3 ms·

You should not be playing a FPS in VR, especially on anything pre-release like the DK2. Acceleration without some kind of cockpit to ground you is one of the wo

by ericflo 11y ago

You should not be playing a FPS in VR, especially on anything pre-release like the DK2. Acceleration without some kind of cockpit to ground you is one of the worst offenders, and virtually all FPS games do that by design/necessity. This is one of my worst fears about VR adoption: gamers, especially the kind who will be on the leading edge of this stuff, want badly to play FPS games and they'll find ways to do it and they're all going to hate VR. I'm glad Oculus is putting their "comfort ratings" front and center, and being really vocal about the principles of sickness-free VR, but I'm worried people are going to skip all the warnings and advice and ruin this for everyone.

mentos 11y ago
I appreciate that and I only ever played about 8 hours of HL2 VR, I stopped when I beat the campaign and moved on to playing WarThunder for a couple months then slowly tapered off. >>This is one of my worst fears about VR adoption: gamers, especially the kind who will be on the leading edge of this stuff, want badly to play FPS games and they'll find ways to do it and they're all going to hate VR. Part of the promise of VR is being able to negotiate a virtual world on foot which currently has too much of a mismatch to work without sickening the user. So what are the long term solutions to this? To me they are really hard if not impossible problems.
- ericflo 11y ago
  Cloudhead's "Blink" system is one good first step http://uploadvr.com/cloudhead-blink-vr-movement/ http://uploadvr.com/cloudhead-blink-vr-movement/ AltspaceVR has been doing something similar for a while too. Another idea is something called redirected walking, which basically tricks you into walking in circles even though you think you're walking in a straight line. Someday we may have electronic solutions to sim sickness -- they've discovered that by sending tiny amounts of electricity through our inner ears, they can programmatically control how you feel you're moving. Edit: Here's a video of Palmer Luckey talking about that inner ear stuff (GVS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRdRc8CcGY&feature=youtu.be&t=11m5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRdRc8CcGY&feature=youtu.be...
  - sfjailbird 11y ago
    I've often wondered if the feeling of acceleration/deceleration could easily be simulated with a simple tilting chair. Tilt the chair back to simulate forward acceleration (like a car speeding). Gravity pulls you 'backwards', similar to the feeling of being pressed back in the seat. Opposite for deceleration. I hereby donate this idea to the world.
    - cjrp 11y ago
      That's exactly what they do in full-motion flight simulators.
      - wlesieutre 11y ago
        Racing games as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-N3XDc-3QQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-N3XDc-3QQ
- jaaron 11y ago
  We can't expect great PC experiences to be great VR experiences. Great VR experiences are built for VR and rely as much as possible on 1-to-1 mapping of actual motion to virtual motion. I see a lot of parallels with early mobile app development. Early mobile games often plastered the screen with virtual buttons, poorly replicating controller-based UI's onto a touch screen. The experience was bad and plenty of people wrote off mobile gaming as impossible. Then we learned how to build mobile games with a touch-centric UI.
soylentcola 11y ago
I agree completely. The FPS "model" was a great way to translate realistic environments to flat, 2d screens but the typical run-and-gun style of FPS is just terrible in VR. Every time I read about these elaborate workarounds (omni-treadmills and the like) I can't help but think that people are missing the point and trying to shoehorn what works in 2d into the VR realm. I get that FPS-style games seem like perfect contenders for VR since they are already pretty realistic and immersive for 2d constructs. Still, the conventions of FPS evolved to fit the flat world of computer monitors and TV screens. Once you're immersed, running around can be quite nauseating even if you're experienced with VR or have a decent resistance to VR motion sickness. I'm more interested in trying out (and building) new conventions that are a natural fit for VR. Seated experiences and, eventually, ones that allow for walking around 1:1 in the room you're actually in will beat running around with a controller while looking through a HMD.

by ericflo 11y ago

mentos 11y ago

I appreciate that and I only ever played about 8 hours of HL2 VR, I stopped when I beat the campaign and moved on to playing WarThunder for a couple months then slowly tapered off. >>This is one of my worst fears about VR adoption: gamers, especially the kind who will be on the leading edge of this stuff, want badly to play FPS games and they'll find ways to do it and they're all going to hate VR. Part of the promise of VR is being able to negotiate a virtual world on foot which currently has too much of a mismatch to work without sickening the user. So what are the long term solutions to this? To me they are really hard if not impossible problems.

ericflo 11y ago
Cloudhead's "Blink" system is one good first step http://uploadvr.com/cloudhead-blink-vr-movement/ http://uploadvr.com/cloudhead-blink-vr-movement/ AltspaceVR has been doing something similar for a while too. Another idea is something called redirected walking, which basically tricks you into walking in circles even though you think you're walking in a straight line. Someday we may have electronic solutions to sim sickness -- they've discovered that by sending tiny amounts of electricity through our inner ears, they can programmatically control how you feel you're moving. Edit: Here's a video of Palmer Luckey talking about that inner ear stuff (GVS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRdRc8CcGY&feature=youtu.be&t=11m5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRdRc8CcGY&feature=youtu.be...
- sfjailbird 11y ago
  I've often wondered if the feeling of acceleration/deceleration could easily be simulated with a simple tilting chair. Tilt the chair back to simulate forward acceleration (like a car speeding). Gravity pulls you 'backwards', similar to the feeling of being pressed back in the seat. Opposite for deceleration. I hereby donate this idea to the world.
  - cjrp 11y ago
    That's exactly what they do in full-motion flight simulators.
    - wlesieutre 11y ago
      Racing games as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-N3XDc-3QQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-N3XDc-3QQ
jaaron 11y ago
We can't expect great PC experiences to be great VR experiences. Great VR experiences are built for VR and rely as much as possible on 1-to-1 mapping of actual motion to virtual motion. I see a lot of parallels with early mobile app development. Early mobile games often plastered the screen with virtual buttons, poorly replicating controller-based UI's onto a touch screen. The experience was bad and plenty of people wrote off mobile gaming as impossible. Then we learned how to build mobile games with a touch-centric UI.

soylentcola 11y ago

I agree completely. The FPS "model" was a great way to translate realistic environments to flat, 2d screens but the typical run-and-gun style of FPS is just terrible in VR. Every time I read about these elaborate workarounds (omni-treadmills and the like) I can't help but think that people are missing the point and trying to shoehorn what works in 2d into the VR realm. I get that FPS-style games seem like perfect contenders for VR since they are already pretty realistic and immersive for 2d constructs. Still, the conventions of FPS evolved to fit the flat world of computer monitors and TV screens. Once you're immersed, running around can be quite nauseating even if you're experienced with VR or have a decent resistance to VR motion sickness. I'm more interested in trying out (and building) new conventions that are a natural fit for VR. Seated experiences and, eventually, ones that allow for walking around 1:1 in the room you're actually in will beat running around with a controller while looking through a HMD.