Yes, there are tools for looking at running programs as 3d objects in VR, as well for static analysis of programs.
The one I looked at a few years back was focused on JVM programs, so it created a 2d graph of objects, and while running moved those graphs into 3d as the classes were instantiated. An intuitive view that made it easy to identify memory issues and poor relationships. A set of colored lines displayed the execution of code (one color per thread), making it a great tool for identifying bottlenecks.
Not to crack open a very annoying semantic argument again but our vision of the 3D world is just a 2D plane so having "3D" - by which I guess you mean perception of depth through parallax - would do little to ease visualization of 4D surfaces.
Sure, it looks really cool to make big sweeping motions, and have them reflected in the digital world. But in reality, most people want to minimum input/maximum result. We need the power steering UX for VR.
VR may open up a totally new field that is independent of current games.
The best examples are Echo VR and BeatSaber. Some call them Exergames, but i think "exercise" discredits the amount of fun you'll have.
When the movement of your body itself becomes a major component of the gameplay (beyond gimmicky reload sequences), VR begins to shine. For example, EchoVR has players dribbling, precisely throwing, pushing themselves off walls and even _physically jumping_ to catch a disk.
The article's argument, and mine, is this is actually a very limited view of VR. Some people want to do these active things, but most people just want to hang out. Even in the much tamer example from the article, playing cards at a table, the game forces you to mimic the in game setup in real life. If the player has any a11y needs or just doesn't want to sit that way, then there aren't any good alternatives.
Yeah, I got the Creed VR boxing game in a bundle at some point and VR sports is honestly a combination of too fun and too sweaty for me to play much of. I haven't needed to stretch to prepare for playing a video game before, even with the Wii.
> EchoVR has players dribbling, precisely throwing, pushing themselves off walls and even _physically jumping_ to catch a disk.
I get how this can be fun (I do enjoy Beat Saber), for short stretches of time and if you're in decent physical condition (my knees hate crouching-heavy songs).
But if you're in a wheelchair, you can't jump. You can't crouch. Heck, if you're over 40, you probably don't want to jump on a carpet with something blocking your view. Bad landings can easily result in permanent injuries. I've seen more than a few colleagues quit after-work basketball games for this very reason.
So, while there's definitely a place for physical games in VR, there also needs to be a place for more Moss-like games in VR too.
But I also remember my "I'm invincible" years where I did a lot of stupid shit because it was novel and/or entertaining. I'm mildly shocked that it's just my knees that I gripe about.
I think where we disagree is whether there is a large enough demand for these non-physical games.
VR is selling bad enough as it is.
Having seen friends drop out of VR for various reasons, I believe that the main draw, more so than immersion and more so than social presence, _is_ the physical movement.
Oculus' top sellers list seems to confirm that belief.
I'm not denying that there is demand outside of exergames, but contrary to the articles clickbaity headline, they're not "the point".
Edit: *Currenty. This will change once VR becomes accessible and comfortable.
I'm afraid that I don't understand the link between people dropping out of VR and a lack of good games requiring physical movement. As you said yourself, the top lists are dominated by those games. Not because they're superior, but because you can already play non-physical games on other consoles (PS5/Switch/Xbox, computers, phones, etc).
I'd even go so far to say that the lack of non-physical games is the biggest detriment to the continued adoption of VR. Stick with me for a moment as I reason this through.
Even the most fit player can only spend an hour or two playing physical VR games. What we do when our body is exhausted from exercising in VR, yet we want to play games some more? We go play more traditional games on a monitor or TV (or phone).
Why do we change which entertainment device we're using? Because the non-physical games we want to play are not available in a VR setting. We can't play angry birds, Call of Duty, Hades, Genshin Impact, or FFXIV in VR. Thus, we must have at least two consoles. Which for most people means they'll have just one console, because consoles are expensive. And logically, that means most people will go for the non-VR console, since it has more games, by several magnitudes.
In contrast, if our entire library of games was available via your VR headset - even as a "you're sitting in a theater" experience - I believe many would be happy to play them there. They could get their full experience with one console.
> I'm afraid that I don't understand the link between people dropping out of VR and a lack of good games requiring physical movement.
My argument is, that only these physical games are what currently sells VR, while the other experiences are not worth the current drawbacks.
> I'd even go so far to say that the lack of non-physical games is the biggest detriment to the continued adoption of VR.
If that was true, wouldn't the available non-physical games sell far better? Without knowing the numbers, Moss, Hellblade, and Lucky's Tale all didn't seem to make a huge splash.
Developers of Subnautica and Everspace have abandoned their VR versions due to lack of interest.
Additionally, I've consistently seen my friends chose 2D screens for games like Payday and IL-2 over VR.
Again, I want to underscore "currently". I believe in a future where VR becomes a primary display.
> Even the most fit player can only spend an hour or two playing physical VR games.
With this, and the sibling comments about the danger of injury, I'm a bit surprised at how cynical you are regarding the average health. I wouldn't call myself remarkably fit, but I can and have played for five hours. I'm also interested to see how all these teens fare growing up with the device. I imagine they will have an exceptional awareness of both worlds.
See, I view the target market as more than just young affluent individuals. I think VR can be and should be for everyone. Young and old. Rich and poor. Able bodied and not.
Which means things like accessibility and a broad variety of games is paramount to its long term success.
This is not meant to be snarky or demeaning but it's hard to judge something has bad in general by "but if you're in a wheelchair". Most of life is not friendly to wheelchairs. My shower, my kitchen sink, the top half of my refrigerator, my car, my building (15 apartments) has only stairs. Etc....
Sure, more things designed for people with various diverse needs is awesome but a world limited to only things that work for people in wheelchairs seems like it would be very limited vs a world where we find out a way to let people in wheelchairs do everything if they want to.
I'm not sure where you got the impression anyone was arguing for a different limited subset of VR interaction rather than a superset to allow it all to happen.
Provide ALL the options. "Some options will make people sick." Ok so that option is not for them, let them turn it off again.
But it might be great for someone else. Just let people be free...
Beat Saber is one of the most popular VR games. The VR world and the real world are locked together, so everything feels right. Anything that breaks that lock is at least annoying, and nauseating to some. This is a big problem.
With omnidirectional treadmills, it gets somewhat better. Phia, who has The Virtual Reality Show on Youtube, has tried some of them.[1] Phia is a VR native. She's grown up using VR. She makes videos about VR while in VR with full body tracking. Worth seeing critiques of VR from someone who really gets it.
A lot of VR games have features for grabbing objects at a distance (Half Life Alyx makes this canon by giving you "gravity gloves"). Many games have menus where you point your hand and pull the trigger instead of moving your hand all the way to touch a virtual in-game button. I think a few more innovations like these would help.
Not true for many if not most people. More physical effort is a feature for me. I can now have a really enjoyable workout by simply playing a video game and I’ve lost 20 lbs so far. Also I find myself playing a lot less video games since it tires me out within 2 hours
TLDR: the author thinks accessibility and new UX is more important than mimicking real-world UX.
IMO accessibility does need to be a consideration, VR can be a big help to disabled. That said, I don’t agree that the default should be “remove UX for accessibility”. I’d wager that mimicking the real world is VRs “files and desktops” skeuomorphic analogy that makes it more approachable in the short run to new users. Like other devices, there should probably be an accessibility mode in VR tools. The authors use case seems pretty common (reclining to use a headset) and probably should be handled well at the OS level.
> If you can’t do something in VR because of a limited range of motion in real life, I think that you have failed as a VR developer.
I have never disagreed with an opinion on VR more. The worst VR experiences are the ones that would be possible without the VR. I thought half life Alyx was bad because of this. I don’t want to treat my headset as just another screen.
There's a difference between possible and being the default. What's being said is akin to complaining about UIs that are mouse centric not having a way to navigate or select controls by keyboard, which is a valid complaint. It doesn't have the be the default, it doesn't even have to show itself without a special setting being toggled, but it should be possible.
I personally thought Dragon Fist was one of the few games that makes you really feel like you're in the space. The only bad part is that few people have enough space to really play it properly and the movement button is so awkward to use. Also, it is one of the games with the highest danger of you punching the wall by accident, even with a conservative guardian boundary.
Caveat: I don't get VR sick and hate all of the clunky movement options you are stuck with in most games. Teleporting around is never not awkward.
I also enjoyed Down the Rabbit Hole, but I have to admit that it could have worked just as well on a regular screen.
> "The worst VR experiences are the ones that would be possible without the VR"
Have to assume you meant "impossible", otherwise I'm confused by your comment.
And I have to disagree. There's nothing wrong with giving people are few nice powers and magic forces over their environment. In real life, I'd love to have a way to pick up objects from a distance. Who wouldn't want that? VR can provide that easily.
I think one thing that's being skirted past by the author with regards to allowing freecam movement is that freecam is the #1 way to cause motion sickness in VR. The purpose of the realism isn't _just_ to keep the user engaged/sell units/have a good experience, it's also because alignment between "what you see" and "what you're doing" is a critical part of the inner-ear feedback loop. There's a reason that so much effort goes into comfort reticles, motor controls, etc: That if you do it wrong your users puke.
You’re absolutely right. To me this is an argument that we need much more standardization and fine-grained details about “comfort level”, and control options.
Many games seem to implement motion and interaction controls internally, which is great for experimentation. But for many games, that isn’t the main point. In those, the user could instead select one of their own personal control schemes. Maybe some of those control schemes could even be extensible, for games that want a familiar UI, but also want to experiment a bit.
Everyone is right. The author still has a point though. However, I don’t see it being fixed until VR hits a tipping point with user numbers, and I don’t see that happening until Apple’s headset is successful (which probably won’t be the 1st version due to its high cost). Meta has an amazing product, but the brand is still tarnished for now which is why so many people actively avoid it. There’s just not enough money in the market to make anyone inclined to solve an edge problem sooner than needed. It will remain an edge case until more of the elderly generation start using VR more often
I mean it also could probably solved by just having a slider that allowed you to change your head position (like an offset). I think his problem is that his head is just way back compared to his body (offset backwards)
Personally I think part of the fun with game consoles is playing sprawled out. The other day I walked up to an old parachute hammock up in the woods and played Mario Kart 7 with a Nintendo 3DS after I crawled up into it.
VR should create simulations that are consistent with that kind of environment.
VRChat has a feature where you can set an angle offset ("horizon adjust") for all of your tracked positions (headset and controllers). So if you're laying down facing the ceiling, you can press a button and the game will treat it in-game as if you're standing up looking forward.
I personally think that lack of eye movement tracking is really the worst part. In real life you don't normally have to turn your whole head to look at things all the time, you often can just look using eye movements and focus. But ability to fully track that stuff and ways to provide some kind of depth perception are almost completely missing from the current VR tech. Methinks it's gonna take a lot of R&D before we're at that level of immersion.
Isn't that mostly about the headsets having a (relatively) limited feld of view. With (insanely fast) eye tracking you might be able to avoid rendering part of the screens you are not looking at but the lense/screen will still need to be physically wide enough for you to look at those parts.
Its a power tool though. Opt-in should be fine. There are a few free look implementations and they're not that bad, anyway.
In my mind the bigger issue is games are just not designed for free look and it doesn't even make all that much sense. Heads clipping through walls is already an annoying problem without the assumption the user can fly anywhere.
I think supporting stick movement and crouch or fixed height seems like something that might be standard if we end up seeing some AAA experiences.
I think the author is arguing that they should be able to press arbitrary buttons and do all the necessary dancing without having to move your avatar to an arbitrary place and pose - freecam movement isn't necessarily implied.
I tend to avoid more extreme carnival rides due to motion sickness, and must take drugs to be out on the open ocean and my own experience with VR was a mild feeling of being unwell that persisted for a few hours after the end of a session.
This was only for the first week of owning and using VR, after that I acclimated to it just fine.
Pretty much everyone, when presented with a poor VR experience (high latency, low framerates) will get nauseous. But there is also a minority who can never get used to even an otherwise good VR experience. Especially if there's any kind of sliding.
Sadly (note, my opinion comes from being in that minority who can't get used to sliding), the current VR player community has settled on sliding as the best mode of movement, and berate developers who create alternatives, when they even create alternatives (Boneworks, etc).
Even many games which do offer alternative movement methods still expect you to crouch, kneel, lean, pivot, etc. I'm not 20 anymore.
Combine the above with the lack of audience (largely due to cost), it's a positive feedback loop of mediocrity. The Quest2 was the closest we came to affordability, and it was still the cost of a middle-range cell phone with limited utility and way fewer games.
At least with social VR, teleport-style locomotion is a decent alternative to sliding controller locomotion, because you're going to spend most of your time planted in one spot and talking to people near you.
When I was new to VRChat, I mainly played with teleport locomotion. (Well, "holoport locomotion": you point somewhere and hold a joystick, your point-of-view stays still while you and everyone else sees your avatar walk there, and then when you let go your point-of-view teleports into your avatar's new location. No unnatural nausea-inducing sliding.) Though there are some game worlds in VRChat that involve running around a lot that don't work well with holoport, and I would occasionally try sliding controller locomotion mode instead. Eventually, around the time I put in a hundred hours into the game, I found I could use sliding controller locomotion without issue, and switched to it for good.
Even beyond acute reactions, current headsets are also pretty bad for eye strain, and for some heavier headsets also neck strain. Pretty much no current headsets are comfortably usable for very long periods.
If the bar is "can spend as much time in VR as I currently do on PC gaming/console gaming" we're nowhere close to it. I can (and have) sat in front of a Playstation for 5-8 hours in a row, and even though my body feels like crap afterwards it's still a heck of a lot longer than I can stand being in a Quest 2.
There's a reason the most successful applications are short-and-sweet. But if you want people to socialize in VR and spend a large amount of time there both the acute illness issue and long-session comfort need to be solved.
I use a third-party strap for the Quest 2 and it is comfortable enough for 5-8 hours (and has a battery so it'll last that long). The stock strap is not great, though.
Yeah, the fact that aftermarket mods are basically necessary to actually fully make use of Quest 2 is what leads to me think that this is not a fully-formed product yet.
For example Quest 2 while usable while wearing glasses, is deeply unpleasant. If you're a glasses wearer a set of prescription inserts is practically required. Likewise for comfort aftermarket straps are a must.
I get why FB isn't including these things out of the box (or has first-party consideration for it) but it overall makes the whole thing feel like a deeply unfinished product.
It's a very affordable headset for casual or occasional VR users. Those who want to use it a lot can pay extra for a strap/interface. If Facebook had sold it that way, with a normal and a 'Pro' version, that would have cleared up a lot of confusion IMO.
For glasses are you using the spacer? I find it okay with the spacer but it lets too much light in. And the aftermarket interfaces don't always support glasses. It's a bit of a mess.
I cannot imagine Gorilla tag. I think I am extremely hard to get nausious. I did not feel a thing for months using the Quest. But grabbing onto things in vr and climbing around like that, I am still feeling nauseous from playing Bonelabs yesterday.
> Why is VR more restrictive than my 27” monitor? Doesn’t that defeat the entire point?
No sir, restrictions are the point. Restrictions are what prevent a reality from simply being a bunch of abstract concepts floating in and out of existence without rules or reason.
Our physical reality has many restrictions: we cannot move through objects, energy is conserved, entropy cannot reverse. These are the restrictions we have to face. And in virtual reality you will have virtual restrictions.
which are arbitrary and don't accommodate this person's range of motion making it useless for his use case.
They want their virtual reality to allow them to do more than they can in the real world... wtf is the point of virtual realities if they suck just as much as this one?
On my list of projects I'll never do but dream about being a billionaire from is a multidirectional VR deck that uses an omniwheel and outerbound drive system to simulate terrain and elevation.
> Do people really care that it kind of looks like they’re betting or it kind of looks like they’re really holding their cards, or do they just want to play poker and interact with people?
I think people do care about factors that add towards the feeling of physical presence. Would maybe go as far as to say that it's the primary point of VR tabletop simulator games as opposed to the more convenient sites/apps for playing and chatting.
Support for more/arbitrary seated positions seems like it'd make sense though.
> Would maybe go as far as to say that it's the primary point of VR tabletop simulator games
I think there's another big aspect there, though - the annoyance with software (even well-made software) when it comes to "goddamn it just let me move the thing over myself".
That goes a long way towards explaining the fairly substantial popularity of Tabletop Simulator as used mostly with mouse and keyboard (its VR interface really isn't great), since it's basically a light physics simulator specialized for board games plus all the helper tools needed to make cards/dice/boards convenient (so, for example, rather than having a rules-enforced game engine, you're moving virtual pieces around in virtual space yourself).
> In all of its public spaces in the metaverse, you can walk around and listen in on conversations if you want to, but if you’re socially awkward it’s going to suck for you.
That's true, but another thing that to me is a huge blocker in that sense, is simply having an accent. When I'm writing in chat rooms my English is fluent and I can just fit right in. But I'm really awkward going into a conversation with a foreign accent in the metaverse.
Even though my accent is not strong at all, and I live in the US and have no problem interacting with people f2f or on the phone/Zoom all day, something about it in the metaverse just makes me feel too self conscious about it. It's weird, it's the only space in which I feel like that, it could just be me I suppose.
I've always thought that VR chat rooms absolutely need is voice changers. And not just pitch sliders, but "speech-to-text-to-speech" style options too. There's no reason you should be able to change your appearance but not your voice.
Accents aside, imagine how much more comfortable people with "traditional" women's voices would end up being.
I know that there are some pretty low quality real time voice changers that can do stuff like this, I wonder if high quality models that can fix accent etc can operate in real time these days.
Voicemod (https://www.voicemod.net) can do some of that, by way of the "virtual microphone" kind of method. It's got the standard old-school voice adjustments you're probably used to, but also the speech-to-text-to-speech style with a limited set of 'AI' voices, plus various layered effects you can toggle on and off (e.g. "spooky cave").
Some of this may be a side effect of the fact that many apps built on WebRTC audio seem to opt for ultracheap audio codecs like G.722[1]. While I haven't been able to completely validate that this is the case, I have noticed that some platforms (like Clubhouse at least through early spring 2021) have truly atrocious audio quality, to the point that everyone sounds like they were talking on a landline phone (which is what codecs like G.722 were designed for).
When you cut the bitrate on an audio signal, it can hurt the signal-to-noise ratio, causing small differences in speech (like a normally subtle accent) to become a larger impediment to being understood.
I'll admit, I'm deep in speculation territory here, but this seems plausible. I will note for the record that this doesn't necessarily apply to larger and more established apps like Zoom and Google Meet. They're definitely compressing the heck out of your audio, but they at least have the decency to use more modern codecs like MP3.
> If motion sickness is the concern, just slow down the top speed of free looking.
There is no non-zero speed of free looking that solves my motion sickness. If "free movement" is the only way to move around space in a VR title, then it's unplayable by me.
Nothing mitigates it. Vignetting, reticles, low-acceleration movement curves. None of it really has an impact on my immediate visceral reaction.
Motion sickness is mainly caused by framerate and given that VR is extremely taxing compared just displaying on a monitor is often the issue. It is hard to drive two screens at once at 120 or higher FPS
No, it's caused by your brain and body disagreeing on movement, one thinks there is movement where the other doesn't and it's the reason you eg. in vr you see movement but your body doesn't feel it. On boats it's the reverse, your body feels movement but the brain sees everything stationary.
For me, it's not FPS. In a game where I can actually walk around in a space, then it's fine. The moment I use a thumbstick to move my camera, then my eyes are disagreeing with my ears about where I am. I instantly feel sick, even at the same frame rate as before.
Visual-vestibular conflict (the main cause of VR sickness) can either be caused by lag (stationary) or vection, i.e., the illusion of movement while locomoting.
I haven't played "until you fall". Maybe I'll try it.
I've tried closing my eyes. It makes it slightly tolerable, but it's definitely not anything I'd call a "good" experience. If I have to fight against the UI just to make it usable to allegedly experience "entertainment", I'll probably just skip it and call it a day.
The elephant in the room with VR is wearing goggles which, no matter how you slice and dice them, just feel dumb to most people. It's why VR is a novelty that creates a laugh at Christmas but get dumped in the unused bin after new year.
For me, I think the winning strategy of VR is to not have to wear goggles and something that can generate smells as this is our most powerful sense.
I don't know that I'd agree with you re: smell. It's strongly tied to memory, and can be tied with emotions via memory, but it's not "more powerful" than vision or audition. what would that comparison even mean?
That elephant from a different angle: adults that grew old staring at glowing rectangles and are now highly resistant to change of any sort. At one point people thought that was stupid, too. What if future change comes mostly from your generation fading into irrelevance and dying off?
You can do VR with a large screen and a webcam and it generally works great. A small room with a 360* circular screen would be even better. You would not even need to generate your own avatar or legs or whatever since you could simply look down and see yourself.
I think this fundamentally misses the point of VR and buys into to the advertisements too much.
Yes, titles need to be better at seated play, because it is a reasonable way to play, given almost no one has enough room to actually walk around.
But the entire point of VR is the controllers, not the headset. The headset is a huge pain in the ass, annoying, blurry, and tiring to use. No one would put on a headset if it were possible to transfer hand movements to a game world any other way. The monitor has to be glued to your face, but that is a downside, not the benefit.
You think the entire point of VR isn't the actual virtual reality?
Without the headset you're back to looking at a 2D projection of the world. There are plenty of fantastic VR experiences that are fully playable in a seated position, flight sims in particular are vastly more immersive when you can physically look around the cockpit and the glass canopy.
No, I think 1 screen vs 2 minutely different screens is the same order of magnitude of virtual reality. Their is almost no benefit, and far more downsides. The complete failure of 3D movies and tvs demonstrates that easily, as they had way fewer downsides and still failed.
Also the neck control is nice, but the only significant benefit of vr is the use of hand-eye coordination for the controller. The use of our feet for locomotion would also be huge, but no one can afford a warehouse to play VR in, so that is possibly never going to happen.
Even with a warehouse, it was obvious that a lot of levels started with you having to turn around as you'd hit the end of usable space.
So even warehouses are not going to cut it.
But I disagree with your "2 minutely different screens" point. I see VR as being like Surround Sound. Yeah, you can play music and watch movies with mono or stereo audio - but the immersivity does add significantly to the experience.
I can't tell if this is a tongue-in-cheek jab at the article's "missing the point of VR" or if you think the Wii is the next step in the evolution of VR. The whole point of VR is the immersion created by being able to look around with the parts of your body made for looking around and seeing a virtual reality substituted for the real one, i.e. the headset. Heck, I can be pretty satisfied with a VR headset and a bog-standard Xbox controller, so long as I have free-look based around twisting my neck.
Agreed. Flying around in Elite Dangerous with a xbox controller is nuts when you have a VR headset on. Shame they didn't follow up on the VR experience with their expansions.
There is even a horror game where all you can do is look around, as you're canonically bound to a wheelchair with chains. You can direct an AI companion with a laser pointer, and that's about it. No controller required (or allowed for that matter).
A great use of VR without full-body controls was "Sir, You're Being Hunted". They changed nothing about the game when they added VR support, except that instead of being able to press ALT or whatever to free-look your head around, you could just... look around. All other controls and whatnot remained the same.
Funny aside about that game, the initial development had promised multiplayer, and then the dev team went incommunicado for like 2 years, during which time everyone assumed the game had died. Then 'Surprise!' multiplayer release. Another year of radio silence and boom, VR support. Mind you, VR headsets were not yet widely available, as in maybe you could see one at some sort of tech fair, but there was no chance you could just go into a store and buy one.
I worked at a startup once and we had early access to the Vive before release. We did a whole VR horror that was set in one hotel room. Imagine something between The Ring and PT. It was unfortunately never released but we never found someone who could make it all the way through without needing to take the headset off.
You can very easily use a large TV (or multiple monitors) if they cover a good amount of your vision plus any standard webcam and do "VR" without a headset. It just basically tracks your head movement and moves the view the monitor produces. Which is the entire point of VR.......
Also the headset does not transfer hand movements at all? Are you talking about the handsets like the two controllers that come with the Vive?
I am not sure how that would work? You want a bunch of monitors mounted around your head somehow?
All modern VR does either full body tracking with the base stations or quest style hand tracking. It would be pretty hard to arrange the monitors in such away that you has full hand movement I dont see how they would not get in the way unless they were tiny and strapped to your face.
I think parent commenter is talking about something like TrackIR, that uses a scaling factor to turn small head movements into large in-sim movements. It has been around since 2001 and has some advantages over VR for seated applications, particularly in terms of cost and comfort.
As someone who plays flight sim: the controllers hold zero value for me, because they're useless. However, the headset is the thing that turns a flight sim into a truly immersive experience, because it allows for the kind of situational awareness that cannot be replicated without a full monitor dome. A triple-wrap-around monitor setup doesn't even come close.
As it turns out, VR means different things to different people. The best VR implementations allow all those people to enjoy VR.
I'm not so sure about all these insights, but I agree with the gist of what he has to say - quality of UX is going to be key with this stuff. Even more than it was with the smartphone revolution. When you are inside of a world and something doesn't work very well, the feeling of frustration is much more intense than when it's just your phone or computer screen. Getting that right will be an enormous project.
My own suspicion is that the one company that can make a substantial move on this space has done extensive research on this topic and that they're waiting patiently until the technology gets to just the right sweet spot. I'm talking about screen resolution, processor size/speed/power, miniaturization, inside-out hand-tracking etc. But once that device gets rolling, developers will have a lot of work on their hands figuring out how to design these sorts of spaces and how to make work comfortable and natural in these sorts of environments.
I mean, the Oculus Quest is arguably a great technology sweet-spot. The original Quest had no problem rendering it's UI and environments at 90hz, and the Quest 2 even manages to lock itself at 120hz. It will be decades before we cross the uncanny valley for VR, so frankly I think the Quest is a great stopgap.
If people want to compete in the VR space, they're going to do so with pricing. I should hope the sales of the Quest vs the Index illustrates that well enough.
The original Quest displays ran at 72 Hz, and the Quest 2 just barely manages to hit 120 Hz for an incredibly small subset of titles. Most run at 72 or 90 Hz.
The Quest is definitely a sweet spot that is possible today technologically, economically. But it’s not the sweet spot that makes humans want to use it all the time. Otherwise it would have been far more successful imho.
The sweet spot I’m talking about is probably just not possible right now. Kind of like how good multi-touch no-keyboard smartphones were not quite there in 2004.
Nobody really agreed about what VR was supposed to be. It was just a "cool future" dream made manifest. I had a friend try a VR expo demo where they put a vibrator on the headset for added immersion. It gave her a concussion.
Like a lot of cool future dreams, there's a need for a "yes, and" follow-up that grapples with the consequences honestly.
Part of the problem here I think is the author is focusing on more metaverse style VR and also experiences that are more "documentary" like (as in watching a sports game) vs actual VR games. In my opinion VR is amazing for lots of video games (like a shooter or a flying space game) and the technology has seen tons and tons of development here. It is fairly mature (although takes a fast PC still) and attracts high end developers and artists. A project like "Poker Stars VR" is probably not very attractive to top end 3D artists and VR developers because it is kind of a boring use of VR. People want to work on cool stuff.
In my opinion what we really need is the metaverse but for hackers. A bunch of business suits meeting in real life or VR will always be boring and sterile. But a place that has the magic of early IRC where a group of whitehats and blackhats anonymously can meet virtually? That could be pretty damn cool and result in some whacky crazy avatars and out of the box environments. Imagine a completely P2P capable hackerverse that mashed together something like Mr. Robot and A Scanner Darkly and your friend shows up looking like a cybernetic android dolphin. You won't see the suits Hug in VR - they're all about Handshakes ;-)
VRChat lets everyone use their own completely custom avatars. You build it in Unity (with ability to use custom 3d models, textures, arbitrary shaders, animations, toggles, OSC protocol support for controlling animations/toggles from external programs/hardware, etc). You upload your avatar to VRChat and then everyone can see you use it. (You don't have to tell everyone you want to see you as it to install your avatar manually from outside the game like how most game mods work.) You can optionally upload an avatar as public so that other people can use it too. People can also make their own worlds (environments) that anyone can visit (unless you mark it as private) that can include arbitrary assets, (sandboxed) level scripts, internet media players, etc. You can make a private instance of a world to visit with friends, or visit a public instance of a world to visit with anyone else who goes there too.
Whenever I get on VRChat with my friends, often a few people show off recent work they've done on their own avatar or worlds. I've uploaded worlds, visited the public instance of the world, and then bumped into tons of random people checking out my world. The game is so good for directly showing off work you've done and talking to other people about the stuff they've made.
NeosVR is p2p and has an embedded node based programming language. I’ve seen everything from yugioh-like card games to racing to a pokeball you can literally capture your friends in. All in a multiplayer, vrchat, metaverse like platform. You can be a non-humanoid avatar if you wish. It makes platforms like Metas a joke.
But in a virtual ski resort you don't need to feel cold. There is nothing inherently limiting about VR that his requests for more accessibility couldn't be readily available.
In reality, most people would love a magic way to pick up objects from a distance. In VR this could be implemented easily. His criticism is that it is not implemented; they are forcing the limited parameters of our current reality on VR.
The problem with his criticism is that not many people, or really enough people have his problem. Most people, including VR enthusiasts, have more freedom of movement. The only way for his problem to be addressed is when both the VR market reaches critical mass AND there is a sizeable number of users with his issue to make it worthwhile to solve.
Most of the best VR experiences I've had were either uncomfortable to me to begin with, or are uncomfortable to many first time and casual users, judging from reviews.
If there was a virtual ski resort and I could feel like the air around me was cold, I would want to!
I'm not saying that no VR experiences can work and be more casual or less immersive (indeed there are some great ones that are just that), but to me the whole point of VR is about going to that next level of immersion and presence.
> In reality, most people would love a magic way to pick up objects from a distance
Many (maybe even most) good VR games have this. Half Life Alyx does it beautifully.
To respond to some points in the article:
> "If you can’t do something in VR because of a limited range of motion in real life, I think that you have failed as a VR developer."
This is nonsensical. Beat Saber would be pointless if you didn't have to wave your arms around, move, dodge. Games with shooting mechanics take on a whole new dimension when you're actually wielding a (virtual) gun with your hands and arms and when you can sidestep, duck, etc. They also allow you to do things (like teleport, jetpack, etc.) that you can't do in reality, but they'd be much worse if they didn't also force you to move (and be limited by your mobility) and use that as part of the control scheme and immersion.
What this statement really says to me is "I'm only interested in VR experiences where I don't need to move" not "you've failed as a VR developer".
> "Some people argue that VR should be a totally immersive experience. You look down, you see your hands, you move your hands around, and so on. Your view is restricted to your neck’s range of motion. While that’s cool, does that kind of immersion trump user experience?"
Yes, totally, in some cases. Often, that kind of immersion is the user experience.
Honestly, I think it's fine to say you want an app for watching TV in VR that's just a big floating screen and works great lying down. Or to criticise the control panel in BigScreen because it could be more usable from a reclined position in which the app otherwise still totally works anyway — that's totally valid feedback.
But to claim that these preferences are the most important thing about VR and that developers should prioritise apps and games for the lazy and casual user with those preferences over pushing the boundaries of the medium is a bit much.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when both in the op and the thread that nobody mentions vrchat. Regularly peaks at 30k plus simultaneous users, tons of game and puzzle worlds, rich avatar system, lots of amazing art and immersive experience projects, and somehow it just flies underneath the radar.
It's also worth noting that VRChat is incredibly janky and buggy in a ton of ways, but has pretty deep accommodations for play style (a sitting/standing toggle is one of the options that's been around for a long time, for example) and self-expression with avatars.
He's clearly using a Quest (he mentioned Horizon Worlds). I've tried VR Chat on Oculus Quest. It's usable, but only barely.
I often joined rooms that would cause VR Chat to crash on the Quest and if I stuck to the default rooms VR Chat recommends, I've mostly just get accosted by children (they sound like they're 10 years old at the oldest) or assholes "Hey, I'm talking to you, why didn't you answer me right away (I'm in a menu). I'm going to kill you!" (and other nasty things until I just left the room)... as one example that happened to me.
I personally would rather stick with Horizon Worlds (as boring and sterile as it is) than deal with that garbage. The people there have been older and more pleasant, on average (but it's also mostly empty, that might change if it actually became popular).
I hear on PC VR Chat is quite nice, though. In particular the raves look like a lot of fun, judging by the documentaries on Youtube. I haven't been able to access those places from the Quest (or at least, not easily or without crashing).
Quest users in VRChat are second-class citizens, it's true. The only way to experience that game is to play it on PC. Can I ask if you've tried Link to play the PC version with your Quest?
This. Vrchat is nearly unusable without a Link. Not only are you able to explore graphic intensive worlds and see graphic intensive avatars, you don’t have to deal with the onslaught of 7 year old kids. (tbh my biggest gripe with vrchat is that there isn’t a way to have 18+ worlds like Horizon)
I had a stint where I played VRChat every day for 6+ hours during peak covid. I never had a problem finding groups that self-selected for adults. Sure, you would have annoying little kids but if you were just in your corner doing your thing, they would quickly get bored.
This sounds horrible. I don't like children being around in my space, and I really really really don't like unsupervised children being in my space. The quickest way to get me to leave a room is to let a child run around screaming in it, which I understand is about 70% of VRchat.
VRChat has a concept of “friends plus” worlds. You can make a world where the only people who are allowed to enter are your friends or the friends of anyone who joins.
The good version of VRChat socialization is looking at your friends list and seeing who’s online and joining off them. You’ll meet your transitive friends of friends and expand your social circle over time. As long as you don’t befriend children or assholes you should have a pretty good time.
The hard part is how do you get the first VRChat friends. Probably you need someone who already knows you to be the first node in your social network.
If you think 70% of VRchat is screaming kids, it doesn't surprise me that your take is so negative. I was friends with a few teenagers, and didn't have much problem with them.
If you ever desire a more private space, it’s just two taps away. One other thing I should mention is that you can very easily block someone black mirror style, they just disappear, and the problem goes away.
No, not yet. It's a bit of a pain for me to use the Link (in part because the most open space to use VR is in my living room and my gaming PC is upstairs in my office where it's more cramped), so I've only really used the Link cable to play Half-Life Alyx and Lone Echo and try out a few other games. Maybe I will at some point.
VRChat is a favorite of mine. Feels like VR geocities. If you're a fan of Stargate check out the Stargate Atlantis world as well as the Original Stargate Command which comes complete with a working Stargate and ring device into a Mothership on the other side.
I don’t know why more IPs aren’t hopping on the VR immersion bus. People would pay decent money just to roam around their favorite locales from TV shows/movies.
That NYTimes article recently did the same thing. Anyone that is serious about understanding the state of VR, but has no experience with VRChat is a huge red flag to me. You don't have to like the culture on VRC(I don't love it), but it is where most of the content and players are. In a way it could a good sign that VR is becoming more accessible, but it's still a bit annoying.
> but it is where most of the content and players are
Is this true? I have VR but I don't enjoy it as a social hangout space for example. Why do you think that most players are interested in that type of content?
I don’t enjoy VRChat myself. It’s essentially VR Roblox but not for kids, or an eventual evolution of Second Life for anyone that remembers it. Furries and anime aside, it is just not my thing.
That said, VRChat is probably the closest thing to being what people think of as the metaverse, and that’s why it’s useful to get familiar with it even if it’s not for you
> You should be able to do anything you want to in VR without moving anything but the controllers, ideally. Not just for lazy people like me, but for people with disabilities who would benefit from improved accessibility in general.
This. VR misses the boat thanks to Facebook's vision of a brand new world, instead of just a better more-accessible screen.
It is the future for sure, but no one will care for fake 3D experience of your people. We want an actual reinvention of what an OS is, a higher bandwidth input, and a new way to visualize things. Instead of 2D views in a 3D environment. Such a miss opportunity so far.
There are definitely applications for VR - see Microsoft Flight Simulator and Zwift.
The key is that these are things that are either hard to do in reality (flight) without a lot of risk or that people can't do in reality for whatever reason (like when there is snow or lots of rain with Zwift).
What people do not want is ordinary reality in cartoons.
MSFS alone is a sufficient argument to buy a VR headset. The immersion is stunning on hi-res headsets and playing it again on a 2D monitor feels very lacking.
That seems like a niche market good for VR. It could be extended for general training for operating specialized systems and even in education. But what I don’t see about VR is wide adoption by the public in a similar vein to the adoption of smartphones.
I will say I wish there was more support for 'seated in a recliner' gaming, as that's my preferred way to play VR games when it's not an exercise app like Beat Saber. I even tried to play BoneLab seated for a while but it kept wanting me to reach down into the seat of the recliner to grab ammo, so it became a bit impossible (wasn't too bad besides that, though, just had to stand up to grab a few things).
I actually have an issue where my right thigh starts burning like crazy if I stand in place for too long (walks are just fine, I can go for miles no problem, but if I mostly stand in place it starts being an issue until I sit down for a bit). I don't know exactly what causes it, but I'm guessing it's probably related to a known bulging disc in my lower back, pinching the nerve a bit.
There's quite a few games that are good for 'seated in an executive chair', like where you can still spin around to react to things behind you, but several of those games don't really let you spin using the motion controller for if you're in a non-spinning chair (some do, I'm thankful for those). Also I've noticed that several games have height adjustment for sitting but for some reason the limits they set on it are too small and/or you have to go into a menu to adjust it. There are times in a game where I mostly want it to be a certain height, but something fell on the ground or at some weird position that's just out of a comfortable height for sitting, so I want to adjust it real quick to grab something and reset it back, but there's not a good way to do it.
I'm not saying you have to do these things, but the games that have a good 'sit in a chair that doesn't swivel' experience get played a lot more than my other games, especially if it's a story driven game. I even play Ragnarock (viking drumming game) more than Beat Saber some weeks, to get my arms moving without having to stand mostly in place.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 252 ms ] threadThe one I looked at a few years back was focused on JVM programs, so it created a 2d graph of objects, and while running moved those graphs into 3d as the classes were instantiated. An intuitive view that made it easy to identify memory issues and poor relationships. A set of colored lines displayed the execution of code (one color per thread), making it a great tool for identifying bottlenecks.
Sure, it looks really cool to make big sweeping motions, and have them reflected in the digital world. But in reality, most people want to minimum input/maximum result. We need the power steering UX for VR.
The best examples are Echo VR and BeatSaber. Some call them Exergames, but i think "exercise" discredits the amount of fun you'll have.
When the movement of your body itself becomes a major component of the gameplay (beyond gimmicky reload sequences), VR begins to shine. For example, EchoVR has players dribbling, precisely throwing, pushing themselves off walls and even _physically jumping_ to catch a disk.
I get how this can be fun (I do enjoy Beat Saber), for short stretches of time and if you're in decent physical condition (my knees hate crouching-heavy songs).
But if you're in a wheelchair, you can't jump. You can't crouch. Heck, if you're over 40, you probably don't want to jump on a carpet with something blocking your view. Bad landings can easily result in permanent injuries. I've seen more than a few colleagues quit after-work basketball games for this very reason.
So, while there's definitely a place for physical games in VR, there also needs to be a place for more Moss-like games in VR too.
Whoever wants to do that is thinking completely out of inexperience. 20 years olds can permanently injure themselves too, and it's not much harder.
But I also remember my "I'm invincible" years where I did a lot of stupid shit because it was novel and/or entertaining. I'm mildly shocked that it's just my knees that I gripe about.
VR is selling bad enough as it is.
Having seen friends drop out of VR for various reasons, I believe that the main draw, more so than immersion and more so than social presence, _is_ the physical movement.
Oculus' top sellers list seems to confirm that belief.
I'm not denying that there is demand outside of exergames, but contrary to the articles clickbaity headline, they're not "the point".
Edit: *Currenty. This will change once VR becomes accessible and comfortable.
I'd even go so far to say that the lack of non-physical games is the biggest detriment to the continued adoption of VR. Stick with me for a moment as I reason this through.
Even the most fit player can only spend an hour or two playing physical VR games. What we do when our body is exhausted from exercising in VR, yet we want to play games some more? We go play more traditional games on a monitor or TV (or phone).
Why do we change which entertainment device we're using? Because the non-physical games we want to play are not available in a VR setting. We can't play angry birds, Call of Duty, Hades, Genshin Impact, or FFXIV in VR. Thus, we must have at least two consoles. Which for most people means they'll have just one console, because consoles are expensive. And logically, that means most people will go for the non-VR console, since it has more games, by several magnitudes.
In contrast, if our entire library of games was available via your VR headset - even as a "you're sitting in a theater" experience - I believe many would be happy to play them there. They could get their full experience with one console.
My argument is, that only these physical games are what currently sells VR, while the other experiences are not worth the current drawbacks.
> I'd even go so far to say that the lack of non-physical games is the biggest detriment to the continued adoption of VR.
If that was true, wouldn't the available non-physical games sell far better? Without knowing the numbers, Moss, Hellblade, and Lucky's Tale all didn't seem to make a huge splash. Developers of Subnautica and Everspace have abandoned their VR versions due to lack of interest. Additionally, I've consistently seen my friends chose 2D screens for games like Payday and IL-2 over VR.
Again, I want to underscore "currently". I believe in a future where VR becomes a primary display.
> Even the most fit player can only spend an hour or two playing physical VR games.
With this, and the sibling comments about the danger of injury, I'm a bit surprised at how cynical you are regarding the average health. I wouldn't call myself remarkably fit, but I can and have played for five hours. I'm also interested to see how all these teens fare growing up with the device. I imagine they will have an exceptional awareness of both worlds.
> If that was true, wouldn't the available non-physical games sell far better?
No. People who dont want / cant play the physical games aren't going to buy a VR system just to play the few subpar non-physical games.
Which means things like accessibility and a broad variety of games is paramount to its long term success.
Anyways, have a good night.
Sure, more things designed for people with various diverse needs is awesome but a world limited to only things that work for people in wheelchairs seems like it would be very limited vs a world where we find out a way to let people in wheelchairs do everything if they want to.
Provide ALL the options. "Some options will make people sick." Ok so that option is not for them, let them turn it off again.
But it might be great for someone else. Just let people be free...
Beat Saber is one of the most popular VR games. The VR world and the real world are locked together, so everything feels right. Anything that breaks that lock is at least annoying, and nauseating to some. This is a big problem.
With omnidirectional treadmills, it gets somewhat better. Phia, who has The Virtual Reality Show on Youtube, has tried some of them.[1] Phia is a VR native. She's grown up using VR. She makes videos about VR while in VR with full body tracking. Worth seeing critiques of VR from someone who really gets it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN5RjAW8TV0
IMO accessibility does need to be a consideration, VR can be a big help to disabled. That said, I don’t agree that the default should be “remove UX for accessibility”. I’d wager that mimicking the real world is VRs “files and desktops” skeuomorphic analogy that makes it more approachable in the short run to new users. Like other devices, there should probably be an accessibility mode in VR tools. The authors use case seems pretty common (reclining to use a headset) and probably should be handled well at the OS level.
I have never disagreed with an opinion on VR more. The worst VR experiences are the ones that would be possible without the VR. I thought half life Alyx was bad because of this. I don’t want to treat my headset as just another screen.
Caveat: I don't get VR sick and hate all of the clunky movement options you are stuck with in most games. Teleporting around is never not awkward.
I also enjoyed Down the Rabbit Hole, but I have to admit that it could have worked just as well on a regular screen.
God I love Star Wars Squadrons.
Have to assume you meant "impossible", otherwise I'm confused by your comment.
And I have to disagree. There's nothing wrong with giving people are few nice powers and magic forces over their environment. In real life, I'd love to have a way to pick up objects from a distance. Who wouldn't want that? VR can provide that easily.
Many games seem to implement motion and interaction controls internally, which is great for experimentation. But for many games, that isn’t the main point. In those, the user could instead select one of their own personal control schemes. Maybe some of those control schemes could even be extensible, for games that want a familiar UI, but also want to experiment a bit.
VR should create simulations that are consistent with that kind of environment.
Some games have seated mode now but Oculus missed to implement this the first 2-3 years of games.
In my mind the bigger issue is games are just not designed for free look and it doesn't even make all that much sense. Heads clipping through walls is already an annoying problem without the assumption the user can fly anywhere.
I think supporting stick movement and crouch or fixed height seems like something that might be standard if we end up seeing some AAA experiences.
What is “the point of tv”? Or of “the internet”?
This was only for the first week of owning and using VR, after that I acclimated to it just fine.
Sadly (note, my opinion comes from being in that minority who can't get used to sliding), the current VR player community has settled on sliding as the best mode of movement, and berate developers who create alternatives, when they even create alternatives (Boneworks, etc).
Even many games which do offer alternative movement methods still expect you to crouch, kneel, lean, pivot, etc. I'm not 20 anymore.
Combine the above with the lack of audience (largely due to cost), it's a positive feedback loop of mediocrity. The Quest2 was the closest we came to affordability, and it was still the cost of a middle-range cell phone with limited utility and way fewer games.
When I was new to VRChat, I mainly played with teleport locomotion. (Well, "holoport locomotion": you point somewhere and hold a joystick, your point-of-view stays still while you and everyone else sees your avatar walk there, and then when you let go your point-of-view teleports into your avatar's new location. No unnatural nausea-inducing sliding.) Though there are some game worlds in VRChat that involve running around a lot that don't work well with holoport, and I would occasionally try sliding controller locomotion mode instead. Eventually, around the time I put in a hundred hours into the game, I found I could use sliding controller locomotion without issue, and switched to it for good.
If the bar is "can spend as much time in VR as I currently do on PC gaming/console gaming" we're nowhere close to it. I can (and have) sat in front of a Playstation for 5-8 hours in a row, and even though my body feels like crap afterwards it's still a heck of a lot longer than I can stand being in a Quest 2.
There's a reason the most successful applications are short-and-sweet. But if you want people to socialize in VR and spend a large amount of time there both the acute illness issue and long-session comfort need to be solved.
For example Quest 2 while usable while wearing glasses, is deeply unpleasant. If you're a glasses wearer a set of prescription inserts is practically required. Likewise for comfort aftermarket straps are a must.
I get why FB isn't including these things out of the box (or has first-party consideration for it) but it overall makes the whole thing feel like a deeply unfinished product.
For glasses are you using the spacer? I find it okay with the spacer but it lets too much light in. And the aftermarket interfaces don't always support glasses. It's a bit of a mess.
No sir, restrictions are the point. Restrictions are what prevent a reality from simply being a bunch of abstract concepts floating in and out of existence without rules or reason.
Our physical reality has many restrictions: we cannot move through objects, energy is conserved, entropy cannot reverse. These are the restrictions we have to face. And in virtual reality you will have virtual restrictions.
They want their virtual reality to allow them to do more than they can in the real world... wtf is the point of virtual realities if they suck just as much as this one?
https://www.omnifinity.se is a pretty awesome concept that I'm keeping an eye on.
I think people do care about factors that add towards the feeling of physical presence. Would maybe go as far as to say that it's the primary point of VR tabletop simulator games as opposed to the more convenient sites/apps for playing and chatting.
Support for more/arbitrary seated positions seems like it'd make sense though.
I think there's another big aspect there, though - the annoyance with software (even well-made software) when it comes to "goddamn it just let me move the thing over myself".
That goes a long way towards explaining the fairly substantial popularity of Tabletop Simulator as used mostly with mouse and keyboard (its VR interface really isn't great), since it's basically a light physics simulator specialized for board games plus all the helper tools needed to make cards/dice/boards convenient (so, for example, rather than having a rules-enforced game engine, you're moving virtual pieces around in virtual space yourself).
That's true, but another thing that to me is a huge blocker in that sense, is simply having an accent. When I'm writing in chat rooms my English is fluent and I can just fit right in. But I'm really awkward going into a conversation with a foreign accent in the metaverse.
Even though my accent is not strong at all, and I live in the US and have no problem interacting with people f2f or on the phone/Zoom all day, something about it in the metaverse just makes me feel too self conscious about it. It's weird, it's the only space in which I feel like that, it could just be me I suppose.
Accents aside, imagine how much more comfortable people with "traditional" women's voices would end up being.
When you cut the bitrate on an audio signal, it can hurt the signal-to-noise ratio, causing small differences in speech (like a normally subtle accent) to become a larger impediment to being understood.
I'll admit, I'm deep in speculation territory here, but this seems plausible. I will note for the record that this doesn't necessarily apply to larger and more established apps like Zoom and Google Meet. They're definitely compressing the heck out of your audio, but they at least have the decency to use more modern codecs like MP3.
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/A...
Maybe I don't understand the point of VR chat apps, but if you're hiding your avatar, what is the point? You may as well just use discord.
There is no non-zero speed of free looking that solves my motion sickness. If "free movement" is the only way to move around space in a VR title, then it's unplayable by me.
Nothing mitigates it. Vignetting, reticles, low-acceleration movement curves. None of it really has an impact on my immediate visceral reaction.
Doesn't mean that all people can get used to it though. Or that it's worth the effort.
Interestingly, I had a similar motion sickness experience the time I went skydiving.
* The vignetting on the oculles quest version of "until you fall" is really good, in my opinion
* Have you tried closing your eyes during movement?
I've tried closing my eyes. It makes it slightly tolerable, but it's definitely not anything I'd call a "good" experience. If I have to fight against the UI just to make it usable to allegedly experience "entertainment", I'll probably just skip it and call it a day.
For me, I think the winning strategy of VR is to not have to wear goggles and something that can generate smells as this is our most powerful sense.
Yes, titles need to be better at seated play, because it is a reasonable way to play, given almost no one has enough room to actually walk around.
But the entire point of VR is the controllers, not the headset. The headset is a huge pain in the ass, annoying, blurry, and tiring to use. No one would put on a headset if it were possible to transfer hand movements to a game world any other way. The monitor has to be glued to your face, but that is a downside, not the benefit.
Without the headset you're back to looking at a 2D projection of the world. There are plenty of fantastic VR experiences that are fully playable in a seated position, flight sims in particular are vastly more immersive when you can physically look around the cockpit and the glass canopy.
Also the neck control is nice, but the only significant benefit of vr is the use of hand-eye coordination for the controller. The use of our feet for locomotion would also be huge, but no one can afford a warehouse to play VR in, so that is possibly never going to happen.
Even with a warehouse, it was obvious that a lot of levels started with you having to turn around as you'd hit the end of usable space.
So even warehouses are not going to cut it.
But I disagree with your "2 minutely different screens" point. I see VR as being like Surround Sound. Yeah, you can play music and watch movies with mono or stereo audio - but the immersivity does add significantly to the experience.
There is even a horror game where all you can do is look around, as you're canonically bound to a wheelchair with chains. You can direct an AI companion with a laser pointer, and that's about it. No controller required (or allowed for that matter).
Funny aside about that game, the initial development had promised multiplayer, and then the dev team went incommunicado for like 2 years, during which time everyone assumed the game had died. Then 'Surprise!' multiplayer release. Another year of radio silence and boom, VR support. Mind you, VR headsets were not yet widely available, as in maybe you could see one at some sort of tech fair, but there was no chance you could just go into a store and buy one.
Not to be rude, but have you used modern VR systems much? The above sounds exactly the opposite of what it's all about.
Also the headset does not transfer hand movements at all? Are you talking about the handsets like the two controllers that come with the Vive?
All modern VR does either full body tracking with the base stations or quest style hand tracking. It would be pretty hard to arrange the monitors in such away that you has full hand movement I dont see how they would not get in the way unless they were tiny and strapped to your face.
As it turns out, VR means different things to different people. The best VR implementations allow all those people to enjoy VR.
My own suspicion is that the one company that can make a substantial move on this space has done extensive research on this topic and that they're waiting patiently until the technology gets to just the right sweet spot. I'm talking about screen resolution, processor size/speed/power, miniaturization, inside-out hand-tracking etc. But once that device gets rolling, developers will have a lot of work on their hands figuring out how to design these sorts of spaces and how to make work comfortable and natural in these sorts of environments.
If people want to compete in the VR space, they're going to do so with pricing. I should hope the sales of the Quest vs the Index illustrates that well enough.
The sweet spot I’m talking about is probably just not possible right now. Kind of like how good multi-touch no-keyboard smartphones were not quite there in 2004.
Like a lot of cool future dreams, there's a need for a "yes, and" follow-up that grapples with the consequences honestly.
In my opinion what we really need is the metaverse but for hackers. A bunch of business suits meeting in real life or VR will always be boring and sterile. But a place that has the magic of early IRC where a group of whitehats and blackhats anonymously can meet virtually? That could be pretty damn cool and result in some whacky crazy avatars and out of the box environments. Imagine a completely P2P capable hackerverse that mashed together something like Mr. Robot and A Scanner Darkly and your friend shows up looking like a cybernetic android dolphin. You won't see the suits Hug in VR - they're all about Handshakes ;-)
Whenever I get on VRChat with my friends, often a few people show off recent work they've done on their own avatar or worlds. I've uploaded worlds, visited the public instance of the world, and then bumped into tons of random people checking out my world. The game is so good for directly showing off work you've done and talking to other people about the stuff they've made.
In reality, most people would love a magic way to pick up objects from a distance. In VR this could be implemented easily. His criticism is that it is not implemented; they are forcing the limited parameters of our current reality on VR.
VR needs to extend the "reality" metaphor to do cool things. But to do so in a way that is intuitive is hard.
If there was a virtual ski resort and I could feel like the air around me was cold, I would want to!
I'm not saying that no VR experiences can work and be more casual or less immersive (indeed there are some great ones that are just that), but to me the whole point of VR is about going to that next level of immersion and presence.
> In reality, most people would love a magic way to pick up objects from a distance
Many (maybe even most) good VR games have this. Half Life Alyx does it beautifully.
To respond to some points in the article:
> "If you can’t do something in VR because of a limited range of motion in real life, I think that you have failed as a VR developer."
This is nonsensical. Beat Saber would be pointless if you didn't have to wave your arms around, move, dodge. Games with shooting mechanics take on a whole new dimension when you're actually wielding a (virtual) gun with your hands and arms and when you can sidestep, duck, etc. They also allow you to do things (like teleport, jetpack, etc.) that you can't do in reality, but they'd be much worse if they didn't also force you to move (and be limited by your mobility) and use that as part of the control scheme and immersion.
What this statement really says to me is "I'm only interested in VR experiences where I don't need to move" not "you've failed as a VR developer".
> "Some people argue that VR should be a totally immersive experience. You look down, you see your hands, you move your hands around, and so on. Your view is restricted to your neck’s range of motion. While that’s cool, does that kind of immersion trump user experience?"
Yes, totally, in some cases. Often, that kind of immersion is the user experience.
Honestly, I think it's fine to say you want an app for watching TV in VR that's just a big floating screen and works great lying down. Or to criticise the control panel in BigScreen because it could be more usable from a reclined position in which the app otherwise still totally works anyway — that's totally valid feedback.
But to claim that these preferences are the most important thing about VR and that developers should prioritise apps and games for the lazy and casual user with those preferences over pushing the boundaries of the medium is a bit much.
I often joined rooms that would cause VR Chat to crash on the Quest and if I stuck to the default rooms VR Chat recommends, I've mostly just get accosted by children (they sound like they're 10 years old at the oldest) or assholes "Hey, I'm talking to you, why didn't you answer me right away (I'm in a menu). I'm going to kill you!" (and other nasty things until I just left the room)... as one example that happened to me.
I personally would rather stick with Horizon Worlds (as boring and sterile as it is) than deal with that garbage. The people there have been older and more pleasant, on average (but it's also mostly empty, that might change if it actually became popular).
I hear on PC VR Chat is quite nice, though. In particular the raves look like a lot of fun, judging by the documentaries on Youtube. I haven't been able to access those places from the Quest (or at least, not easily or without crashing).
The good version of VRChat socialization is looking at your friends list and seeing who’s online and joining off them. You’ll meet your transitive friends of friends and expand your social circle over time. As long as you don’t befriend children or assholes you should have a pretty good time.
The hard part is how do you get the first VRChat friends. Probably you need someone who already knows you to be the first node in your social network.
If you ever desire a more private space, it’s just two taps away. One other thing I should mention is that you can very easily block someone black mirror style, they just disappear, and the problem goes away.
I don’t know why more IPs aren’t hopping on the VR immersion bus. People would pay decent money just to roam around their favorite locales from TV shows/movies.
Is this true? I have VR but I don't enjoy it as a social hangout space for example. Why do you think that most players are interested in that type of content?
That said, VRChat is probably the closest thing to being what people think of as the metaverse, and that’s why it’s useful to get familiar with it even if it’s not for you
This. VR misses the boat thanks to Facebook's vision of a brand new world, instead of just a better more-accessible screen.
It is the future for sure, but no one will care for fake 3D experience of your people. We want an actual reinvention of what an OS is, a higher bandwidth input, and a new way to visualize things. Instead of 2D views in a 3D environment. Such a miss opportunity so far.
The key is that these are things that are either hard to do in reality (flight) without a lot of risk or that people can't do in reality for whatever reason (like when there is snow or lots of rain with Zwift).
What people do not want is ordinary reality in cartoons.
I actually have an issue where my right thigh starts burning like crazy if I stand in place for too long (walks are just fine, I can go for miles no problem, but if I mostly stand in place it starts being an issue until I sit down for a bit). I don't know exactly what causes it, but I'm guessing it's probably related to a known bulging disc in my lower back, pinching the nerve a bit.
There's quite a few games that are good for 'seated in an executive chair', like where you can still spin around to react to things behind you, but several of those games don't really let you spin using the motion controller for if you're in a non-spinning chair (some do, I'm thankful for those). Also I've noticed that several games have height adjustment for sitting but for some reason the limits they set on it are too small and/or you have to go into a menu to adjust it. There are times in a game where I mostly want it to be a certain height, but something fell on the ground or at some weird position that's just out of a comfortable height for sitting, so I want to adjust it real quick to grab something and reset it back, but there's not a good way to do it.
I'm not saying you have to do these things, but the games that have a good 'sit in a chair that doesn't swivel' experience get played a lot more than my other games, especially if it's a story driven game. I even play Ragnarock (viking drumming game) more than Beat Saber some weeks, to get my arms moving without having to stand mostly in place.