RolStoppable said:
Yes, people get sick from other things in life and in the majority of cases that can be overcome by getting your body used to it. That requires the motivation to do so. In your examples, that's the desire to travel to distant places and see more of the world. For VR, it would obviously be the games. But if the VR journey starts with developers holding back until there are enough sales of the devices to convince them otherwise, then that pretty much initiates the death spiral because consumers aren't going to buy when the games aren't there yet.
All I have to back up that the majority isn't going to put up with VR is that the majority is already not investing into 3D (be it games or movies), and 3D is a less taxing experience on the mind and body, so logically, VR is going to fare worse. Admittedly, this majority also includes people who are simply disinterested in those technologies, so take that as a correction for my statement in the previous post.
The reason why I think that the benefits of VR are insubstantial in the majority of cases is that the regular visual upgrades we've seen over the generations haven't done much to draw in more people to video games. On the other hand, we've seen many popular games over the years that didn't feature strong visuals. If the market is to be convinced that VR is the next big thing in gaming, then VR needs to offer gameplay that is vastly superior in VR or outright exclusive to VR. Merely working well for some games isn't going to cut it, because then it's nothing more than an alternate way to play a game. A substantial improvement would be when lots of people start to say that they cannot imagine playing certain kinds of games without VR anymore.
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Comparing it to 3D is also one of the problems VR faces. I've tried 3D in the late 90's, on a CRT projector no less. I grew bored with it after 1 game. I only fisnished Descent 2 on it, tried a few others, went back to a monitor soon after. I don't enjoy it either in modern cinema. 3D does not add anything significant to the experience, headtracking is the big differentiator.
3D videos on the VR headset don't do anything for me, they looks and feel fake. Perspective that does not adjust to where you look breaks the experience. Yet without 3D it doesn't work either. 360 videos all seem to have the completely wrong scale. 3D plus headtracking together makes all the difference. Everything around you feels solid and in the right proportions. On a 2D screen you have to use tricks with DoF to try to simulate different scales. In Robinson: the journey, it switches to a model like look for some puzzles, simply by adjusting the depth. I tried to take screenshots of it, and it looks exactly the same in 2D. The sense of scale simply does not translate. Same in Bound. In the memory scenes it adjusts the depth to the perspective of a child. Impossible to capture in screenshots.
Graphics are not the strong point of VR, not for a while anyway. Level of awareness, being conscious of your surroundings, a better understanding of everything around you in relation to eachother and yourself are the big advantages. After driving in VR, yes it is hard to go back to driving on a screen. For driving I'm not even aware anymore that I'm looking around at the road. My kids came in the other day, asked why I was turning my head all the time, I'm racing... It comes natural, and now the perspective and rigid view feels all wrong on a tv screen :/
Imo it is vastly superior for many types of games, not only cockpit games. I could never get into Rez on TV. Had no clue what was going on, sucked at it. Instant hit in VR, best VR game so far. I looked at Area X on the tv screen, it's just a mess of pixels with zero sense of depth.
Eagle flight, I don't think it's possible to play that without headtracking, can't imagine how to do it.
I've only had one game so far where VR is detrimental. Super stardust Ultra VR. Looks cool with the world floating in front of you, yet you have less overview as you can't look everywhere at once. In contrast to Tethered (RTS), where you have much better awareness of what is going on. A matter of perspective, SS puts you to close.
But true, if the big games don't come, people won't. If people don't come, big games won't. At least developers already realize this and have started to treat VR as a single platform instead of OR vs Vive vs PSVR. For example http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-11-30-ubisofts-vr-line-up-will-support-cross-platform-play
Azzanation said:
d21lewis said:
This saddens me.
I've been playing PSVR Worlds lately and it's still amazing to me. I want VR to succeed so badly. |
I dont think you want VR to succeed unless you prefer your next console purchase to be VR only. Companies arent going to focus on 2 types of media. Its already a expensive and costly industry to be in. Comes down picking one. For me id prefer a controller anyday.
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I wouldn't mind a VR only console yet that's not neccesary. People will still love 2D games which have no reason to be in VR. RTS and early FPS weren't suited to consoles, didn't hamper them either.
Only 4 out of the 18 games I've bought for VR so far require the move controller(s). Some games feel better played while standing, most you can simply get comfortable on the couch with a controller. I prefer to still use my 5.1 sound system instead of headphones, better sound quality and you're not completely cut off from the outside world.
The headset will be the console in the future, perhaps with the ability to beam a h.265 stream to the tv for non VR purposes. It's the only way to go wireless eventually. I don't want to wait that long. I'm enjoying it now. I might be 60+ before lightweight dual 8K wireless VR with decent battery life exists.
It's an uphill battle I admit. Mainstream gaming is on phones or tablets with the tv on in the background. Then there's the cod and fifa crowd, both games not the best fit to start with in VR. I don't know if VR can break the status quo and become big as a new form of entertainment. I sure hope it can.
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