I don't know. Author complains devs are targeting "hard core" game culture with violent games. But my instinct is that only "hard core" gamers are going to want to stick a thing on their head (that they had to pony up large amounts of dosh for, BTW).
I also believe in The Market. With the number of years VR headsets have been one the market I am quite confident no one somehow missed a lucrative genre. I see a lot of people projecting that they wish VR were the Next Big Thing, but they seem unable to wish it into reality.
Author mentions Beat Saber which would seem to contradict the argument that VR is focused on hyper violent games. Is VR taking off now or not?
My sense is that VR will always be a niche thing — maybe akin to 3D movies, TV. Or like Guitar Hero a (much more expensive) fad.
Completely agree, it’s destined to be niche forever… because it involves strapping something to your face. Niche is FINE! Beat Saber is one of my favorite games of all time, VR did that!
Hardcore gamers don’t want to stick this on their head because it’s a gimmick. They want to play games, not have ads up to their eyeballs.
Games aren’t the VR killer app that people mistakenly think it is. Nothing is. VR as glasses is a gimmick. Sensory depravation of vision far outranks whatever thing you want to do on a computer. It’s too much effort for no gain and so far it’s been too much marketing and too much tech hyping things up. It’s cringe to see it unfold like it isn’t obvious. Wearing ski goggles indoors to use a computer makes you look like a tool.
It's interesting to me that you compare VR and Guitar Hero as they are very different. VR is nothing but isolation. Guitar Hero and the other Band game at least made it where more people could participate at the same time in the same location. One pulls you away, while the other attempted to include more people.
Everyone I know who uses VR for more than a year, it's because they started socializing in VR. Like MMOs, it can be as social or asocial as you want it to be!
I think the overlap between "hard core" flatscreen gamers and "hard core" VR gamers isn't a given.
I mean, look at VRChat. People spend thousands of dollars on gear (before even getting into the physical space needed for full immersion) to... wander around talking to each other and play low-quality clones of minigolf and Among Us games.
As someone who's spent a large amount of time in Beat Saber I think half the problem is that as good as VR headsets have gotten since the introduction of the original Rift, they're still full of compromises. None of them do everything well, and so you have to pick the one that sucks the least for a single use case (fitness games, racing/flight sims, VRChat, etc), and that's really bad for something as expensive as VR headsets are (even the cheaper quests).
In the case of Quest stuff, PC link users being treated somewhat as second class (no direct DisplayPort input) and the lock-in of the crappy Quest desktop software doesn't help matters.
I agree that VR will always be a niche, but I would also say that there's a good chance of the niche growing with the introduction of a well-built, affordable, well rounded headset that's built on the SteamVR ecosystem.
The "targeting "hard core" game culture with violent games" thing is quite silly. Many of the most mainstream games around, played by average Joes, are very violent games. I am thinking particularly of the Call of Duty and Halo franchises. Meanwhile many "hardcore gamers" making a lifestyle out of it are into games like Mario.
I don't think it's a content issue as much as a comfort issue. Literally everyone I know who bought a VR headset, high-end or low-end, has said more or less the same thing: It's impressive, but it starts to hurt after an hour or so. Hard to get and stay immersed when you're in physical discomfort.
It's not even comfort for me, it's the hygiene of it. Touching greasy skin and then sharing... ick. You really need a personal device for everyone which is pricy.
I got these little fabric covers ("VR cover") for my HMD so the cleanliness aspect is a bit better managed. A couple people can use the first one and then I can swap it to a new, clean one, etc.
It's not just physical comfort though that's definitely a part of it. It's also how fiddly it can be to find the sweetspot where image is not so blurry. There's either screen door or mura effects depending on screen technology. There's the clunkiness of the controls on most games. There's high potential for motion sickness. Most games require quite a lot of space which a lot of people won't have. It isolates the player from the surrounding environment which is not always an adequate position to be in. On games with more movement (boxing, beat saber and other rhythm games, etc) there's the heat that accumulates in the headset, which is not only uncomfortable but can make the lenses blur and the headset to start slipping. So many issues. Some smaller, some subjective, some dependent on player, but any given player will have a stack of issues to deal with any time they hop into the virtual world.
So there's now edu-tech start-ups working on VR training. Which does sound cool, like provide an immersive experience in hospital room with different patient scenarios for example. My spouse got to try one recently and it sounded like a mixed bag in practice. Lots of problems with people feeling sick, not having glasses that fit under the goggles etc.
It's also way harder to jump in/out of a game session. I have to take a dramamine, clear the area, put on the damn thing, make sure my focal calibration didn't get messed up, then actually play... and if something beckons me mid-session it's a chore to take off the headset and put it back on again.
Versus with regular gaming, if my phone buzzes or the laundry goes off, pausing the game and putting down the controller takes two seconds.
One thing I also miss is being able to just jump from the regular game on a monitor into VR and back. Star Wars: Squadrons is the only game I can think of that even has VR as an in-game option to toggle. Everything else requires a full restart of the game to switch to VR or even the purchase of a separate VR version of the game.
That's something that should have been handled much smoother, especially given the comfort issue that might force people to not play everything in VR. But alas, VR support in regular monitor games is extremely rare to begin with and that area of VR never really got much support.
- Heavy on the head, making the neck sore after a while.
- Press into the face, which can also get sore.
- Seals around the face, which is claustrophobic.
- Insulates head/face, making hot and sweaty.
- Even high resolution headsets look pixelated, making things like reading / trying to see details irritating.
- VR motion sickness is very real, (with guides on how to develop your VR legs... which takes multiple days of careful practice).
Despite current headsets being excellent from a technical perspective, IMO they still need to get significantly ligher and more physically comfortable, significantly higher resolution, and ideally solve VR motion sickness in some way...
An hour is much more than I can do. I want to play in VR, but every time I try again I regret it. And it only takes about 15 minutes for the pain to start (and a couple days at least to subside). I really truly love playing Beat Saber, but I just can't ever let myself do it again (until and unless headsets get dramatically lighter).
I agree with this being a user and a VR dev myself. A couple of things that make the experience somewhat tedious is that you can't really get comfortable if you are on a sofa and then decide to lay down and turn side-to-side. Which you can just watching a movie or playing a game casually using a TV etc.
Another reason personally also, it is more tedious to develop games for VR wearing and taking off the HMD all the time. I can imagine this would deter other developers not wanting to make VR games, it's already a slow painstaking process to make games already.
I think also the amount of apps you have to switch on your desktop if using PC also means you keep taking the HMD on and off before you begin to play. Too many barriers to entry when it should be a convenience thing, wear and go!
Not everybody is physically fit/young/healthy or wants to just do physical gaming which i think leads to lack on incentive to use VR too. I personally play most games now via my monitor or projector screen and use VR for simracing as there really is no comparisson here. So VR Great for sim cockpit type games, flying and racing but for everything else, it's back to good old pancake mode monitor instead.
To give you one counterpoint, I can wear my Quest 2 (with upgraded head strap) for hours and not get tired or uncomfortable, and I suffer from motion sickness normally too.
The one trick though is that I drink about a liter of water every hour I'm using the headset, even when doing low impact games like golf. The headset is super dehydrating, and I suspect that is the cause of many people's discomfort.
You have to have a bottle nearby that you can drink by feel.
There are comfort solutions but if there's nothing compelling enough for you to do so, you probably won't seek them out. (fwiw Globular Cluster is the general solution for Quests!)
I just got a new different headset (Quest Pro, coming from an Index) and I had to figure out how to make it comfortable enough, because you're right that out of the box, they rarely are. (Except Index, which is still one of the best all-around headsets, even years on)
But I figured out a comfort fix because I'm hooked: I'm in VR 10-20 hours a week these days, because I use it to transcend my physical body and hang out with friends around the world. There are even sleep worlds in VRChat where people literally sleep in VR! Also, less intentionally, sometimes you're hanging out and someone passes out on the couch and starts lightly snoring. As above, so below. :)
In some ways, sci-fi is here! It's just, like bars, beaches, or boardgames, not for everyone.
That sounds like a great tool for quality of life improvement for lets say disabled people or very old. A thousand times better than sad empty look down the street, if they are even capable of looking out of window.
For regular folks, you must have messed something up in your real life pretty badly to waste it in VR in such ways. Real life can have amazing experiences, adventures, passions, extreme sports, experiencing different cultures through real social interaction. But it requires actual effort to get there, not just throwing some money at the problem. Efforts build character, lack of them shows.
If all that sounds old school, boy am I glad to belong there.
As somebody who's deep into the VR space, most of that is just bad ergonomic design by the headset makers, as a result of them trying to make headsets look (rather than actually be) lighter in the marketing material.
For the kind of design that's actually comfortable, look at third party suppliers like BOBOVR, which have various designs that have actually learned from what's done in other industries. For example, halo strap designs (like https://www.bobovr.com/products/s3-pro) distribute the weight around the head like a hard hat/welding mask instead of clamping things to your face, making the results immensely more comfortable.
While comfort is an important issue with a lot of low-hanging-fruit solutions (top-straps!!!), it's a hole every serious VR user will mod themselves out of. There are numerous third party solution to make existing headsets more comfortable, be it complete strap replacement, facial interfaces or top straps. Even alternative headsets like the BigScreenBeyond or Xreal that are substantially lighter and smaller exist. The option are out there.
> It's impressive, but it starts to hurt after an hour or so.
The issue is that "impressive" wanes after a few weeks or months, while comfort tends to improve by additional adjustments and customization. What VR is missing is long-term content, the stuff you use VR for after the initial wow-factor has vanished, the stuff that takes advantage of the 360° 3D screen in front of your eyes and the 6DOF controls without just being gimmicky.
That's one issue I think Apple handled much better than Meta. On VisionPro you have full 2D app support, so most of the apps just work. It might sound boring, but VR needs to embrace that kind of boring when it wants to survive long term, since boring stuff is what people do with computers 24/7.
On Meta Quest things are much more of a mess. There is no clear vision for what's the headset is actually good for. You have a few lackluster games here, a few exercise apps there, a "Metaverse" that still feels woefully incomplete, basic 2D app support without Google Play Store, no easy way to watch movies and a whole lot of other half done ideas.
wow one billon people trying VR by 2027, would that even happen if they gave away headsets for free? I get that it’s a lofty moonshot goal, not a real goal, but still!
I mean, AAA games for VR get a lot more hype because ... well, because that's a part of the spend, on marketing, etc.
But the vast majority of games (on Oculus at least) are very much casual games in the vein of Beat Saber, but they all suck and our Oculus has been gathering dust once the novelty of Beat Saber wore thin.
I don't think the article makes a compelling case for a "why". I'll take a shot at it -- it's a technological dead end. Maybe there are applications for AR once the technology matures, but VR is never going to be a holodeck. The movement-based mechanics of the Wii and the Kinect and whatever the Playstation crap was had a moment in the sun and then we all moved on because there was no killer app, just a bit of novelty.
Beat Saber and Walkabout Mini Golf are hardly "hyper-realistic and violent immersive games" and there are no shortage of other extremely popular (within the market) titles along those lines.
VR gaming faces a low ceiling because (a) VR headsets present a challenge to how our eyes, neck, and proprioceptive systems are accustomed to working and induce a associated fatigue, and (b) VR gaming is more isolating than any other kind of gaming. You disconnect entirely from your surroundings, which is fun as a novelty, but is an "all-in" activity that you can't semi-attentively engage in like you might a portable/mobile game, TV game, a PC game.
It seems like they set up a straw man to make the points about gaming they wanted to make. In fact the most popular things on Quest are either various movie streamers or various 3D chat program. Neither of those things are particularly hard core or hyper realistic.
I love when academics take on a medium. Those who can't do teach.
I think it still makes for an interesting contrast when you look at what's got the most ongoing users (VRChat, Gorilla Tag, Bigscreen, Beat Saber, etc), and then compare to the endless parade of devs trying to make yet another direct VR port of FPS game design.
In my very limited experience, the main things I greatly enjoy in VR are:
* social interaction
* games that are improved by deep immersion, like horror games.
For social interaction, our tools are getting better every day. VRChat and its similars really are very, very good. A very real downside of it, though, is just how much money you need to spend to get "everything working".
At every stage, you'll want to spend more money on it, it feels like.
* Get the headset on? The arms work, but the legs don't.
* Buy hip and leg trackers. Now it can't show what you're looking at -
* gotta buy eye-tracking, but eye-tracking is rare and only exists on like 2 headsets and their support is spotty at best. (Honestly, I think the PSVR2 would FLY off the shelves for a bit if they unlocked its best features for PC).
* Buy face tracking, because people can't tell that you're grinning or making a face at them. - Oh, but that requires attaching something to your existing headset that might be custom or an additional fee because none of the headsets do this well by default.
* buy a better computer to support all that
In the end, each of those steps is __several__ hundred dollars, and some of them require swapping out major parts of your machine for deeper and deeper immersion in the social world.
Which gets at the thing that bugs me about the article: “developers are focused on hard-core gamers” is not a root cause.
Why would a casual-game developer waste time on a VR effort, when the only people who already have the $1000+ worth of necessary VR equipment are the hardcore gamers. The “casual” crowd (i.e., people with other hobbies) would much rather upgrade their phone, or buy a new stand mixer for their kitchen, or go on a vacation, or whatever. They are specifically not going to go out and buy a expensive piece of equipment in order to try PokemonVR (in large enough numbers to matter), and when they do, it will sit unused for months at a time. You can't monetize a casual player who doesn't have the headset on long enough to want to buy in-game improvements to the experience.
I am not a gamer but was absolutely fascinated by a VR game on Oculus GO that I can't even find anymore.
In the game, I was essentially a metal sphere that could "jump" and float through a huge maze. It was a puzzle game.
Tried a ton of games on more modern headsets and never got into them. Zombie games, shooters, sims, etc - nothing came even close to the fascinating experience of that colossal maze.
So in my view, VR games have moved in the wrong direction. From games that explored the new opportunities VR offered to trying -- and failing -- to match the console game experience.
Daedalus - excellent game! The devs have since made Red Matter (and Red Matter 2), just as beautiful but otherwise more conventional.
There is still a lot of indie energy exploring the possibilities of VR. For cool environment you can find a lot in VRChat. For mechanics there are things like Monkey Tag (new motion mechanic) or Silent Slayer on Quest (experimenting with MR).
That's right, Daedalus! Thanks for reminding me the name. I spent so much time in it - just floating around. It's actually possible to jump over the wall in several places and just endlessly fall down outside of the geometry of the walls. Very meditative.
The last thing I want to do after working all day is to come home and put on a headset and be disorientated. That isn't my idea of fun, or entertainment and there are many people who feel the same way I do. There isn't a single thing any of the tech companies could do, or not do, to make me a VR or AR user. I don't care how realistic it is, how lightweight the headset is, or how well the tracking works. I just don't want to put on a headset, and I never will.
This opinion feels like the age-old gaming divide between high-fidelity graphics in games and simply creating an enjoyable experience. Some believe that a AAA game today needs to have the most stunning visuals to be a game worthy of playing with others focusing more on the mechanics and how rewarding it is to play a game.
I think while this touches on something I don't think immersion and embodiment are mutually exclusive.
Well, they canceled EchoVR which was by far my favorite. Also, the cheap plastic headband clips on my Oculus broke so I can't wear it any more because it's loose without them.
I bought a Valve VR headset just to play Half Life Alyx. It was beyond awesome. My son and my wife also played it and also thought it was very, very cool.
I played a few more games since then, nothing as good as HL-A (I haven't heard that anything is as good as that is...). My eyesight isn't great so I have to wear glasses inside. I only have one pair of glasses that fit okay. Getting focus on glasses + lenses + adjustment takes time. The eyes do get strained after 45-60 minutes and I get a little nauseous, so that limits my enjoyment. If there was a way to use my feet to walk Ready Player One style that'd be really super awesome and might alleviate the disconnect between virtual and physical movement.
These days my son plays multiplayer shooter games and occasional multiplayer sword fighting. He seems to enjoy it, especially the social aspect of it.
Also, at parties the various visiting youth play, lots of Superhot playthroughs as it's so easy to get into casually.
Getting clip-in lenses designed for the headset should improve the experience a fair bit, both from ease of use and because it allows for a tighter fit.
For the movement, try out Gorilla Tag. For most people, it turns out that arm-swing movement eliminates nausea; it's just enough to convince the brain that you're the one doing it and not something else.
All this and no mention of Eleven Table Tennis. If you’re a fan of table tennis and you have a Quest, you should try this game. It’s fantastic. The controller is about the same weight as a table tennis racquet and it’s great practice.
This is anecdotal and the little boring, but... Your house/apartment situation. Some games can be played sitting, but many need some floor-space for a good experience.
The people who live in places with nice big room habitually empty of obstacles which they can monopolize for an hour are probably not the prime demographic for VR gaming escapism.
I keep telling myself I'll play one or two of the things in my Steam library once I finally finish a hardware project and clear some junk away...
It’s because the sets are expensive for something you can only use solo at home, mostly for video games.
Compare to the price of a Switch, which is portable (or the smartphone you already have…) or to a TV, which is usable by multiple people at once.
And then if you still get one, gaming alone at home in a way that’s more isolating than the stereotypical nerd basement gaming dungeon, while also forcing you to worry about the environment around you so you don’t bump into things or people, turns out to suck. A lot.
So even if you get a headset, good odds you won’t use it much.
That’s putting aside discomfort or motion sickness.
Its basically geeks trying to get their wet dream come true (pun intended, I may have been one of them), and then realizing that its hardly what they dreamed about, just a mediocre experience (or excellent for some for half an hour, which makes it still overpriced crap nobody cares about after initial wow period).
I keep hearing about 'its just behind the corner, just lighter / better resolution / just resolve XYZ problem' literally from 90s (VFX1 for example), but the 'almost there' mantra never changed, just the details. When Apple's solution has fallen hard on the market, it was pretty clear how far from success we are and Apple adjusted plans accordingly.
I gave up on the topic for good, actually grew up some time ago and found out real life out there, with some effort offers massively more than any such goggles will ever offer in my lifetime. Most (rather successful and smart) women I ever talked to about this express immediate disgust with this, it downgrades men to weird boys in their eyes. I still see young me dreaming about alternate realities, but when you want powerful experience now or in near future use psychedelics (responsibly).
There is no good enough content, nobody wants to invest into this too much due to all above, there is no 360 porn to speak of to break barrier like it used to with previous digital revolutions. Human's senses are much harder to fool well than few geeks thought it would.
There is some irony in one of the largest companies in the world changing their name to Meta; and hordes of people preaching about the metaverse and the brilliance of Neal Stephenson and Snowcrash and then all at the end of the day paying basically no attention to the part of the book where he explains the thing that made the meta verse popular in universe (it was high fidelity facial expression copying).
Meta is working on that with their Codec Avatars[1], but since their focus is on affordable self contained VR headsets, and PCVR support is all but abandoned, they'll likely remain R&D experiments for quite a few more years. They just don't have enough compute in their current hardware offering.
Apple with their VisionPro is quite a bit further along and their Persona[2] are available to consumer, though the price tag of the device puts it out of reach for almost everybody.
I'm too much of a transhumanist to understand why, when you can choose to look like anything you could imagine, you would choose to look like your default human self!
I think there are plenty of fun VR games. Beat Saber is quite entertaining. As is Walkabout Mini Golf. Both of those can keep me entertained for longer than makes sense.
Gran Turismo is also very fun. Though, honestly, the steering wheel kit will do more to build that experience than the VR headset.
I think the biggest thing killing VR for many otherwise great games, is that I really can't just walk around. Maybe if the "treadmill" options pan out, that can be solved. As things are, though, it is very jarring to have to pen yourself in, or to rely on controller for walking. Shame, as otherwise it works really well.
I think there's a much simpler explanation here, one that covers all of the other failed stereoscopic 3D products: It's a cool novelty effect, but people's brains are already pretty good at reconstructing 3D from 2D, so there's little lasting value. Once the novelty wears off, most people stop caring.
I believe that explanation also covers the Brewster Stereoscope (500k units sold in the 1850s), the ViewMaster (the US DOD bought 100k units alone as part of the future of education), the 1950s wave of 3D movies, the 1990s wave of VR, the 2010s wave of 3D movies, and the rapid rise and fall of 3D TV.
It also covers my experience every time I try this stuff. A while back I rented an Oculus Quest. For the first week, everybody was super into it, and I really loved some of the games. By the end of the second week, nobody even noticed when I mailed it back; we had all returned to playing games on Switches and the consoles.
I think the reason we keep having this problem is that a mixture of the concept (3D is obviously better that 2D, right?) plus the wow from a novelty experience suffices to attract investor money. This time, gobs and gobs of it.
> It's a cool novelty effect, but people's brains are already pretty good at reconstructing 3D from 2D, so there's little lasting value. Once the novelty wears off, most people stop caring.
This might be true for some categories of games, and not true for other categories.
For example, I've played VR on/off since I think the first version of Oculus Rift, until now using a HP Reverb G2. For action games and most categories of games, it is just fun and useful for a small amount of time.
But when it comes to simulators like flight simulators and (realistic) racing games, I literally cannot go back to faux-3D anymore. The sense of depth you get when flying/driving and being able to turn your head around helps so much that going back to non-VR is just impossible now, there is no comparison.
I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling like this regarding simulators and VR. But can it hold up a whole market segment with just this? Unsure, but not impossible either, simulator rigs/hardware seems to be doing more-or-less OK even though it's very niche.
But I'll note that as entertainment experiences, plenty of people are happy to play flying and racing games on a 2D screen, so I suspect that this particular niche is quite small, similar to the fraction of dedicated fans who insist on 3D screenings of movies.
I'm sure it's not big enough to justify the billions spent on R&D, and I suspect it's too small to interest the major players in the long term. But perhaps the niches are enough to justify continued production of 3rd-party headsets.
I mean, I do! But I see plenty of people listening to stuff from their phones or mono Bluetooth speakers, so I don't think it's a strong preference. Heck, I'd rather have stereo, but my workshop speaker is mono and I don't care enough to upgrade it for the casual listening I do there.
The question isn't if people prefer it, it's if they prefer it enough to spend the time, money, and energy it currently requires to get that experience. I'd prefer lots of things if they were cheap and easy, but they aren't, so I don't bother.
> there's little lasting value. Once the novelty wears off, most people stop caring.
i disagree. if we got half-life alyx level games as often as flatscreens people would still be playing. I do think we need lighter cooler headsets (at least compared to valve index) for longer play sessions.
I think the main point is not emphasized enough: VR is physically exhausting.
Unless you are playing with stick control (which is nice but nauseating) you will be moving a lot, I am a big guy that can barely kneel and you expect me to do super soldier stuff? yeah, no
I find the best experiences for me are those that require less "getting your VR legs": puzzling places, zombieland or that kayak infiltration game.
Of course everybody has different preferences, but to the author's point: not everyone wants (or can) play high intensity action games (which is what AAA focuses on).
As an aside: the other big one are sports games (usually racquet), playing ping pong or tennis feels realistic and its a good exercise.
I feel like the other obvious area that VR games have barely touched on is simulation games. Think of Theme Hospital, Rollercoaster Tycoon, and the like as floating dioramas you can manipulate and zoom in and out of.
yeah! there are a few for the quest, heck, there is even a port of cities skylines!.
But all of them run into the fact that making a good simulation (VR or not) requires time and money, and that's something VR games rarely have in abundance.
IMO it's because too many VR games focus on the "VR" part of that phrase rather than the "game" part. Even Alyx, which is a good game, has some limitations. Most feel more like VR tech demos than real games
Anecdata, with a few exceptions, the VR games I tried were impressive as an experience, but not really all that fun once the novelty passed. The limitations of the format clash with the kinds of games that are being made so I often felt like the games were limited, or toy-like. I think the argument made by the article does hit on something about why VR isn't really getting accepted. The games are wrong: but they might be wrong because of the limitations vs expectations of the developers and audience.
The comfort issue is real too. Even with the fairly svelte PSVR2, it's annoying to wear those things.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] threadI also believe in The Market. With the number of years VR headsets have been one the market I am quite confident no one somehow missed a lucrative genre. I see a lot of people projecting that they wish VR were the Next Big Thing, but they seem unable to wish it into reality.
Author mentions Beat Saber which would seem to contradict the argument that VR is focused on hyper violent games. Is VR taking off now or not?
My sense is that VR will always be a niche thing — maybe akin to 3D movies, TV. Or like Guitar Hero a (much more expensive) fad.
Games aren’t the VR killer app that people mistakenly think it is. Nothing is. VR as glasses is a gimmick. Sensory depravation of vision far outranks whatever thing you want to do on a computer. It’s too much effort for no gain and so far it’s been too much marketing and too much tech hyping things up. It’s cringe to see it unfold like it isn’t obvious. Wearing ski goggles indoors to use a computer makes you look like a tool.
The most popular VR app of all time is a 3D chat room.
I mean, look at VRChat. People spend thousands of dollars on gear (before even getting into the physical space needed for full immersion) to... wander around talking to each other and play low-quality clones of minigolf and Among Us games.
In the case of Quest stuff, PC link users being treated somewhat as second class (no direct DisplayPort input) and the lock-in of the crappy Quest desktop software doesn't help matters.
I agree that VR will always be a niche, but I would also say that there's a good chance of the niche growing with the introduction of a well-built, affordable, well rounded headset that's built on the SteamVR ecosystem.
Beat Saber just happens to have a intuitive controls and no motion sickness because of the stationary game play.
But it's mainly considered as an introduction to VR gaming not it's final form.
Versus with regular gaming, if my phone buzzes or the laundry goes off, pausing the game and putting down the controller takes two seconds.
That's something that should have been handled much smoother, especially given the comfort issue that might force people to not play everything in VR. But alas, VR support in regular monitor games is extremely rare to begin with and that area of VR never really got much support.
- Heavy on the head, making the neck sore after a while.
- Press into the face, which can also get sore.
- Seals around the face, which is claustrophobic.
- Insulates head/face, making hot and sweaty.
- Even high resolution headsets look pixelated, making things like reading / trying to see details irritating.
- VR motion sickness is very real, (with guides on how to develop your VR legs... which takes multiple days of careful practice).
Despite current headsets being excellent from a technical perspective, IMO they still need to get significantly ligher and more physically comfortable, significantly higher resolution, and ideally solve VR motion sickness in some way...
The one trick though is that I drink about a liter of water every hour I'm using the headset, even when doing low impact games like golf. The headset is super dehydrating, and I suspect that is the cause of many people's discomfort.
You have to have a bottle nearby that you can drink by feel.
I just got a new different headset (Quest Pro, coming from an Index) and I had to figure out how to make it comfortable enough, because you're right that out of the box, they rarely are. (Except Index, which is still one of the best all-around headsets, even years on)
But I figured out a comfort fix because I'm hooked: I'm in VR 10-20 hours a week these days, because I use it to transcend my physical body and hang out with friends around the world. There are even sleep worlds in VRChat where people literally sleep in VR! Also, less intentionally, sometimes you're hanging out and someone passes out on the couch and starts lightly snoring. As above, so below. :)
In some ways, sci-fi is here! It's just, like bars, beaches, or boardgames, not for everyone.
For regular folks, you must have messed something up in your real life pretty badly to waste it in VR in such ways. Real life can have amazing experiences, adventures, passions, extreme sports, experiencing different cultures through real social interaction. But it requires actual effort to get there, not just throwing some money at the problem. Efforts build character, lack of them shows.
If all that sounds old school, boy am I glad to belong there.
For the kind of design that's actually comfortable, look at third party suppliers like BOBOVR, which have various designs that have actually learned from what's done in other industries. For example, halo strap designs (like https://www.bobovr.com/products/s3-pro) distribute the weight around the head like a hard hat/welding mask instead of clamping things to your face, making the results immensely more comfortable.
> It's impressive, but it starts to hurt after an hour or so.
The issue is that "impressive" wanes after a few weeks or months, while comfort tends to improve by additional adjustments and customization. What VR is missing is long-term content, the stuff you use VR for after the initial wow-factor has vanished, the stuff that takes advantage of the 360° 3D screen in front of your eyes and the 6DOF controls without just being gimmicky.
That's one issue I think Apple handled much better than Meta. On VisionPro you have full 2D app support, so most of the apps just work. It might sound boring, but VR needs to embrace that kind of boring when it wants to survive long term, since boring stuff is what people do with computers 24/7.
On Meta Quest things are much more of a mess. There is no clear vision for what's the headset is actually good for. You have a few lackluster games here, a few exercise apps there, a "Metaverse" that still feels woefully incomplete, basic 2D app support without Google Play Store, no easy way to watch movies and a whole lot of other half done ideas.
But the vast majority of games (on Oculus at least) are very much casual games in the vein of Beat Saber, but they all suck and our Oculus has been gathering dust once the novelty of Beat Saber wore thin.
I don't think the article makes a compelling case for a "why". I'll take a shot at it -- it's a technological dead end. Maybe there are applications for AR once the technology matures, but VR is never going to be a holodeck. The movement-based mechanics of the Wii and the Kinect and whatever the Playstation crap was had a moment in the sun and then we all moved on because there was no killer app, just a bit of novelty.
VR gaming faces a low ceiling because (a) VR headsets present a challenge to how our eyes, neck, and proprioceptive systems are accustomed to working and induce a associated fatigue, and (b) VR gaming is more isolating than any other kind of gaming. You disconnect entirely from your surroundings, which is fun as a novelty, but is an "all-in" activity that you can't semi-attentively engage in like you might a portable/mobile game, TV game, a PC game.
I love when academics take on a medium. Those who can't do teach.
"No one wants to strap shit to their face."
Yeah.
At every stage, you'll want to spend more money on it, it feels like.
In the end, each of those steps is __several__ hundred dollars, and some of them require swapping out major parts of your machine for deeper and deeper immersion in the social world.There are so, so many horror games. I really just want WoW on the quest - all of the MMORPG things are so clunky atm.
>I think the PSVR2 would FLY off the shelves for a bit if they unlocked its best features for PC
You are in luck for this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/15139hs/full_psvr2_he...
Edit: That's an old post, I was certain that the iVRy devs had unlocked eye tracking using their app, but I can't seem to find that post atm.
Why would a casual-game developer waste time on a VR effort, when the only people who already have the $1000+ worth of necessary VR equipment are the hardcore gamers. The “casual” crowd (i.e., people with other hobbies) would much rather upgrade their phone, or buy a new stand mixer for their kitchen, or go on a vacation, or whatever. They are specifically not going to go out and buy a expensive piece of equipment in order to try PokemonVR (in large enough numbers to matter), and when they do, it will sit unused for months at a time. You can't monetize a casual player who doesn't have the headset on long enough to want to buy in-game improvements to the experience.
In the game, I was essentially a metal sphere that could "jump" and float through a huge maze. It was a puzzle game.
Tried a ton of games on more modern headsets and never got into them. Zombie games, shooters, sims, etc - nothing came even close to the fascinating experience of that colossal maze.
So in my view, VR games have moved in the wrong direction. From games that explored the new opportunities VR offered to trying -- and failing -- to match the console game experience.
There is still a lot of indie energy exploring the possibilities of VR. For cool environment you can find a lot in VRChat. For mechanics there are things like Monkey Tag (new motion mechanic) or Silent Slayer on Quest (experimenting with MR).
I think while this touches on something I don't think immersion and embodiment are mutually exclusive.
I played a few more games since then, nothing as good as HL-A (I haven't heard that anything is as good as that is...). My eyesight isn't great so I have to wear glasses inside. I only have one pair of glasses that fit okay. Getting focus on glasses + lenses + adjustment takes time. The eyes do get strained after 45-60 minutes and I get a little nauseous, so that limits my enjoyment. If there was a way to use my feet to walk Ready Player One style that'd be really super awesome and might alleviate the disconnect between virtual and physical movement.
These days my son plays multiplayer shooter games and occasional multiplayer sword fighting. He seems to enjoy it, especially the social aspect of it.
Also, at parties the various visiting youth play, lots of Superhot playthroughs as it's so easy to get into casually.
For the movement, try out Gorilla Tag. For most people, it turns out that arm-swing movement eliminates nausea; it's just enough to convince the brain that you're the one doing it and not something else.
The people who live in places with nice big room habitually empty of obstacles which they can monopolize for an hour are probably not the prime demographic for VR gaming escapism.
I keep telling myself I'll play one or two of the things in my Steam library once I finally finish a hardware project and clear some junk away...
VR felt like it would be the ultimate gaming experience.
Sadly it gave me a headache, made me feel sick and was a real hassle to set up and make happen.
There’s too many competing forms of entertainment without even one of these problems.
Compare to the price of a Switch, which is portable (or the smartphone you already have…) or to a TV, which is usable by multiple people at once.
And then if you still get one, gaming alone at home in a way that’s more isolating than the stereotypical nerd basement gaming dungeon, while also forcing you to worry about the environment around you so you don’t bump into things or people, turns out to suck. A lot.
So even if you get a headset, good odds you won’t use it much.
That’s putting aside discomfort or motion sickness.
I keep hearing about 'its just behind the corner, just lighter / better resolution / just resolve XYZ problem' literally from 90s (VFX1 for example), but the 'almost there' mantra never changed, just the details. When Apple's solution has fallen hard on the market, it was pretty clear how far from success we are and Apple adjusted plans accordingly.
I gave up on the topic for good, actually grew up some time ago and found out real life out there, with some effort offers massively more than any such goggles will ever offer in my lifetime. Most (rather successful and smart) women I ever talked to about this express immediate disgust with this, it downgrades men to weird boys in their eyes. I still see young me dreaming about alternate realities, but when you want powerful experience now or in near future use psychedelics (responsibly).
There is no good enough content, nobody wants to invest into this too much due to all above, there is no 360 porn to speak of to break barrier like it used to with previous digital revolutions. Human's senses are much harder to fool well than few geeks thought it would.
Apple with their VisionPro is quite a bit further along and their Persona[2] are available to consumer, though the price tag of the device puts it out of reach for almost everybody.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxMZ9zjqMs
[2] https://youtu.be/H3PB2zA6Q-c?si=E_OU1WeF4tsqhpTR&t=288
Gran Turismo is also very fun. Though, honestly, the steering wheel kit will do more to build that experience than the VR headset.
I think the biggest thing killing VR for many otherwise great games, is that I really can't just walk around. Maybe if the "treadmill" options pan out, that can be solved. As things are, though, it is very jarring to have to pen yourself in, or to rely on controller for walking. Shame, as otherwise it works really well.
I believe that explanation also covers the Brewster Stereoscope (500k units sold in the 1850s), the ViewMaster (the US DOD bought 100k units alone as part of the future of education), the 1950s wave of 3D movies, the 1990s wave of VR, the 2010s wave of 3D movies, and the rapid rise and fall of 3D TV.
It also covers my experience every time I try this stuff. A while back I rented an Oculus Quest. For the first week, everybody was super into it, and I really loved some of the games. By the end of the second week, nobody even noticed when I mailed it back; we had all returned to playing games on Switches and the consoles.
I think the reason we keep having this problem is that a mixture of the concept (3D is obviously better that 2D, right?) plus the wow from a novelty experience suffices to attract investor money. This time, gobs and gobs of it.
This might be true for some categories of games, and not true for other categories.
For example, I've played VR on/off since I think the first version of Oculus Rift, until now using a HP Reverb G2. For action games and most categories of games, it is just fun and useful for a small amount of time.
But when it comes to simulators like flight simulators and (realistic) racing games, I literally cannot go back to faux-3D anymore. The sense of depth you get when flying/driving and being able to turn your head around helps so much that going back to non-VR is just impossible now, there is no comparison.
I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling like this regarding simulators and VR. But can it hold up a whole market segment with just this? Unsure, but not impossible either, simulator rigs/hardware seems to be doing more-or-less OK even though it's very niche.
But I'll note that as entertainment experiences, plenty of people are happy to play flying and racing games on a 2D screen, so I suspect that this particular niche is quite small, similar to the fraction of dedicated fans who insist on 3D screenings of movies.
I'm sure it's not big enough to justify the billions spent on R&D, and I suspect it's too small to interest the major players in the long term. But perhaps the niches are enough to justify continued production of 3rd-party headsets.
But we do prefer stereo over mono in audio domain, right?
i disagree. if we got half-life alyx level games as often as flatscreens people would still be playing. I do think we need lighter cooler headsets (at least compared to valve index) for longer play sessions.
the big trend now on PC is flat2vr. UEVR and luke ross have been carrying pcvr on their back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q02UCNXLJY8
I find the best experiences for me are those that require less "getting your VR legs": puzzling places, zombieland or that kayak infiltration game. Of course everybody has different preferences, but to the author's point: not everyone wants (or can) play high intensity action games (which is what AAA focuses on).
As an aside: the other big one are sports games (usually racquet), playing ping pong or tennis feels realistic and its a good exercise.
Sure, those aren't going to immerse me in a sci-fi or fantasy world the same way, but if recreation is the goal I'll take the in-chair experience.
But all of them run into the fact that making a good simulation (VR or not) requires time and money, and that's something VR games rarely have in abundance.
The comfort issue is real too. Even with the fairly svelte PSVR2, it's annoying to wear those things.