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It's a step in the right direction, but I personally don't think the tech is there yet - just look at the millions that go into creating 3d games for a 2d surfa

It's a step in the right direction, but I personally don't think the tech is there yet - just look at the millions that go into creating 3d games for a 2d surface, how does that scale to 360deg of motion? Additionally, you have M$ marketing campaign which does videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aThCr0PsyuA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aThCr0PsyuA (even though it's AR, the point still stands that VR/AR are being marketed as more than they actually are).

hrnnnnnn 11y ago
I don't understand the question. You've already got a 3D environment, all you have to do is implement camera control for the headset. For simulation games where the user is stationary (planes, cars) you can pretty much stop there. Other games will need to be designed with VR in mind, but it's not going to balloon art budgets or anything. On the contrary, what a lot of developers find is that they can get away with less sophisticated graphics while maintaining a sense of presence. See Superhot for a good example. https://superhotgame.com/ https://superhotgame.com/
- hacker_9 11y ago
  Yes you have a 3d world, but now everything in it needs to be interact able. Knock your fist against a wall for example, it makes subtlety different noises everytime - how do you program for that? Everything in the environment should have physics too. In a survival game if I pick up cello-tape and a gun and flashlight I'd expect to be able to attach it all together myself with my hands. All this stuff you can hide behind a button press on a gamepad+tv, but in VR it's so much more jarring when the world you are walking around can only be somewhat interacted with - the techniques we use to fake stuff today just don't stand up when you can look at them from a mm away. The idea of VR+gamepad just doesn't make sense to me - If I can't see/control my hands/feet as I'd expect then all these reports of VR induced sickness come as no surprise.
  - hrnnnnnn 11y ago
    Good point. I thought you were just referring to graphics, but yeah, the bar for interaction is definitely going to go up once our hands are involved.
deleted 11y ago
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hosh 11y ago
I disagree. (1) The millions that go into creating 3d games for 2d surfaces are often going for things that may not matter for VR. Much of the push in AAA titles have been towards photorealism. Photorealism is not necessary to induce presence. (2) With presence, VR content will not necessarily be about games, it will be about experiences, of which games are a small subset. It's a different medium. (3) The current trend towards violent games won't work. With a sufficient level of presence, the current edge of VR technology will induce an existential crises. It doesn't work for everyone (yet), but we've never had something that closed enough of the uncanny valley gap until this generation. When I heard that it induces an existential crises, I knew this is the real deal.
- hacker_9 11y ago
  Graphics in modern 3d games are completely faked, and it works because they can control the view medium (the tv - a 2d window). When you can walk around the world though in VR would you not expect to be able to kick objects around, move lights, lock doors, break tables to use the pieces as weapons? Instead you still have the same game as on the tv where all that stuff is off limits, resulting in this weird in-between-fake-and-real-world-simulation which is jarring to play.
  - brazzledazzle 11y ago
    I didn't find it jarring at all. It's a game with a cooler screen, I don't expect a holodeck.
    - danielbln 11y ago
      Same here, I played Half Life 2 in VR and found it incredibly captivating and engrossing. It doesn't need to simulate reality to a T to be enjoyable.
  - hosh 11y ago
    You're confusing realism for presence. Realism is not necessary for presence. I'm using the conventional notion of realism: that set of coventions, idioms, beliefs, habitual expectation that form your set of what is "real". This is easy to test -- if you were to go to another country with a very different culture, some things will jar you out of your expectations. Other things like catastrophic natural disasters tends to shock people into paralysis because the thing going through their mind is "this isn't real". You see a tsunami coming your way, it's real enough, but because you haven't experienced it, you might spent some time wondering if this was "real". Presence, on the other hand, is the experience of being embodied within a space, whether that space is tangible or not. It is quite possible to have presence within an artificial space whose laws of physics do not resemble anything that you expect. Presence is typically attained when the uncanny valley is crossed. In other words, it's the brain that needs convincing for the presence, not your expectations on what "realism" is. If you are finding unrealistic elements are jarring, that's more likely that the tech has not crossed the uncanny valley for you. There's a strong case that the current generation of VR tech works well for men, but probably not women, due to physiological differences in neurology. However, if the VR experience has presence, but things don't operate the way you expect, that leads to a different experience: an existential crises. I'm looking forward to where this is going. Our civilization needs this tech badly, to help break us out of conventionality and closed-mindedness. Some of the most interesting project includes a VR sim of being in a warzone as a bystander ... to develop empathy for people elsewhere. That's something the current social networks don't foster. We still have difficulty seeing things from someone else's point of view. If the world wide web brought information closer together, the mainstream adoption of VR can potentially bring people together. And that's a big deal.

hrnnnnnn 11y ago

I don't understand the question. You've already got a 3D environment, all you have to do is implement camera control for the headset. For simulation games where the user is stationary (planes, cars) you can pretty much stop there. Other games will need to be designed with VR in mind, but it's not going to balloon art budgets or anything. On the contrary, what a lot of developers find is that they can get away with less sophisticated graphics while maintaining a sense of presence. See Superhot for a good example. https://superhotgame.com/ https://superhotgame.com/

hacker_9 11y ago
Yes you have a 3d world, but now everything in it needs to be interact able. Knock your fist against a wall for example, it makes subtlety different noises everytime - how do you program for that? Everything in the environment should have physics too. In a survival game if I pick up cello-tape and a gun and flashlight I'd expect to be able to attach it all together myself with my hands. All this stuff you can hide behind a button press on a gamepad+tv, but in VR it's so much more jarring when the world you are walking around can only be somewhat interacted with - the techniques we use to fake stuff today just don't stand up when you can look at them from a mm away. The idea of VR+gamepad just doesn't make sense to me - If I can't see/control my hands/feet as I'd expect then all these reports of VR induced sickness come as no surprise.
- hrnnnnnn 11y ago
  Good point. I thought you were just referring to graphics, but yeah, the bar for interaction is definitely going to go up once our hands are involved.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

hosh 11y ago

I disagree. (1) The millions that go into creating 3d games for 2d surfaces are often going for things that may not matter for VR. Much of the push in AAA titles have been towards photorealism. Photorealism is not necessary to induce presence. (2) With presence, VR content will not necessarily be about games, it will be about experiences, of which games are a small subset. It's a different medium. (3) The current trend towards violent games won't work. With a sufficient level of presence, the current edge of VR technology will induce an existential crises. It doesn't work for everyone (yet), but we've never had something that closed enough of the uncanny valley gap until this generation. When I heard that it induces an existential crises, I knew this is the real deal.

hacker_9 11y ago
Graphics in modern 3d games are completely faked, and it works because they can control the view medium (the tv - a 2d window). When you can walk around the world though in VR would you not expect to be able to kick objects around, move lights, lock doors, break tables to use the pieces as weapons? Instead you still have the same game as on the tv where all that stuff is off limits, resulting in this weird in-between-fake-and-real-world-simulation which is jarring to play.
- brazzledazzle 11y ago
  I didn't find it jarring at all. It's a game with a cooler screen, I don't expect a holodeck.
  - danielbln 11y ago
    Same here, I played Half Life 2 in VR and found it incredibly captivating and engrossing. It doesn't need to simulate reality to a T to be enjoyable.
- hosh 11y ago
  You're confusing realism for presence. Realism is not necessary for presence. I'm using the conventional notion of realism: that set of coventions, idioms, beliefs, habitual expectation that form your set of what is "real". This is easy to test -- if you were to go to another country with a very different culture, some things will jar you out of your expectations. Other things like catastrophic natural disasters tends to shock people into paralysis because the thing going through their mind is "this isn't real". You see a tsunami coming your way, it's real enough, but because you haven't experienced it, you might spent some time wondering if this was "real". Presence, on the other hand, is the experience of being embodied within a space, whether that space is tangible or not. It is quite possible to have presence within an artificial space whose laws of physics do not resemble anything that you expect. Presence is typically attained when the uncanny valley is crossed. In other words, it's the brain that needs convincing for the presence, not your expectations on what "realism" is. If you are finding unrealistic elements are jarring, that's more likely that the tech has not crossed the uncanny valley for you. There's a strong case that the current generation of VR tech works well for men, but probably not women, due to physiological differences in neurology. However, if the VR experience has presence, but things don't operate the way you expect, that leads to a different experience: an existential crises. I'm looking forward to where this is going. Our civilization needs this tech badly, to help break us out of conventionality and closed-mindedness. Some of the most interesting project includes a VR sim of being in a warzone as a bystander ... to develop empathy for people elsewhere. That's something the current social networks don't foster. We still have difficulty seeing things from someone else's point of view. If the world wide web brought information closer together, the mainstream adoption of VR can potentially bring people together. And that's a big deal.