Aja on 27/7/2023 at 19:18
VR friends, I implore you to try Song in the Smoke if you haven't. I finished it this week, and it was easily one of the best VR games I've played so far. On Steam it has like 30 user reviews, which is a shame given how polished and fun it is. It has satisfying VR mechanics, including stick carving, fire starting, mortar and pestling, arrow making, and hunting. It has minimal jank. It also has a wonderful ambient soundtrack and soundscape, with striking visuals. It took me about 16 hours to reach the ending, and overall I found the difficulty well-tuned, with a good pace of introducing new mechanics and new threats as I progressed through the levels. At first it felt too punishing, especially since you can only save at campfires, but once I learned how to prepare, I only died to my own mistakes, and it never felt unfair. That said, to succeed I had to always be doing something: gathering resources, scouting for a suitable campsite, preparing for nightfall. I would've liked a few moments of downtime to enjoy the scenery. So it's a bit of a stressful game at times, but so gratifying once I started to feel in control. I mentioned it earlier, but no game since The Long Dark has captured so well the feeling of being alone in the wilderness at night. The love and care the devs put into Song in the Smoke is obvious from its detail and depth of systems. It's a good world to live in for a while.
Renault on 31/7/2023 at 14:56
@Aja - Agreed on Song in the Smoke, seems criminal that barely anyone has played it. I thought it was great (actually listed it as my (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151583&p=2481732&viewfull=1#post2481732) GOTY for 2021). I should probably replay it at some point, as I'm sure they've added stuff since. I did think that game got extremely hard at the end, I wasn't able to finish it, but i wouldn't mind going back and trying again. It'd be nice if we get some DLC at some point too.
So, Fall is not that far off, but still no official release date for the Quest 3, kind of wondering what's going on with that. I read somewhere that Meta cancelled production of the Quest Pro, so I assume the Q3 is their primary VR focus now. I do plan on picking one up, but I'm wondering if this point if it's going to be delayed.
Aja on 31/7/2023 at 16:36
Ah, I admit I probably read right past that back in 2021 when I saw “Oculus.” Glad someone else enjoyed it!
Depending on when you last played it, they added free jumping, which makes a big difference (the original teleport is still available). On PSVR2 they integrated eye tracking into climbing, so you look at the ledge you want to climb, the cursor appears, and you press the button to mantle up. It works surprisingly well.
Malf on 25/8/2023 at 07:00
My Pico 4 only arrived on Wednesday.
I've not put in much time with it yet, as it's a little hot to be playing VR (and BG3 is still consuming my every waking hour), but first impressions are good.
The OS and software built-in to the unit are fast and responsive.
The controllers are direct rip-offs of Oculus ones, so that's good, although the grip button feels a little awkwardly placed; I'll have to see how that pans out over time.
The resolution and field-of-view are a HUGE step up from the original Rift. There's also no god rays at all (I'd read that the Pico 4's lenses have been designed to eliminate them).
I haven't played a game running on the Pico 4 itself yet, but I did get it hooked up to my PC using 5GHz wifi and Virtual Desktop (which I bought on their store, then ran the free Streamer app on my desktop). I then played about an hour of Superhot, which for the most part was excellent, although the streaming did crap out at times if I breached my play-zone.
The reason for that is that the headset has full-colour pass-through video, which kicks in when you breach your boundary so you can see exactly what you might be thumping in the real world. I'm really impressed with the pass-through, and interested to see if there's anything that's using it for an AR experience.
It's all inside-out tracking, and feels more consistent that my Rift. I have downloaded Alyx, so we'll see how it handles tracking when I'm moving my hands over my shoulder to change weapon.
The audio is also surprisingly good, seeing as how there's no visible speakers or headphones. Instead, where the side-straps meet the headset, there are some backwards-facing speakers, not even 5mm wide, and about 15mm long. I have yet to try the mic, so can't comment on that.
All in all, pretty impressed, especially at the price-point.
Thirith on 25/8/2023 at 07:49
Nice! I hope you'll enjoy the Pico 4 once it gets cooler. I'm also ready to return to VR once I'm less likely to sweat heavily and steam up the lenses two minutes after putting on the headset... I very much want to check out the Half-Life 2 and Resident Evil (either 2 or 7... or both?) VR mods, and I want to get back to Dirt Rally 2 - but not before temperatures are around 20°C.
Thirith on 28/8/2023 at 08:46
I played the beginning of Half-Life 2 VR last night. My first impression: it works tremendously well, even if the game wasn't originally designed for VR. Also, it is tremendously cool to explore such a familiar virtual space in VR: walking through the train station and looking up at Breen's enormous face on those screens, walking right up to the Combine soldier being a dick, having the G-Man look straight at you.
At the same time, being able to get this close to textures does reveal the game's age. It'll probably feel less so once there's combat, but for now I think I'll wait for a texture pack that the developers of the VR mod have announced. It might still be a while (I think they're working with the team that's doing the Half-Life 2 RTX mod), but I've got plenty of other things to play in the meantime.
Briareos H on 28/8/2023 at 09:11
It is really great to go back to more traditional shooting. The gameplay in Alyx is a huge departure from previous Half-Life games, very tactical and methodical. While I understand the desire to focus on smaller, more personal encounters I have never found fighting the combine in Alyx to be all that great. I think my favourite gunplay in VR has been using the golden gun in the Golden Eye mod, putting more power in the hands in the player in exchange for many more enemies felt like a revelation to me.
In any case I loved HL2VR up to the end, perhaps even as much as Alyx, hope you enjoy as much as I did! The interactivity of the world and the physics engine go a long way to enhance the VR experience.
That said I'd be down to replay a lot of old single-player classic first-person shooters in VR, even those without HL2's engine brilliance, stuff like FEAR, Far Cry or Red Faction.
Thirith on 28/8/2023 at 09:34
You've probably heard of the Far Cry VR mod that's currently being worked on, right? They seem to be progressing pretty quickly too, going from a fairly basic implementation to working motion controls in a pretty short time.
[video=youtube;YLNxqtKPEN0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLNxqtKPEN0[/video]
Briareos H on 28/8/2023 at 10:13
I hadn't seen that one, thanks. The guy's video is a bit janky but that looks promising.
I've seen FEAR running in VorpX but of course that doesn't have hand tracking.
Thirith on 28/8/2023 at 11:09
Honestly, while I like the idea of VorpX, I've not had a single experience with it that I personally found worthwhile. It's very well possible that it's a question of finding the right settings, and also that VorpX has improved in the meantime, but in my experience with the software (which by now is about five years ago) it never felt right. It's not that it made me queasy, nor was it just a matter of it being janky; there was always something off to how the image changed when turning your head or moving, a distortion at the edges, so that I never really had the proper VR sense of 'being there'.
I know there's a VR mod for No One Lives Forever 2 that I've not tried out. It might be worth checking out.
