I agree, in a sense the Wii and Kinect can be seen as precursors to VR. I can see in the near future a Kinect 3 that integrates with VR to track your entire body. We're living in an exciting age.
VR.. What do you think really. Fad, dying, misunderstood or bubbling below the surface.
- Thread starter cpbtrading
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I agree, in a sense the Wii and Kinect can be seen as precursors to VR. I can see in the near future a Kinect 3 that integrates with VR to track your entire body. We're living in an exciting age.
The kinect and wiimotes didn't fail (again, the Wii did not fail, but the motion control part of it did fail to result in anything more that shoehorned waggle mechanics) because of a lack of VR.
They failed because motion controls and "your body as a controller" are a terrible terrible way to control actual games. (especially the latter) The only thing that jumped out at me when watching the original Wii commercials and Kinect footage when they were showcasing all the motion tracking and full body tracking was "that's great and all, but if I want to walk down a corridor and through a door how the hell do I do it?"
The wiimotes at least had actual controllers built into them via d-pads and buttons which is what saved the wii, and thankfully the Touch controllers do as well along with the Vive wand. Kinect did not, and it was never used for anything noteworthy in gaming. Mine sits on my desk as a glorified mic array, and no I didn't pay for it.
Nonsense, multiple fantastic games, some of the best VR has to offer, do not use touch controllers or vive wands.
They failed because motion controls and "your body as a controller" are a terrible terrible way to control actual games. (especially the latter) The only thing that jumped out at me when watching the original Wii commercials and Kinect footage when they were showcasing all the motion tracking and full body tracking was "that's great and all, but if I want to walk down a corridor and through a door how the hell do I do it?"
The wiimotes at least had actual controllers built into them via d-pads and buttons which is what saved the wii, and thankfully the Touch controllers do as well along with the Vive wand. Kinect did not, and it was never used for anything noteworthy in gaming. Mine sits on my desk as a glorified mic array, and no I didn't pay for it.
Nonsense, multiple fantastic games, some of the best VR has to offer, do not use touch controllers or vive wands.
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No sir.
Quite a few VR games use a standard pad controller, and are really good. I can name Chronos or Edge of Nowhere for instance.
There's also some new "escape games" that are using VR, and this genre is perfectly suited to that.
I have an Oculus Rift and will only play ED in VR, so for me it is not a fad. The things that I don't like about it, are the Fresnel lenses and the FOV. Such a shame graphics card prices are so high too. You do need a decent card to run ED in all it's splendour.
Would love to see Dungeon Keeper VR become a thing. [smile]
Would love to see Dungeon Keeper VR become a thing. [smile]
Elite, Resident Evil 7, Obduction before they patched in Touch controls, Edge of Nowhere, Subnautica, Chronos, Thumper, the Serious Sam remasters, Redout, Project Cars... just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Also, Elite works fine with keyboard/mouse in VR though it's obviously better with a Hotas just like it is on a monitor. Racing games can use wheels, but they also work just fine with controlers or k/m.
Meanwhile, nearly all touch/wand games are "stand in a spot shooting at a thing" shovelware or bow and arrow simulators. There's a few great versions of those, like Robo Recall, but most are trash. There's also a number of touch games that do more than have you teleport to nodes and point at stuff like Lone Echo and Onward, but there's not many when most devs can't muster the effort and creativity to figure out how to make an engaging and long lasting game experience with motion controls instead of just resorting to "Waves of [FOTM Enemies] coming at you, shoot/throw stuff at them while you stand in place or maybe use some boring teleport mechanic." I chalk it up to the inability try new things or let players move freely with thumbsticks or find some other method of moving around instead of forcing teleport which is about the most jarring and uninteresting way to control a character in a game.
Another interesting thing about my short list of games: many are real actual games lasting multiple hours instead of the 10 to twenty minute "experiences" that get churned out because there's only so much gameplay you can force into the act of standing in one spot pointing controllers at stuff.
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Along these lines, whatever happened to the platform where you could physically turn, run, duck etc, and the game mirrored your movements?
Love to see this, actually get in shape while playing CS.
Imagine the in game experience where 90% of the players just fall down from exhaustion after trying to get out of spawn by sprinting.
Love to see this, actually get in shape while playing CS.
Imagine the in game experience where 90% of the players just fall down from exhaustion after trying to get out of spawn by sprinting.
I value my eyes, so i'll hold out until we get a proper 'holodeck' 
Third person in VR...? How on earth does that even make the slightest bit of sense? Who thought this was a good idea? You want to be a floating head following some guy around while "controlling" him, instead of being, and embodying said avatar, like in actual VR?
I was under the impression all of the escape room games were roomscale, as that's one genre that approach is perfectly suited for, but I don't really play those.
Elite = HOTAS is best for this
Serious Sam remasters = fully room scale with motion controls. They may have accessibility options for those who are impaired from using full VR for some reason, but that's clearly a second rate way to play these games.
Redout = I tried the demo, it was crap. Vector 36 is better and has HOTAS support
Project Cars = racing wheel is best for this
The rest I haven't played as they don't interest me.
There's a lot of shovelware and repetitive wave shooters for sure (What does seated-only have other than cockpit sims and racing games? Mario clones where you're a floating disembodied head replacing a third person camera? KB+M first person games? You might as well be just using VorpX to play regular games. How many actually do that?), but roomscale + motion controls in no way limits game design to those constraints, on the contrary, roomscale + locomotion is the hightest amount of freedom possible in VR. Sairento, Fallout 4, Onward, Serious Sam all give you smooth locomotion on top of the ability to move around in roomscale, the two modes of movement are in no way mutually exclusive and they complement each other. That's the golden standard, anything less is a suboptimal VR experience (though a game designed fully around the limitations of roomscale-only can also be fun, and potentially more immersive than locomotion, but that does put some serious constraints on game design)
It's less about whether it "works", it's more about "what's the point"
What does it put on the table that makes it worth the hassle of putting on the headset and suffering the lego resolution, vs. just playing monitor games on a monitor?
For VR, you would want games that actually make good use of VR.
What does it put on the table that makes it worth the hassle of putting on the headset and suffering the lego resolution, vs. just playing monitor games on a monitor?
For VR, you would want games that actually make good use of VR.
Mu77ley
Volunteer Moderator
I value my eyes, so i'll hold out until we get a proper 'holodeck'
You do know that there's absolutely no evidence of any kind that having a screen close to your eyes is in any way damaging? That's an old wives tale, aka nonsense.
Mu77ley
Volunteer Moderator
Well, I've played Lucky's Tale quite a bit which is a 3rd person platformer, and it's a fantastic experience. You feel like you're controlling little miniature figures running around a model world, it's just brilliant.
Funnily enough, when I made my earlier comment about Lucky's Tale I was only half joking ... I never expected a "silly" gold-coin collecting platform game to be especially interesting in VR but you're dead right - it's like you're interacting with this little model world that's all right there in front of you and it is, as you say, surprisingly brilliant.
"I'm still waiting for real games to come out for it"
And that pretty much sums it up for me. I've had a Rift for a few months, and I love it. It's great, but I get bored quickly, and browsing the game library on the rift store is like sifting through Netflix for something to watch. Lots of flashy stuff, but very little meat. I like Roborecall, but I can't play that for extended periods. Elite is stunning in VR, but I like having a second screen to do other things when playing, and the Dash 2.0 isn't quite the same thing. So yeah, I love the idea of it, I think it has enormous potential, but it's just not there yet in terms of applications and games.
And that pretty much sums it up for me. I've had a Rift for a few months, and I love it. It's great, but I get bored quickly, and browsing the game library on the rift store is like sifting through Netflix for something to watch. Lots of flashy stuff, but very little meat. I like Roborecall, but I can't play that for extended periods. Elite is stunning in VR, but I like having a second screen to do other things when playing, and the Dash 2.0 isn't quite the same thing. So yeah, I love the idea of it, I think it has enormous potential, but it's just not there yet in terms of applications and games.
Thing is that unlike previous "novelty" experiences, like the Wii where the majority of games were naff and just displayed the potential of the technology rather than applying the tech to the games we're used to (don't get me wrong Nintendo have a knack for pushing the boat out and the Wii was an important release), we're now at the point where standard games have either an integrated VR option or a standalone VR version.
Some of it feels a little or very unpolished but we're cresting the horizon of an age where VR compatibility is gonna become fairly standard for many high reputation games.
What I DON'T want to see is more releases like FO4 VR - expensive VR version of the game and was released in such a poor state that it's far from even finished, let alone "polished". Crap menu functionality, buggy, no DLC, cannot use gun scopes...the list goes on and on.
If you haven't heard of it mate, try looking up vorpx.