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LA Noire The VR Case Files for HTC Vive

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Rockstar Games has just announced new versions of its detective thriller LA Noire for Xbox One, PS4 and Switch (releasing November 14th 2017). Alongside these three new console versions, they are taking their  first steps into virtual reality with L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files, featuring seven select cases from the original game rebuilt specifically for a virtual reality experience on the HTC VIVE.
 
-L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files for HTC Vive delivers seven of the original engrossing, self-contained cases from L.A. Noire rebuilt specifically for virtual reality, blending breathtaking action with true detective work to deliver an unprecedented interactive experience.
 
 😮 


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.
37 REPLIES 37

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
That's my point, HMD's shouldn't either. VR should be standardized as should motion controllers (like joysticks are standardized, they have different buttons, configurations and features, but all are treated the same from a programmer's standpoint).

Zenbane
MVP
MVP


That's my point, HMD's shouldn't either. VR should be standardized as should motion controllers (like joysticks are standardized, they have different buttons, configurations and features, but all are treated the same from a programmer's standpoint).


I'm not much of a fan of this approach. Computer Technology and Info Tech are ever-changing, ever-growing, and ever-evolving. Standards need to be tested and reviewed repeatedly before being published as an actual Official Standard. However, in this ever-evolving industry... by the time a Standard goes through all of that testing and reviewing, the landscape has changed thus rending the Standard non-applicable mere moments after it gets published.

The Virtual Reality industry is still trying to figure out how to best implement immersion (FOV, Resolution, Tracking, Audio), while also trying to establish comfort levels, while also trying to perfect motion sickness issues, while also trying to increase the level of Presence, while also trying to decrease hardware requirements/dependencies...

The environment itself is about 5 years away from anything that could possibly resemble "stability." Talks of Standards now are simply premature and unrealistic, imo.

Besides, even if a Standard was created, there would be some company going against it. And that's the company I'd choose to give my money to.

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
That's the thing about standards, they are designed to apply in the broadest sense. What do motion controllers capture? If we break it down, it is:

1) Position in x, y and z axes
2) Rotation about x, y and z axes
3) Button presses (including the touch sensors that detect if your finger/thumb is touching something without pressing).
4) Analog controller inputs (thumbsticks, triggers, grips)

That's it, it doesn't matter if it is a vive wand, the rift's touch controllers or something totally different 30 years from now. That is all they do now and all they will ever do unless someone decides to put in thermal sensors or something silly. But even then, a thermal sensor is an analog control, so yeah, it's a thumbstick as far as the code is concerned.

Taking that style approach is the reason a game developer can support everything from a bare bones joystick to a high end HOTAS to a race wheel to pedals to a simple xbox controller without writing a single extra line of code to do so. If they support one, they support them all. The only catch is they must also include the ability to rebind axis and buttons since these are all drastically different controllers and they can't possibly account for them all.

The VR headsets are just as simple. All they really are is a dual monitor setup with a slight offset in the images. This can be generalized to:

1) Resolution per eye
2) IPD
3) View angle along the x and y axes
4) Position in x, y and z axes
5) Rotation in x, y and z axes

Obviously headsets can have additional things such as microphones and headphones, but these are already treated as general I/O devices by windows. That bit is already standardized.

Edit: I did think of one possible addition, and that is a force feedback effect for something like a mechanical glove (I've seen some youtube videos of them). But once again, not a big deal and could be added to the standard without issue. Force feedback effects are already standardized for wheels and joysticks. No reason it can't apply to such things.

kojack
MVP
MVP


That's my point, HMD's shouldn't either. VR should be standardized as should motion controllers (like joysticks are standardized, they have different buttons, configurations and features, but all are treated the same from a programmer's standpoint).

You've never done PC game input programming. 🙂

Just look at how even huge games like Dark Souls have broken input, I have to unplug every usb controller (hotas, rudder pedals, cad controller, etc) otherwise it's xbox controller support is broken.

How are you accessing the joystick? Xinput? DirectInput? Raw Input? USB HID? All have different issues. XInput can see two triggers on an xbox controller, but can't handle any non MS game controller. DirectInput thinks an xbox controller has only 1 trigger (left is -1, right is 1) and no headphone socket, but handles more devices. But it can't see multiple mice or keyboards as individuals, reads mice at lower res and only supports 32 buttons (my HOTAS has more). Raw input doesn't do the standardising of device controls, you are now dealing with raw data packets you need to reverse engineer for each device, but it gives better access to features like high mouse resolution. USB HID is the lowest level, similar to raw input.

You may well need to support all of those alternative input libraries: xinput if you detect an xbox controller, directinput if you detect another joystick, raw input for mouse, HID for custom devices like 3d Connexion, then custom sdks for other devices like novint falcon, trackir, etc. Just like VR, needing to support Oculus SDK, OpenVR, whatever MS calls their stuff.

We also end up with exclusives to certain input devices. Black and White had custom content just for one specific model of Logitech mouse (it had vibration). A lot of games don't support (or very badly support, from axis mappings right up to just not working at all) anything that isn't an xbox controller. Portal 2 has an entire custom campaign only for owners of a Razer Hydra. The haptic editions of Penumbra Overture and Penumbra Black Plague are specifically for the Novint Falcon. NaturalPoint use FUD and threats to drop support to force developers like Eagle Dynamics (DCS) to not support competing head tracking sdks.



Ok, sorry, got a bit distracted there. I've been doing game input programming (especially for odd devices) and ranting about bad input support in games for many years, right back to the amiga days where I'd hack hardware to get around the limits of bad standards.
Things are WAY better now than they used to be, but we still aren't at the point where programmers don't need to care about what's plugged in.



We definitely need a standardised interface to VR. But the danger is doing it too early.
While VR has been around for a LONG time, actual game VR development stagnated due to limited hardware (until recent hardware, things like Async Time Warp and Async Space Warp were out of the reach of consumers). The ones doing research into VR (like the military) didn't care about friendly game store cooperation, they were making $30000+ proprietary devices. Systems like Vuzix did almost nothing in their sdks, just told you the current rotation. Everything else was up to the developer.

Oculus has done more to develop performance features (ATW, ASW, other stuff inside of the sdk). Valve has done more to make room scale safe (oculus guardian is really just a clone of Vive chaperone). Both have contributed research into differing aspects of VR. MS are doing interesting stuff with world scale spatial tracking and OS integration.

Now that features are fairly stable, it's the time for a group like OpenXR to step in and standardise, based on all of the research and progress done by individual companies. Sucks for consumers in the short term, but it gives a better end result in the long term by not stifling innovation with under-prepared standards (that just causes more standards to propagate).


Hang on, what was this topic about again?
Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
Those are just different standards/libraries with assorted advantages and disadvantages. But they are all reasonably standard. Some developers do fall terribly short though. This is often an issue with console ports as they may be designed strictly for an xbox controller and it never even occurs to the developer that something else might be plugged in. You aren't the only one who's encountered such nonsense, it bugs me just as much. My programming pet peve is single threaded applications. It irritates me to no end when a game has low FPS or a program is going to take 20 minutes to do something because it's using 100% of a single CPU thread and nothing else, despite 11 more CPU threads being idle. There is no excuse for that kind of crap, just as there is no excuse for controllers interfering with each other.

Boneboys
Protege
Well, that went off-topic rather fast !

I could give reasons why I believe Rockstar chose to develop a VR version of LA Noire, or write about the cool aspects of the original game but I'll let you guys discover that for yourselves.

I'm still going to buy because the game was so impressive using a 3D Vision setup that my expectations for a remade VR version are high.
Get a Grasp, get a Grip, get Rifting.

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
Sorry for assisting in derailing. So yeah, it might be a good game. I never played LA Noire but I remember it looking interesting at the time. Just one of the many games I never got around to messing with. Hopefully it works reasonably well with the Rift, might pick it up if it does.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP


That's the thing about standards, they are designed to apply in the broadest sense. 


That is completely untrue. You are thinking about Guidelines, not Standards. Although even Guidelines have a specific tone (as opposed to "broadest sense").

The Standards for HTTPS, for example, are extremely specific. I've not only written Standards for organizations, I've also had to write software to specific standards (e.g. Financial Software that adheres to PCI standardization).

Feel free to cite some examples of Standards that are meant to address things in the "broadest sense," specific to Information Technology.

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
You're just trying to nitpick and redefine words. You know exactly what I mean when I say standard.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP


You're just trying to nitpick and redefine words. You know exactly what I mean when I say standard.

I haven't presented any definitions. One can't "redefine" a word until it is first been "defined," right? Besides, use whatever definition you choose, I asked you to come up with an example and you didn't.

I know what you think you mean when you say Standard, and it's definitely not a Standard. I don't say that based on definitions, I say that based on actually applying any type of Standard to any facet of Information Technology.