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Early adopter here, initial 2012 Oculus Rift Kickstarter backer, I own all the headsets. My excitement has all but died down in regards to the current generatio

Early adopter here, initial 2012 Oculus Rift Kickstarter backer, I own all the headsets. My excitement has all but died down in regards to the current generation of VR. Mostly, I find the hardware cumbersome and clunky and the games to be too same-y (teleportation galore) or unpolished. The absolute best experience I had in VR was playing Half-Life 2 back in 2013, with terrible resolution and tracking, but it was so immersive I could barely contain myself. Now though, that I'm no longer wowed just by "being there", the act of strapping into VR is so cumbersome, the software is buggy at times, the cable is annoying, the headset is heavy, hot, doesn't work well with glasses etc. However, I'm still as excited for VR as I was in the beginning in regards to the technology. Give me a lighter headset, 100% wireless and great handtracking and finally some long, immersive games (can be ports, that's fine for me) and I'm ready to shell out money again. As it stands today though, my VR hype is on hibernation until the next gen rolls around.

kromem 9y ago
Same for me, though a huge factor in my "re-entry" threshold is resolution. I really do enjoy VR when I get around to playing it, but all I have is presence, but in a world that not particularly beautiful. My favorite VR title is Elite: Dangerous, but while it's absolutely beautiful outside of VR, in VR it's rather....blurry. When in-VR had the detail of out-of-VR, the presence may be more meaningful. (But that'll be a while).
- danielbarla 9y ago
  > in VR it's rather....blurry I wonder where the issue lies; is 1080×1200 per eye just not high enough (considering the wide FOV)? Or is it the optics? I used to play E:D on somewhat of a potato machine, and it was pretty sharp on a standard monitor, with relatively low resolution.
  - Taek 9y ago
    It's a lot closer to your face. Your conical vision is seeing like an order of magnitude fewer pixels as when it's looking at the same resolution screen but 18" away.
    - kijin 9y ago
      Also, if you're a serious gamer, that screen 18" away is likely to have a lot more pixels than 1080x1200.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    Yes, 1080x1200 per eye is nowhere close to high enough. I mean, sit back, look in the direction of your monitor, and estimate how large(small) part of your total view area is taken by it (for me it seems less than 1/9 for a quite large screen and 1/25 for a laptop). You'd need 1080x1200 for that central area alone.
  - gaius 9y ago
    is 1080×1200 per eye just not high enough (considering the wide FOV)? But that's more pixels than your retina has photoreceptors when you consider full colour (6M but it takes several of them working together to form a "pixel" equivalent)
    - lokedhs 9y ago
      The difference is that your eyes have much higher "resolution" in the centre of your view compared to the peripheral vision. But your eyes move all the time, so unless you can move the screen as fast as your eyes moves, a VR headset needs to have that highest resolution across your entire field of view.
  - ajsalminen 9y ago
    As one of the issues with VR has been (still is to an extent) the "screen door effect" which means being able to see the gaps between the individual pixels of the displays I think it's safe to say it's the low resolution.
- DiThi 9y ago
  E:D Has always had VR issues. I think one of the tricks I've used is to downsample the game itself while upsampling the final render in SteamVR. I don't remember if it was like that or the opposite. My favorite games have been Climbey, Lone Echo and Vivecraft.
Taek 9y ago
The real thing holding back the Vive though is not any of that. It's the small room. Every game has to operate from a very tiny room, and most game creators have not been able to do that effectively. If we can figure out how to make game worlds bigger, perhaps even with AR, then we will probably have a lot more interesting things to do.
- leoc 9y ago
  The next generation of SteamVR Tracking 2.0 (it seems that 'Lighthouse' is no longer the preferred name) is bringing the long-promised support for tracking setups using more than two base stations, making large-area tracking a reality. (The first headset we see using it may be an LG HMD, around the end of this year.) https://uploadvr.com/steamvr-tracking-2/ https://uploadvr.com/steamvr-tracking-2/ https://steamcommunity.com/games/steamvrtracking/announcements/detail/1264796421606498053 https://steamcommunity.com/games/steamvrtracking/announcemen... The problem is that it seems most users aren't able (and willing) to find even enough free space for even the maximum tracked volume of the current Lighthouse system for their VR setups. (And the new base stations aren't compatible with the existing HTC Vives ...) So large-area VR seems set to arrive soon, but to only a minority of even PC VR setups for the immediately foreseeable.
  - Taek 9y ago
    I wonder if you could set up a large VR room in someone's yard. My yard is much bigger than any room in my house, and I have friends who have more than an acre to spare. That could really open up a lot of possibilities in terms of game design. Granted, people who live in cities won't have that option, so the market is still somewhat limited.
    - leoc 9y ago
      Unfortunately Lighthouse doesn't work at outdoor daytime light levels, it seems. There are also other practical considerations like safety and so on. That said, an outdoor setup would presumably work at night or twilight, and could indeed be great under the right circumstances. There would be another problem with using outdoor space to create large play areas, though: finding very stable mounting points for all the sensors, especially ones that would have to be directly overhead of the play area rather than just off to one side or corner.
djsumdog 9y ago
I wonder what we'll see when the newer Microsoft sponsored vR headsets start to hit the shelves. I think Acer will be one of the first ones. They're not as advanced as a Oculus/Vive, but they can function without needing to setup an entire room.
- tigershark 9y ago
  Those are not VR headset, they are AR headset with a front camera as the "mixed reality" in the product name implies. MS would never invest in VR given all the heavy investments in AR. And I think that it is indeed the correct choice.
  - yodon 9y ago
    As someone who owns both of these devices you are incorrect. They are fundamentally VR goggles with cameras in the goggles allowing them to be self tracking. Microsoft's MR branding is confusing but it is a mistake to think of these goggles as AR.
    - tigershark 9y ago
      I guess that you are not using them correctly then: "Where mixed reality wants to make a point of differentiation is in offering a system of front-mounted cameras that can give you either real world objects in your virtual world, or virtual objects in the real world." http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/141215-windows-mixed-reality-what-is-it-what-headsets-are-available-and-when-can-you-get-it http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/141215-windows-mixed-reality...
      - yodon 9y ago
        There is at present no way to get imagery or spatial data about the room from the low cost MR headsets. The HoloLens can do it but not the low cost headsets. The video in the article you linked does support these points, as all it discusses making available about the room in VR is a "subtle boundary grid" which is not room scan or visual photo of the room, it's the boundary region traced out manually by moving the headset when initially turning on the headset in a new physical room. I do understand that's a surprising answer and not the answer you want or think should be correct, but these are best thought of as VR headsets with MR branding.
m_mueller 9y ago
Valve are the ones who have dropped the ball. They had all the cards lined up. Killer IP that would make people buy hardware if used correctly (HL3, Portal 3). Probably the best tech currently available (Vive). The biggest PC gaming storefront (Steam). Their own OS. Each and every one of these components, with the exception of Steam, was neglected. They had the future of PC gaming right there ready to grab... and did essentially nothing with it. It may not be too late but I think Valve needs an organisational restructuring if they want to pick up their pieces. If they don't it's very likely that they loose most of their revenue in the next 10 years, because even Steam needs killer exclusive content, i.e. content that cannot be licensed on another online platform, which soon will only be Valve games.
- rapsey 9y ago
  I suspect the loose management style of Valve has this effect. Great ideas, no one to drive them home. Something that works great for keeping your employees happy, but works only as long as you have a dominating market position.
  - rusk 9y ago
    There might be another way of looking at this in that perhaps with a distributed management style the costs become more apparent. With a centralised style you can take a "five year plan" style approach and swallow all the upfront costs but where you have a bunch of separate cost centres each with their own P&L it's harder to find one single personality to drive things forward. It might seem that I'm saying that if they had a more centralised style they might have made more progress but I don't think that's the case since when we look around at other more driven companies we aren't seeing too many breakthroughs either. There are two fields where I know for a fact VR has made significant inroads in the last few years they being Gaming and Design Visualisation. The latter being where a VR rig is a worthwhile business expense. The former being my PS 4 where there seems to be plenty of content available, but the €600 price-tag is just a little out of my reach... I'm a well-paid (some would say over-paid) professional and I'm quibbling about the cost of the rig and I just wonder are we at a point where the economics stack up for widespread adoption of the technology? Not just in terms of the gear but the R&D costs for game developers, such as Valve, with a questionable rate of return ..
rubicon33 9y ago
Similar experience here. I was an early adopter, 2012 rift backer and a major proponent of the technology. I jumped on the VR band wagon hard, and now, am shocked by my own disinterest in the space. Simply put - no game has really kept my interest. Most feel unpolished, and very limited. What you gain in VR immersion, you lose in gameplay. Either the immersion needs to be PERFECT, or the gameplay needs to be much, much better. As I see it, there are some technical (even physiological?) hurdles, that they need to overcome. 1) "Teleport to move" is horrible, and sucks the feeling of immersion right out of the VR experience. Sadly, true "walking" with horizontal movement without accompanying angular momentum causes nausea in most people - hence teleporting as a solution. This as I understand it is a physiological system that is at odds with the VR world and while not everyone experiences it most do. 2) The resolution. It's hard to feel immersed in the world when it's so blurry. This is especially true for VR. VRs selling point IS immersion which IMO is an all-or-nothing experience. A blurry view detracts from feeling immersed in the world.
- dave7 9y ago
  > Sadly, true "walking" with horizontal movement without accompanying angular momentum causes nausea in most people - hence teleporting as a solution. This as I understand it is a physiological system that is at odds with the VR world and while not everyone experiences it most do. While true, it is also true that of these most people who will (at first!) experience simulator sickness, the vast majority can adapt fairly quickly and "get their VR legs". Sadly this is never mentioned in articles.
  - ajsalminen 9y ago
    Is this anecdotal or does research saying this exist? I know this is conventional wisdom but I've wondered about how true it actually is after seeing a few counterexamples.
    - Kroniker 9y ago
      As far as I know it is literally the same thing as sea-sickness. You get over it eventually.
ImSkeptical 9y ago
I have a Vive, and have surprised myself with how little I play it. The game Fantastic Contraption was illuminating for me. I had played many tens of hours of the original. In VR I was amazed at how it looked and felt. Solving the first couple challenges was a lot of fun - just watching the machines run was great. I started to realize a flaw though. A machine I could build in seconds by stretching my fingers a few inches across a keyboard and mouse took ten or twenty times as long in VR, and involved squatting, walking, grabbing, holding, etc. There's a Perry Bible Fellowship comic of a child in a VR suit, clutching his simulated wounds while saying "Cool!" That comic is similar to my experience. Do we really want to experience things like this? (Tedium or pain)
- vhold 9y ago
  I think the devs of Fantastic Contraption acknowledged this partially, and several months after releasing the game they added the ability to rescale and move the world, so you could play even while sitting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AQg2I7VIh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AQg2I7VIh8
- majewsky 9y ago
  > There's a Perry Bible Fellowship comic of a child in a VR suit, clutching his simulated wounds while saying "Cool!" You made me find this website (thanks for the implicit recommendation) and go through every single comic (they're not that many), and there is no such comic on this site as of now.
  - ImSkeptical 9y ago
    Comic for comic Perry Bible Fellowship is my favorite. I also tried to find the comic to link to it, but I couldn't do it. I have a strong memory that it was that comic though, and no better guesses.
  - slavik81 9y ago
    http://pbfcomics.com/comics/game-system/ http://pbfcomics.com/comics/game-system/
52-6F-62 9y ago
I can't speak from ever using a proper current headset like Vive or Oculus, but I have done some (very short-term) experimenting with Google Cardboard sets and Oculus/Vive emulation software that pipes the display over the local network to the phone-headset. With some of that porting/emulation software I was able to play some SteamVR and other games. As a control I just used an Xbox 360 USB controller and the results surprised me. Now working with a G Cardboard set isn't fun for very long, but the way that a few games translated was surprisingly good, as long as you're happy to not have the full experience. I found the headset was a lot of fun as a change of perspective. The games I recall in particular being pretty good were GTA V and Skyrim (though I think Skyrim had a little bit of a perspective offset issue, but I didn't really tweak it). For native VR apps I tried ADR1FT (http://store.steampowered.com/app/300060/ADR1FT/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/300060/ADR1FT/) which was pretty good as well. I imagine trying this with a proper headset work work far better and be more comfortable than my experience, but like I said I haven't worked with one. A conclusion I made though was that I really didn't mind using the controller as I would on a console.

kromem 9y ago

Same for me, though a huge factor in my "re-entry" threshold is resolution. I really do enjoy VR when I get around to playing it, but all I have is presence, but in a world that not particularly beautiful. My favorite VR title is Elite: Dangerous, but while it's absolutely beautiful outside of VR, in VR it's rather....blurry. When in-VR had the detail of out-of-VR, the presence may be more meaningful. (But that'll be a while).

danielbarla 9y ago
> in VR it's rather....blurry I wonder where the issue lies; is 1080×1200 per eye just not high enough (considering the wide FOV)? Or is it the optics? I used to play E:D on somewhat of a potato machine, and it was pretty sharp on a standard monitor, with relatively low resolution.
- Taek 9y ago
  It's a lot closer to your face. Your conical vision is seeing like an order of magnitude fewer pixels as when it's looking at the same resolution screen but 18" away.
  - kijin 9y ago
    Also, if you're a serious gamer, that screen 18" away is likely to have a lot more pixels than 1080x1200.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- PeterisP 9y ago
  Yes, 1080x1200 per eye is nowhere close to high enough. I mean, sit back, look in the direction of your monitor, and estimate how large(small) part of your total view area is taken by it (for me it seems less than 1/9 for a quite large screen and 1/25 for a laptop). You'd need 1080x1200 for that central area alone.
- gaius 9y ago
  is 1080×1200 per eye just not high enough (considering the wide FOV)? But that's more pixels than your retina has photoreceptors when you consider full colour (6M but it takes several of them working together to form a "pixel" equivalent)
  - lokedhs 9y ago
    The difference is that your eyes have much higher "resolution" in the centre of your view compared to the peripheral vision. But your eyes move all the time, so unless you can move the screen as fast as your eyes moves, a VR headset needs to have that highest resolution across your entire field of view.
- ajsalminen 9y ago
  As one of the issues with VR has been (still is to an extent) the "screen door effect" which means being able to see the gaps between the individual pixels of the displays I think it's safe to say it's the low resolution.
DiThi 9y ago
E:D Has always had VR issues. I think one of the tricks I've used is to downsample the game itself while upsampling the final render in SteamVR. I don't remember if it was like that or the opposite. My favorite games have been Climbey, Lone Echo and Vivecraft.

Taek 9y ago

The real thing holding back the Vive though is not any of that. It's the small room. Every game has to operate from a very tiny room, and most game creators have not been able to do that effectively. If we can figure out how to make game worlds bigger, perhaps even with AR, then we will probably have a lot more interesting things to do.

leoc 9y ago
The next generation of SteamVR Tracking 2.0 (it seems that 'Lighthouse' is no longer the preferred name) is bringing the long-promised support for tracking setups using more than two base stations, making large-area tracking a reality. (The first headset we see using it may be an LG HMD, around the end of this year.) https://uploadvr.com/steamvr-tracking-2/ https://uploadvr.com/steamvr-tracking-2/ https://steamcommunity.com/games/steamvrtracking/announcements/detail/1264796421606498053 https://steamcommunity.com/games/steamvrtracking/announcemen... The problem is that it seems most users aren't able (and willing) to find even enough free space for even the maximum tracked volume of the current Lighthouse system for their VR setups. (And the new base stations aren't compatible with the existing HTC Vives ...) So large-area VR seems set to arrive soon, but to only a minority of even PC VR setups for the immediately foreseeable.
- Taek 9y ago
  I wonder if you could set up a large VR room in someone's yard. My yard is much bigger than any room in my house, and I have friends who have more than an acre to spare. That could really open up a lot of possibilities in terms of game design. Granted, people who live in cities won't have that option, so the market is still somewhat limited.
  - leoc 9y ago
    Unfortunately Lighthouse doesn't work at outdoor daytime light levels, it seems. There are also other practical considerations like safety and so on. That said, an outdoor setup would presumably work at night or twilight, and could indeed be great under the right circumstances. There would be another problem with using outdoor space to create large play areas, though: finding very stable mounting points for all the sensors, especially ones that would have to be directly overhead of the play area rather than just off to one side or corner.

djsumdog 9y ago

I wonder what we'll see when the newer Microsoft sponsored vR headsets start to hit the shelves. I think Acer will be one of the first ones. They're not as advanced as a Oculus/Vive, but they can function without needing to setup an entire room.

tigershark 9y ago
Those are not VR headset, they are AR headset with a front camera as the "mixed reality" in the product name implies. MS would never invest in VR given all the heavy investments in AR. And I think that it is indeed the correct choice.
- yodon 9y ago
  As someone who owns both of these devices you are incorrect. They are fundamentally VR goggles with cameras in the goggles allowing them to be self tracking. Microsoft's MR branding is confusing but it is a mistake to think of these goggles as AR.
  - tigershark 9y ago
    I guess that you are not using them correctly then: "Where mixed reality wants to make a point of differentiation is in offering a system of front-mounted cameras that can give you either real world objects in your virtual world, or virtual objects in the real world." http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/141215-windows-mixed-reality-what-is-it-what-headsets-are-available-and-when-can-you-get-it http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/141215-windows-mixed-reality...
    - yodon 9y ago
      There is at present no way to get imagery or spatial data about the room from the low cost MR headsets. The HoloLens can do it but not the low cost headsets. The video in the article you linked does support these points, as all it discusses making available about the room in VR is a "subtle boundary grid" which is not room scan or visual photo of the room, it's the boundary region traced out manually by moving the headset when initially turning on the headset in a new physical room. I do understand that's a surprising answer and not the answer you want or think should be correct, but these are best thought of as VR headsets with MR branding.

m_mueller 9y ago

Valve are the ones who have dropped the ball. They had all the cards lined up. Killer IP that would make people buy hardware if used correctly (HL3, Portal 3). Probably the best tech currently available (Vive). The biggest PC gaming storefront (Steam). Their own OS. Each and every one of these components, with the exception of Steam, was neglected. They had the future of PC gaming right there ready to grab... and did essentially nothing with it. It may not be too late but I think Valve needs an organisational restructuring if they want to pick up their pieces. If they don't it's very likely that they loose most of their revenue in the next 10 years, because even Steam needs killer exclusive content, i.e. content that cannot be licensed on another online platform, which soon will only be Valve games.

rapsey 9y ago
I suspect the loose management style of Valve has this effect. Great ideas, no one to drive them home. Something that works great for keeping your employees happy, but works only as long as you have a dominating market position.
- rusk 9y ago
  There might be another way of looking at this in that perhaps with a distributed management style the costs become more apparent. With a centralised style you can take a "five year plan" style approach and swallow all the upfront costs but where you have a bunch of separate cost centres each with their own P&L it's harder to find one single personality to drive things forward. It might seem that I'm saying that if they had a more centralised style they might have made more progress but I don't think that's the case since when we look around at other more driven companies we aren't seeing too many breakthroughs either. There are two fields where I know for a fact VR has made significant inroads in the last few years they being Gaming and Design Visualisation. The latter being where a VR rig is a worthwhile business expense. The former being my PS 4 where there seems to be plenty of content available, but the €600 price-tag is just a little out of my reach... I'm a well-paid (some would say over-paid) professional and I'm quibbling about the cost of the rig and I just wonder are we at a point where the economics stack up for widespread adoption of the technology? Not just in terms of the gear but the R&D costs for game developers, such as Valve, with a questionable rate of return ..

rubicon33 9y ago

Similar experience here. I was an early adopter, 2012 rift backer and a major proponent of the technology. I jumped on the VR band wagon hard, and now, am shocked by my own disinterest in the space. Simply put - no game has really kept my interest. Most feel unpolished, and very limited. What you gain in VR immersion, you lose in gameplay. Either the immersion needs to be PERFECT, or the gameplay needs to be much, much better. As I see it, there are some technical (even physiological?) hurdles, that they need to overcome. 1) "Teleport to move" is horrible, and sucks the feeling of immersion right out of the VR experience. Sadly, true "walking" with horizontal movement without accompanying angular momentum causes nausea in most people - hence teleporting as a solution. This as I understand it is a physiological system that is at odds with the VR world and while not everyone experiences it most do. 2) The resolution. It's hard to feel immersed in the world when it's so blurry. This is especially true for VR. VRs selling point IS immersion which IMO is an all-or-nothing experience. A blurry view detracts from feeling immersed in the world.

dave7 9y ago
> Sadly, true "walking" with horizontal movement without accompanying angular momentum causes nausea in most people - hence teleporting as a solution. This as I understand it is a physiological system that is at odds with the VR world and while not everyone experiences it most do. While true, it is also true that of these most people who will (at first!) experience simulator sickness, the vast majority can adapt fairly quickly and "get their VR legs". Sadly this is never mentioned in articles.
- ajsalminen 9y ago
  Is this anecdotal or does research saying this exist? I know this is conventional wisdom but I've wondered about how true it actually is after seeing a few counterexamples.
  - Kroniker 9y ago
    As far as I know it is literally the same thing as sea-sickness. You get over it eventually.

ImSkeptical 9y ago

I have a Vive, and have surprised myself with how little I play it. The game Fantastic Contraption was illuminating for me. I had played many tens of hours of the original. In VR I was amazed at how it looked and felt. Solving the first couple challenges was a lot of fun - just watching the machines run was great. I started to realize a flaw though. A machine I could build in seconds by stretching my fingers a few inches across a keyboard and mouse took ten or twenty times as long in VR, and involved squatting, walking, grabbing, holding, etc. There's a Perry Bible Fellowship comic of a child in a VR suit, clutching his simulated wounds while saying "Cool!" That comic is similar to my experience. Do we really want to experience things like this? (Tedium or pain)

vhold 9y ago
I think the devs of Fantastic Contraption acknowledged this partially, and several months after releasing the game they added the ability to rescale and move the world, so you could play even while sitting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AQg2I7VIh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AQg2I7VIh8
majewsky 9y ago
> There's a Perry Bible Fellowship comic of a child in a VR suit, clutching his simulated wounds while saying "Cool!" You made me find this website (thanks for the implicit recommendation) and go through every single comic (they're not that many), and there is no such comic on this site as of now.
- ImSkeptical 9y ago
  Comic for comic Perry Bible Fellowship is my favorite. I also tried to find the comic to link to it, but I couldn't do it. I have a strong memory that it was that comic though, and no better guesses.
- slavik81 9y ago
  http://pbfcomics.com/comics/game-system/ http://pbfcomics.com/comics/game-system/

52-6F-62 9y ago

I can't speak from ever using a proper current headset like Vive or Oculus, but I have done some (very short-term) experimenting with Google Cardboard sets and Oculus/Vive emulation software that pipes the display over the local network to the phone-headset. With some of that porting/emulation software I was able to play some SteamVR and other games. As a control I just used an Xbox 360 USB controller and the results surprised me. Now working with a G Cardboard set isn't fun for very long, but the way that a few games translated was surprisingly good, as long as you're happy to not have the full experience. I found the headset was a lot of fun as a change of perspective. The games I recall in particular being pretty good were GTA V and Skyrim (though I think Skyrim had a little bit of a perspective offset issue, but I didn't really tweak it). For native VR apps I tried ADR1FT (http://store.steampowered.com/app/300060/ADR1FT/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/300060/ADR1FT/) which was pretty good as well. I imagine trying this with a proper headset work work far better and be more comfortable than my experience, but like I said I haven't worked with one. A conclusion I made though was that I really didn't mind using the controller as I would on a console.