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Improving the "permanent" Guardian Wall : Dot Mode

HiThere_
Superstar
The permanent form of the Guardian Wall can only be switched on, or switched off :

Switched off makes you worry too much about hitting your furniture, and
so limits the amount and speed of movements you dare to make in VR (or you
don't worry enough about hitting your invisible limits and you do move fast enough to manage to crash your hand into something).
- Switched on it is highly intrusive and immersion breaking, which is why I'm guessing ~100% users leave it switched off.

My
Feature Request : Add a "dot mode" to the Guardian wall, that
transforms the permanent highly intrusive full laser cage into a
significantly less intrusive permanent bunch of dots, which can be left
switched on using during gameplay without getting in your way. This
would be a specially useful feature for intense action room scale
applications like "Echo Arena", so you can tell at all times how far you
are from your closest wall, without ruining the immersion.

This small change would radically
change the way I dare move in VR : I find the ground floor Guardian
marking to be too low to be useful, so I always play in slow motion
instead, and find fast action (throwing and thrusting) games like Echo Arena too dangerous to be played at all (specially for my friends, and my monitor in front of them...).

Of course, when the user does get close to the Guardian Wall limits, it then
lightens up under it's current highly intrusive full laser cage form as usual.
20 REPLIES 20

HiThere_
Superstar

74Loki said:

I personally don't see anything wrong with the current system.


When you throw your arm forward in an intensive VR game, you don't know how close you are to your walls, and even if the Guardian Wall triggers it might trigger too late to stop your arm from crashing into something, because the faster you move, the less time you have to react to the Guardian Wall warning.

So this isn't about changing the current Guardian Wall appearance : It stays the same.

It's about adding the option to switch on a permanent but subtle reminder, such as a dot grid , of where your VR space ends, so you know if you can safely throw a fast swing, or make a quick step, without triggering a sudden Guardian Wall halfway through.

Despite the Guardian wall, CV1 users have already bashed their hands even even their headset into various things, and destroyed various things such as TVs... and again that's because the faster you move, the less time you have to react to a Guardian Wall alert. Having the option to switch on some dot grid, on top of the default Guardian wall, would have done a better job preventing those accidents, by providing a subtle reminder of how close those users where to their border BEFORE they decided to trigger a fast body movement straight through it.

And you won't see anything wrong with the current system, until it's your turn to use a VR game that's both intensive and immersive enough to have you crash straight through your Guardian Wall before you know it : You can try your (bad) luck with VR titles that encourage you to thrust your hand forward while moving around your VR space, such as Valkyrie Blade.

Protocol7
Heroic Explorer

Cyril said:
When you throw your arm forward in an intensive VR game, you don't know how close you are to your walls, and even if the Guardian Wall triggers it might trigger too late to stop your arm from crashing into something, because the faster you move, the less time you have to react to the Guardian Wall warning.
Yes this has happened to me, particularly when throwing something in VR. Mid-throw the Guardian appears but my hand is already crashing into the wall.

Roming22
Adventurer
As I said on another thread, being able to choose the color and transparency of the GW would definitely enhance the UX for people who might need it because of space issues without impacting users with large play space.

Having the option to use dot would be nice as well, but I believe it would break immersion a bit too much if it stayed that bright blue.

Gouyou
Explorer
If I could activate in the guardian system settings some kind of ON / OFF  switch to only activate the floor guideline, (not the wall), I believe  that would be awesome and help me much. Maybe that screenshot will help understand what I mean by that :  https://www.screencast.com/t/QB7EmZ2vA
So the wall would still only appear when you get close to them, but the floor area would be visible with a simple line.

danknugz
Superstar
i would prefer the ability to change the threshold which controls the distance from the boundary you have to be in order for it to light up and become visible.

i have smacked my hand into the walll countless times when trying to throw a grenade or a flashbang, because my body was far enough away from the wall so as not to activate the guardiab system, and of course it shows up a fraction of a second as my hand is 2 inches away from the wall and already moving. this is completely useless.

even better would be the ability to remap the home button (which I never use) or any of the other buttons to temporarily light up the guardian so you know where you are without having to guess or try and peek through the nose gap.

this is very basic shit and kind of ghetto that they havent fixed this by now
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on forums?

danknugz
Superstar

Protocol7 said:


Cyril said:
When you throw your arm forward in an intensive VR game, you don't know how close you are to your walls, and even if the Guardian Wall triggers it might trigger too late to stop your arm from crashing into something, because the faster you move, the less time you have to react to the Guardian Wall warning.
Yes this has happened to me, particularly when throwing something in VR. Mid-throw the Guardian appears but my hand is already crashing into the wall.


exactly, this is hilarious dumb and sad at thw same time
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on forums?

Anonymous
Not applicable
I got enough room to move only I find all I ever do is turn around as I'm shit scared in panic even to move when under fire or getting eaten by zombies!

jon
Heroic Explorer


Cyril said:

...
My
Feature Request : Add a "dot mode" to the Guardian wall, that
transforms the permanent highly intrusive full laser cage into a
significantly less intrusive permanent bunch of dots, which can be left
switched on using during gameplay without getting in your way. This
would be a specially useful feature for intense action room scale
applications like "Echo Arena", so you can tell at all times how far you
are from your closest wall, without ruining the immersion.
...


 I'd personally prefer a quick A/B toggle so I can have different settings for seated play and room scale ready to go.

My room scale setup is bounded such that I won't accidentally 'VR punch' my desk or monitor.  I currently end up turning that off when seated, but would still prefer something that could visually fence off my monitor while perhaps being a bit less aggressive on fade in.

Digikid1
Consultant
Excellent idea. 

Anonymous
Not applicable
I can't believe we still can't force the boundary on like on steam. It's reason I use steam all the time, its a must for me to set it to soft color / line but keep on, I can play with confidence. You need to turn wall off, just use floor. I'm shocked still dont have guardian control... Its forcing me use my vive way more. Is there an possibly way to use the steam chapperone when playing space junkies beta? It seems use oculus SDK / guardian I think when I use rift.