henke on 6/8/2021 at 16:21
Quote Posted by Thirith
It reminds me of that futuristic skate-racing game whose name I can't remember right now...
Sprint Vector? I did love Sprint Vector, but that one was very focused and it seems like this one is trying to do more things, maybe more along the lines of Sairento, which I couldn't get into.
Anyway, I haven't really had much interest in VR for a while now. Still haven't played Climbey, which I picked up in the summer sale. I did play a bit of VTOL VR tho, which has a very nice interface, tho I didn't make it much further than the training missions.
Thirith on 6/8/2021 at 18:29
Do you think it's a general thing, or is it a phase? I've not been doing much VR lately, but it's mostly that during summer I just sweat too much, and it means the lenses constantly fog up.
woah on 6/8/2021 at 23:24
Quote Posted by Thirith
Do you think it's a general thing, or is it a phase? I've not been doing much VR lately, but it's mostly that during summer I just sweat too much, and it means the lenses constantly fog up.
I think I've mentioned this here before, but in my experience the attenuated VR usage is very common. There are a few enthusiasts I know who use VR constantly but most tend to drop off over time or only come back in phases. My hypothesis is that with VR there is an intense "honeymoon period" that clouds over many of the issues with the technology. It's hard to form a level headed view of those problems and what functional affordances the technology currently offers when you're still enamored by its intense immersive qualities. I've come to categorize the issues under comfort, friction, and utility/usability.
The heat thing definitely falls under comfort but also extends to things like the inability to accommodate, weight, physical exertion, pressure on the face, pupil swim, sim sickness, etc etc. Compare with flat gaming where a simple glare on a screen is considered a show stopper. Friction is pretty obvious and may be as minimal as it currently can be with the Quest 2. Utility/usability would fall under how VR is not currently suitable to a wide variety of contexts due to things like lacking/limited motion controller input and feedback, lacking passthrough, how the inability to accommodate makes it poorly suited for contexts where you're focusing on things in the near field, and so on. And of course there's software but everyone mentions this and while I agree with it I think it's overemphasized.
I don't know if you guys have ever experienced it this way or not, but at some point VR starts to feel more like just a monitor strapped to your head. A rather uncomfortable one compared to flat gaming. The inputs are the more interesting part but these are still quite limited and clunky.
I don't think the technology is a gimmick but most aspects of the experience still need to improve and it's going to take a while to get there. What has always worried me about VR is companies having the patience to sustain the amount of investment and time this will require amid poor user retention.
henke on 7/8/2021 at 09:30
I think it's mostly that my current VR devices are more of a hassle to use than my old Oculus Rift. Getting VR started in the Valve Index usually requires un-plugging and re-plugging cables and pressing Reset Headset, and the Oculus Quest is uncomfortable and will surprisingly often not recognize the room its in, requiring re-scans. With the ol' Oculus Rift I could just pop it on my head and it worked. Remember when VR was good and just worked, guys?
nicked on 7/8/2021 at 11:24
VR still just reminds me of how the Wii was going to completely change how we play games forever... until we all realised that motion controls are actually far more of a barrier to immersion than just pressing buttons.
Anything that is even slightly physically inconvenient will always lose out to whatever requires no effort or physical investment from the user.
henke on 7/8/2021 at 11:40
Suggesting that VR or non-VR is going to "win" or "lose" is just as ridiculous a statement as "Changing how we play games forever". No technology has ever changed how we play games forever. The introduction of 3D games didn't mean people stopped playing 2D platformers. The introduction of mobile games didn't mean people stopped playing PC and console games. Those new technologies, as well as the Wii and VR did expand what games can be though.
Thirith on 7/8/2021 at 16:26
@henke: It sounds like you might like the Oculus Rift S, if you could get your hands on a good second-hand one. It's even less hassle than the original Rift, due to the inside-out tracking. (Unfortunately I've sold mine...)
woah on 7/8/2021 at 17:40
Quote Posted by nicked
VR still just reminds me of how the Wii was going to completely change how we play games forever... until we all realised that motion controls are actually far more of a barrier to immersion than just pressing buttons.
Anything that is even slightly physically inconvenient will always lose out to whatever requires no effort or physical investment from the user.
Forgive the long post ahead. This is something I often think about.
So in some ways I agree with this, specifically in that motion controller input in VR (as it exists today) is poorly mapped to many contexts. E.g. using laser pointers or finger poking to navigate UIs and send key inputs in VR is quite lacking and I think the hope for an "immersive" Minority Report style user interface for navigating desktop UIs is largely a waste of time because it's just too imprecise, physically taxing, and slow (rather, I think eyetracking + traditional buttons will be better suited to navigating UIs in VR--or just M&K if you're at a desk anyway). In addition, many VR games really do use VR input in gimmicky ways, and when combined with today's uncomfortable VR headsets, this can result in experiences that are all around worse than the flat counterparts when you're no longer enamored by the spectacle (e.g. No Man's Sky VR). They're not quite as bad, but they remind me of gimmicky Wii games.
However, I think where I differ on this is that what you describe is always a balance of the functionality provided vs the downsides (such as physical exertion). Even today, if used properly VR can really offer functionality or capacities that aren't possible (or reasonable) through the flat interface, and that can make the additional effort involved worthwhile for many people. Even if it's not (currently) without many problems, the head-mapped perspective that the display provides is critical to that as it provides the right perspective for interaction with the hands (and for which something like the Wii doesn't). Flat gaming is a much more abstract form of gaming (e.g. you press E to open a door vs actually using your hands to open a door) and there is often something lost through that simplification.
Personally I've found many instances today where VR offers more and makes the additional effort worthwhile. Some obvious examples would be Blade & Sorcery, Beat Saber, and Vermillion--I don't see how you can provide the complexity that these experiences allow within the constraints of the more abstract M&K interface while retaining a good user experience. More subtle examples (i.e. you have to actually try it to "get it") would be Half-Life Alyx where the visuals and the fidelity of interaction between the hands and the environment creates a connection to the virtual world that is attractive for its own sake, or VR FPSs where aiming rifles with motion controllers might be more difficult but adds a different kind of challenge and more variety/flexibility. That said, the tech still has many downsides--I think we are just barely over the threshold of VR being worthwhile for the subset of people that are interested and that's why you see bad retention.
I would also say things like the social connection that VR allows can't be replicated by the flat interface. Meeting up with friends in VR is about as close as it gets to meeting them in real life. And that's with just basic head/hand tracking and mics with positional audio. Next year we will see consumer VR headsets with eye and face tracking (which already exists but only in the high end), and every time you add in these different capacities more social cues are conveyed.
Of course, that doesn't mean it's worthwhile to increase the fidelity of
everything. Like, there's absolutely no way that I'd want to jump in real life to jump in VR. Personally, I don't even stand up when playing VR--I sit down on a swiveling chair and using the joystick to translate up and down. So there are many situations where additional fidelity doesn't have functional benefit and is thus not worthwhile (and this varies by the individual). I think this is a challenge for every VR developer: how do you actually take advantage of VR in a way that offsets both its innate and "early technology" downsides? Just throwing something in VR for its own sake does not make it worthwhile, and I don't think M&K interface itself will ever go away for gaming (though it may eventually be used from within VR headsets itself). E.g. the experience of a fast paced first person deathmatch game can't be replicated with motion controllers. There
are VR counterparts but the experience is fundamentally different.
Furthermore, as VR input and feedback improves, I can see many other opportunities for it to offer additional capacities. Right now we are quite limited by the manipulation of objects/the environment in VR due to lack of feedback in motion controllers and developers have to perform a variety of "hacks" to kind of guess what the player intends to do as a result of that. E.g. games that implement throwing in VR
well currently influence the direction of the throw with the direction that the player's head is looking in (IRL the hand provides feedback that allows one to modulate the direction and intensity of the throw--this feedback is missing in today's VR). But there are a variety of feedback technologies that may change this (e.g. ultrasound-based or LRA-based haptics that provide the sensation of directional and rotational components), and the long term goal are VR gloves with a variety of touch and force feedback components. At that point, we should be able to perform extremely complex interactions in VR with functional affordances that aren't possible in other mediums.
Lastly, I think it's quite possible that at some point VR displays themselves will get so good that independent of the immersive effect they provide they will be fundamentally more useful and visually comfortable than flat displays. It's the complete opposite right now--in terms of comfort, today's VR displays are worse than budget CRT monitors from the 90s (they're good for a few hours assuming you've trained your visual system to function without variable accommodation), but when we have compact (visor form factor) varifocal or multifocal displays with eyetracking and passthrough, imagine VR being less of a monitor strapped to your head with fixed focus, and more of a window into a virtual environment with a massive FOV, variable depths of interaction, and selective passthrough.
nicked on 8/8/2021 at 10:10
Yes, I should clarify that I'm a complete outsider perspective. Every time I've tried VR I've felt sick and/or got a headache. I've been assured (mostly by people who have spent hundreds of pounds on their kit) that after a few hours you start to get used to it, but that's hardly a convincing sales pitch.
As a result of that, I cannot directly relate to the "functionality or capacities that aren't possible (or reasonable) through the flat interface" or "many instances today where VR offers more and makes the additional effort worthwhile". Which compounds VR being a very hard sell. When the best sales pitch for it is "Trust me, you'll like it when you experience it for yourself", the price point needs to be about 1000% lower than it currently is to generate that "Screw it, why not" curiosity among the majority.
Until that time, it still inherently has niche appeal, which leads to more gimmicky experiences that simply try to sell the novelty of VR itself rather than being worthwhile experiences in their own right, which leads to lower long term retention as people who don't need selling on VR have nothing but flimsy sales pitch content to experience, and therefore drop it.
"Win or lose" language is of course hyperbole, you're right there Henke. I can't see a world where VR dies completely any more than I can see a world where VR supersedes normal screens. I was just trying to explain my perspective on woah's hypothesis that VR has a high drop-off rate after an intense honeymoon period.
woah on 8/8/2021 at 14:16
Quote Posted by nicked
Until that time, it still inherently has niche appeal, which leads to more gimmicky experiences that simply try to sell the novelty of VR itself rather than being worthwhile experiences in their own right, which leads to lower long term retention as people who don't need selling on VR have nothing but flimsy sales pitch content to experience, and therefore drop it.
I do agree with this, well mostly. Right now we have a situation where (
https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebooks-vr-business-is-bigger-than-you-think-and-it-is-masking-the-companys-true-profitability-51624895223) Facebook is losing ~$5.5b to $6.5b/year on it and has ~10k people working on XR and they are only expanding their efforts. Imagine Valve's entire annual revenue going into VR--it's such a large investment that it's masking Facebook's profitability. A large part of this is subsidizing their standalone hardware (Quest 2 is $300, rumored to be subsidized between (
https://twitter.com/benz145/status/1415350125405212672) $100 to $200) and software, resulting in a much more accessible VR device. I remember when the device first came out and basically all multiplayer, multiplatform VR games were overrun with kids, whereas before it was mostly people in their mid 20s and 30s.
If it weren't for this, I think VR would absolutely remain as a niche, enthusiast thing for quite a while (and would have been hyped up less to beginbwith). But if Facebook keeps this up they may be able to largely hold the industry up and create a market that's profitable for devs until the tech is "ready". (though it may be something of an "artificial" market). The reason they're able to do this is that Zuckerberg has majority control over the company and thus its operations aren't entirely driven by the impatient whims of short term profit obsessed investors. They at least outwardly appear determined to stay the course and have seen some retention improvements due to the reduced friction of their newer devices. That said, VR tech advances aren't progressing as fast as they predicted and hoped, and some people in the industry suspect that for them VR is just a stepping stone to AR. Many aspects of the VR platform and technologies transfer to AR, and most agree that AR is the "true" mass market technology (though AR tech isn't ready yet). I don't know how their priorities will change if AR is wildly successful and/or they are competing head to head with Apple in AR.
Zuckerberg has recently stated that the reason they're doing all of this is that they don't want another Facebook Phone failure--they want that highly coveted position as one of the big platforms/middle men that everyone has to pass through and being the first to develop a new medium gives them a shot at that. And of course AR itself is a data capitalist's wet dream