Comment by andybak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andybak | Hacker News Reader

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I own a Vive and I demo it to people constantly. I've never seen a tech that makes ordinary people (as in "non-tech/non-gamers) gasp with delight with such regularity.

It's wrong to consider VR as a gaming peripheral - the appeal is much wider.

Music visualization applications are astonishing and photogrammatry is compelling. I've often just sat in a virtual location enjoying the ambience. Music making and 3D modelling (both for leisure and for professional use), social VR, fitness, narrative/story-based, virtual tourism and educational applications - these are all genres that work much, much better in VR than on a flat monitor.

> given the limited games and limited quality of them

This is quite simply not true unless you have very specific tastes or unlimited free time. There is more good content available now than I would ever have time to play.

There is a lack of big-budget, AAA, 60+ hour gameplay titles mainly due to the economics of game production (creating a typical AAA title solely for VR would require it to sell for something like $1000 a unit to coup costs given the current user base) but there are several VR ports in the works including Doom, Skyrim and Fallout 4 from Bethesda by the end of the year.

But I can list a dozen incredibly good gaming experiences in VR off the top of my head. I rarely touch non-VR games now.

Yes - VR has room for improvement (FOV, lens quality and weight would be top of my list - the resolution is far from being a major problem and most others agree) and the cost needs to drop further for it to be mainstream.

But the tech is already compelling in a way that no other technology in my lifetime has shown itself to be. Count me as a true believer. I'd buy another rig immediately if I had to choose again.

> But I can list a dozen incredibly good gaming experiences in VR off the top of my head. I rarely touch non-VR games now.

Could you actually do it please?

OK. I'll focus on games with reasonable length or replayability - there's some amazing short games and experiences that are still good value for money but I'll leave them to one side. I'll also avoid non-games - even ones that are primarily for entertainment.

1. Rec Room

2. Sairento

3. Arizona Sunshine

4. Doom BFG (with the VR mod)

5. SuperHot

6. Elite Dangerous

7. Climbey

8. Pavlov (some prefer Onward but I haven't tried it)

9. Vivecraft

10. Subnautica

11. Vanishing Realms

12. Robo Recall

I can keep going if you like. The bottom of the barrel is a fair way off.

Space pirate trainer ... I love it!! It is so simple but so perfect with touch controllers. I used to be a gamer back in my youth but little time these days. This game is instant action as soon as you start.

Darknet on gear vr. Same deal ... loved it and a very quick fix.

Landfall. I played like a demon the entire open beta. My wife was very annoyed at me :-p But I think I unlocked all the mechs. This is a controller game though.

Thanks! some of these do look quite good. I wish I had the opportunity to try them out, so far I've just been able to try experiments on the Vive, not finished games.

Thus far I've always felt its been a wonderful demo. I feel like the killer app should be here by now, what with so much huge names and money behind it.

What is the application that goes mainstream? Maybe 360 video? Google Maps?

> 360 video

360 video can be great but it's not really "VR". You don't need a Vive/Rift and positional tracking to watch 360 video. Anyone with $5 Cardboard goggles can experience it.

VR is the killer app. Or rather it doesn't need a single killer app - it just needs to gradually accumulate interesting content in the way the web did. What was the "killer app" that made the web go mainstream? From my recollection is was the breadth of content rather than having a single specific trigger.

Cost is probably the biggest factor holding back adoption with maybe ease of use coming second. The following needs to happen:

1. We'll need good inside-out tracking in a consumer device so that room setup is painless and quick (should be here by the end of the year either from the Microsoft partners or the Daydream standalone)

2. There has to be either a good standalone headset at a reasonable price - or the PC upgrade cycle needs to do it's magic so that most people don't need to buy a new PC specifically for VR. (I suspect the Daydream standalone will be underpowered - we might need another year for this to resolve itself)

3. The headset itself needs to be less bulky and more comfortable. Casually dipping in and out of VR and passing the headset around while in company needs to be much less effort.

I like VR too but a product that makes people gasp with delight is not the same as a product that people want to use regularly. The problem with VR as a standalone product (and not just as peripheral) is that when using VR you have to give it your full attention. It's a separate activity. As such it must be weighted against one's other competing interests. Is VR really compelling enough for most people as a standalone activity? Are they really that interested in carving out hours of their time to (verb) VR?

I think the big breakthrough in VR will be social, and it will be more "active-social" than "passive-social". (Examples would be VR parties and MMOs.) Only then will VR as an activity have mass appeal.

For me the killer app for half a year has been Climbey. I have done exercise frequently by playing that game several times a week with a friend, and has hundreds of user created levels, some are much better than the few built in levels. Some are very long and difficult but the challenge is frequently fun (not always, some are just bad).

I think it shows the future of VR controls. In every other VR game I play I miss Climbey controls. Except Echo Arena, which also it's the best VR single player campaign to date.

I watched a gameplay video and I didn't get what's special about the controls in Climbey. Care to explain?

Videos rarely do VR justice.

Climbey has arm-swinging for walking and jumping and a climbing mechanic central to the gameplay. It's just wonderfully immersive (as long as you've got a head for heights).

Climbing is a satisfactory 1:1 movement because you "move the world" exactly the distance you move the hands, so it feels very natural, unlike any other artificial movement system in VR games. Lone Echo does this but even better (I said Echo Arena before by mistake, it's the multiplayer version of Lone Echo)

Jumping can be hard to get used to for some, it's like throwing yourself, and requires the same skill as throwing a ball to a target. But once you get the hang of it, it feels VERY good, it's an incredible sense of freedom, esp after playing other VR games with teleport or other systems of artificial locomotion. I'd like just to jump everywhere like that. The jumps are superhuman but your brain accepts it as perfectly possible (which is important for immersion).

Walking is done through arm swinging. I think it's kind of weak but I still prefer that form of locomotion over any other if there's no jumping.

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