cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

A few basics that should be obvious

Sharkku
Protege
I understand that a few of these things comes from the defaults in Unity or Unreal Engine, but nevertheless it's so basic that it should be in every game. The following frustrates me something fiercely, and has made a lot of demos unplayable or unenjoyable for me:

First: There should ALWAYS be a reset position button. Most devs get this, but still it's amazing how many misses this simple thing. Granted, it's become better lately. Still, it's CRUCIAL.

Second: There has been a long-standing common practice in the gaming world that the Esc-key brings up a menu. Why on earth is it ok that it insta-kills the app all of a sudden? Not even a "Quit - Yes/No?"?

Third: This goes for FPS:es. Looking direction and walking direction should be decoupled! At least it should always be an option! When looking and walking is the same, you always end up sitting with your head still, to avoid ending up where you look all the time. Kind of negates the point of having headtracking.

Fourth: Options, options, options. Reverse mouse y-axis. Reverse joystick axes. Etc.

Does anybody agree?
DK1 - previously owned DK2 - 2014-08-26 RECEIVED (ordered 2014-04-24) CV1 - 2016-05-25 RECEIVED (ordered on release day) Touch - 2016-12-07 RECEIVED (pre-order with CV1)
9 REPLIES 9

OnEdge
Honored Guest
Point 3 is certainly my main issue with any of the first person walking based games/demos. If I am pressing forward I would much prefer to continue moving the same direction regardless of where I look. As far as I understand the problem is this is not recommended in the Oculus best practice guide?

At least an option between the 2 would be great!!

cybereality
Grand Champion
I actually find a lot of Rift demos ignore the ESC key. You press it and nothing happens, which is a bad experience. In these cases, I am forced to ALT-F4 just to exit the app, which should not be necessary. Devs, please implement the ESC key as the first thing you do. Thanks.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

theRevolution
Honored Guest
Reset button meaning what? Reset the head camera?

cybereality
Grand Champion
"theRevolution" wrote:
Reset button meaning what? Reset the head camera?

I think he means re-centering the view angle.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

genetransfer
Explorer
I agree, all very important things to have!

Sharkku
Protege
"cybereality" wrote:
"theRevolution" wrote:
Reset button meaning what? Reset the head camera?

I think he means re-centering the view angle.

Well, that, and the position that's considered "neutral". For me it's mostly the position that's important, i can always turn my chair a little if the angle is off. I have mounted my tracking camera so it's looking down at me at a 45 degree angle. This has the advantages of giving me more distance to the camera, and almost 360 degrees positional tracking. But some demos interpret this as if I'm ducking way below my neutral position, even if I'm in the centre of the tracking cone. The result being that demos often start with a viewpoint that's below the floor.
DK1 - previously owned DK2 - 2014-08-26 RECEIVED (ordered 2014-04-24) CV1 - 2016-05-25 RECEIVED (ordered on release day) Touch - 2016-12-07 RECEIVED (pre-order with CV1)

vrcover
Explorer
The Unreal Engine 4 Oculus template provides a really good starting point. It has all these things baked in, along with IPD adjustment. Really great work.

Oneiros
Honored Guest
Also, please put comfort mode in your games. If it's mouse rotation only, I'm not going to bother. This is pretty good thanks to the templates, but I recently bought Qbeh-1 which is supposedly designed for VR and it does not have comfort mode. Waste of time and money.

genetransfer
Explorer
"Oneiros" wrote:
Also, please put comfort mode in your games. If it's mouse rotation only, I'm not going to bother. This is pretty good thanks to the templates, but I recently bought Qbeh-1 which is supposedly designed for VR and it does not have comfort mode. Waste of time and money.

Personally I don't think comfort mode is the solution. It may be if you are limited to xbox/generic gamepads, but sitting in a swivel chair with 360 orientation/clip on leds or something (and if the rift had 360 also) is a far better situation. I did a test a while back using a directional heading based on the razor hydras (basically a forward vector based on the hydras) and I was blown away, being able to turn 360 and have independent head and arm movement ontop of this was just so natural and increased immersion many fold. I had been missing out. that to me is made for vr, anything else is just squeezing a cube through a round hole to reach a broader market, but hey you have to work with what you have and make the best of it, so not dissing anyone, as with any other better solution also requires the user to be invested enough to break the bank for a more immerssive experience as well.