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'We Expected VR To Be Two To Three Times as Big', Says CCP Games CEO (roadtovr.com)
CCP Games, the Icelandic studio known for their long-running MMO Eve: Online (2003), shuttered their VR production studios in a surprise move last year, selling off their Newcastle-based branch behind their multiplayer space dogfighter EVE: Valkyrie (2016), and completely shutting down their Atlanta studio behind sports game Sparc (2017). Now, CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson speaks out in an interview with Destructoid about the studio's return to traditional desktop gaming, and his thoughts about the VR landscape. From a report: In short, he thought VR would be bigger by now, and more capable of supporting a healthy multiplayer userbase. EVE: Valkyrie, the company's flagship VR game, was the result of over three years of development before becoming a day-one launch title on Oculus Rift and PSVR, arriving shortly afterwards on HTC Vive via Steam in 2016 -- a seemingly best-case scenario for any multiplayer-only game.
Under CCP direction, EVE: Valkyrie saw a number of updates designed to entice players back, including new ships, maps, and weekly events; CCP even pushed a major update to the game last year that brought support for desktop and console players, a move to help boost sales and revive the ailing VR-only playerbase. Still, the multiplayer game just didn't perform as CCP ultimately expected, and the company officially stepped back from VR shortly thereafter. "We expected VR to be two to three times as big as it was, period," Petursson tells Destructoid. "You can't build a business on that."
Under CCP direction, EVE: Valkyrie saw a number of updates designed to entice players back, including new ships, maps, and weekly events; CCP even pushed a major update to the game last year that brought support for desktop and console players, a move to help boost sales and revive the ailing VR-only playerbase. Still, the multiplayer game just didn't perform as CCP ultimately expected, and the company officially stepped back from VR shortly thereafter. "We expected VR to be two to three times as big as it was, period," Petursson tells Destructoid. "You can't build a business on that."
I never expected VR to be bigger.
It always seemed like a no-go for me. At least for now. Most people play games to relax and de-stress. When playing VR is as simple as sitting on the settee and wearing something as light and simple as a pair of sunglasses, people will play VR in numbers. When the sights looks lifelike and not uncanny valley, and don't leave you nauseous... people will like it.
VR probably will rebound in the future but for now it's a dying fad for a niche market. As long as you have to wear bulky contraptions with head straps and fit into awkward devices I'd much rather just have a keyboard, mouse and a monitor- you can keep your VR.
Someday in the future VR will take off- but today's generation is not good enough to warrant a big market. All the best gaming experience is still to be found on a flat screen. VR is a curiosity for those willing to spend money on unproven tech but not what most people want.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
None of the big VR headset makers want pron on their store so noone buys $400 headsets and $1000 rigs when there is no content.
Dust 514 would probably also have been much more successful if they had launched it on the PC and not just PS4.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Given all the previous questionable moves they made they're pretty bad at anticipating how technology will play out for them.
Their main game EVE Online runs on Python, which requires them to use specialized server hardware that emulates single-core behaviour on multi-cores systems.
They made deals with Sony to develop their Dust 514 for the PS3, a console whose feature was already superseded by the PS4 when the game finally released. And also while all of their consumer base was using the PC platform.
Their investment in White Wolf and the development of the World of Darkness MMO didn't go too well either.
I'm not too surprised that they miscalculated once again.
They should use the "zoom" feature
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I expected VR to get cheaper.
Instead, they keep pushing the minimum specs up...I don't want to spend $700 on a video card, thank you.
This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.
I lost interest in VR once Oculus was bought by Facebook.
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They should use the "zoom" feature
When the project was first proposed to them they thought it was VR for ants.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Yes, but admittedly it's always simply because the tech isn't good enough.
This time, admittedly, the tech was SIGNIFICANTLY better than in previous attempts, but it's still not to the point of true seamless immersion.
Unlike other techs, VR pretty much has to be more or less "perfect" or most people aren't interested. That makes developing it incrementally hard - you can't finance the next gen of it with profits from the current gen. Instead every few years we just have to try it again based on technological advancements made due to other segments of the industry and hope that everything has gotten good enough.
I'd say that whenever VR is finally perfected, it will be nothing short of amazing. That said, I don't think it's there yet. I don't even though the next attempt or two will be there yet. Maybe in 20-30 years.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
EVE: Valkyrie didn't take off because it is an fast arcade-style game that most people can only stomach in VR for short periods and gets old very quickly. It's also competing with Elite: Dangerous, while not quite the same style of game, is the most immersive space VR experience you can get.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Seeing as VR has caught on this time? Its good.
This time, a lot of the horrid technical features is fixed. Which still leaves us with a few essential problems:
1. Most VR game stuff is designed for high end desktops. There isn't a lot of those, meaning its a small marked
2. There is a platform/controller/store split
3. The upgrades to controllers or input methods will cause fragmentation, and its possible that we are stuck with the current control set(but with more buttons)
Now, if this will be like the 144hz monitor/TV projector marked, or if it will reach mainstream marked penetration remains to be seen.
and miners. For the last 18 months you couldn't get a VR capable graphics card for less than $500 and the PS4 Pro just isn't powerful enough.
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Current VR setups are awesome, if you are into simulators.
A force feedback setup, VR, and i-racing is phenominal. It feels pretty much the same as being on track and you can judge depth and speed far better than through a screen. It's similarly good for flight sims.
Of course few people are into simulators, so its a small market.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
VR growth may be slow, but it isn’t stopping. I have a Lenovo Microsoft Mixed Reality set and it can be very immersive. That said, it was balky to set up at first with unanticipated bluetooth problems. Even though the Headset is affordable, you still need a serious rig to run it. There is a very noticeable screen door effect that makes it impractical for watching movies or reading fine print (so don’t expect to replace your monitor for day to day tasks). That said, true 360 degree videos can be quite engaging, and games can also be knock your socks off experiences (you don’t really notice the screen door effect when your are really in a game or 360 video).
3D never caught on for many reasons, but VR will only improve with time. Screen door effects will go away especially once foveated rendering becomes common. Hardware costs will come down, eventually it will replace your desktop in many cases. Viewing 3D movies at home will probably make a resurgence once VR headset become better (as in watch in VR).
Yes adoption is not what was expected, but that is not a death knell, there is too much potential for what can be done in VR and AR. Right now you need to be somewhat technically inclined to know what you need or tweak things to work – that will change. What will always disappoint and be expensive going forward is haptics – that will be one very hard nut to crack. Another problem is motion sickness in games with motion not tied to your actual body position (driving games for instance). Walking around in VR is a blast, riding around in VR is a vomit inducing nightmare. So, as with any technology, there are places where it shines and places where it doesn’t.
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will never "Take Off". It's a novelty every few years for young kids that hadn't seen it yet. Once they do, they universally go, "Meh?"
Unlike other techs, VR pretty much has to be more or less "perfect" or most people aren't interested.
I don't agree. What it has to be is either perfect, or cheap. Since it is neither of these things, it's a non-starter suitable only for tech demos.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Exactly this.
$700 for a video card is ludicrous. $700 for a video card that launched 2 years ago is beyond ludicrous, it's gone plaid.
This time, the problem was the approach. Going straight to consumer, even with the comparatively reduced price tag, was a mistake on the part of the big players. At its current price and performance, industrial uses should have been the target.
VR *HAS BEEN* (for decades) and always will be a niche. On what basis did he think it was gonna go big? It's a very cool concept, sure, but your average players are never going to strap a helmet to their heads to play a game that you still have to use a joystick with.
In fact that's not even really "VR" - just a 360 degree view with head control.
Now - you make a thought control interface (ala Sword Art Online... without the microwave frier...) or a full suit interface (ala Ready Player One) where the player's entire body can be engaged and receive feedback - THAT would take off.
VR as it stands right now is nothing more than 3D or where voice control was about 10 years ago.
It's a novelty.
Today's VR presents our eyes and brain with an uncanny valley that is different enough from reality that the brain strains and rejects the result. I know a lot of smart people are working on this. But some pieces of the puzzle are still missing.
That said, the perfect is the enemy of the good. VR is plenty good enough to be fun and even useful and products can be successful.
I think Hollywood reality with its portrayals of VR and even the name "Virtual Reality" itself have been artificially constraining enthusiasm for these products. And setting the bar so high that to be considered successful we apparently need to see products and a VR ecosystem that matches the fiction.
I doubt it'll ever really catch on, it'll always be niche, because it's too immersive, but something will usually be wrong with it. AR will also have the same problem, no one want's it to just be ads for stuff all the time with is what it basically will be really quickly.
Sorry, but that comparison is laughable and is certainly not common sense. 3D was not a solution to anything. VR, the real interactive kind and not just the 360 video with which it's often conflated, allows a form of interactivity that didn't exist. The real problem, or one of them, is that not enough effort has been put into making it do useful things besides entertainment. The marketing to consumer was all wrong and has too many people thinking it's just another game peripheral.
The issues currently:
1. Low resolution, most "VR" games are half resolution, and since it takes up your entire visual field unlike a computer screen, that makes it equivalent to looking at a 240p game. That's nowhere near good enough for an immersive game, and at best gives you 80's nostalgia.
2. Input is the shittiest thing ever. You can not see the game controller. VR needs to quite literately go back and re-invent the power glove at the minimum and work from there. It may be possible to mimic this with multiple cameras on the HMD and the environment, but the requirement is still there.
3. No haptic feedback, if you bump into something in the game, you should be knocked to the ground/aside, which won't happen with a HMD or game controller. This lack of feedback is the same reason why people won't switch from a mechanical keyboard to something like a software-keyboard based on a touch screen. There is no way for the user to know they are in fact giving input when they can't see their hands or the input buttons.
That's the issues that need to be overcome, how they can be overcome:
1. 8K support when GPU's hit 5nm.
2. Bring back power-glove style input at the minimum, some alternive BCI (Brain Computer Interface) would be ideal, and we know they exist, but are too invasive.
3. This goes back to needing a 500sq ft room to really use VR, you will never be able to properly play a VR game sitting down. But you can largely improve the experience if you have "force feedback" built into a chair or bodysuit. The game shouldn't need to physically throw you to the ground, but you should feel like you're being pushed, and that part of your body actually being pushed.
Films like Ready Player One, kinda try to oversell VR in a way that would never be practical. Yes the VirtualBoy was trash, but pretty much everything regarding VR looks like it.
Like this is what needs to happen:
1. Intel needs to quit being shitty and put 64 PCIe lanes on the CPU so that 4 GPU's can be used at 16X instead of the present situation where you can only do this with a $40,000 workstation. AMD could step up their game here as AMD X399 has 66.
2. Route separate GPU's to each eye, and "SLI" them to get the necessary resolution to wrap around the player's head and peripheral vision.
That would solve the HMD issues.
3. Re-invent the power glove using existing wireless input technology. There has been attempts https://mimugloves.com/
4. Haptics are also on the "attempts" list https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/02/holosuit-promises-full-body-vr-tracking-and-haptics-by-november-2018/
The largest problem is really software support for all of this. At best a "VR" game right now just a conventional "3D" game with the camera shifted and warped. It's not really VR by any measurable means yet. A 16-button 6-axis controller is not an appropriate input device inside a world where you should be able to move your arms.
There is a lack of content and lack of utility. Period. The few games there are, many are the same re-skinned or barely tech demo. Even if there was porn , so what ? There is available VR porn by the way. Does not seem to make VR boom. It just is that some *lower* quality tech (2D flat screen) is actually still better and less costly than the 3D VR one. And THAT is why people don't buy in drove.
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I'm not discounting the possibility that in the future, tech will advance far enough so virtual reality becomes attractive to people again (probably at the stage where we can inexpensively generate 3D holograms of things floating in front of people). But this constant incremental churn of VR headsets and gear is stale and not getting much traction.
Among other things, I think some people in the industry aren't willing to accept that when it comes to gaming, a whole lot of people don't WANT that level of immersion! Picture your typical teenage console or PC gamer at home, already constantly dealing with getting yelled at by parents for not hearing what they're telling them because they're sucked into their "stupid video game". There's still a need to be able to hear when the "real world" is trying to get your attention, even if that jest means the doorbell ringing because your pizza delivery arrived. It's enough of a problem when you wear headphones or use earbuds, without a big, chunky pair of glasses immersing your whole field of vision in the game too.
Even as an adult, I like playing video games to unwind in the evening after work .... but I don't want to block out everything happening around me. If my wife needs to tell me something important, or the kids have an emergency - they should be able to interrupt my game and communicate with me. VR would make that too difficult.
And we're not even talking about the motion sickness problems some people experience. Gaming isn't much fun if it gets your stomach upset or gives you headaches. VR just amplifies those issues and makes them unbearable for some people.
But even if the whole experience was ideal in other perspectives, the cost is still a problem. I work for a marketing company where they toyed around with the idea of setting up VR experiences for clients. It was soundly rejected as not being financially feasible, each time it was presented as a possibility. (Imagine scenarios like universities doing fundraiser events where alumni are invited back to their schools. Theoretically, you could put on a show where everyone in a room puts on a VR headset and has a shared experience of taking a virtual tour of what the campus used to look like when it was new .... time-warping to the days they attended, and again to the present or even envisioned future that their donations could make possible. Cool, right? Except the computer hardware and expense building that whole 3D VR world runs the cost up way beyond the ROI.)
Even for a fixed, limited market like Playstation 4 owners, their VR solution just isn't compelling because again, the content creation for it seems to be hugely intensive. You wind up with a few basic, simplistic VR specific titles that feel more like product demos, and a few major game titles that use SOME VR in limited parts of the game. That's really not enough to sell most people on it.
As someone who's tried most VR tech since the early 90s, all my experience with the current generation suggests that the tech is indeed good enough.
In particular, I get lost in the Steam/HTC Vive setup my friend has every time I use it. Google Earth alone is a killer app, if you know where to go (I'm a climber: try Yosemite or Eldorado Canyon in Boulder, they've imaged the cliffs in both places to the point where you can actually see the handholds and make out routes). The paint programs are surreal as well.
I get motion sick easily. This is the first generation of VR gear that I've been able to spend 30+ minutes with the headset on and feel fine afterwards.
So, why don't I have my own VR setup? Two reasons: (1) cost and (2) I have half of it. For the latter, I purchased an X-Box One X for my son specifically because MS was setting it up as a VR platform. $500 for a game console was steep, but the hardware was right for good VR. Unfortunately, MS has now signaled that VR is not coming to the platform and I've overpaid for a gaming console. (yes, I should have just bought a PS4)
Cost, and to a lesser extent the hassle associated with that cost, is what I think is the real issue. Without a consumer friendly setup in the $500-700 range all-in that supports all VR content (PS4's problem is content), it's just too expensive to get started. I don't want to drop a few grand on a high end gaming PC, then the hundreds on the VR gear, plus the time it will take to setup and maintain the PC. It's just too expensive in money and time commitment.
The tech is there. There are compelling apps. It's just still too expensive to get started.
-Chris
When playing VR is as simple as sitting on the settee and wearing something as light and simple as a pair of sunglasses
This to me is the real problem - it's just not simple. Every VR setup, even PSVR, has quite a lot of cables going on, and then you have to find space to play in.
I think AR is where the future will be because it offers more of a choice between full VR and partial VR, along with more practical uses. Plus to date they have been more as you say - like a pair of glasses, even if over-large and goofy glasses at the moment.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I remember Avatar, seeing it in 3D in a movie theatre was a pretty mind blowing immersive experience. Cameron came close again with Sanctum. That was 3D done right, not "solving a problem" but certainly adding something to the experience... The problem with 3D is that is that it is very difficult and expensive to get those results, and you simply cannot get the same depth (literally) of experience at home with current technology, that's just a physical limitation. Even on a big screen 4K TV with awesome 3D glasses, that same Avatar movie is going to be... ok-ish. And probably not worth the hassle of finding those glasses, charging them, and keeping them on for the movie. But even though 3D TV is going the way of the dodo, I expect that studios will continue to make the odd 3D movie.
VR doesn't have the problem that it doesn't work at home. This time round it's gotten to a point where it actually works very well visually (the controls still leave a lot to be desired). I suspect that the gear is simply too expensive and complex for mainstream consumers to bother with.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
In addition to needing some fairly substantial upgrades to a two year old computer (video card, mostly) and having to sink hundreds of dollars on a bulky headset with multiple wires, there is another problem for me.
My eyes are terrible. VR headsets don't fit over my glasses very well. And since I'm farsighted, I can't use it without them.
The VR industry has basically completely ignored people who don't have perfect vision.
The problem with a title like Eve Valkrie is that it was all in on VR. For a multiplayer experience, this is a challenge as the experience isn't compelling without other people, and other people won't join until it is compelling.
Contrast with, for example, Elite Dangerous where VR is core to the development, but it is but a *mode* of experiencing the game.
VR-only titles are going to be a problem, as a financial endeavor development has to stick to game that only optionally requires VR for now.
It is much the same way a game can support an RTX2080 for fancy graphics, but it better not *mandate* an RTX 2080.
In terms of people saying 'the technology isn't ready yet', frankly it's close enough to go. People go on about eye tracking, foveated rendering, and varifocal display, but far more critical would be more boring stuff, like better humidity management, optics that don't produce godrays, and perhaps some slightly high res, with emphasis on high resolution of textual elements even if the horsepower isn't there for general rendering (sure, eye tracking would facilitate foveated rendering which would be a big help, but we don't need to declare higher res is useless until we have eye tracking).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's easy to blame the 'tech' for not being 'perfect', but perfection has never been a requirement for nascent technologies to capture imagination and build consumer momentum. It seems that there is a more fundamental mismatch between current VR design and how humans engage with the world (virtual or otherwise).
No shit most people can't afford hundreds of dollars in VR gear on top of the high-end gaming PC required to use it. If companies don't like it, they should try paying their employees more, it worked for the Ford Model T...
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EVE is like CQC portion of Elite but worse and very few Elite players bother with CQC.
I gave my EVE license that came with Rift to someone else. Wasn't interested in trying after seeing videos of gameplay. That and would have had to un-firewall Oculus malware just to play. Not worth it.
I love the powerglove...it's so bad. [link]
It won't ever work. The disconnect between what the eye sees and the inner ear senses will cause motion sickness. This cannot be corrected because it is physiological.
Every successful tech goes through a phase of garage development. This hasn't happened with VR.
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When 3D accelerators first came out, you had a clear improvement in the quality of the visuals as well as an improvement in framerates. In addition to that, there were more than a handful of games that were actually good. The move to VR has a lot of amazing chances, you look at a game like Rise of the Tomb Raider, and I mean the full game, not just some DLC, and that would have been an amazing experience if it were fully VR. Hell, in 4k, Rise of the Tomb Raider was stunning on a 27+ inch display. So, VR...one DLC that could almost be seen as a tech demo. What other content out there gives you that feeling of amazing visuals that VR would also enhance? Games themselves, since most are already 3D, would probably benefit a lot from going VR, but the games are NOT being released with VR in mind, and that is why it is not taking off. The game developers as a whole, need to either have a good API, or for the VR headsets to just accept DirectX 12 and make it a better way to display/render the content.
If VR headsets were actually treated like a simple monitor, then every game should just work without a lot of special coding being needed, and people would want to use them to enhance the experience. Instead, what do you see, special controllers, and trying to treat them as something "special". News flash, keep it simple, and people might just go for it. Add support for extras then, like vibration, or whatever, and again, it makes it simple for game developers to adopt. The more work you need the game developers to do to support YOUR special VR device, the less likely they will do it.
It depends on if the card is really better than the $600 and below cards. The problem is when performance is stagnant, or you don't get anything extra for the higher price tag.
In fairness, 3D movies are considerably more expensive to create, and rarely have much extra to offer except things occasionally flying at your head. They're also plagued by directors trying to put the content in front of the screen instead of behind it, where field-of-view issues don't exist. Understandable for the "experience", but it does a great disservice to what the technology *can* do well by introducing lots of annoying artifacts, especially if you're not sitting directly centered in front of the screen. About the only time I saw it done at all well was an undersea nature documentary at a dynamax, where the screen filled much of my field of view and the animal they focussed on would swim in your lap. Almost made up for the fact that everything else in the scene made my brain hurt as its proximity caused it to go off-screen for one eye or the other.
VR doesn't suffer from most of those problems. Most especially, it doesn't inherently suffer from considerable production expense - all the content is already in 3D, it's just a matter of rendering the same thing twice. The interface is currently more expensive to develop - but a lot of that is just growing pains and will disappear once the industry settles o good standards. Just as virtually all modern FPS games use the same basic interface. It wasn't always that way, in the early days there was a lot of variation, but once the "mouse and keyboard" control scheme dominated pretty much everyone settled on basically the same interface.
And yes, VR does solve a consumer problem - the desire for more immersive games. (There's also professional VR, but that's a separate market that predated the Oculus, though it did explode with the introduction of cheap consumer VR of semi-comparable quality)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Most consumers DON'T want to wear some bulky, fugly VR glasses.
Furthermore people who wear glasses find it annoying having to wrangle with headsets and glasses.
Second, the lack of haptic feedback along with contradictory MIXED messages your brain is receiving (eyes tells your brain you are moving, your ears tells your brain you aren't) is one of the reasons of nausea. Not extactly a great selling point.
Third, good VR required high end GPUs. Most consumers don't care about having the latest and greatest GPU.
Fourth, there is no "killer app" that everyone must have.
Fifth, it is hard to demo VR. Chicken and egg problem that dovetails with point 4.
There are always exceptions. While Google Earth is a great VR experience there are more gimmicky / novelty apps then anything serious / productive.
VR will *always* be a niche market until these are addressed. These have been true for the past 20 - 40+ years and I don't see that changing *anytime* soon.
In a lot of ways VR is like 3D movies or hi fi audio. Most people don't care, they need to have a good experience to understand what it brings to the table before they are convinced. VR has as much a marketing problem as it does a hardware problem.
But it would have made VR *profitable*, which is the key thing. It's a lot easier to design for the consumer market when you already have a steady flow of money from the industrial/commercial market and aren't betting the company's survival on whether you sell enough for Christmas.
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The real key to Avatar in 3D is that it wasn't just items sticking out of the screen at you, but was more about depth in every scene. 3D still has the potential to enhance TV, but unless it is used properly, ends up being worthless. The move from mono to stereo in movies/TV, and you had people saying that stereo wasn't needed. The key is that it DID enhance the experience, and after a while, if you didn't have stereo sound, it felt like there was something missing. Surround sound isn't EVERYWHERE, but once you have a decent 5 or 7 channel surround sound setup, going back to watching without it just makes you feel like something is missing.
3D, if you make it so EVERY scene has depth, it doesn't have to be stupid effects, but just to enhance the feel of every scene, you would probably find it just feels better, even if not necessary at first. VR should effectively be like 3D, simply with a controller/feedback system included, and a VR headset without special support SHOULD provide a value to people if they are done properly, because the 3D would be done "better" than a monitor could.
Again, the problem is more that companies don't seem to understand the idea of, "enhance the experience, and don't make it difficult to make it work".
VFX1 as well. Street price was under 1k$. Stereo resolution was halved, but how much resolution was a 486 going to generate anyhow?
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You get bragging rights for your water cooled, overclocked 2080 ti SLI setup.
Telling a girl your computer has so much GPU power you need a 1600 Watt power supply is instant panty remover! (do I need an explicit /sarc?)
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There IS (sort of) a way... make it look like the larger environment is stationary & perfectly-synchronized with head motion (low latency, zero jiggle/slosh), and limit the moving stuff to small elements within the larger scene. Your brain can deal with small things that wobble/jiggle/slosh, as long as the "big picture" is consistent with what you see. It's when your entire WORLD is seemingly in conflict with your senses that you get motion sickness.
Eyestrain is a related, but different, problem that's currently a lot worse than it really *has* to be, simply because most devices have piss poor calibration & lenses. Part of the calibration problem can be resolved by giving each eye its own optimally-placed display (with precise orientation), and most of the remaining problem could be resolved by involving opticians to fit & customize lenses for individual users. It could be something simple, like designing a future Oculus device to ship with standard lenses, but be able to easily swap them out with custom lenses fitted by opticians certified by Oculus as being "VR-aware".
There's also the fact that "rendering optics" today are often where "game physics" were circa 1995. Libraries try to matrix-out distortion, without fully understanding what they're doing, what has already been done, and what's going to be done further down the pipeline. That's a big reason why VR companies have finally started to hire opticians & involving them in the process (and using them to help design better lens designs).
VR requires enormous amount of integration at every level. Comparing "First Person Shooter" to "Immersive VR universe" is kind of like comparing "Java app" to "distributed J2EE app with rich native client". The problem's scope is ENORMOUSLY bigger & requires more resources & more sophisticated management.
You also need to manage expectations, and eliminate the nausea caused by the semicircular canals not reflection the visual field.
I agree that eventually VR will be dominant, but there's far yet to go.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I disagree. Tech is good enough already. Problem is cost which feeds into lack of software. Few are willing to shell out four digits on hardware BEFORE the costs of the actual headset and its peripherals not to mention software for gaming entertainment. Additionally current VR games are awful in terms of visual fidelity because of the FPS and low latency per frame needed. Current graphics cards sorta kinda can deliver the relevant power, but you will have to pay well into four digits for a system that can deliver, and then shell out for the HMD.
And then come the games that are just lackluster. EVE Valkyrie was a VR launch title, and one of the handful of titles that actually had decent graphical fidelity if you had the GPU and CPU power to throw at it. Most look like PC desktop games from 2000s if you're lucky, and go all the way down to mobile phone game grade crap if you're not. So pretty much the main user base that I see among my contacts are the hardcore sim people. DCS, Eurotruck, etc. Those are the guys who will spend four digits just on their simulator controllers (and I use that term loosely, these people have "battlestations" in the truest meaning of the word) without blinking. And VR software serving them lives by being able to charge them easy 100USD and more per year on update packs with new content, knowing that they will have the hardware to run the games because they will have the GPU and CPU that their favourite game requires to run well enough to give them maximum immersion.
Mass market though? Games like EVE Valkyrie? Not a chance. And without mass market adoption, games aimed at mass market cannot thrive.
Duke3D ran fine on 480p iirc. I remember trying one HMD in store back in 1990s with it, and it was one of my favourite games to play over internet back then (remember heat.net?). It had a really weird implementation on where head tracking would use the "look to the side" function of duke3d, that no one used because it was awful. Had to look straight to keep the game coherent.
Also, it ran in a Pentium MMX iirc.
Remember 3D movies? Remember how Avatar was promoted relentlessly? 3D was a solution in search of a problem. While it allowed for a nifty new feature that could be sold for more money, it didn't solve a problem. It also had some nasty side effects that bother a lot of people. It didn't take long for 3D to be effectively abandoned. It simply isn't worth the cost to make something in 3D.
I often wonder if those carting out the 3DTV analogies have even once tried a modern 6DOF HMD for themselves.
I expected VR to be like looking thru binoculars or a viewmaster. Basically two big looking screens hanging in front of each eye going into it when I bought it sight unseen. Bzzt was I wrong. Totally completely and utterly not that way at all.
There is no Avator for people to relate to. Instead of buying one piece of technology you are buying one for each person. This makes 3D an expensive experience that can't be shared with anyone else. 3D is destined as a niche product that will never gain widespread consumer acceptance.
Split screen multiplayer and LAN play are an endangered species on consoles and PCs across the board and that royally sucks ass.
Play rec room in VR or meet up on some random planet hundreds of light years away with dozens of other CMDRs in Elite and then come back here and tell us all about how VR experiences can't be shared with anyone else.
Can someone use your technology without looking like an idiot?
No but mocking people wearing HMDs when they can't see you doing it is a lot of fun.
The two aforementioned VR headsets in the 90's required proprietary titles; I remember there was being a version of Mech II for the Forte VFX1; was there ever Duke Nukem?? I certainly didn't think so...
MS never signaled that, though; it was clear that they'd optimized it for 4K.
If the mouthbreathers expected greater uptake by now, it's merely because they don't understand the tech well enough to be making predictions.
I think you meant it's biological. In any case, I had no problems until I put a car through a wall and didn't feel the expected deceleration. I became instantly more nauseous than I can recall ever having felt and I was left with a 24hour migraine; that was a first as well.
Ate you an alien?? 'Cause you sure as fuck don't seem to know much about humans.
Bingo.
It varied. Some games had native support, some had support hacked in, some used the headset to emulate a mouse.
Pretty sure Duke was the last category.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
3D was a solution to a serious problem: How can we get people to go the the theaters again to make more money. The solutions turned out to be foreign markets, better action movies (e.g. Marvel), and significantly better non-theater options for the studios.
Bluetooth earpieces have always been quite popular. Hell, that's pretty much what AirBuds are.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
What it has to be is either perfect, or cheap. Since it is neither of these things
It's as cheap as you want to make it. The GearVR headset can be had for less than a Benjamin Franklin. Google cardboard for a significant cut lower.
Now that IS cheap, however it's not good. So you can't say that it just has to be perfect or cheap. There has to be an element of both in it.
Also cheap is overrated. Look at all those sold out RTX2080s everywhere. It's amazing the kind of money people are actually willing to part with for incremental improvements. Don't confuse "cheap" with "affordable".
You can not see the game controller.
Of course you can. You cannot see you hand on the controller, but the controller in most games is rendered accurately in the 3D space.
Umm, a quarter to a half of all movies playing in my local theatre are playing in 3D. There are billions in 3D ticket sales. Where is has really fallen down is in the consumer space
Look, many of us tried to tell you this whole VR immersive environment and overuse of video on web and media platforms was a bad idea, but you bought into the sales pitches of those who made money from selling high end graphics hardware and software.
Now stop making videos of everything - provide a link to the video, but stop trying to show it when I really don't care, and neither does anyone except teens who have no real jobs.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What doesn't work well is anything that involves big movement -- the flight simulator I have makes me queasy in a matter of seconds and I don't get motion sick. If it's making me queasy, I imagine the volume of vomit it'll produce from someone who's actually prone to motion sickness. Any big FPS type thing also feels pretty clunky. If you can stand still or move within a fairly small area, you can make a decent game of it. For the tech to really work well, I feel like you need to be able to run without having to to worry about the cable or breaking your kneecaps on the coffee table. If you could do that, it'd be great for getting the next generation of gamers into shape.
I was really looking forward to a higher resolution headset and speced my gaming PC to be able to handle eit, but with HTC's financial trouble and the lack of much new content for the platform, it looks like I'll probably have to wait a while for the next iteration. Too bad, you can really see the potential in the current generation.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
VR much like 3D has to be for a purpose other than just itself. When used in conjunction and to enhance a good story or function it will catch on. Up until now it has been just a one trick pony used for just a lark, in no way contributing to a story or function.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
When a omnidirectional treadmill for VR gets to a reasonable price range and functions seamlessly then VR will be amazing.
Right now it's pretty stupid to stand in place and move your thumbs around.. it's uncomfortable to stand in one place without moving, but walking is awesome exercise and people will love it if they can walk and game.
I would say another example are the original BlackBerry pager devices. They're a sad joke compared to what the mobile phone industry would become after the iPhone and Android phones hit the market but the use case - sending email from anywhere - was so compelling that people used them despite the fact that they were primitive. Heck they got the nick name CrackBerries as a result. Now we have an entire world of people staring at their phones sending messages with any number of devices when they're not playing Fortnite.
The tech maturity argument is valid. The cost concerns are valid. The logistical concerns are valid. But I think the real thing is that at the end of the day, most people don't care a damn thing about VR and even if all of those things get sorted out the number of people who want to strap a thing to their face and be in that world for anything more than a few minutes a couple of times to see what's the big deal is nowhere near where it would need to be to make something like that viable.
And I'm saying this as someone who got a Virtual Boy Emulator using Google Cardboard VR running on the iPhone.
Schnapple
Where the fuck is Star Wars X-Wing VR? The VR Demo from Battlefront is the only great VR experience and at 15 minutes long is pathetically short. Hell at least a FreeSpace 2 Port to VR should have happened by now. Dickhead obsession with "presence" and high framerate content is what's killed VR. Sony nailed it. Use a hardware framerate doubler, so devs just have to get 60FPS to the hardware. All the other VR systems require crazy spec computers and don't really work properly. Sony should have thrown $20 million at EA/Disney to get Star Wars VR made.
Yes I've seen that but you still have to have a safe play space set aside.
Of all the VR systems I've tried (and I've had or tried all of the commercial ones) I liked the Vive the best. But it still is too complex even with things like that, to really be mass market.
Vive is compelling enough though (moving within a space for real) that I was hoping it would grow enough of a niche to survive, maybe what needs to happen though is some other VR systems die off so more Vive specific content can me made that takes advantage of that real movement, and gain a solid sustainable niche that it can live within before we all migrate to AR systems. Vive seems a much better stepping stone in that direction than any other VR system.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Cars and boats seem to have become pretty popular despite some people suffering motion sickness from them.
There are many people that do not get motion sickness from the current VR headsets (I am one of them). I predict that those numbers will rise as children are introduced to it at a younger age and their brains learn to adjust. That won't work for everyone of course. The same people that suffer from car sickness now will probably always suffer from VR motion sickness as well. But there are people that get motion sickness from movies and normal videogames so I'm not too worried about it.
I love my VR setup, the vive. It gets me extra exercise each day, keeps it from being boring, and makes it happen regardless of the weather. Fallout, Skyrim are amazing in it, even if they aren't designed for it.
EVE Valkyrie was a Rift exclusive, so I pretty much ignored it. I didn't even know it came over the Vive until I read this, 2 years later. Meh, no thanks. I know studios love doing exclusives, but the VR ecosystem is far too small for that.
The list goes on, it's a chicken or egg problem... you need the NES as well as Mario.
Blizzard doesn't want to invest in VR because the market demographic is too small and fragmented.
Developers don't want to go all in because of small user base.
Small user base exists because of so few games.
Add the relatively high cost ( for most people ) of a Vive or Occulus setup complete with gaming rig level hardware to run it, plus the bullshit infighting between hardware makers to become the " standard " and it's easy to see why it hasn't taken off.
It really never stood a chance.
They did signal VR and even put a lot of development effort into it. It's only recently that they decided against it:
https://www.cnet.com/news/here...
Given all the previous questionable moves they made they're pretty bad at anticipating how technology will play out for them.
I'm sure their lack of success has also nothing to do with their game, at all.
It has lackluster ratings on Steam (58%) and is a multiplayer only game. I could be the target market for their game - I love space sims and own a VR headset - but I couldn't care less about a multiplayer only game. I'm pretty certain that applies to the vast majority of people who enjoy a space sim.
That old X-Wing / TIE Fighter / Wing Commander / Freespace crowd? All singleplayer gamers in their 30's and 40's with jobs and cash to spend on an expensive VR outfit. But multiplayer? Nope. That is for the 14-24 year old Call of Duty crowd who have perhaps never played a space sim in their life.
"Dying" in VR could very well be its own punishment....
Btw, misread "physiological" as "psychological."
Well maybe it's not VR, but the fact that it's a VR MMO game in Space for hardcore players?
It's not really a super large player base there to begin with, and most people are probably still playing the old Eve Online, why move over to this?
That's actually a harder problem to solve than you might expect.
Problem 1: what is the camera looking at? You can't just follow what the user is looking at... it would be like watching a bad camcorder video shot by a drunk person. To write the virtual camera positioning code, you need somebody who actually understands cinematography & can apply that knowledge to the user who's lurching around inside the VR world (keeping it pointed at the most interesting content, zooming as necessary, but nevertheless keeping it relatively stable to avoid making everyone watching it nauseous).
Problem 2: you need yet another GPU pipeline to render the "public" view... in a system whose video cards are ALREADY getting pushed to the breaking point, with no ability to add more. We desperately need the ability to pack four x16 video cards into a PC. Right now, the market for higher-end video cards is too niche for anyone to make halfway-affordable higher-end cards... but to achieve what you need with only a pair of cards, you need REALLY EXPENSIVE cards. If we had 64-bit PCIe, you could instead buy four cheaper cards (with greater economies of scale) instead. Or you could buy two cards, then buy two more after you realized the first two weren't adequate.
You underestimate those older Millennial and younger GenX gamers. There's a good chunk that is interested in multi-player which is reflected in the crowd funding base of Star Citizen for example. The average age of players in EVE Online also happens to be within that range. CCP even had the means to evaluate the hardware of their player base and see whether they'd be a possible target audience for the game. Other than that, Valkyrie also has a single player campaign as far as I know.
Other than, yes, their game not being good didn't help it either. From what I know the single player was bad as well.
However, if they just released it for the PC without all the additional requirements it could have done a lot better in filling that action-gameplay gap from which their EVE Online has been suffering for a long time.
Pretty much the same applies to Dust 514, which was a mediocre shooter at best. And since the crowd that is mostly attracted to consoles wasn't really interested in the link with EVE Online, Dust 514 had to stand on its own legs. And there it had to compete with other shooters like Call of Duty, Battlefield and the likes. I believe it would have fared a lot better on the PC with its direct link to EVE Online. There its mediocrity could have easily been overshadowed by it offering its complementary gameplay to existing EVE Online players.
That's a lot of EVE players wanted at that time anyway. But CCP knew better.
I don't think it necessarily needs to be highly immersive, however it needs to be much cheaper. You have to start off first with a high end gaming PC, and then spend the equivalent of the cost of a gaming console (viewer plus controls). It's a steep burden for your typical PC gamer.
If I had a beefy system, I might try the 3D game, but I really don't see the need to go a step further for a full VR experience. There's really not much point to it that I can see. But if you look at the average PC gamer that won't spend more than $200 for a graphics card and will never bother with absurdity of dual SLI cards, those people aren't going to see the point of wasting money on VR for a handful of games they don't care about.
If 3D television didn't catch on, then I doubt VR games will catch on either. There are always the early adopters with disposable income that quickly buy into a new fad but it doesn't sustain itself.
Games I enjoy with PSVR have Move and Aim controllers fully visible in game.
You are right about the poor resolution in VR, Skyrim graphics is primitive and low res. You get used to it tho. The Move controllers work well with Skyrim, you see what you are holding and where your hands are at, the sense of immersion is great.
With the Aim controller, in games which match up the visual weapon you are holding, immersion is also good, it matches your posture and movements very well.
Personally I really enjoy the limited VR experience available in Gran Turismo Sport, as I use a steering wheel and get a good feeling of being in the cockpit of the car. Lack of g-force is something you have to get used to, it can also be the cause of discomfort for some people.
Having stated all that tho, the VR experience is not fantastic enough to take over my flat-screen gaming time, it sits unused a lot of the time. As we are a working couple who never spawned, the cost of PSVR gear was probably more acceptable for me than it may be for many people trying to fit toys and games into their budget. I wouldn't call it a must-have or 'the future of gaming' at this stage tho.
I read someplace that Sony plan much lower prices for the next edition of VR, maybe that will encourage greater uptake.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
It has to be good enough to justify wearing the gear and getting up out of my chair. And that's a tall order considering that I can become highly immersed in a virtual world simply by reading a book, listening to a radio show (theatre, not talk), or watching a TV show. Long ago, I sold televisions for a living, and something that struck me was that after 10 minutes of watching a good show, it didn't matter how bad your signal was or how small your screen was -- most people were immersed by then.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
I am reading some of the silliest excuses in this thread. That VR has to be perfect, there's no porn in VR, there's no haptic feedback, it's not dirt cheap, it can't be developed incrementally.
VR doesn't have to be perfect, it has to be good enough which it is. The resolution is starting a bit slow but there is more than one serious product on the market in competition with each other. Higher resolution VR headsets are being developed, and incremental VR development is underway which someone else here said was impossible.
There are a good amount of games for VR, especially considering how new the platform is.
The manufacturers won't allow porn? Do you really think they can keep porn off their headsets? My dick is virtually raw (see what I did there?)
"VR isn't easy to do unlike watching TV". OK, nothing else on a computer or game console is. When I play VR, here's what I do: Start the game, turn on each controller, put on the headset. That's it, it's easy.
"There's no haptic feedback" that's a lie, there is haptic feedback. You have a crappy system if you don't have that.
"VR isn't cheap" it's relatively cheap, especially for what's basically 1st gen new technology.
"You can't see the controllers" what?! Firstly, yes you can sometimes. Secondly, a well-designed controller doesn't need to be seen. Do you look at your keyboard while you type? Do console gamers look to make sure they're hitting the right button?
There are however 2 points that I'll concede: Some people to get motion sickness and that's a serious problem that devs and engineers can only do so much to fix. Hopefully there will be better drugs developed to combat this so we can move into a badass cyberpunk reality. The other one is that (sometimes) people play games to chill and don't want to be active. That's fair enough, I'm even too lazy for VR sometimes even though it's rarely a real workout.
Valkyrie performed well on PSVR and was the first VR game I got into a lot, but the online-only aspect limited it's uptake I think, and a single-player mode with extensive campaigns could have made it sell better.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
There are a few games on PSVR which let multiple people connect via mobile phone to participate in some way. I haven't seen reviews on them so I don't know if they got popular at all. Also I don't have any gaming friends in the same city so no reason to try them out myself.
The motion sickness thing is still real, I don't have a problem with racing cars, space ships or running about in Skyrim, for a good long gaming session, but after a few hours it starts to kick in and I need to stop. Some of this could be related to lack of liquid intake, as when I am flat-screen gaming there is usually a glass of wine or scotch nearby. I am not going to start drinking scotch thru a straw under my VR helmet tho.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
I was hoping that DOOM VR was going to be the killer app, what a huge let down that was.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
There is one other essential problem with VR that will never be fixed.
0) Any technology that requires the user to wear something stupid strapped onto their head will always fail.
Seriously it just need to be responsive, high resolution and hours of sustainable fun
What you want is The Matrix.
Well the game wasn't doing well on VR, they released a desktop version and it still wasn't doing well.
MUST BE A PROBLEM WITH VR!!
I would rather think it is a problem with the game if it also fails on the desktop.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Panty remover is literally correct, no need for sarcasm. The panties are removed, together with the girl wearing them, form your house immediately.
Not a problem with me using PSVR, you just need to install a couple of foam bumpers to prevent your glasses scratching the lens. I don't even use those - just adjust the head mount so that they don't touch and lock it in place.
Don't talk like this is a problem that all players experience. I don't get motion sickness at all in VR, even after 3 hours of Skyrim VR.
...just not his!! Just because his game has been totally and utterly trounced by ELITE DANGEROUS, (which for Vive/Rift is a bit of a "killer app" for VR), doesn't mean VR not selling. That's like saying PC gaming is dying because the Duke Nukem remake didn't sell. VR is going great - yes as some people have said there's "too many cables"... but the technology is moving along at breakneck speed at the moment.. For example , the "cable" problem has just been resolved ... this week! HTC specifially have brought out a vive wireless adapter which does away with the cables.
The Samsung GEAR VR and the (equivalent) Oculous GO are just pick-up-and-play self-contained VR which have a surprising amount of fantastic space games for them - such as Project Charon, End Space and Anshar 2.
Project Charon specifically is a sight to behold, considering it can be run from a cheap mobile phone getup (GEAR VR) and silences most VR crtitics after a demonstration.