Slashdot Mirror
CCP Games Explains Why Virtual Reality First Person Shooters Still Don't Work
An anonymous reader writes Icelandic studio CCP is better known for EVE Online, but its first foray into virtual reality with space shooter Valkyrie has caused a stir, and is widely seen as a flagship game for the Oculus Rift headset. In a new interview, Valkyrie executive producer Owen O'Brien explains what advantages the game will have when played with a headset — and gives his view on why a dogfighter is better suited to VR than a first person shooter: "People have hacked it together, but it doesn't really work," he says. "The basic problem is Simulator Sickness. In Valkyrie or any cockpit game or driving game, what you're doing in the real world, assuming you're sitting down, more or less mimics what your brain is telling you you're doing in the game. So you don't get that disconnect, and it's that disconnect that causes sickness. So, the problem with first-person shooters is that you're running or crouching or jumping in the game but not in the real world, and because it's so realistic it can make some people (not everybody) feel nauseated if they start doing it for extended periods of time."
I'm sure the real reason is that its not open source. Whose with me?
Indeed. A slashdotter is only fully satisfied when the hardware is open, the source code is open, and when the device is running the Linux kernel. At this point the original company cannot make much money with the product anymore, because there is so many Chinese copies created from the fully open specs. But thankfully we have the Open Source Community, a magical software mill from where volunteer slaves appear to create hundreds of thousands lines of code for free. Sadly they cannot afford a quality assurance team.