14 ms·

I wanted to love VR. I dreamed of having a headset when I was younger and kickedstarted the oculus rift. I imagined a million worlds that would be within virtua

I wanted to love VR. I dreamed of having a headset when I was younger and kickedstarted the oculus rift. I imagined a million worlds that would be within virtual reach. It would be the coolest! VR has been nothing but a complete disappointment to me. Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. Never played a VR game that wasn’t better without it, somewhat like 3D movies. I have my doubts this will ever be anything other that a use once toy for most. Seeing Facebook further latch onto our faces fills me with dread. I don’t think we will interact with each other in VR with business or pleasure outside of some fringe groups. More fads, more ewaste… AR on the other hand, either as a small projector or special glasses — that is exciting.

whywhywhywhy 5y ago
Have you played Lone Echo and “Blade & Sorcery”? Really think those are the benchmarks for me, vr isn’t about the headset or 3d it’s about rich hand tracking/interactions.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
Pavlov VR is amazing and wouldn’t work as a non VR game. The custom games are really fun and everyone has a sense of humor I haven’t seen elsewhere. PavZ is a blast. Your distaste for VR is due to genetics. I’m sorry you got the short end of the stick with the motion sickness.
callmekit 5y ago
I bought Oculus Quest 2 about a month ago. The games I play the most probably wouldn't be even possible (or at least fun) without VR - Pistol Whip (you need to evade slow-moving bullets) and Thrill of the Fight (boxing simulator). It's more of a fitness device for me now.
- jcims 5y ago
  I returned mine after a month but apparently I didn't do enough research into how to get out of the little walled garden that is set up for you. I had the Samsung Gear a few years back and felt like it was the exact same environment. In both cases one of the most interesting experiences was the movie theater. It somehow works. The social aspect was creepy, i'm an old guy and all i could hear was voices of young children...i felt like i shouldn't be there haha.
  - nannal 5y ago
    I've had a similar problem, I like the tech, enjoy the single player games but when it comes to anything online the number of shrill voices makes me feel like I'm the outsider in their space.
- newcup 5y ago
  I agree, VR absolutely provides an experience flat-screen gaming can never deliver. With the Covid situation being what it is and sports halls are closed, I’ve replaced live table tennis trainings with Valve Index and Eleven Table Tennis VR game. It has stunningly realistic physics and the immersion is so good that I don’t miss the real thing much. This wouldn’t be possible in front of a flat screen.
blazespin 5y ago
Yeah, major VR fanboy. I have umpteen headsets. Meh. It's just been eye crossing eye candy, who needs it. Even the kids who enjoyed it at first are pretty meh about it. Still, the idea of working in VR is actually good, not the 3d or VR part, but the efficient use of physical space and replacement for multiple monitors. But I highly doubt it's there yet, FOV and resolution.
randomsearch 5y ago
Shades of nomad / lame at this point. Agree that Facebook being involved is a very bad thing, but don’t overestimate their ability to build something entirely new. No doubt in my mind that VR will change everything - it’s simply a matter of “when”, but I’m willing to bet that we are now on a slow and steady path of improvement, but that path may be far longer than Zuck imagines.
Traubenfuchs 5y ago
> AR on the other hand, either as a small projector or special glasses — that is exciting. Is it? All I have ever seen is floating stuff lagging behind or jumping around. A "proof of concept" level experience, at best.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  I look forward to a HUD mapping overlay and other info widgets that would enhance my travel. It could provide real time info without needing to look at a watch or phone, without distraction. I hope the slab of glass phase ends soon. Too many people looking at their hands and ignoring reality.
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    Reminds me of Horizon Zero Dawn's Focus gadget. But I think that technology is still way far off.
- criddell 5y ago
  My car projects stuff onto the windshield. Is that a type of AR?
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Yes and I think this is the most useful kind. This tech is going to get much better this decade.
dale_glass 5y ago
You've not played the right games, then. I mean, take Robo Recall, which is one of the first things that came out. Sure, you can do a shooting game without VR, but then you don't get the experience of tearing a robot apart with your own hands and punching another's head off with a torn off arm. Or Elite Dangerous is quite the experience in VR too. Less so than Robo Recall, but it works out extremely well if you have a HOTAS. You work as if you were sitting in a cockpit. Or Subnautica, which in VR gets even more terrifying. Or VR Chat and similar, where you get to interact far more personally than you would just looking at an avatar on a screen. Now of course it's not like it solves world hunger or anything, but the tech works extremely well within the right scenarios.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Subnautica in VR is broken beyond playability without mods. I've tried it and I would disagree with any suggestion that VR enhances the experience of the game.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  The tech works extremely well at making me feel sick. I enjoyed subnautica sans VR. ED is less interesting than Euro truck simulator. :-) I get the physical games like table tenis and beat saber, but how is this not a fad? The wii was cool at the time too. Nintendo didn’t retain the ideas in later hardware. VR chat is about as interesting as second life, and any metaverse that follows will follow the same path.
  - dale_glass 5y ago
    Well, in that case you've got to make adjustments to your setup (wrong IPD maybe?), or you could just be unlucky and get sick far too easily. Consumer VR of course involves a disconnect between what you feel and what you see, and that makes people sick when it gets bad enough, but most people can enjoy at least some VR experiences. By my account, I've managed to spend days of real time within Subnautica exclusively in VR. If you get sick, what I'd recommend is something like Beat Saber, where you're never moved without physically moving in reality. If that doesn't work something is definitely wrong. The next easiest experience is cockpit simulations. I'd say Subnautica comes somewhere after that, being in the intermediate range. The worst I've personally tried is Half Life 2 in VR (as in, HL2 just rendering to VR without further changes), and that is indeed not a nice experience because the FPS mechanics just don't work in VR. The acceleration, the need to constantly rotate your view without moving in reality, the need to make very quick and frequent changes in direction are all very hard to tolerate. > I get the physical games like table tenis and beat saber, but how is this not a fad? Who cares? What matters if it's fun or not. I enjoy the exercise, I don't do it to fit in. And it's surprisingly good exercise. I lift weights, and Racket NX still is capable of making my arms sore. Then I suppose I have a rather violent play style.
Shacklz 5y ago
> Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. I've bought a Vive when Half Life: Alyx came out and was completely blown away by the first impressions and immersions of that game. Since then however and after the first "whoa!"-effects faded, every game was exactly what you've just described: Pure disappointment, and my body completely stressed out/sick after half an hour, at best. The only exception is beat-saber, which is a lot of fun for quite some time, but not the kind of game I'd want to play for hours on end. So far, VR seems gimmicky, and quite frankly is way too much of a hassle to set up to enjoy it often (so many cables!, and I don't have the space for a permanent setup).
- Fredej 5y ago
  The cable thing is pretty solved with the Quest 2. Zero cables there.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Yeah, if you want to play a subset of games that Facebook has deemed you can play. Still salty that Pavlov isn’t native to quest. Air Link solves this, but boy is it annoying in practice. Setting down the headset always pushes the floor just out of reach when you come back to it. Which is frustrating in a game that makes you pick things up, like shooters.
    - Noelkd 5y ago
      Not sure if you are aware but you can get Pavlov Shack for free through the AppLab for quest2: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3649611198468269 https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3649611198468269 I've had some good fun playing it.
    - anonred 5y ago
      Why is SideQuest and AppLab not sufficient for “unapproved” games?
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  I was pretty disappointed with Alyx. Little manual interactions like the healing stations and the markers and the reloading felt novel. But the actual meat of the game, the combat, was just not very good. Teleport movement breaks immersion. The hardest enemies in the game were the electric dogs. They did this thing where they drastically over commit to shooting in a specific direction and all you needed to do was click to move somewhere else and you were fine. It was super lame, but, at the same time, not actually super easy to execute. It's like we've taken a step forward on graphical immersion and three steps back on game design immersion. Valve did a good job working with the constraints they had, but my takeaway is that the constraints are just too vast to make a game that isn't clearly hand holding you because your controls and situational awareness are just kind of bad. I played on an index and would do multiple hours at a time, with no sickness.
darkwater 5y ago
> and kickedstarted the oculus rift. Did the kickstarters get some juice when Facebook bought Oculus? Or just a big thank you?
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  I got a retail kit as well as the DK1, which was nice. I did feel shafted by Palmer when he took both my and zucks money, but looking back now, it was buying a devkit not equity.
  - darkwater 5y ago
    Obviously you were not buying equity but at the same time you were funding the actual creation of a new product, taking a part of the role of an investor. If you do a successful exit I think it would be nice to at least refund the money obtained by the kickstarters. But probably I'm just naïve.
mojzu 5y ago
I've got the Index, there was definitely some acclimatisation required to dampen the motion sickness (especially for free movement) but for the most part I've had a great experience with it. Half-Life Alyx is an incredible game, although I would like to see more narrative/story driven games for VR. There are a lot of arcade games that are fun to pick up now and again (Beat Saber, Robo Recall), and shooters like Pavlov are great fun to play online
- jcun4128 5y ago
  Yeah I had the same problem too at first. I could only play about an hour max before I had to stop. Got better over a few weeks then was able to play like 4-6 hrs straight one time.
  - mojzu 5y ago
    I had a similar experience, could only go 30 minutes at first until motion sickness set in or the headset became uncomfortable. After some time and headset strap adjustments though I'm comfortable for a couple of hours or so at least. Although I still struggle with some games like Boneworks which for whatever reason still makes me a bit motion sick
bobsmooth 5y ago
That's really sad. When VR works, your brain totally believes the illusion. I hope better screens and hardware makes it accessible to more people.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  Seems that the problem is the hardware, not the software then.
practice9 5y ago
> Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. You can try another headset in a few years. Lower headset weight, better audio, larger field of view, >= 120 hz refresh rates, frame interpolation, eye/face tracking - not all of these are possible right now, but I think we can expect them in 2024 - 2026. I find that right now many games are not optimized for VR, which brings FPS drops that kill the immersion and give me a headache after a few minutes. The weight of the headset doesn't help too. I agree that for business VR may be not as useful as the companies would like us to think. If you jump in and out of meetings, respond in chats etc. the UX should be on par or better than on traditional platforms, otherwise everyone would fallback to their laptops. But for a casual moviegoers or gamers this may be a good product
fuzzy2 5y ago
One thing that just occurred to me: Maybe the headset was not correctly positioned in front of your eyes or the interpupillary distance was not set up correctly. If these are not perfect (but good enough) you can still get depth perception and immersion but the fatigue will increase a lot. Also, the headset must basically be “glued to your face”, so it does not sway when moving the head. A high-performance PC is also very important, every FPS drop will induce nausea. I can play HL Alyx for hours on end but still get dizzy when I become dehydrated or hungry. I only have first-hand experience with an HTC Vive (1st gen) though, which uses room-scale laser tracking. I also only ever played room-scale.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Immersive experiences are primarily a content problem. We've got a big empty room with current hardware solutions. You can play games or mess around in some big corporation's walled garden. That's it. Not very compelling. The games are nice of course but mostly they work without VR as well. Creating content for these empty rooms is actually a problem as there are no open standards, the tools are complicated, there are lots of hurdles, and a lot of gate keepers with dollar signs in their eyes trying to tap into any value you might create that are actively frustrating each other's attempts to do so. You end up with these exclusives for some proprietary hardware. And that hardware changes all the time so it is time limited as well. The only people that bother with going through the trouble for this so far are game studios. Even 3D movies are largely not accessible via VR because that's a different proprietary content silo with misaligned financial incentives. So, even though there is a lot of 3D content in the form of a decade plus of 3D action movies that were released by movie studios, exactly none of that can be enjoyed via VR goggles. That's how hard it is to target these things. I guess movie studios could do it but then they'd be haggling with the likes of Steam about just how large of a cut they would take. Likewise, Netflix is not a Steam VR experience. They are not producing material in 3D and you can't sign up for a 3D Amazon Prime either. If there were open standards, this would be a no-brainer thing for them but there aren't. IMHO, any content that works in VR should be trivially accessible using a normal 2D screen as well. There is no technical need for any content to be exclusive to VR/AR goggles and if you are the owner of that content, you'd actually want to maximize your audience rather than artificially limit it. You lose a bit of immersiveness but we've been playing 3D FPS games on 2D screens for decades so that does not seem to be that big of a deal. In other words, there's nothing stopping us from building a metaverse right now. You'd buy the VR goggles to enhance the experience in the same way you might invest in a bigger TV or better sound system. So, why don't we? Well very simply put, it doesn't solve a problem we actually have. We can already immerse ourselves in game worlds (with or without goggles) and we can already communicate with people. And more importantly, 2D UIs are actually pretty nice for a lot of things; especially when it involves text. And in so far some things might actually work, excluding most of the planet that does not own any goggles yet is not a great plan for creating a mass market.
- me_me_me 5y ago
fsloth 5y ago
VR is already an excellent expert tool. VR based visualization of digitally designs - products or houses, is becoming a very pragmatic tool for designers to review their work in 3D, instead of just a flat screen (3D HAS more information). As a trivial example - when designing our new office, some people reviewed the auditorium design in VR and figured out the screen was too high for comfort, and it was lowered. Extreme examples go into virtualized surgical training where physics and graphics engine specialized to tissue simulation is used to teach surgeons new procedures. AR displays such as hololens can be used in construction yards to compare the as built with a digital model for quick review. Etc etc. I don't know how good toy VR or AR will ever become, but it already is an indispensable expert tool.
- mrwnmonm 5y ago
  Designers and surgeons would die without it. We have to introduce this unnatural thing to life or FB would lose money and humanity will suffer. I think young surgeons would get a trauma moving from this nonsense to real surgery. Or maybe they will try to press a button in the patient's stomach.
bushbaba 5y ago
Watch vr immersive video. Game changing. VR’s perspective makes the actors more life like. I can totally see VR be the future of tv. Not the 360 vr video, but more like 100-180 degree VR video.
- shock-value 5y ago
  Strong agree. It baffles me that Meta/Facebook isn’t putting up more of that in the media section of the Quest software. Well, there are a lot of videos but most are 2D and/or very low resolution, and just not interesting content. The best I’ve seen on there are the “Ecosphere” videos (best quality by watching through the actual app). It’s sort of otherworldly feeling like you are standing next to an actual elephant. Awesome use of the medium and totally convinced me of its viability.
tiku 5y ago
The new oculus quest 2 solved a lot of those issues for me. The only thing that remained was the fogging up part, but I have acquired a fan for that. 1) No cable anymore, streaming it or playing on it directly works fine. 2) Weight is not so heavy anymore. 3) Battery time is also good, just as with the HTC Vive and Wireless kit, minus the bulk of the battery. The problem for me is the games on it. A few are really cool, but even then I get bored. And to buy another game, sure, but then you get to spend 20 dollars again, way to pricey for just a few hours of gaming. SuperHot and Half Life Alyx are the games that I like the most.
- whalabi 5y ago
  Tip: if you find the HMD pressing into your forehead or face, make a counterweight and attach it to the back of the HMD. It's completely changed things for me.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    I got the elite strap partly for this, but it didn’t help. What does seem to help is to physically rotate the headset up or down. The quest 2 is deceptively rigid, so it’s easy not to realize you can do that.
    - whalabi 5y ago
      Does the strap include a counterweight? I see the battery elite strap weighs 179g, but from memory the HMD weighs over 500g. I wrapped a couple portable batteries (they're dense) in a bag and tied it to the back of my basic strap, and I don't even need to tighten the strap anymore, the weight is mostly pushing down on the top of my head now. It's an incredible difference, to the point that I'm offended they don't include a counterweight by default. From memory my counterweight is around 350g. Maybe you can try it out by loosening the strap and using a finger to tug down on the back of the strap, and see if it balances on the top of your head and feels good.
      - sillysaurusx 5y ago
causi 5y ago
Ever tried it with dramamine? I get motion sick in less than twenty minutes but medicine completely eliminated the problem.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Yeah having to take drugs to game sounds like a problem IMHO. Oculus Quest 2: with included Dramamine subscription from FB marketplace. Yeah opt out pls
  - rpdillon 5y ago
    It's routine for folks that get on a boat to go SCUBA diving or snorkeling to take Dramamine. Many people take it to go on a car ride or fly in an airplane. I think we see that as "just fine" partly because boating, driving, and flying are seen as "normal". But maybe it's also because if none of those are normally happening that often, so taking the drug is a special event, in some sense. VR might be an everyday thing, so that starts looking pretty dicey - who wants to take a pill before every gaming session, forever I wonder if folks that are trying to gain their "sea legs" could take it as a stop-gap until their body adjusts. I certainly saw this with folks that had extreme sea sickness when they first joined the Navy.
  - causi 5y ago
    What, you never thought about taking a chemical sacrament to enter a parallel digital universe? It's cyberpunk as hell.
mettamage 5y ago
Things I like: Immersed.com (second computer screen): I wish the Quest 2 had 4000x4000 per eye to make this work beautifully but I suppose that will be the future. Eleven Table Tennis: I practice smashing in this game, the skill transferred. Now I am beating all my friends with real actual table tennis (at an amateur level). Thrill of the Fight: awesome shadowboxing on steroids workout. Walkabout minigolf: feels like actual minigolf, except the courses are more fun [1]. Space Pirate Trainer DX: I haven’t played it yet but seems like an enhanced laser tag [1]. What I would like to be solved: - Excellent passthrough: I want to interior design my rooms with VR - Excellent screens (i.e. 4000x4000 per eye), it opens up applications/games that are mediocre at the moment - omnidirectional treadmills fully solved (super hard to do): I want to be able to strafe in place, jump, side jump, duck, crouch, make almost any movement in place IRL and for it to be translated to actual movement in VR. I sometimes muse about how to solve this but I wouldn’t know how. [1] The biggest benefit that VR/AR has are two things: one, you can make virtual hardware, and in some cases that is about as good as real hardware (e.g. virtual screens). Two, you can make experiences that are as almost as good in real life (e.g. table tennis) but then you can enhance them since a developer has much more control to bend physics than any other engineer does in the real world. The coolest application I saw for that is this model train game, you could scale down and be inside of the train, you could construct train tracks on very small orbs, etc. If I’d be a fan of trains, I’d buy it.
- scrapcode 5y ago
  I used Eleven to learn how to play table tennis during the pandemic and have also become fairly competitive with my friends and family that already played. I now have a real table in my home and my wife and I play regularly. Certainly got my money worth out of that used Oculus.
- TenJack 5y ago
  Great list. I would also recommend checking out some movies in Bigscreen. It supports 3D movies.
  - mettamage 5y ago
    I have tried Bigscreen and will definitely use it in the future. The problem that I have with it currently is that the pixel density of the Quest 2 is too low. My friend that I watch movies with regularly has a plasma smart tv (or whatever you call them) and the detail is much more crystal clear.
sAbakumoff 5y ago
>> Never played a VR game that wasn’t better without it, somewhat like 3D movies. Many people say that VR adult movies are fantastic, and one could find that non-VR ones are not even close.
ErneX 5y ago
I like the PSVR headset design because the screen is not glued to your face it is suspended before your face and the whole thing is supported by your head.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I've played a few VR games that were better or could only really work in VR that I thought justified it, but I keep my Rift around pretty much just for Beat Saber. Generally speaking I'd agree that VR is pretty disappointing. The best experiences are room scale and need, you know, basically a whole room dedicated to them. Movement is a problem because of motion sickness, tracking tech is still a bit dodgy, and unless you are ok with patronizing Facebook the tech is expensive and requires you to deal with cables. In a few generations I'd say it might be worthwhile, but for now it's a pretty expensive gimmick.
gilbetron 5y ago
My son pushed through his VR sickness, and now doesn't really suffer from it. He plays at least a couple of hours of VR each day. Boneworks, H3VR, Onward, Pavlov, RecRoom, Blade & Sorcery, Half-life Alyx, and other games he just loved. I can go maybe 15 minutes in it, and VR isn't really something I'm that into (despite it being a fantasy of having it since I was a kid). Although VR shooters have kind of ruined 2D shooters for me now :( Thing is, when I play a game, I don't want to move around - as an adult, I've been busy all day, now I just want to sit on a couch and chill. VR was key to my son making it through the pandemic with his sanity intact. But he does seem to be a rarity - he has a couple of friends that have VR and they just play Beat Saber, if that. If there was an updated Garry's Mod for VR - we'd never get him out of there!
- marzullo 5y ago
  Facepunch is working on the next iteration of Garry's Mod using Source 2 which will have VR support! https://sbox.facepunch.com/news https://sbox.facepunch.com/news
root_axis 5y ago
If there is any hope for this space it's in VR, the technology necessary for a quality AR experience is so far away from what is currently possible that it's basically DOA as a product.
kache_ 5y ago
Of course if you use garbage hardware that is sold at cost to get you to make a facebook account, it'll be a shit experience If it isn't tethered to a computer with a 3090, is it really VR? You won't get motion sickness with a index running at 144hz
- indiv0 5y ago
  Correction: majority of people who didn’t spend their lives gaming get motion sickness pretty quickly anyways. This is coming from someone with an index running at 144 Hz on a 3090. I’ve actively been encouraging friends and family to try it and my experience is that motion sickness hits about 18/20 people within 30 minutes of play, depending on the game. However I’ve noticed that my friends who have played a lot of computer games (in particular fast paced FPS) tend to fare better, and also that the sickness goes away with practice. I used to get it too but now I can beatsaber for literal hours without discomfort. The headset does make a difference, (my friend’s Vive was particularly bad), but it’s not as great as you suggest. Time and practice are far more important.
  - kache_ 5y ago
    And that's why I have a vive tracker on a bucket at all times. It's my VR bucket, for when I throw up
asdfsd234234444 5y ago
Try the Quest 2. $399 price point for a standalone unit. I didn't experience any motion sickness even though it was my first time with a real VR device. Games like Superhot VR + Beatsabre + thrill of the fight, are awesome. and can't be made without VR. Also, it has a passthrough mode - which I'd love to see improved - because it basically trumps AR. By adding high quality cameras in front of the headset you hit 2 birds with 1 stone.
mikeholler 5y ago
One of my biggest hobbies is sim racing, and I can tell you that putting on the VR headset is akin to putting on a helmet and setting off on the track. The sweatiness and discomfort is nothing more than a real driver would experience, and turning a wheel feels real without hand tracking. What you're experiencing with disorientation does tend to go away for most people if they're careful about it. And for me, I literally can't remember the last time I've felt disoriented in VR. Even considering that I've had shunts that have caused me to roll 20 times or more. I agree, there is waste involved (as with anything), but as a comparison to racing it's much more friendly for the world than burning fuel. I'm in full agreement that Facebook on our faces sounds terrible, and concerns me, but VR can be a very good thing.
- titzer 5y ago
  > that putting on the VR headset is akin to putting on a helmet and setting off on the track. It depends on what your brain is used to. If you've never felt the acceleration, you don't know what you're missing. But I've done a lot of skiing in my life, and my brain will not accept VR skiing as the real thing. I feel queasy and have to stop.
  - mikeholler 5y ago
    I know what I'm missing, and have experienced it. I see this as an environmentally friendly way to do something I love literally whenever I want, and it's wayyyyy cheaper to boot. And the racing quality (competition) is better than any real-world thing too. The skill ranges are so tight in online races, especially iRacing. The feelings you had with nausea is common for people, and it's possible to get over it if you are methodical. Lots of people I knew couldn't do more than 1 minute when they started, and slowly worked up to it. Trick is to stop the moment your stomach feels unsettled, and try it every day. Don't push though it.
- mettamage 5y ago
  Any racing games you can recommend? I couldn't find a good one (without trying them out).
ianbutler 5y ago
I’m sorry. I have very high VR tolerance and I experience no sickness at all even in the most intense games and VR has been an almost magical experience over the last few years so I’m sorry you’re not able to get that same enjoyment. Calling it a fad though seems incorrect. We’ve already passed the point of Quest 2 headsets being in over 10million homes and that’s up from 5 million a few months earlier. At this rate it’s following the same trajectory as consoles and because of the headsets general availability a whole generation of kids are getting a Quest 2 instead of an Xbox or pS5.
mandernt 5y ago
dr-detroit 5y ago
greggman3 5y ago
I'm exactly the opposite. I love VR and I now find non-VR games boring and old like trying the play NES or C64 games (which I used to love). Half Life Alyx is arguably the best Half Life experience to date. No Man's Sky is amazing in VR but zero interest outside of VR. In VR I'm actually in a spaceship or actually on another planet. Outside VR I'm just looking at someone else's travel photos. Seeing vista's in VR is like the difference between looking at a picture of the Grand Canyon and actually being at the Grand Canyon. The first is a pretty picture. The second you actually feel it's 20 miles the other side and a mile deep. Seeing a smoking volcano in Farpoint, again outside vR is just a picture, inside VR the mountain actually feels 1-2 miles high with 7-10 mile plum of smoke. So now non-VR games that don't get then sense of presence fill like something is missing. Further, well made VR games (which is definitely not all) are often way more intuitive than non. The 19 buttons on a dualshock or a mouse and 101 buttons of a keyboard, a good VR game you should reach out and touch stuff in the game. There are also experiences like Jet Island or Eye of the Temple you just can't have outside VR. VR Rhythm games actually force me to dance, vr non-VR rhythm games which rarely do that. As for AR, I used to be more excited, but I suspect reality will be tracking, constant ads, and distractions. And further, it's kind of hard to turn reality into any setting, something VR can do easily. In AR, in my living room, maybe I could have an AR pet that runs around my furniture. In VR I can escape my living room for another planet, an underwater adventure, a dragon's lair, a space station, a secret lab, a zombie infested factory, etc... The biggest problem with VR is just lack of great content. Looking forward to Horizon Forbidden West as the next true AAA VR title.
anonred 5y ago
It would be useful to include what headset you tried in your comment. Consumer VR has progressed a lot in the last few years wrt resolution, refresh rate, and form factor.
tchock23 5y ago
I also kickstarted the original Rift, but have the opposite perspective. It took a while, but VR in the Quest 2 is taking up more and more of my gaming time these days - especially playing Demeo. What was the last headset you picked up? I can see this critique being valid for early headsets, but a lot of the issues you mentioned are less pronounced/eliminated in recent headsets.
mcjkrw 5y ago
Totally. Why do you need a virtual screen if you have a real life one. I could not imagine myself working in VR, I like to look around from time to time when I'm working, I also like to have some space/depth before me to be able to look far away and I love working from cafes especially. VR seems like a way to get even more cut off from the body / trapped in head (losing body awareness) when working - a problem that is going on which most people are not aware of. It may make sense for some games, but desktop will be the king of work for a long time - until we get brain-computer interface with some AR glasses, then maybe that would be an improvement.

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

Have you played Lone Echo and “Blade & Sorcery”? Really think those are the benchmarks for me, vr isn’t about the headset or 3d it’s about rich hand tracking/interactions.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

Pavlov VR is amazing and wouldn’t work as a non VR game. The custom games are really fun and everyone has a sense of humor I haven’t seen elsewhere. PavZ is a blast. Your distaste for VR is due to genetics. I’m sorry you got the short end of the stick with the motion sickness.

callmekit 5y ago

I bought Oculus Quest 2 about a month ago. The games I play the most probably wouldn't be even possible (or at least fun) without VR - Pistol Whip (you need to evade slow-moving bullets) and Thrill of the Fight (boxing simulator). It's more of a fitness device for me now.

jcims 5y ago
I returned mine after a month but apparently I didn't do enough research into how to get out of the little walled garden that is set up for you. I had the Samsung Gear a few years back and felt like it was the exact same environment. In both cases one of the most interesting experiences was the movie theater. It somehow works. The social aspect was creepy, i'm an old guy and all i could hear was voices of young children...i felt like i shouldn't be there haha.
- nannal 5y ago
  I've had a similar problem, I like the tech, enjoy the single player games but when it comes to anything online the number of shrill voices makes me feel like I'm the outsider in their space.
newcup 5y ago
I agree, VR absolutely provides an experience flat-screen gaming can never deliver. With the Covid situation being what it is and sports halls are closed, I’ve replaced live table tennis trainings with Valve Index and Eleven Table Tennis VR game. It has stunningly realistic physics and the immersion is so good that I don’t miss the real thing much. This wouldn’t be possible in front of a flat screen.

blazespin 5y ago

Yeah, major VR fanboy. I have umpteen headsets. Meh. It's just been eye crossing eye candy, who needs it. Even the kids who enjoyed it at first are pretty meh about it. Still, the idea of working in VR is actually good, not the 3d or VR part, but the efficient use of physical space and replacement for multiple monitors. But I highly doubt it's there yet, FOV and resolution.

randomsearch 5y ago

Shades of nomad / lame at this point. Agree that Facebook being involved is a very bad thing, but don’t overestimate their ability to build something entirely new. No doubt in my mind that VR will change everything - it’s simply a matter of “when”, but I’m willing to bet that we are now on a slow and steady path of improvement, but that path may be far longer than Zuck imagines.

Traubenfuchs 5y ago

> AR on the other hand, either as a small projector or special glasses — that is exciting. Is it? All I have ever seen is floating stuff lagging behind or jumping around. A "proof of concept" level experience, at best.

randomhodler84 5y ago
I look forward to a HUD mapping overlay and other info widgets that would enhance my travel. It could provide real time info without needing to look at a watch or phone, without distraction. I hope the slab of glass phase ends soon. Too many people looking at their hands and ignoring reality.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  Reminds me of Horizon Zero Dawn's Focus gadget. But I think that technology is still way far off.
criddell 5y ago
My car projects stuff onto the windshield. Is that a type of AR?
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Yes and I think this is the most useful kind. This tech is going to get much better this decade.

dale_glass 5y ago

You've not played the right games, then. I mean, take Robo Recall, which is one of the first things that came out. Sure, you can do a shooting game without VR, but then you don't get the experience of tearing a robot apart with your own hands and punching another's head off with a torn off arm. Or Elite Dangerous is quite the experience in VR too. Less so than Robo Recall, but it works out extremely well if you have a HOTAS. You work as if you were sitting in a cockpit. Or Subnautica, which in VR gets even more terrifying. Or VR Chat and similar, where you get to interact far more personally than you would just looking at an avatar on a screen. Now of course it's not like it solves world hunger or anything, but the tech works extremely well within the right scenarios.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Subnautica in VR is broken beyond playability without mods. I've tried it and I would disagree with any suggestion that VR enhances the experience of the game.
randomhodler84 5y ago
The tech works extremely well at making me feel sick. I enjoyed subnautica sans VR. ED is less interesting than Euro truck simulator. :-) I get the physical games like table tenis and beat saber, but how is this not a fad? The wii was cool at the time too. Nintendo didn’t retain the ideas in later hardware. VR chat is about as interesting as second life, and any metaverse that follows will follow the same path.
- dale_glass 5y ago
  Well, in that case you've got to make adjustments to your setup (wrong IPD maybe?), or you could just be unlucky and get sick far too easily. Consumer VR of course involves a disconnect between what you feel and what you see, and that makes people sick when it gets bad enough, but most people can enjoy at least some VR experiences. By my account, I've managed to spend days of real time within Subnautica exclusively in VR. If you get sick, what I'd recommend is something like Beat Saber, where you're never moved without physically moving in reality. If that doesn't work something is definitely wrong. The next easiest experience is cockpit simulations. I'd say Subnautica comes somewhere after that, being in the intermediate range. The worst I've personally tried is Half Life 2 in VR (as in, HL2 just rendering to VR without further changes), and that is indeed not a nice experience because the FPS mechanics just don't work in VR. The acceleration, the need to constantly rotate your view without moving in reality, the need to make very quick and frequent changes in direction are all very hard to tolerate. > I get the physical games like table tenis and beat saber, but how is this not a fad? Who cares? What matters if it's fun or not. I enjoy the exercise, I don't do it to fit in. And it's surprisingly good exercise. I lift weights, and Racket NX still is capable of making my arms sore. Then I suppose I have a rather violent play style.

Shacklz 5y ago

> Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. I've bought a Vive when Half Life: Alyx came out and was completely blown away by the first impressions and immersions of that game. Since then however and after the first "whoa!"-effects faded, every game was exactly what you've just described: Pure disappointment, and my body completely stressed out/sick after half an hour, at best. The only exception is beat-saber, which is a lot of fun for quite some time, but not the kind of game I'd want to play for hours on end. So far, VR seems gimmicky, and quite frankly is way too much of a hassle to set up to enjoy it often (so many cables!, and I don't have the space for a permanent setup).

Fredej 5y ago
The cable thing is pretty solved with the Quest 2. Zero cables there.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  Yeah, if you want to play a subset of games that Facebook has deemed you can play. Still salty that Pavlov isn’t native to quest. Air Link solves this, but boy is it annoying in practice. Setting down the headset always pushes the floor just out of reach when you come back to it. Which is frustrating in a game that makes you pick things up, like shooters.
  - Noelkd 5y ago
    Not sure if you are aware but you can get Pavlov Shack for free through the AppLab for quest2: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3649611198468269 https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3649611198468269 I've had some good fun playing it.
  - anonred 5y ago
    Why is SideQuest and AppLab not sufficient for “unapproved” games?
spywaregorilla 5y ago
I was pretty disappointed with Alyx. Little manual interactions like the healing stations and the markers and the reloading felt novel. But the actual meat of the game, the combat, was just not very good. Teleport movement breaks immersion. The hardest enemies in the game were the electric dogs. They did this thing where they drastically over commit to shooting in a specific direction and all you needed to do was click to move somewhere else and you were fine. It was super lame, but, at the same time, not actually super easy to execute. It's like we've taken a step forward on graphical immersion and three steps back on game design immersion. Valve did a good job working with the constraints they had, but my takeaway is that the constraints are just too vast to make a game that isn't clearly hand holding you because your controls and situational awareness are just kind of bad. I played on an index and would do multiple hours at a time, with no sickness.

darkwater 5y ago

> and kickedstarted the oculus rift. Did the kickstarters get some juice when Facebook bought Oculus? Or just a big thank you?

randomhodler84 5y ago
I got a retail kit as well as the DK1, which was nice. I did feel shafted by Palmer when he took both my and zucks money, but looking back now, it was buying a devkit not equity.
- darkwater 5y ago
  Obviously you were not buying equity but at the same time you were funding the actual creation of a new product, taking a part of the role of an investor. If you do a successful exit I think it would be nice to at least refund the money obtained by the kickstarters. But probably I'm just naïve.

mojzu 5y ago

I've got the Index, there was definitely some acclimatisation required to dampen the motion sickness (especially for free movement) but for the most part I've had a great experience with it. Half-Life Alyx is an incredible game, although I would like to see more narrative/story driven games for VR. There are a lot of arcade games that are fun to pick up now and again (Beat Saber, Robo Recall), and shooters like Pavlov are great fun to play online

jcun4128 5y ago
Yeah I had the same problem too at first. I could only play about an hour max before I had to stop. Got better over a few weeks then was able to play like 4-6 hrs straight one time.
- mojzu 5y ago
  I had a similar experience, could only go 30 minutes at first until motion sickness set in or the headset became uncomfortable. After some time and headset strap adjustments though I'm comfortable for a couple of hours or so at least. Although I still struggle with some games like Boneworks which for whatever reason still makes me a bit motion sick

bobsmooth 5y ago

That's really sad. When VR works, your brain totally believes the illusion. I hope better screens and hardware makes it accessible to more people.

arvinsim 5y ago
Seems that the problem is the hardware, not the software then.

practice9 5y ago

> Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. You can try another headset in a few years. Lower headset weight, better audio, larger field of view, >= 120 hz refresh rates, frame interpolation, eye/face tracking - not all of these are possible right now, but I think we can expect them in 2024 - 2026. I find that right now many games are not optimized for VR, which brings FPS drops that kill the immersion and give me a headache after a few minutes. The weight of the headset doesn't help too. I agree that for business VR may be not as useful as the companies would like us to think. If you jump in and out of meetings, respond in chats etc. the UX should be on par or better than on traditional platforms, otherwise everyone would fallback to their laptops. But for a casual moviegoers or gamers this may be a good product

fuzzy2 5y ago

One thing that just occurred to me: Maybe the headset was not correctly positioned in front of your eyes or the interpupillary distance was not set up correctly. If these are not perfect (but good enough) you can still get depth perception and immersion but the fatigue will increase a lot. Also, the headset must basically be “glued to your face”, so it does not sway when moving the head. A high-performance PC is also very important, every FPS drop will induce nausea. I can play HL Alyx for hours on end but still get dizzy when I become dehydrated or hungry. I only have first-hand experience with an HTC Vive (1st gen) though, which uses room-scale laser tracking. I also only ever played room-scale.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Immersive experiences are primarily a content problem. We've got a big empty room with current hardware solutions. You can play games or mess around in some big corporation's walled garden. That's it. Not very compelling. The games are nice of course but mostly they work without VR as well. Creating content for these empty rooms is actually a problem as there are no open standards, the tools are complicated, there are lots of hurdles, and a lot of gate keepers with dollar signs in their eyes trying to tap into any value you might create that are actively frustrating each other's attempts to do so. You end up with these exclusives for some proprietary hardware. And that hardware changes all the time so it is time limited as well. The only people that bother with going through the trouble for this so far are game studios. Even 3D movies are largely not accessible via VR because that's a different proprietary content silo with misaligned financial incentives. So, even though there is a lot of 3D content in the form of a decade plus of 3D action movies that were released by movie studios, exactly none of that can be enjoyed via VR goggles. That's how hard it is to target these things. I guess movie studios could do it but then they'd be haggling with the likes of Steam about just how large of a cut they would take. Likewise, Netflix is not a Steam VR experience. They are not producing material in 3D and you can't sign up for a 3D Amazon Prime either. If there were open standards, this would be a no-brainer thing for them but there aren't. IMHO, any content that works in VR should be trivially accessible using a normal 2D screen as well. There is no technical need for any content to be exclusive to VR/AR goggles and if you are the owner of that content, you'd actually want to maximize your audience rather than artificially limit it. You lose a bit of immersiveness but we've been playing 3D FPS games on 2D screens for decades so that does not seem to be that big of a deal. In other words, there's nothing stopping us from building a metaverse right now. You'd buy the VR goggles to enhance the experience in the same way you might invest in a bigger TV or better sound system. So, why don't we? Well very simply put, it doesn't solve a problem we actually have. We can already immerse ourselves in game worlds (with or without goggles) and we can already communicate with people. And more importantly, 2D UIs are actually pretty nice for a lot of things; especially when it involves text. And in so far some things might actually work, excluding most of the planet that does not own any goggles yet is not a great plan for creating a mass market.

me_me_me 5y ago

fsloth 5y ago

VR is already an excellent expert tool. VR based visualization of digitally designs - products or houses, is becoming a very pragmatic tool for designers to review their work in 3D, instead of just a flat screen (3D HAS more information). As a trivial example - when designing our new office, some people reviewed the auditorium design in VR and figured out the screen was too high for comfort, and it was lowered. Extreme examples go into virtualized surgical training where physics and graphics engine specialized to tissue simulation is used to teach surgeons new procedures. AR displays such as hololens can be used in construction yards to compare the as built with a digital model for quick review. Etc etc. I don't know how good toy VR or AR will ever become, but it already is an indispensable expert tool.

mrwnmonm 5y ago
Designers and surgeons would die without it. We have to introduce this unnatural thing to life or FB would lose money and humanity will suffer. I think young surgeons would get a trauma moving from this nonsense to real surgery. Or maybe they will try to press a button in the patient's stomach.

bushbaba 5y ago

Watch vr immersive video. Game changing. VR’s perspective makes the actors more life like. I can totally see VR be the future of tv. Not the 360 vr video, but more like 100-180 degree VR video.

shock-value 5y ago
Strong agree. It baffles me that Meta/Facebook isn’t putting up more of that in the media section of the Quest software. Well, there are a lot of videos but most are 2D and/or very low resolution, and just not interesting content. The best I’ve seen on there are the “Ecosphere” videos (best quality by watching through the actual app). It’s sort of otherworldly feeling like you are standing next to an actual elephant. Awesome use of the medium and totally convinced me of its viability.

tiku 5y ago

The new oculus quest 2 solved a lot of those issues for me. The only thing that remained was the fogging up part, but I have acquired a fan for that. 1) No cable anymore, streaming it or playing on it directly works fine. 2) Weight is not so heavy anymore. 3) Battery time is also good, just as with the HTC Vive and Wireless kit, minus the bulk of the battery. The problem for me is the games on it. A few are really cool, but even then I get bored. And to buy another game, sure, but then you get to spend 20 dollars again, way to pricey for just a few hours of gaming. SuperHot and Half Life Alyx are the games that I like the most.

whalabi 5y ago
Tip: if you find the HMD pressing into your forehead or face, make a counterweight and attach it to the back of the HMD. It's completely changed things for me.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  I got the elite strap partly for this, but it didn’t help. What does seem to help is to physically rotate the headset up or down. The quest 2 is deceptively rigid, so it’s easy not to realize you can do that.
  - whalabi 5y ago
    Does the strap include a counterweight? I see the battery elite strap weighs 179g, but from memory the HMD weighs over 500g. I wrapped a couple portable batteries (they're dense) in a bag and tied it to the back of my basic strap, and I don't even need to tighten the strap anymore, the weight is mostly pushing down on the top of my head now. It's an incredible difference, to the point that I'm offended they don't include a counterweight by default. From memory my counterweight is around 350g. Maybe you can try it out by loosening the strap and using a finger to tug down on the back of the strap, and see if it balances on the top of your head and feels good.
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago

causi 5y ago

Ever tried it with dramamine? I get motion sick in less than twenty minutes but medicine completely eliminated the problem.

randomhodler84 5y ago
Yeah having to take drugs to game sounds like a problem IMHO. Oculus Quest 2: with included Dramamine subscription from FB marketplace. Yeah opt out pls
- rpdillon 5y ago
  It's routine for folks that get on a boat to go SCUBA diving or snorkeling to take Dramamine. Many people take it to go on a car ride or fly in an airplane. I think we see that as "just fine" partly because boating, driving, and flying are seen as "normal". But maybe it's also because if none of those are normally happening that often, so taking the drug is a special event, in some sense. VR might be an everyday thing, so that starts looking pretty dicey - who wants to take a pill before every gaming session, forever I wonder if folks that are trying to gain their "sea legs" could take it as a stop-gap until their body adjusts. I certainly saw this with folks that had extreme sea sickness when they first joined the Navy.
- causi 5y ago
  What, you never thought about taking a chemical sacrament to enter a parallel digital universe? It's cyberpunk as hell.

mettamage 5y ago

Things I like: Immersed.com (second computer screen): I wish the Quest 2 had 4000x4000 per eye to make this work beautifully but I suppose that will be the future. Eleven Table Tennis: I practice smashing in this game, the skill transferred. Now I am beating all my friends with real actual table tennis (at an amateur level). Thrill of the Fight: awesome shadowboxing on steroids workout. Walkabout minigolf: feels like actual minigolf, except the courses are more fun [1]. Space Pirate Trainer DX: I haven’t played it yet but seems like an enhanced laser tag [1]. What I would like to be solved: - Excellent passthrough: I want to interior design my rooms with VR - Excellent screens (i.e. 4000x4000 per eye), it opens up applications/games that are mediocre at the moment - omnidirectional treadmills fully solved (super hard to do): I want to be able to strafe in place, jump, side jump, duck, crouch, make almost any movement in place IRL and for it to be translated to actual movement in VR. I sometimes muse about how to solve this but I wouldn’t know how. [1] The biggest benefit that VR/AR has are two things: one, you can make virtual hardware, and in some cases that is about as good as real hardware (e.g. virtual screens). Two, you can make experiences that are as almost as good in real life (e.g. table tennis) but then you can enhance them since a developer has much more control to bend physics than any other engineer does in the real world. The coolest application I saw for that is this model train game, you could scale down and be inside of the train, you could construct train tracks on very small orbs, etc. If I’d be a fan of trains, I’d buy it.

scrapcode 5y ago
I used Eleven to learn how to play table tennis during the pandemic and have also become fairly competitive with my friends and family that already played. I now have a real table in my home and my wife and I play regularly. Certainly got my money worth out of that used Oculus.
TenJack 5y ago
Great list. I would also recommend checking out some movies in Bigscreen. It supports 3D movies.
- mettamage 5y ago
  I have tried Bigscreen and will definitely use it in the future. The problem that I have with it currently is that the pixel density of the Quest 2 is too low. My friend that I watch movies with regularly has a plasma smart tv (or whatever you call them) and the detail is much more crystal clear.

sAbakumoff 5y ago

>> Never played a VR game that wasn’t better without it, somewhat like 3D movies. Many people say that VR adult movies are fantastic, and one could find that non-VR ones are not even close.

ErneX 5y ago

I like the PSVR headset design because the screen is not glued to your face it is suspended before your face and the whole thing is supported by your head.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

I've played a few VR games that were better or could only really work in VR that I thought justified it, but I keep my Rift around pretty much just for Beat Saber. Generally speaking I'd agree that VR is pretty disappointing. The best experiences are room scale and need, you know, basically a whole room dedicated to them. Movement is a problem because of motion sickness, tracking tech is still a bit dodgy, and unless you are ok with patronizing Facebook the tech is expensive and requires you to deal with cables. In a few generations I'd say it might be worthwhile, but for now it's a pretty expensive gimmick.

gilbetron 5y ago

My son pushed through his VR sickness, and now doesn't really suffer from it. He plays at least a couple of hours of VR each day. Boneworks, H3VR, Onward, Pavlov, RecRoom, Blade & Sorcery, Half-life Alyx, and other games he just loved. I can go maybe 15 minutes in it, and VR isn't really something I'm that into (despite it being a fantasy of having it since I was a kid). Although VR shooters have kind of ruined 2D shooters for me now :( Thing is, when I play a game, I don't want to move around - as an adult, I've been busy all day, now I just want to sit on a couch and chill. VR was key to my son making it through the pandemic with his sanity intact. But he does seem to be a rarity - he has a couple of friends that have VR and they just play Beat Saber, if that. If there was an updated Garry's Mod for VR - we'd never get him out of there!

marzullo 5y ago
Facepunch is working on the next iteration of Garry's Mod using Source 2 which will have VR support! https://sbox.facepunch.com/news https://sbox.facepunch.com/news

root_axis 5y ago

If there is any hope for this space it's in VR, the technology necessary for a quality AR experience is so far away from what is currently possible that it's basically DOA as a product.

kache_ 5y ago

Of course if you use garbage hardware that is sold at cost to get you to make a facebook account, it'll be a shit experience If it isn't tethered to a computer with a 3090, is it really VR? You won't get motion sickness with a index running at 144hz

indiv0 5y ago
Correction: majority of people who didn’t spend their lives gaming get motion sickness pretty quickly anyways. This is coming from someone with an index running at 144 Hz on a 3090. I’ve actively been encouraging friends and family to try it and my experience is that motion sickness hits about 18/20 people within 30 minutes of play, depending on the game. However I’ve noticed that my friends who have played a lot of computer games (in particular fast paced FPS) tend to fare better, and also that the sickness goes away with practice. I used to get it too but now I can beatsaber for literal hours without discomfort. The headset does make a difference, (my friend’s Vive was particularly bad), but it’s not as great as you suggest. Time and practice are far more important.
- kache_ 5y ago
  And that's why I have a vive tracker on a bucket at all times. It's my VR bucket, for when I throw up

asdfsd234234444 5y ago

Try the Quest 2. $399 price point for a standalone unit. I didn't experience any motion sickness even though it was my first time with a real VR device. Games like Superhot VR + Beatsabre + thrill of the fight, are awesome. and can't be made without VR. Also, it has a passthrough mode - which I'd love to see improved - because it basically trumps AR. By adding high quality cameras in front of the headset you hit 2 birds with 1 stone.

mikeholler 5y ago

One of my biggest hobbies is sim racing, and I can tell you that putting on the VR headset is akin to putting on a helmet and setting off on the track. The sweatiness and discomfort is nothing more than a real driver would experience, and turning a wheel feels real without hand tracking. What you're experiencing with disorientation does tend to go away for most people if they're careful about it. And for me, I literally can't remember the last time I've felt disoriented in VR. Even considering that I've had shunts that have caused me to roll 20 times or more. I agree, there is waste involved (as with anything), but as a comparison to racing it's much more friendly for the world than burning fuel. I'm in full agreement that Facebook on our faces sounds terrible, and concerns me, but VR can be a very good thing.

titzer 5y ago
> that putting on the VR headset is akin to putting on a helmet and setting off on the track. It depends on what your brain is used to. If you've never felt the acceleration, you don't know what you're missing. But I've done a lot of skiing in my life, and my brain will not accept VR skiing as the real thing. I feel queasy and have to stop.
- mikeholler 5y ago
  I know what I'm missing, and have experienced it. I see this as an environmentally friendly way to do something I love literally whenever I want, and it's wayyyyy cheaper to boot. And the racing quality (competition) is better than any real-world thing too. The skill ranges are so tight in online races, especially iRacing. The feelings you had with nausea is common for people, and it's possible to get over it if you are methodical. Lots of people I knew couldn't do more than 1 minute when they started, and slowly worked up to it. Trick is to stop the moment your stomach feels unsettled, and try it every day. Don't push though it.
mettamage 5y ago
Any racing games you can recommend? I couldn't find a good one (without trying them out).

ianbutler 5y ago

I’m sorry. I have very high VR tolerance and I experience no sickness at all even in the most intense games and VR has been an almost magical experience over the last few years so I’m sorry you’re not able to get that same enjoyment. Calling it a fad though seems incorrect. We’ve already passed the point of Quest 2 headsets being in over 10million homes and that’s up from 5 million a few months earlier. At this rate it’s following the same trajectory as consoles and because of the headsets general availability a whole generation of kids are getting a Quest 2 instead of an Xbox or pS5.

mandernt 5y ago

dr-detroit 5y ago

greggman3 5y ago

I'm exactly the opposite. I love VR and I now find non-VR games boring and old like trying the play NES or C64 games (which I used to love). Half Life Alyx is arguably the best Half Life experience to date. No Man's Sky is amazing in VR but zero interest outside of VR. In VR I'm actually in a spaceship or actually on another planet. Outside VR I'm just looking at someone else's travel photos. Seeing vista's in VR is like the difference between looking at a picture of the Grand Canyon and actually being at the Grand Canyon. The first is a pretty picture. The second you actually feel it's 20 miles the other side and a mile deep. Seeing a smoking volcano in Farpoint, again outside vR is just a picture, inside VR the mountain actually feels 1-2 miles high with 7-10 mile plum of smoke. So now non-VR games that don't get then sense of presence fill like something is missing. Further, well made VR games (which is definitely not all) are often way more intuitive than non. The 19 buttons on a dualshock or a mouse and 101 buttons of a keyboard, a good VR game you should reach out and touch stuff in the game. There are also experiences like Jet Island or Eye of the Temple you just can't have outside VR. VR Rhythm games actually force me to dance, vr non-VR rhythm games which rarely do that. As for AR, I used to be more excited, but I suspect reality will be tracking, constant ads, and distractions. And further, it's kind of hard to turn reality into any setting, something VR can do easily. In AR, in my living room, maybe I could have an AR pet that runs around my furniture. In VR I can escape my living room for another planet, an underwater adventure, a dragon's lair, a space station, a secret lab, a zombie infested factory, etc... The biggest problem with VR is just lack of great content. Looking forward to Horizon Forbidden West as the next true AAA VR title.

anonred 5y ago

It would be useful to include what headset you tried in your comment. Consumer VR has progressed a lot in the last few years wrt resolution, refresh rate, and form factor.

tchock23 5y ago

I also kickstarted the original Rift, but have the opposite perspective. It took a while, but VR in the Quest 2 is taking up more and more of my gaming time these days - especially playing Demeo. What was the last headset you picked up? I can see this critique being valid for early headsets, but a lot of the issues you mentioned are less pronounced/eliminated in recent headsets.

mcjkrw 5y ago

Totally. Why do you need a virtual screen if you have a real life one. I could not imagine myself working in VR, I like to look around from time to time when I'm working, I also like to have some space/depth before me to be able to look far away and I love working from cafes especially. VR seems like a way to get even more cut off from the body / trapped in head (losing body awareness) when working - a problem that is going on which most people are not aware of. It may make sense for some games, but desktop will be the king of work for a long time - until we get brain-computer interface with some AR glasses, then maybe that would be an improvement.