3 ms·

VR seems to be catching on. Is the experience that much better than a normal screen?

xwdv 6y ago
It’s different, not necessarily better.
Pfhreak 6y ago
For games specifically designed with VR in mind? Yes, the experience is dramatically different. For many people, the suspension of disbelief is there, and you absolutely feel present in the space. Good VR titles force you to move many more muscle groups than keyboard/mouse or controller games. Your brain stays much more engaged when you have to, e.g., duck out of the way of an incoming projectile. For games where VR is tacked on, or not deliberately handled, it can be a vomit fest. Playing Half Life 2, for instance, is possible in VR but it's very unpleasant. Playing Half Life Alyx, which was built from the ground up to be a VR experience, is incredible.
- thanatos519 6y ago
  What's the big deal? I had that suspension of disbelief in Zork I.
  - NateEag 6y ago
    For us aphantasiacs, VR is the closest we'll ever come to daydreaming. (I'm not invested in it myself, just making the point.)
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    VR can trigger reflexive behaviors in people, e.g. trying to avoid an incoming projectile, putting their hands up to protect their face, stepping back from a high place. Many folks can get deep suspension of disbelief from just text. Many folks can't. I don't think it's reasonable to say, "Well, I do just fine with X, so that should be good enough for anyone.", as your comment seems to be implying.
  - mthoms 6y ago
    "Suspension of disbelief" is a spectrum not a binary. That is, there are varying degrees of it. It's not simply on/off.
crdrost 6y ago
Some parts are really engaging. That one is finally using arms and hands and posture and rotations—not mere button presses—to manipulate a virtual world makes that world much more intimate. Simply the freedom to move your attention around the world is powerful; this has been a staple of come theaters and planetariums and in some ways headsets are just an attempt to virtualize that so that you don't have to sell people a whole projection room. Other parts are downright dangerous. Apparently the headset being close to your eyes causes pupils to involuntarily dilate right as you are shining a bright light into them, creating really nasty eye strain problems for VR game developers and presumably later for their customers. Addictive behaviors are almost certainly more addictive in VR; this is why casinos create their noisy everyone-is-out-here-winning illusions in real life; one can only imagine the damage that VR gambling and pornography could do. I am still waiting for a resurgence of arcades with the introduction of something like powered exoskeletons. These are being developed for military and mechanical contractor use, where you want to give people the ability to lift things and stuff, but transducers are often bidirectional and going the other direction, that ability to provide force-feedback can be used to suspend someone basically in air and give them a considerable amount of control of their environment: you are in a airplane cockpit, and it really shakes like an airplane cockpit. Playing VR games now, everybody laughs about how you we're trying to bend down and pick up a gun, but you accidentally grabbed Phil’s foot on the coffee table. Relatively amateurish. But that sort of pod exoskeleton could be used to go for a virtual run—no, not on this planet: on the moon.

xwdv 6y ago

It’s different, not necessarily better.

For games specifically designed with VR in mind? Yes, the experience is dramatically different. For many people, the suspension of disbelief is there, and you absolutely feel present in the space. Good VR titles force you to move many more muscle groups than keyboard/mouse or controller games. Your brain stays much more engaged when you have to, e.g., duck out of the way of an incoming projectile. For games where VR is tacked on, or not deliberately handled, it can be a vomit fest. Playing Half Life 2, for instance, is possible in VR but it's very unpleasant. Playing Half Life Alyx, which was built from the ground up to be a VR experience, is incredible.

thanatos519 6y ago
What's the big deal? I had that suspension of disbelief in Zork I.
- NateEag 6y ago
  For us aphantasiacs, VR is the closest we'll ever come to daydreaming. (I'm not invested in it myself, just making the point.)
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  VR can trigger reflexive behaviors in people, e.g. trying to avoid an incoming projectile, putting their hands up to protect their face, stepping back from a high place. Many folks can get deep suspension of disbelief from just text. Many folks can't. I don't think it's reasonable to say, "Well, I do just fine with X, so that should be good enough for anyone.", as your comment seems to be implying.
- mthoms 6y ago
  "Suspension of disbelief" is a spectrum not a binary. That is, there are varying degrees of it. It's not simply on/off.

crdrost 6y ago

Some parts are really engaging. That one is finally using arms and hands and posture and rotations—not mere button presses—to manipulate a virtual world makes that world much more intimate. Simply the freedom to move your attention around the world is powerful; this has been a staple of come theaters and planetariums and in some ways headsets are just an attempt to virtualize that so that you don't have to sell people a whole projection room. Other parts are downright dangerous. Apparently the headset being close to your eyes causes pupils to involuntarily dilate right as you are shining a bright light into them, creating really nasty eye strain problems for VR game developers and presumably later for their customers. Addictive behaviors are almost certainly more addictive in VR; this is why casinos create their noisy everyone-is-out-here-winning illusions in real life; one can only imagine the damage that VR gambling and pornography could do. I am still waiting for a resurgence of arcades with the introduction of something like powered exoskeletons. These are being developed for military and mechanical contractor use, where you want to give people the ability to lift things and stuff, but transducers are often bidirectional and going the other direction, that ability to provide force-feedback can be used to suspend someone basically in air and give them a considerable amount of control of their environment: you are in a airplane cockpit, and it really shakes like an airplane cockpit. Playing VR games now, everybody laughs about how you we're trying to bend down and pick up a gun, but you accidentally grabbed Phil’s foot on the coffee table. Relatively amateurish. But that sort of pod exoskeleton could be used to go for a virtual run—no, not on this planet: on the moon.