"IMO" = your opinion... millions of headsets selling year on year = fact. Fact > Opinion
Frontier don't even honour their own words!!! (Angry about VR)
- Thread starter NoVR - What_The_X_F_Dev
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Of course FB wants it. They are obsessed gettong into ppl's privacy. And what would be better than peeping what you see. FB is also experienced in inflating numbers. What are the VR sets being used iin? How many are used. Erotic media, Conference equipment? I have a hard time believing there is every simmer getting a VR set because it's still pretty expensive for what it does.AFAIK, there's ~5 million Quest 2 headsets in circulation at the moment. They're projecting that will grow to 9 million by the end of the year. Whether that happens or not is an open question at this point, but I think it's fair to say that the headset is aimed squarely at the mainstream consumer market & is heavily subsidised by FB to flood the market. It's a space Zuckerberg wants to own, and so far, he's succeeding.
Result is, VR is no longer "niche". Braben has got it wrong (again) & backed the wrong horse.
Other companies will fill the void after FDev's departure and make all the games and the money in that growing market.
Your bias is showing. They're simply pulling the same trick that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo do when selling new consoles - sell them at below cost in order to gain market share. Once you're on their platform, they can monetise you in other ways. It works... and is working for VR too. Are we going to suggest that console users are "niche" now?
They'll be used in whatever way the user sees fit & can find the software for. Which brings us back to Elite...
I'm going to guess you don't own a VR headset yourself.
Seriously, with over a billion users I am not sure Zuckerberg cares if you spend 3 hours a day in ED.
You're correct. On the bias too. Last I heard was that frames and resolutions arent the hottest which makes me wonder why there is such a ruckus when the worst thing to use it for would be twitch based shooter gameplay.Your bias is showing. They're simply pulling the same trick that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo do when selling new consoles - sell them at below cost in order to gain market share. Once you're on their platform, they can monetise you in other ways. It works... and is working for VR too. Are we going to suggest that console users are "niche" now?
They'll be used in whatever way the user sees fit & can find the software for. Which brings us back to Elite...
I'm going to guess you don't own a VR headset yourself.
You could level those questions to any computing equipment, laptops, PC's, tablets etc...
Granted, not EVERY VR headset sale is to a gamer, and not every gamer is a VR headset owner. For example, I used to work with a guy who, after trying my gaming laptop + VR headset, which was way better than gaming on the laptops 4k gsynch screen, bought the first oculus standalone headset, purely to watch movies on it rather, than watching his vilms on the 19" TV's we had in our cabins. However, most VR owners I know buy it to take their gaming experience to the next level, and studies have shown that simmers tend to be more into VR than most gamers, and Elite as a specialised flight sim is over represented by VR users making up a way larger section of the userbase than is typical across gaming as a whole and even the simming niche.
~4megapixel display, supporting upto 120hz refresh rate after a recent software update, so approximately comparable to 2540x1440p @ 120hz - not a bad display...
Sure, pure esports athletes would find anythin other than 144hz "totaly unplayable" but twitch based gunplay is only a small aprt of Elite, which has always been big on immersion, and VR is THE immersion peripheral.
It's perfect for sims. I used head trackers and its not just for dogfights. Complex sims dont fit on a screenanymore. All the info is too much to not turn the head to the various dials views and haveyou. Putting that together is perfect and best for realistic simulations. Either for job training or gaming. Surprised to hear it's used for meia consumption. I guessed the erotica is a niftrty idea and thought the sets were only useful for 3D stereoscopic modes?
I can't speak directly about the Q2 performance yet, because I don't own one (yet), but a standalone full VR headset that will also work wirelessly with a PC - sold for less than the price of your average games console - is obviously attractive to many folks. Especially when you can't even buy said consoles easily, and I could walk into a shop right now and come out with a Quest 2.
There's a ruckus because E: D has always been a VR game, since the days of the Oculus DK2. Thousands of people have built their rigs around it (including me) so we're naturally p'd off that development on it has been halted with Odyssey.
But as I said, other companies will come along and fill that void. Because the market is now huge and will only get bigger, and if FDev doesn't want a share of that pie, then the failing is on them.
It's a known historical fact that the growth explosion of the internet during the 1990s was driven by "erotica", and it's possible that it will drive VR in the same way. People are people after all.
But unless Braben opens an OnlyFans (which frighteningly probably has a niche market) its not really relevant here.
If you use your headtracker in shooters, you begin to get some mild inkling of the use of VR in that context. VR has some advantages but some drawbacks, save for the latest and greatest headsets with ~4k resolution like the reverb G2, resolution is down compared to a 2160p monitor,or some of these ultrawide offerings currently occupying the top end of the monitor market. But it is 360° stereoscopic 3D vision that conpletely fills your field of view, like you don't see the edges of the monitor, or the keyboard or mouse, al you see is the game world. The hope is that more nuanced gameplay will be added to elite, such as EVA, boarding derelict ships, station interiors beyond the foyer etc, and the game will turn to a RPG rather than a shooter, at which point the VR headset will be in its element.
You keep circling back to the aspect of VR, I used tot ake my headset and gaming laptop onto offshore oil rigs, where I was asked about and one of my colleagues out there confirmed there is a lot of VR available, and, and his colleagues said he probably had most of it. So yes, VR follows Rule 34, if it exists there will be pron for it, can we now move past please? As I really don't think this is appropriate for this forum.
Even if Odyssey's gameplay remains as is, I don't think there are many esport's E-thletes going to be competing in Odyssey CZ's, and even if they were, the odds of being in a VR headset, in the same location, at the same time, and in the same game isntance as an E-thelete, on the opposing side, is so remote as to be irelevant. But even if a VR player were to instance with a pro, one of the two, E-thlete or VR player would get splattered PDQ, and likely respawn into a new/different instance, and it's highly unlikely that the VR player would be all that bothered, if they wanted to be an E-thlete / progamer, they'd either up their game to compensate for the VR's compromises, or go fancy monitor 
I think streaming media (movies, TV shows and the erotica stuff) would drive VR more than gaming. But that is depending on the price point maybe even more than for general gaming. What surpises me is the seemingly automatic connection between "platform" and VR. That's two different things and a mere display device doesn't need to be marketed as a part of a closed distribution channel. It would see much better market penetration as a simple display device open for all applications.
Because VR has moved on from being simply "another display" to being a standalone platform in and of itself, requiring no additional hardware to work.
That's basically the Quest 2. Other headsets will simply use whatever API is setup for them, or following open standards like OpenXR or SteamVR, but that's not really what we're talking about here. Those headsets are the Vive, Index, PiMax, Rift S, G2 and others... which are high end "niche" headsets by comparison.
The thing about the Quest 2 is that it can be both. And given the sheer numbers of them out there, that's a very big market that FDev are passing up.
They are starting to toy with the idea of VR adds. I won't be the least surprised if they end up gathering info as proficiently as they do in FB. Why do you think they can price so competitively the Oculus Rift?
Excuse me, because google is unhelpful for me, unless you meant People Dedicated to Quality, wtfdev does PDQ mean?
I'll only address this briefly, as this is no forum appropriate for this discussion but the adult entertainment is basically 360 stereo videos, with only 3 degrees of freedom (roll, pitch, yaw) as opposed to full 3d. And I've heard a few opinions that the scale of the experience is not okay for some. I like it tho
There are some specialised, ahem, anime games out there and some indie titles which I didn't explore tbh. If one looks for vr subreddits on Reddit, one will find it. But frankly it's only for, pardon the double pun, VRgins. Later it loses the appeal, and all you see is low res, faux 3d and shoddy production values (or it's me getting old ;P) naaaah ;-). On a sidenote, what the modding community did to pancake skyrim, is now available in VR. Just sayin'.Last thing to add: VR makes the brain "believe", and the effect is really strong at start when it's not accustomed to VR. Later the "brain wow factor" disappears, and you kinda take it for granted. When I first tried Pimax 5k+ in it's widest display mode, at first I was like "woooow", and then it grew on me very quickly and I treated it as "normal". It was only when I switched back to my OG HTC Vive when I was simply "gutpunched" on how limiting the FOV is (compare to viewing through toilet paper rolls). Until I didn't have the comparison, Vive didn't feel claustrophobic. After I had comparison it was simply too small. What's interesting, the feeling subsided after I used the vive for a while, but it remained as memory. And with Pimax 5k+, while I already had a few years of VR experience behind me I almost leaned on the table in "The Lab". The illusion was that much better than the OG Vive (better res, better fov, a bitt better edge to edge clarity).
As for framerates, it's a peculiar thing. Some people experience it like it's hyper-realistic - Norm from Tested who reviewed Index was praising the 144Hz mode to heaven. Now I do play FPSes a lot, and since having a TV which could support 120Hz I never looked back. I can detect something is off if my framerates drop from 120 to 110-100, it just... "feels" wrong. Also if my current FPS game (Overwatch) which I play in 4k120, earlier 1080p120 somehow starts in borderless windowed 60Hz mode it feels like molasses and it's like watching a replay for me. So you can say I'm very sensitive to framerate issues. I mention this because it is complete opposite in VR. I have the Index, and I have very hard time recognizing whether it's 90, 120 or 144 Hz. I know what I have to look for, but basically for me is only possible to spot it when I am focusing on spotting it. If you are curious, you can kinda tell by the smoothness of stick rotation, but I'd have a hard time determining the difference between say 120 and 144Hz. It's probably connected to the way the brain interprets one flashing 2d image on screen (monitor view), and two completely separate 2d images presented separately to each eye, simulating the world. Fascinating, really.
Pretty Darned Quickly.
I actually think the opposite, with the rapidly dropping prices of large screen 4k TV's over the last 5 years, and the whole content delivery system there in place already, sky / netflix etc, TV's will remain the main viewing platform for video content. To make a VR headset little more than a wearable TV is massivly underutilsing the technology, those kits you clip your phone into a set of goggles as low dough VR can already do that, where as a Quest 2 as a standalone device is (AFIK) on a par with a PS3's performance, and a typical VR gaming PC is two levels above that.
Both the standalones and the PCVR systems have the ability to render interactive games/experiences, which are much more immersive than just watching a video. Maybe, in future, interactive or 360° content will be created which will play to the headsets strengths, imagine the sounds coming from behind you, and you have to look over your shoulder to see the monster, rather than a cut to a new camera angle? Initial VR applicaitons included alot of 360° video platforms, think of a VR version of youtube, but they were all short clips and pretty low budget productions, and never really took off as the defining VR experiences. Maybe if big studios made headline movies / boxsets for the 360° market the platform might gain more traction in that sector, but for now, it is better utilised as a 3D gaming / simulation experience.
Maybe, the market would be big to tap though.
The gaming VR is kinda limited. When steam started tagging VR I used it to filter them out. VR games would be incompatible with standard PC setup so it's like the games dont exist. Kinda like exclusives.
For the market to be that big, it would need content made specifically for it, produced specifically for 360° - it is possible,I eman there are some cool technologies going into production facilities that would work with that idea, like the cinematic wraparounds replacing green screen (linked below) but it would take a paradigm shift within the film making industry combined with a consumer hardware and software platform to make it work.
There are some games that are indeed VR only such as lone echo and onward(?), there are others that have NO VR whatsoever like Cyberpunk 2077, but there are plenty that have VR as an option. Starting with the obvious one, Elite, it's both VR and monitor playable, as is Skyrim etc...
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