just wondering what people think
i bought the HTC Vive in like 2018 back when The Good VR Headsets plus proper setup would cost you $1000. it felt a lot like being an early internet user: zero Best Practices to follow, lots of experimentation that does NOT pan out, some experimentation that does, so so so so so so so many rough edges that may or may never be sanded down, and the absolute surety above all other topics of discussion that This Is The Future.
I made a "game" that i positioned more as Witchcraft/Spirituality Software called "Witches Suite VR" which lets you sit quietly in a unity3D-developed little island with a large tree and gentle sounds, and build an altar if you like. I think VR is way way more suited to this sort of thing than games. It's good for hanging out in. I would not be surprised if there end up being a lot of really great games (Beat Saber is cool, i don't know what to tell you) but I don't think it's really a Gaming Platform as much as it is a lot of other things instead.
also, I sure did buy the Facebook Thing (Quest 2) at target during holiday season last year because it was $250 and I wanted to play Half-Life Alyx. I haven't touched it since!!
i *think* apple is working on a VR thing (not just an AR thing) and once they come out with that VR will matter a lot more, and probably not until then.
My sentiments are along the āI'll never put that shit on my headā, but maybe that will change in a far enough future where a whole bunch of jank gets sorted out, and something gets made for it I'm genuinely interested in.
I'm going to assume that trying that stupid Dactyl Nightmare thing running off an Amiga 500 or whatever it was in the concourse of a shopping center 30-ish years ago doesn't count.
For the past few months my friend had secretly been working every night on a VR game about being a bird that holds a baseball bat and has to fly around and hit stuff in midair. He spent all this time researching the physics involved and watching slow motion videos of birds flying so that the arm motions you have to do to fly properly are as anatomically correct as possible (though everything involving the baseball bat is very much not anatomically correct for obvious reasons). I put his VR headset on for that. It was neat! Then after that we loaded up VR chat, and he showed me Mario Hell, which was also neat, albeit in a completely different way.
Anyway, it was quite something, sitting on my friend's bed in his tiny room, watching this very large man with massive goggles on his head flap his arms so gracefully.
my #nongamersignificantother was stuck sitting next to some goofy dude on a flight who wore a VR headset the whole way. She still makes fun of him years later, so I personally wonāt wear one bc I donāt want a woman to laugh at me forever
a friend of mine had me try that elite game in vr, and it made my feet weird-out when i rolled, and i didn't like that. i also hated having these weird little doll arms moving with my real arms. not a fan to be honest, but it is quite novel.
no clever jokes or āwitticismsā using the above post please
Edit: meaning mine
I thought maybe one day Iād pick up a PSVR2 before they announced it wouldnāt be backward compatible. Moss sounded cool.
The hangout worlds people are creating in them are neat and I really respect it all. I wouldn't want to spend a whole lot of time in them though. I spend enough time at home in front of a screen, strapping screens to my face scares the shit out of me.
The only VR games Iāve played have been Beat Saber (cool) and Superhot (also cool), but both felt like tech demos/single note experiences and not full fledged game material, although they couldāve been (also the controls for Superhot took me a while to get used to for some reason). The fact that it's been years and still no MMO a la .Hack has arrived is a shame.
a #nongamerfriend once explained VR to another #nongamerfriend in the most elegant way possible:
"it's like they made a new type of TV but just for nerds"
i think it was our boy big boy baby boy tim rogers that said beatsaber was the kind of thing they'd get out at sunday school or something.
personally, i have not even tried VR. i would like to have a go on, say, resi 7 / 8 or tetris effect. having said that, i do not want it in my house.
SUPERHOT VR is phenomenal on PSVR and the endless mode is pretty dang intense. Also, Arizona Sunshine allowed me to appreciate the body shenanigans that take place as you and your buddy do goofy poses to try and make each other laugh. Iām still waiting on a Half-Life: Alyx PSVR2 announcement before I decide to purchase it but rest assured, Iāll pick it up someday.
Iāve got psvr and I think itās pretty dang cool, although I barely play it.
My first vr experience was Skyrim and I loved it at the time, but last time I played I wasnāt really into it.
That Walking Dead Saints and Sinners game is pretty fun, and I think the jankiness of the current state of vr makes it even more fun personally, though reading stuff can be difficult to impossible at times.
I think thereās a huge potential for some really cool rhythm games, I'm pretty into the Hatsune Miku game and Beat Saber, but I think they both fall a little short of something truly great.
Fishing in vr also really gets me goin.
Unfortunately, I think I will have to get a Quest 2 at some point and play me some of that Resident Evil 4 vr cause why not buy that game for a 5th time.
Iām guessing some of making fun of VR comes from (1) it being very goofy looking, and (2) the idea of strapping a headset on and entering cyberspace seems very antisocial and dystopian. I canāt really refute either of those points (especially the first one), though I will say that everyone I know with VR treats it like it's weed and is constantly trying to get their non-VR-owning friends to come over and try it out. Watching my friends spin around with the headset on, describing whatever it is they see in there, while I use my own imagination is in some ways more fascinating to me than just watching someone play a game on a normal screen. I think the goofiness of it all only increases its effectiveness as a bonding exercise.
Even watching my friend stream via discord is more fun when he's in VR, because I see the camera bob around as his head does, and it's amusing to imagine him at 2am sitting in the dark jacked into cyberspace. It feels like I'm making a call directly into [computer world](https://youtu.be/zWSkwvvfmco).
I'm sure ultimately VR will be used for all sorts of terrible things and make the world a significantly worse place once it becomes as necessary for engaging in society as smartphones have become (if that ever happens), but for now it's a very fun toy that I personally could never justify the expense of, though I'm glad I got to experience it via friends. I love seeing what random nonsense artists do with it, like my aforementioned friend, or [this guy](https://youtu.be/m9zIe_X0WSw).
I guess I've been a diehard VR person for a long time. I was finishing up college in 2014 and got my small state uni to partially pay for an Oculus Rift DK2 so that I could develop weird little 3D environments in Unreal in my senior level ācomputer graphicsā course. I mostly screwed around with it at home and definitely loved making my friends try it and play all sorts of weird little games with it. Anyone remember Dreadhalls?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1RnmMvSHQg
I used that DK2 quite a bit, and really thought VR would take off a lot faster than it has. Flash forward to late 2019, and Half Life: Alyx got announced as a VR only release, and I was beyond ecstatic. I didn't have a gaming pc anymore, nor a modern VR headset, and decided I would have to jump back in for HL:A. I built a new, modern PC in early 2020, right before COVID lockdowns here in the USA. HL:A launched, I got my self an HTC Vive Pro instead of an Index, and promptly became fully obsessed with VR again. If you have a way to try HL:A and haven't, I highly recommend it. It's truly the pinnacle of VR experiences still. Beat Saber, Rez Infinite, Tetris Effect, Paper Beasts, modded Alien Isolation, and Google Earth VR really helped get through all the at home pandemic times.
Last summer, I managed to pick up a used Oculus Quest 2 for $175 and have screwed around with it a bit. RE4 VR is quite the experience tbh. I still feel like the HTC Vive Pro is a better VR experience than what the Quest provides, but the Quest is like 80% of the experience which is probably fine for most people.
The PSVR headset is really neat for console gamers, and I really really wish RE7 VR wasn't locked to the PS4 release. There are mods for RE7/8 for VR on PC, but last time I tried them, the controller mapping wasn't great. This was kind of me just rambling, but VR is cool and weird and maybe the PSVR2 will usher in another wave of interesting big budget VR releases, but it feels pretty stagnant still and I haven't bought a new VR game since RE4 came out last year...
Also, yes VR done right requires a whole ass room dedicated to it, which is extremely not feasible for a lot of people. I have my home office setup in such a manner that it accommodates the VR stuff. Given how small my house is, I've considered setting up my attached garage for VR due to the size and shape, but boy o boy, what a concession to play some video games.
Iād love to hear more about the technical details re: actually making VR stuff from @āfetus8ā#p88148 and @āesperā#p87895 (and anyone else whoās worked on VR before)!
My school's game developer club also had an at-the-time new oculus devkit, and I kind of regret not trying to make something with it. Back then I was only interested in 2D (and also was a pretty marginal member of the club) so it never ocurred to me what a wonderful opportunity I had that is now lost. Well, now that VR is a lot more affordable, I might get into it eventually, though I'm not sure I have as much time for crazy experimentation.
Okay I did say āI'll never put that shit on my headā but really I'm just lying to myself out of recognition that:
So in this sense "I'll never put that shit on my head" is less of a declaration and more of a lamentation
----
[img width=300]https://i.imgur.com/rL1g4Rk.png[/img]
@āsaddleblastersā#p88151 wellllll, itās been 8(ish) years since Iāve made anything for VRā¦
At the time, I was extremely interested in exploring 3D spaces in VR, as I thought that was one of the most interesting and immersive aspects of VR. I spent a lot of time in Unreal Engine building out rooms, interiors and weird naturalistic cave type structures and mostly focused on the textures and lighting effects to create spaces that felt otherworldly yet familiar. I used the built in first person cameras and controls in Unreal to make moving around easy. I honestly didnāt do a lot of scripting or anything due to simply wanting to create spaces to explore. Since then, Iāve experimented a bit more with creating more reactive elements in those kinds of spaces, but I donāt think Iāve ever made anything akin to an actual game for VR.
@"Gaagaagiins"#p88152 headsets with plastic adjustable bits on the back actually fit big fat heads really well, and distribute the weight super well across your whole head so you really don't feel the headset too much. The PSVR system is honestly one of the best feeling headsets, and I know a couple friends with self described big ass heads who don't mind wearing a headset for extended periods of time.
The fabric only bands on the Oculus Quest 2 suck and definitely get uncomfortable after a short period of time, and that's coming from me with a normal to medium largish head.
Iāve only tried VR a few times, itās kind of amazing how screens infront of our eyes can make it feel like we're in a completely different space.
I know a fair bit about it as I'm friends with a few VR game developers, they all worked on the game [Wanderer](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1599560/Wanderer/). I haven't played it as I dont have the hardware but it seems pretty cool.
The biggest problems with VR development is the renderering and making things seem natural. For rendering it has to be in a high resolution, high framerate and once for each eye, kind of like a fancy Nintendo DS. For making things natural I've had a few discussions with these friends about topics like limb movements and basic collision, it seems like there is no industry standard or "best way" to tackle this problem so there's lots of discovery to be made.
I don't think VR will ever become ubiquitous. The whole movement of smartphones was decluttering and merging handheld devices into one. Trying to add a headset into that space doesn't really work. Maybe if apple made a really good Google Cardboard clone it may take off, but even then there seems to be a public pushback. Like what would the majority of people ages 30-60 (has purchasing power) even do in VR? Watch big prawnos and visit Zuck's metaverse? You can't market a product off the sentiment of giving up. Sidenote the VR CG prawn scene in Maniac (2018) was the weirdest TV I've ever seen.
I think VR at least the version at the moment is destined to be a console accessory or arcade expereince. It's going to be the new Kinect but it will stay around longer.
the thing about VR that i really canāt stand (there are many of those things, but this is number one on the list) is how it cuts me off from the quote-unquote real world. i get scared when iām in VR. someone could walk right up and stab me while iām in there waggling around some fake sword or whatever it is iām doing, and i wouldnāt even notice them approaching, because three of my senses are being pushed to their experiential limits (letās pray we never get VR smells and tastes in the equation). sure, we live in a dystopia, but i'd rather be aware of my surroundings at all time than immerse myself completely in something completely virtual.