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VR isn’t dead. It was just taking a nap

kevinw729
Honored Visionary
For those that had been questioning why things had been quiet on the VR forum front of late, here is a really good overview from a VR developer on what they see is happening.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/06/vr-isnt-dead-it-was-just-taking-a-nap/


Note - For transparency, I write a column for a news service (VRFocus) that is funded by nDreams, but am impartial to their position, and only report what I feel comfortable covering.
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959
68 REPLIES 68

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

pyroth309 said:

....no CV2 out until 2019+ that the rift interest of new users may stall out.



Start from 5:53 - 

https://youtu.be/polGIA3OILc?t=353
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

What he says from 5:30 to 6:15 is absolutely spot on and should please all Rift owners.
Big PC, all the headsets, now using Quest 3

MadScientist_42
Protege

KillCard said:



You need a lot of space to play VR and maybe you could do 1 hour in a headset. They just need more fun games. A lot are pretty crappy tbh


My longest session without breaks in VR is 8 hours, my longest session with breaks is 12. My Average session is 3-4 hours.

As for the games being shitty ... this is basically just PC gaming in general, of all the indie/AAA games out there about 1-2% of it is actually worth-while. The same is true for VR, just instead of 100 out of 10 000 games being good, instead 10 out of 1000 games are good. So there are less games but the "ratio" is still the same.

Find the games you like and just play the shit out of them ... I actually like it better, having 10 games I want to play is actually more realistically manageable than having 100 games I want to play.



The problem is that the bar is a bit higher.  The odds of the stuff being 99% sh*te are a bit higher.  Worse, the vendors are still mostly overpriced or have failed to disclose things like needing DX11's runtimes installed (and don't install them FOR the customer when you don't see them present).  I had a hell of a time figuring out the ONE d*mn thing that kept me from just simply nuking the Windows install on my new laptop, bought to PLAY Robo Recall, since it was free, and just moved on to just using Linux on my machine and making OpenHMD work right on it so I could play the few SteamVR titles that moved over to Linux and so I could begin doing my own content which will be targeted to most VR platforms.

They're hurting because they overstated what was there and overpriced themselves along with alienating the hardcore crowd that could've helped them go further, either in tech or in assets.  IDIOTS.

Techy111
MVP
MVP
9djfc2p6m8e0.jpg

Crappy ? 1 hour in the headset ? WTF are you smoking something..........wacky? I have just re-installed my PC for the first time since I got my rift last year. The new Home and Dash wasn't working before but now it's silk......I have 20 or 30 "crappy" games to reload and many "hours" in my headset to look forward too. I work damn hard as a paramedic......have 4 kids, 2 of them under 4 AND i am 52 and FIND time to play even when I am tired.......jeeeeeez seriously, what would make you happy ?
A PC with lots of gadgets inside and a thing to see in 3D that you put on your head.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

MadScientist_42 said:
They're hurting because they overstated what was there and overpriced themselves along with alienating the hardcore crowd that could've helped them go further, either in tech or in assets.  IDIOTS.



The hardcore crowd typically doesn't complain about things being overpriced. In fact, embracing over-pricing is often a prerequisite to being a member of the hardcore crowd. Otherwise... it's not really hardcore, now is it? More softcore.

VR as an industry, its hardware, and its software is advancing amongst the hardcore and softcore crowds just fine.

DarkTenka
Trustee



KillCard said:



You need a lot of space to play VR and maybe you could do 1 hour in a headset. They just need more fun games. A lot are pretty crappy tbh


My longest session without breaks in VR is 8 hours, my longest session with breaks is 12. My Average session is 3-4 hours.

As for the games being shitty ... this is basically just PC gaming in general, of all the indie/AAA games out there about 1-2% of it is actually worth-while. The same is true for VR, just instead of 100 out of 10 000 games being good, instead 10 out of 1000 games are good. So there are less games but the "ratio" is still the same.

Find the games you like and just play the shit out of them ... I actually like it better, having 10 games I want to play is actually more realistically manageable than having 100 games I want to play.



The problem is that the bar is a bit higher.  The odds of the stuff being 99% sh*te are a bit higher.  Worse, the vendors are still mostly overpriced or have failed to disclose things like needing DX11's runtimes installed (and don't install them FOR the customer when you don't see them present).  I had a hell of a time figuring out the ONE d*mn thing that kept me from just simply nuking the Windows install on my new laptop, bought to PLAY Robo Recall, since it was free, and just moved on to just using Linux on my machine and making OpenHMD work right on it so I could play the few SteamVR titles that moved over to Linux and so I could begin doing my own content which will be targeted to most VR platforms.

They're hurting because they overstated what was there and overpriced themselves along with alienating the hardcore crowd that could've helped them go further, either in tech or in assets.  IDIOTS.


The bar isn't higher, it's lower. VR automatically gives you a huge bonus to immersion - which is why a lot of dev's are lazy. The problem is a lot of them get TOO lazy. The OTHER problem is, you have to be a moderately avid VR user to know not to look at graphics as a bar of what to expect. The nature of VR is shit graphics = something that still looks awesome, the major failing is making a solid experience that both utilises VR to its fullest extent and remains engaging. There are TONNES more games that succeed at this than it looks like, but most of them go un-noticed because new users are still in "flat mode" and think if the graphics are shit then the game must be shit.

There are WAY more good titles out there than it looks, you just need to know what to look for and be a little open-minded.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

KillCard said:
.....
There are WAY more good titles out there than it looks, you just need to know what to look for and be a little open-minded.


As has been stated, the current VR community are more than happy with what they have, and are deeply engrossed in enjoying their new "reality"!

That would be fine if the sub-4 million installed base was acceptable to those investing in developing the business, but the business sector was promised a "main stream" market by 2016-17 and that has not happened. It seems to be a longer haul, and while many understood this could be the case, there seems to be a part of the media and investment community that are looking at the slow install as some sign of stagnation or possible collapse.

I do not subscribe to this - and just feel that a number of gullible individuals believed the hype they were fed, and in some cases drank way too deep from the Kool-Aid. As with all attempt to establish a phase of adoption, there is a rough climb, and possible troughs to navigate. This ride may be a bit more bumpy for VR this time round because of the vast amount initially invested into a business plan that has now been drastically changed or even scrapped.
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

DarkTenka
Trustee

kevinw729 said:


KillCard said:
.....
There are WAY more good titles out there than it looks, you just need to know what to look for and be a little open-minded.


As has been stated, the current VR community are more than happy with what they have, and are deeply engrossed in enjoying their new "reality"!

That would be fine if the sub-4 million installed base was acceptable to those investing in developing the business, but the business sector was promised a "main stream" market by 2016-17 and that has not happened. It seems to be a longer haul, and while many understood this could be the case, there seems to be a part of the media and investment community that are looking at the slow install as some sign of stagnation or possible collapse.

I do not subscribe to this - and just feel that a number of gullible individuals believed the hype they were fed, and in some cases drank way too deep from the Kool-Aid. As with all attempt to establish a phase of adoption, there is a rough climb, and possible troughs to navigate. This ride may be a bit more bumpy for VR this time round because of the vast amount initially invested into a business plan that has now been drastically changed or even scrapped.


Yea I suppose that makes sense. I would never have thought about it that way .. though its understandable if some misguided business owners jumped in with the idea that this was going to "instantly blow everyone away" .. no new tech works like that. Even mobile phones were super oversized, cumbersome and overly-expensive for a long time before it was actually "adopted to mainstream".

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
Never thought I'd agree with Atmos on something, but here we are. The basics of VR are now established, so at this point it is a battle of resolution, refresh rate and FoV. None of these things are new, monitors have been having that battle since monitors were invented. It has no real impact on game development as coding in the ability to alter resolution, aspect ratio and FoV is completely trivial and normal to do. I just wrote a basic raytracer program for a computer graphics class in C++. Care to guess how many lines of code it took to make the resolution and aspect ratio changable? The answer is 3, just 3 lines of code. And two of them were declaring variables.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

Atmos73 said:
 But to sit there and say one thing then another is just laughable. 



He didn't contradict himself at all; you're just confused about the difference between hardware that goes outside a computer vs hardware that goes inside a computer. The rest of your post is more wishful thinking with the same mislead predictions you're so famous for.



Never thought I'd agree with Atmos on something, but here we are.



When you first arrived and called HMD's "monitors" I figured you and Atmos would end up best friends. Just as he's confused about internal vs external hardware, you get confused about screens vs lenses.


Anyway, the "vr is dead" discussions always end up attracting the worst types of responses and the most nonconstructive debates. And some folks don't need much of an excuse to turn every discussion in to some nonsensical anti-Oculus rambling.