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Valve's "Room Scale VR Survey" Finds a Lot of People Play In Their Bedrooms (itworld.com)
itwbennett writes: Earlier this week Valve published the results of a "Room Scale VR Survey" completed by 2008 members of its VR Community. The findings: 860 (~43%) of respondents said their gaming PC was in their bedroom and 1,393 (~69%) said they were not willing to move their PC to accommodate a VR experience. The average space respondents feel they can devote to VR is about 8.5'x 9'. Why does this matter? Well, last March, Valve and HTC debuted the HTV Vive virtual reality system consisting of a VR visor, a couple of custom controllers and a tracking system the allows the user to wander around a 15'x15' area. 'While the Vive system certainly sounds impressive I've had questions about how practical it'll be,' writes Peter Smith. 'How many people have a 15'x15' clear area in front of their PC? Turns out, not many.' 'According to this survey at least, using all of the 15'x15' space the system can track is going to leave most users frustrated,' adds Smith.
When you live in your parents' basement, your gaming room is also your bedroom. And it's hard to get enough space for VR with that damn washer and dryer in the way.
vr is not going to smash into hardcore gaming.
why? you're going to fail around like an idiot for 8 hours+? you might just as well go out and play some real football or enlist in the army.
keyboard + mouse is a FINE control combo for vr headset gaming - you only change your monitor to be the display and you need LESS SPACE to play while enjoying the benefits of having a (potentially)360 degree display.
basically, I gave up giving Valve credit as the premier company in 'getting it' when it comes to vr headset gameplay when they released the vr patch for TF2 and it had WORSE control scheme than the unofficial half life 2 patch. basically the unofficial hl2(and other games) hack just tied the head controls to mouselook and added stereoscopic 3d and that was much much better to play with than any of the tf2 modes, which all separated aiming from the view for some reason and that makes you less effective fps player and frankly sucks, because in fps games you quite often need to look up and down and if you always need to do that by tilting your head up and down you will get bored and get a sore neck - and if in order to shoot UP you need to both move the aim to UP and look physically UP then that sucks big time!
so in essence, just use the display for display and KEEP THE FRIGGING MOUSELOOK on mouse!
or a ps4/xbox controller.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
PC sales are not dead. You'd have to pry it from the dead nerds hands in his/her bedroom.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
...Tell me this isn't an afterthought. How can you get this deep into product development and suddenly realize so few people will be able to use it? It's been of my assumption that for the physical VR experience, you'd have to go to a wealthy friends' house.
So most video games are played by children or by adults who live in single-room apartments! Who would've thought!
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I'm afraid that getting tangled in cable attached to headset will probably end up being a practical limiting factor before running out of space.
My opinion walking in place to move around in "VR" will end up being a popular way to travel on foot. Probably easy to detect fake walking between Vive and Rift sensors. No idea extent to which people will get used to it and probably some craptastic constraints on change in speed ..etc to keep people from getting sick.
I know I know metric but hey I can't think in ft....
But anyway roughly 3m x 3m of clear space is still a big space. Especially in a bedroom that will contain a bed, a book case a desk and quite often a wardrobe (Which TFA comments on). My gaming PC is in a dedicated room and I don't have that amount of space behind me.
So honestly I question their results as I don't believe that people really have that amount of space they could dedicate to VR. A more realistic figure would be 1.5m deep by 2m wide.
Can't they build the PC into the goggles? And you might find a 15x15 space.... outside
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm very much looking forward to VR gaming, but have no intention of getting out of my seat. I want VR for the immersion, not flailing and jumping around in my livingroom. I wish Valve and the Rift people would stop focusing on this walking around VR they think everyone wants. If anything is going to kill VR before it can really take off, it's this. It's probably why everything is taking so long.
...I wonder what size living room the Kinect was designed for.
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Seriously, If I move my chair back a little, I hit an obstacle. I do not have any space here... VR isn't possible to be used while standing for gaming... Unless you have a multi directional treadmill or something.
For whatever it's worth, I'm remodeling a guest bedroom with this exact purpose in mind. I'll get a folding wall bed, so it can still function as a (spartan) guest bedroom, but with the bed folded up there'll be just about 12X12 feet of open space.
I'm thinking of the comment I read somewhere from somebody at Valve. . . I don't remember who, or the exact quote, but basically: "People already routinely set aside space in their houses for a home theater. If VR is compelling enough, they'll make room for it."
The only room in the average house bigger than 15' x 15' is your living room, and this is going to be packed with furniture. Just where do you expect people to have 240 square feet of free space in their homes?
What took so long?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I do my gaming from the toilet
If you go 5 minutes without damaging yourself your room is officially "VR ready". Congratulations! Level 2 certification involves repeating this test with other humans, animals, ajar doors, hot beverages, and obstacles within the same area.
Problem solved...
(Although having a harness hanging from the ceiling in the bedroom might be an issue...)
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
I pay $2000 per month in rent and with a lot of sacrifice I could do 0.5'x1', maybe 0.7'x1'...
It's entirely sensible. The bedroom is only used for sleeping and either getting up or going to bed. And the rest of the time almost unoccupied. So it's the only sensible thing to do to use it for computing, which is much more compact than watching TV and without any moving from the seat,so occupies a tiny amount of space extra than the desk the computer sits on.
Where else would you put it? The front room? It's busy there, you would get in the way. Kitchen? Don't be daft. Toilet? WHAHAHAHA! So where else?
It could be even better if it were a spare bedroom,since it's not even used for sleeping most of the time. But it "looks" like a bedroom.
So all in all, what the fuck does this report think it's trying to say? "Look at these lusers!!!! Staying in their bedroom like a sulky teen!!! HAHA!"?
Sometimes your parents house doesn't have a basement. That is where the bedroom comes in.
A 15 foot wide room in a house requires buying something that isn't a typical apartment or lower cost house. When I went house shopping a few years back, one of my requirements (other than being fully detached and in the entry level pricing zone) was a 15 foot wide room for a home theatre, preferrably in the basement.
Seems like unless you have a house that costs money, 15 feet wide just wasn't going to exist. Probably means upgrading the I beam supporting the first level. I found a place I liked with a 13 foot room and compromised.
I did find the *occasional* home where the living room or family room were 15 feet x 15 feet or slightly larger, but most did not offer that size of room.
I expect a more expensive house would have at least one room fitting the bill, but the question is: Do you really want to devote that room to be the computer room? I imagine most would say no, that room will be where you have guests over and spend your time relaxing. Which means settling for a room about 10 foot wide (or narrower) for your computer. That valve figured 15x15 was normal tells me their employees might just be a tad out of touch with what the average American (or even slightly above average American) has for a home.
Thats is the median age f gamers.
I only care about the VR 2 feet in front of my face.
Let me sit down and give me helicopter foot pedals to spin the view around me.
Install your VR setup up in your garage, plenty of space when the car isn't in it. Apartment dwellers: yeah, you're probably screwed.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
When TV came along, houses were not built around what became the arguable focal point of domiciles. I would argue that most houses, apartments, etc. factor this into their architectural design planning. The +1 to this is the media room.
Why would VR be any different? Dwellings may not have the space (initially), but if technology isn't fast enough with our neural shunts and we need a analog to the holodeck albeit with goggles on, layouts of rooms will follow suit.
I'm sure there are plenty of countries in which large internal spaces are common - but here in most parts of the UK (and quite a few other parts of Europe), a property with a 15'x15' area going spare anywhere in it whatsoever is likely to be WAY up the housing market. The largest room in my (4-bedroom, detached) property is smaller than that - and it most DEFINITELY isn't free to be dedicated to VR. (Use the garage, did someone say? Again - this isn't the US. Almost every house on this street uses the garage as storage, and parks its vehicle(s) on the drive. Space is simply too much at a premium.)
The 15x 15 measurement is a maximum, it will work perfectly well in a bedroom or at a desk, the same as an oculus rift. If used this way it doesnt even need both base stations.