VR is not a gimmick!

[The_Yoda]

John2290 said:

The_Yoda said:

No worries, I agree sight and sound are the big two, touch would be next, smell then taste in my opinion. 

I don't know that being able to add smell would be any more of a gimmick than the sensation of touch.  Not a necessity but yet another element that adds to immersion and brings the overall experience closer to reality. I also think it would be easier to implement than taste which as I stated earlier I think would be near impossible.  The only way I can see taste getting pulled off is some sort of neural interface.

 

Again as I said to Errorist76 my response in this thread was more to curb Habam enthusiastic claims of "everything is possible".  As much as I hate to give him this out, he may have been talking of the future of VR rather than what is possible in the here and now. Even then the Everything is an awfully big claim to make even when talking of the future.

I think touch has much more value than simply immersion. It would add a whole lot, too many examples to list are bumbling around in my mind right now but one good one is being able to grab something from a belt on your hip and knowing what it is through different feedback sensations would be invaluable in a inventory heavy fps game like say, perhaps a battle royal game, right now you'd either have to be really mindful of where you left that clip or look down to find it and looking down might mean a bullet through the skull. Immersion would also be greatly increased, I agree but I think it does have value. Gloves with an exo skeletal controller on the back of the hand that replaces motion controls (The rift controls/ps move) and haptec feedback on the inside and knuckles with some form of enhanced rumble on the wrists (for gun recoil and the like) would be invaluable to VR gaming. I believe the only reason they aren't going in on this right now is it kills the external perihperal market and all the current start ups that are sure to pump money into the market and possibly create a tech that will take off, benefiting the tech. However touch is added in, in the long term ...man, I can't wait for a boxing game where I can feel the weight of the gloves and the impact of the punch or the recoil off a gun as I pop off a few rounds into the ceiling of a GTA supermarket, lol.

I can see where you are going, like I said touch ranked in third for me. 

Can you imagine if smell were perfected (perhaps things would get too realistic) how that might affect gameplay.  I imagine I might be even less inclined to go into a sewer in a resident evil game if i also had to put up with the smell let alone whatever creatures are lurking down there.  Or the smell of rotting flesh if I let a zombie get too close, ect ect. 

Or smell smoke in the distance, or gun smoke as you fire off a few rounds. Smell plays a large roll in our lives but again, not as big a roll as touch in my opinion.  We are visual creatures first and foremost though to be sure.

We will near the summit of the tech when all 5 senses are engaged but i see that as being far enough off that I may never see it.

I'm still surprised Errorist76 went off on me like he did, I'm one of the guys that wants this tech pushed forward.  I think it is very neat (even in its current iterations), but at the same time I understand the practical limitations of today's technology, mostly notably in low cost interfaces.