better APIs like Vulkan that are more efficient.
> 2. The technology needs to be better (higher resolution)
Sure, on the low end Samsung VR and others could use a resolution bump (mainly GPU constrained there currently), but room scale VR with the Vive is high res enough that it is acceptable and fully immersive in most cases.
> 3. There's not a lot of VR content available yet.
Definitely, more content and a broader ecosystem would be great. But today you can go into a Microsoft store and try VR and have a great experience, and there are quite a few high quality, immersive games that you can blow 10+hrs playing.
Sure it's "good enough" for many games, but it's also not something I'm going to spend a large chunk of money on. I'd much rather wait a generation or two.
I know it's hard to conceptualize because we're so used to 2D controls, but there will be new control schemes. There's nothing particularly inevitable or natural about WIMP.
Head tracking as input.
Right now I have my SMS window peeking out from behind this browser window. I have it so that I can just barely see if there's a new message.
In VR, I could just move my head slightly and see the whole message. As it is, I have to Alt+Tab.
The other thing that I think will be big is permanent placement of data in 3D space. Right now some people do this with virtual desktops... laying out windows and files in different workspaces so you have different places for different tasks.
A lot of people don't get that far for two reasons:
1) the virtual workspace navigation tools aren't great. This could be improved in 2D, but I believe there will be a strong incentive to solve these problems in VR
2) many digital objects don't currently have very good spatializable 2d representations. For example, I just bookmarked that article about good programmers. It's currently represented as a DIV on pinboard, but it has no generalized 2D or 3D representation. In a VR desktop, things will need to have bounded 3D representations just to exist in the UI. Once it has a representation, it's a lot easier to arrange spatially. I could put a collection of links in the same place as my code, which is currently awkward.
That all said, I do think there is a core idea you are suggesting which is fully correct: Once VR takes off, and we see how things work in VR, we will "backport" a lot of those interactions into 2D. I think interest in headsets will surge, but we'll eventually settle into a balance of 2D and 3D and the 3D will mostly be for things which are spatially intensive.
So, in that sense you're right the monitor will do everything. But VR is still interesting because it will be the source of a lot of inventions.
Also consider: dogs and cats can't use mouse and keyboard, but they can do head tracking. The first game platform that lets people play video games with their pets will be massive. In that sense, VR isn't about letting pro users do more, it's about expanding capabilities to a wider audience.
> Also consider: dogs and cats can't use mouse and keyboard, but they can do head tracking. The first game platform that lets people play video games with their pets will be massive. In that sense, VR isn't about letting pro users do more, it's about expanding capabilities to a wider audience.
Please tell me you know someone working on something like this, because I would love to learn more.
There's a formula to work it out but I don't remember it.
This is a title that has VR people raving about it, and I can picture why - the immersion would be full and complete. Now, I haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet, as I like the resolution of my monitor too much - which is a factor especially in titles like DCS World that I'd also like to play.
Having said that I can't wait for the 2nd generation of Oculus Rift to come out with 4k screens or thereabouts. I'll be preordering.
The game certainly has a learning curve ... yet manages to provide perfect escapism at the end of the day.
Interesting. I just upgraded my video card because my old card (Geforce GTX 780) was not quite enough for some games. The new one, a GTX 1080 should last through this generation of VR headsets, but assuming the next ones are more of 4k at 90hz type of spec, it will need to be upgraded for that.
It's a fun platform, but it definitely has the gimick aspect to it. I've experienced Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Gear VR and PSVR. In all honesty, nothing has really wowed me just yet. I believe we'll need 4k VR for the technology to truly take it up a notch, it's getting there. My favourite is definitely the Vive, just peripherials and the resolution is great.
No doubt, the PSVR 2.0 is going to be amazing and I will buy that again.
One of the things about Rez is that it's an update of a 2001 Dreamcast and PS2 game. The simpler graphics mean that head tracking in the VR version is very close to perfect, even on a first-gen PS4. I noticed judder in the head tracking when I was at the system menu in "virtual screen in front of you" mode; there was none in Rez Infinite, even in full VR in Area X.
That said, I get the general criticism for the current state in VR ("low" resolution yadda yadda) and PSVR in particular (lack of full room control / limited motion tracking yadda yadda). I really don't mind as presence works across the board today and I actually love the "subtractive" design and simple controller based experiences of most PSVR titles.
In any case, even with the most high-end graphics card on a 4K+ display and the most ambitious titles, games still look very far from photo realistic (ask any non gamer to watch you play and evaluate).
It will take us still a very long time to get to that somewhat questionable goal, especially in VR where all those "shortcomings" get even more pronounced. We will probably need completely new paradigms in game development as well as whole new classes of technology in general.
So, it's still called "playing" right? Let's continue using our imagination while enjoying the most creative efforts of our time in ever more engaging ways.
REZ and BattleZone VR alone.. my 14 year old me still can't believe that this exists and is available for normal people for essentially a summer holiday amount of work :O
All that considered, VR clearly is not for everyone. Many people can't get used to it for lots of reasons. One should also always get enough sleep and take breaks even when accustomed to VR – it is taxing. Another reason why I prefer more "simple" arcade style experiences actually, 20 min bouts of highly enjoyable escapism after which I get back to real life yay ;)
You have to wonder whether Sony is using the same strategy to generate more long term interest in a product that was "sold out" and "scarce".
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-xbox-kinect-did...
The Kinect sold ten or twelve million in the first couple of months. (That may have been the number manufactured, but it still sold in the many-millions on launch).
That didn't help it succeed. There are a bunch of reasons why it didn't, and why it was eventually all but deprecated from the Xbox One. I believe that user interaction design driven by management-imposed ideology, rather than user testing, was a big factor.
I also agree and said at the time, adding $100+ to the price of the xbox one for a peripheral which most people wouldn't use was incredibly fucking dumb.
This is actually one of the big problems in developing content for VR, because it's not true. There are different levels of immersion in VR, and you cannot take a game that is full immersion which includes 360 roomscale tracking with hands, to the most limited VR which is front facing tracking without hands. One is being able to walk around and touch things with your hand, the other is sitting in a chair and not being to touch things. Yes, you can use the most basic immersion on any VR system, but my understanding is most people don't want to bother with it because it's boring. One thing the Vive did correctly in my opinion is offering the highest immersion to every buyer - there were no optional wands, they were included (whereas you have to buy them separately for the Rift). 360 tracking is out of the box, whereas with the Rift you need to buy a 3rd sensor for that to work (and they're still having so many problems Facebook has even admitted it's not working properly). The PSVR does not support 360 tracking at all right now, it's intended as a sit down experience.
I see a lot of potential in VR, but I'd say it's 2 generations away from becoming "mainstream" in the sense that there is an active community for it and it's profitable, but it's always going to be a subset of the gaming market (talking solely about VR for gaming, the focus with Facebook is clearly to focus on mobile). Right now it's way too expensive, the resolution is bad, it requires high end video cards to just barely eke out 90 fps when you want 120 fps, and most importantly there is a serious lack of content.
Like another commenter said, VR right now is in the Palm Pilot stages. It's cool and there are early adopters, but it has a long way to go before we're in the iPhone era.
What isn't true? There are absolutely games on the market that have been ported between PSVR, Occulus and Vive platforms.
What I suspect will happen is the Vive will dominate for PC gaming (which I suspect will be a niche market), Oculus will dominate mobile (I think this will take 5-10 years and they will be heavily competing with Apple who is leapfrogging VR entirely for AR which I think will be a far bigger market and the true next computing platform), and the PSVR will slowly fade into oblivion the same way that nobody uses a Kinect anymore.
Is it untrue that PSVR games can be ported to other VR platforms (this is what I was responding to initially and asked for clarification on) or that there are legitimate technical and market hurdles involved in porting from PSVR to other VR platforms?
My initial comment was that it is true because that exact phenomenon is happening, there are multiple titles out that exist across all three major VR platforms and we're about to have more (Good lord almighty will Elite Dangerous hurry up and come out for PS4 already...); so my disagreement starts and about ends there because I thought that's what you were arguing?
Is that no longer the case as you're now talking about demos, and market split between Vive vs PC vs VR and the technical challenges needed to port games among platforms? If this is the case, I-in fact-agree with you.
Again, I just want to make sure I know exactly what I'm responding to.
As more developers commit to the Vive (which polls show is the case)
Would you mind sharing those polls? This is something I'm very interested in as the whole VR space right now has really got me wanting to get back into game development-which was a hobby in high school making 2D platformers-so I'm curious what about the Vive is so attractive to other developers.
Yes, games made for PSVR can be ported to the Rift and Vive. However games designed for the Vive that take advantage of its capabilities probably cannot be ported to the other systems. Basically, the Vive can do more stuff, and if you design you game around that it doesn't port well (or potentially at all) to the other headsets.
How do you mean? When I went to buy my PSVR there were four store trips (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and two GameStops), all sold out before I finally came home and just ordered one online-and even on Amazon I saw a notice that supplies were limited.
You, and the media, perceive all these stores being sold out as implying that the product is super-popular and special. Someone who didn't plan to buy the product will see this scarcity and think that it's incredibly popular, and maybe want to jump on the bandwagon.
However, there's not necessarily a scarcity at the source - they could have a large number of units in Sony warehouses. Then, a week after they sold out on initial launch, and people are hearing stories from their friend iamdave and from the Times that the PSVR is incredibly popular and hard to find, they can ship those warehouse units to the stores and suddenly even more people can purchase a PSVR.
But as someone else posted, selling a million in a short time frame certainly seems like success. Whether there's artificial pent-up demand or not, they've sold quite a few considering the price of it all.
I can only speak for myself here, so take it however you want to, but going to four stores and all of them being sold out-honest to God my only thought was-oh okay, they're out, on to the next store.
Legitimately the "hype" factor for me was playing a space dogfighting game at a friend's house, falling in love with the experience (as I'm a longtime fan of the EVE Online series, and Valkyrie was made by the same production team) and deciding "Hey, I want one of these for myself".
So I somewhat get your point, but I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced enough of how true it is to agree with it. And even if that's what Sony did...it appears to be working for them. The appeal to PSVR is that it doesn't require the investment of some PC-oriented gaming rigs necessary to render games twice for a functioning VR experience; the PS4 is already a successful and popular platform; Sony rolled the dice and got lucky 7's with PSVR.
I suspect Amazon is doing this on purpose to get people to try Prime Now. That was probably the first purchase I made on Prime Now and I've since made quite a few purchases. When I used to need something right away I would drive to Best Buy or a nearby store. Now I first check Prime Now before going anywhere else.
Any related marketing buzz is a bonus, of course. ;)
So I wonder how often their inability to deliver is mislabelled as an intentional move.
But AAA studios can approach VR as something of a hybrid experience. It requires some development, but can be retroactively applied to a lot of existing games and engines without a huge amount of additional effort. They can budget VR more like a port, and less like an entirely new game from scratch. The PC community is helping out a lot with this by retroactively patching older games with VR support, and in the process very rapidly iterating on control schemes and camera parameters to make it "work" in games that weren't originally planned for the platform. Games which support VR can also support traditional controls and regular televisions, which expands the market for those who just want to play the game, and don't want to pay for the immersive headset.
It's an interesting space to be sure. I definitely think Sony was wise not to over-produce headsets initially for such a new, untested platform, but at this point it's pretty clear that VR is going to continue to be a thing. I don't know if it will ever hit actual mainstream / casual gamers, but there's enough passion in the product from the hardcore customer base to keep the momentum going.
VR generally wants you to have a slower paced first person view, if the player isn't in a cockpit of some sort and in a "natural sitting" position. Racing and flying games have this and are naturally good VR experiences if the engine will allow for it (not all do). But all 3rd person games are out. Most FPSes are out. Thats a good chunk of the industry.
However VR isn't really restricted to a first person view, you definitely need to respect motion sickness and avoid it as much as possible but there are plenty of good games that use a third person viewpoint on the action. What you really shouldn't do is take control of the camera and when you do (e.g. for locomotion) avoid styles that cause nausea.
Scaling production up and down may be easier than it used to be, but it still can be fairly costly.
I think the advertising of 'we sold more than we can make' is just a nice extra.
http://vrheads.com/do-you-really-need-ps4-playstation-vr
I've been trying to get one since they shipped in October. I'm in Japan. They have a raffle every 2 weeks or so to decide who gets to buy them at list price.
By great experiences, I mean, games that make you go "Wow" for the first 10 minutes, but after you've completed the game, there's not much reason to go back. The VR games aren't often designed with replayability or player freedom in mind. This coupled with the fact that putting on the headset is substantially more work than just picking up a controller means I've barely used the VR setup compared to just playing regular PS4 games.
Maybe things will change after the popular success of Resident Evil 7. But the problem with RE7 is that a pants-shitting experience is not the gaming for everyone. I don't blame developers in general for not putting the effort in making great, polished VR games -- the audience just isn't there in comparison to the 50 million PS4 systems in general. For PSVR to become truly successful, Sony had to throw money at developers to make games that will be loss leaders at first.
Right now, PSVR is mostly shovelware and ports from other VR platforms. One of only developers to build a AAA-game for PSVR, RIGS, was supported by and then shut down by Sony [0]. I don't have a lot of faith that VR won't go down the route of PSMove, PS Camera, Xbox's Kinect, and other such unsupported peripherals.
edit: A couple of other things to point out. I haven't used Rift or Vive but the general consensus is that PSVR tracking is inferior. That has to be another disincentive for developers to make distinctive, polished games. Right now, the most fun VR game is Fruit Ninja, but that allows for sloppy tracking and is a fairly simple game. The challenge of translating player gestures, and also not making the player super-sick, are the kind of challenges that require first-party support/investment by Sony...third-party indie developers can't do it on their own.
All that said, for games that can be played fully as either VR or non-VR -- this includes RE7, Rez, and Bound -- the VR experience is so much more superior that you can't imagine playing the non-VR versions.
[0] http://metro.co.uk/2017/01/12/sony-shuts-down-rigs-developer...
Personally I've been very impressed with RE7 in VR and it does feel like the "killer app" that VR has needed to create consumer excitement for the medium, at least for hardcore gamers. You're right that horror isn't going to appeal to everyone, though Capcom has a deep library of IPs and constantly creates new IPs. I think they have the ability to create a deep, AAA, VR experience for a wider hardcore gamer audience.
It's mostly a lot of things that feel like demos. Nothing that I could see myself losing hours into, like skyrim[1].
The one game that feels really close is Arizona Sunshine. It is a zombie fighting game, and there is a minigame on it called "horde mode", where progressively more zombies come at you from all directions and you have to shoot them.
Essentially that game is a really good[2] combat simulator.
That said, I don't regret the purchase at all. VR is an incredible gift to share with people.
[1]Time enjoyed isn't time lost. Skyrim is a beautiful world to explore.
[2]Arizona Sunshine feels like you are actually developing a shooting skill while you are using it. Not exactly the skill that I would have set out to develop, but definitely interesting.
I have a projector setup, so the PSRV camera has some propriterary cable running to it that I'd need to buy a third-party extension cord for, and who knows if that'll work.
Even if I have that I can't find any information on Sony's site about where it's acceptable to mount the camera relative to where you're standing. Is it only OK if it's directly in front of you, how about at a 45° incline etc?
Then, if I get all of that right I don't have a lot of floor space in front of the projector (maybe 2x2 meters), they don't say how far you're expected to move around in the games you can buy.
It works. I have mine on my mounted tv, which sits roughly at that angle from where my seat is. The PS Camera can tilt and swivel down so it doesn't need directly parallel vision.
Edit: The biggest knock I have (and this might be a problem with Occulus and Vive but I don't own either to know) is the issue of screen drift. Some games - like Eve Valkyrie - switch from a 2D/flat loading screen to fully rendered 3D environments.In those loading areas I may pull off the headset to check my phone or take a sip of water, put it back on and have to reorient the screen.
It's not a burdensome task to adjust, just press and hold options and it pops back into place. It's also not a terrible amount of drift that it impacts gameplay, but it is something I've noticed occurring with a frequency that's a little nagging.
Overall though, the immersion, the unique control scheme for space dogfighting, upgrading and improving your ships, it's doing a VERY good job holding me over until the PS4 port of Elite Dangerous comes out.
See the first to market here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-CWz8nAFgs
I have a 2.5m x 2.5m space, with walls an inch or so past the edge of the space on two sides. There's only been a small handful of hits, and those were mostly at the beginning. My experience, both for myself and watching my friends try things out, is that the wire is annoying, but it's not dangerous. I think part of the problem here could be that it's best to play without shoes on - it's easier to tell when you are standing on the cord, which is when you can get the most tangled up. Obviously people are not taking their shoes off for store demos.
Wireless is definitely going to be a massive improvement, but I think saying it is dangerous is a bit of a stretch.
ie: I don't want to walk around. I want to sit comfortably without straining my arm or walking into walls.
For games, I've been playing VR archery since I got the Vive almost a year ago and I still love it. It is tiring but so are traditional sports and people do those.
I know that not everyone shares my feeling, but somehow I have troubles imagining doing the same with VR headsets on. I don't really want to be completely removed from this social setting, completely emerged in the VR environment -- I want both, plus the ability to switch between them quickly.
Don't get me wrong, I think VR is a super cool technology. My point is that I just don't think it plays well with the social setting of a bunch of buddies hanging out together.
How do HN people feel about VR?
Barring a major publisher (e.g. Capcom from the article) taking a leap of faith, I think that's where a lot of the quality first gen content is going to come from.
I think it's good to have high-quality ports to help advance the platform (Arizona Sunshine, Fruit Ninja), but given the substantial technical challenges of VR and its relatively small audience, I think quality titles are going to require committed funding by Sony.
Super Hypercube is an indie game for PSVR that is considered to be quite good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM523jjrvf4
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-life-o...
It feels like we're in the "Palm pilot" stage of the technology. Eventually an "iPhone" will come out, but there are technical and UI hurdles to overcome before that can happen.
That being said, it's also an exciting time to get involved. VR owners get to experiment with different play styles and UIs and be part of a small dedicated community. Game devs hang out on /r/vive and accept feedback and ideas. And if you already know how to code, getting started in VR development is pretty easy.
What we don't have yet is content. We need 1 company to put out a triple A game, and it will hit mainstream.
It's similar to the PC vs console economics. I almost never buy games at full price. The money I spent over the cost a console is definitely cancelled out by the money I've saved with Steam sales, Humble Bundles etc.
I want to say that Vive is by far the best experience, but I don't think that you're going to get ruined by trying the PSVR first, especially not if you have a bit of imagination/ability to dream about what the technology will become.
Even back in the DK1 days, it was very very clear that this was going to be an incredible technology, and I think the PSVR is better than that was.
/Firey opinion off, apologies