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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.
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.
..Or by children and adults in a larger home where neither they nor their spouse want the common areas cluttered up with piles of gear.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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.
I pay $2000 per month in rent and with a lot of sacrifice I could do 0.5'x1', maybe 0.7'x1'...
You know, it really depends on how you define "home theater".
If you mean the sloped floor, 12 recliners, the commercial popcorn machine, the in-floor lighting, and the Han Solo in carbonite replica on the wall? Yeah, probably not so many people with those.
If you mean "that reasonable sized TV in front of the sofa which might also have your video game, a Blu Ray player, and a couple of speakers", then I think a LOT of people have that these days. Most people call it "the living room". And the stuff required to do that these days is relatively cheap -- you can buy a home theater in a box from Wal Mart for not much at all. When you realize "living room" is where most people will use this, you have a much more realistic understanding of what it needs to be.
What people don't have is a big giant empty room they can use for exactly one purpose.
So, what needs to happen is figuring out what the average living room size is, how much free space can be had in that, and make the technology such that it can work in that space. Just expecting users to have a 15'x15' space? That pretty much means you have no idea and are just hoping, because that's a fairly big area.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.