Virtual Reality

It's a thing now.  I mean, Oculus Rift has been kicking around for a while, but now Sony has entered the arena too.  The PS4 has a VR headset.  Thousands of films and TV shows predicting a VR future are vindicated.  That future is now.  Ish.

So, VR: good thing, bad thing, unimpressive thing?  The future of gaming, or a niche product for a niche audience?  Discuss.



I'll start the ball rolling: I dislike VR.  Always have, ever since I got into games, and people/media were raving about how it was the future.  I like to be able to play as a character: even when they have no lines, the likes of Mario and Link manage to convey themselves through appearance, small vocalisations, the expressions in their eyes.  I've never bought into the whole "the hero, it's you" that games like Pokémon have tried to foist onto me, and this seems like another step down that path.

As for whether it's the future of gaming - not any time soon.  Sony are releasing this as a peripheral, and the big developers don't use peripherals integrally unless they have to.  Otherwise they lose sales from those who don't own the peripheral.  However, I can see it being more hyped and more used than Move, say.

It's a weird one, as FPS's should be good and someone said about a star wars game where you hold the move and you see it as a lightsaber. That sounds brilliant but it comes down to price which even at £300 is cheap for what it is but really expensive for a peripheral.

Will I buy it, more then likely as I'm a sucker for new tech but will a use it unlikely.

I can't see it ever feeling as natural as sitting in front of a tv with a pad, but if it brings us a step closer to the holodeck I'm all for it.

The virtual reality that's being touted right now, to me at least, is not something I care for at all.  Now if it ends up being the first technological step towards genuine vr with the whole actually entering a virtual world that you enter mentally I can tolerate it, but otherwise it's just another case of doing something more awkwardly than current methods simply because it requires more fancy tech.  Like voice control in things, the buttons are simply more effective and fast, and achieve the same result.  That's what I see the current so-called virtual reality being touted by the media as. Awkward, excessively expensive, and unneeded.

An indie dev I follow on The Twitters was going on about "presence" yesterday, during the reveal- that part of the appeal of VR is 'being' in the location.

So from that, I can only come to one of two conclusions:

1/ Gimmick. Gimmick gimmick gimmick gimmick gimmick.
2/ It's going to be another thing to use to beat us around the head with Walking Simulators, as if there's not enough of that already.

After trying the Oculus Rift, I really don't think that FPS games will feel "right" at all.

1st person vehicle games are really good in the device, as both you and the character in the game don't move, and you're both pushing buttons to control the vehicle you're in - the immersion works. But I get an inkling that first person games are going to feel like controlling a floating camera totally disconnected from any characters.

A Rogue Squadron game, however, would be absolutely amazing on the device. War Thunder worked well, but flying an A-Wing or the mighty B-Wing would be immense.

...Actually, Lylat Wars might work really well in VR.  

If I can do the death star trench run in a decent vr set up, my childhood will be complete.

Buskalilly wrote:

If I can do the death star trench run in a decent vr set up, my childhood will be complete.

As for VR, despite not having experienced it I definitely feel that it'll be as how Cube described it, and for that reason I can't say I'm particularly pumped for VR hitting the mainstream.

So would Driveclub be a good title to show of for the VR as I still think that's why it' got delayed. But personally I don't think it would be great as if I'm that close to the wheel I think it would feel of as I'd see someone steering it which to me would put me a bit off.


Surely in a FPS you'd be controlling the firing of the gun and moving forward but your actual head would be controlling the looking around.

It's not for Zero.

Scroll down to the last one. Hilarious, if you're me.

Facebook are buying Oculus.

And in the short time since the announcement, interest in Sony's Project Morpheus has dramatically increased.

As someone who has no interest in VR, I'm finding the fallout from this hilarious. Adverts during loading pauses, anyone?

I think it is upsetting for technological advances in gaming though. Oculus were doing wonders for advancing the technology and now they'll likely find their support waning and their advances stagnating. I guess it's up to Valve and Sony now.

Regarding Valve, I actually think that the main reason they were holding on their VR technology is because they wanted to play nice with an indie start-up and let them have the glory they deserved from bringing it into market.

Now a big company is behind them, I don't think they'll hold back any more.

Is Valve really that nice though?

They're fairly reliable when you compare them to the other big games companies out there.

JayMoyles wrote:

They're fairly reliable when you compare them to the other big games companies out there.

*lights the Fronksignal*

I had a go on the Oculus Rift at Rezzed yesterday. I don't really get motion sick - maybe after an extended PC FPS session, sitting too close to the screen, but I can e.g. play Minecraft for 5 hours and feel fine.

However, I immediately felt nauseous, and only just made it through the 5 minute demo.

Also, as cool as it is being immersed in another world, you have to remember where things are in reality; if you don't remember where your controller is when you put the headset on, you could spend the first few minutes of a gaming session trying to control your character with a baguette. I'm now "un-sold" on VR, as I was in the 90s.

Listening to the CVG podcast (Keza MacDonald on this week), one of the things they touched upon concerning Morpheus over Oculus (such a silly sentence to type) was how Morpheus has Move-enabled head-tracking. So the PS4 headset should allow you to see your controller if you look down, unlike Oculus.

For me, I find VR inherently unappealing. I have to wear a heavy, expensive visor and cut myself off around from my surroundings to play a game. It also amuses me how many of the same people that moaned that the 3DS's 3D effect hurt their eyes are hyped for this.  

Oh, and a minor claim to fame. According to Twitter history, I was the first person to coin the term "Facebooculus"

...on Twitter. I used the word "Facebookulus" independently on CVG, although I don't know whether that was before or after.

Axis1500 wrote:

For me, I find VR inherently unappealing. I have to wear a heavy, expensive visor and cut myself off around from my surroundings to play a game.

One thing I should say in its favour - it's not at all heavy. The rest seems to be true though   

MS have patented a few thing's do with VR, I think they could have the best VR due to the Kinect.

Also I've said before in other threads apps could be great on VR and someone brought up Porn for VR. If that happens It could take of, well it's worked for media formats.