4 ms·

I'm curious if you have any thoughts on why VR remains so niche. Decent VR hardware has been available for years. And yet relatively few people use it.

by Breza 5y ago

grumple 5y ago
Most people are not nerds like us and prefer to interact with people in person. They cook dinner, they make babies, they read, they play with their dog. They use computers for work. Then you have the gamer segment. VR games are generally casual / active. Not playable in most apartments due to space needed. Most gamers are into either shooters, dark souls style games, or moba-style games. And action/rpg - which is great in VR, but there are also only a couple of them. Metaverse? Live in VR? Why? You can live in real life. People have other things to worry about.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >Not playable in most apartments due to space needed. Maybe in places like Tokyo or Hong-Kong as even in my small European apartment, I could find the 2x2m space needed for VR.
- zelphirkalt 5y ago
  Personally I have not heard about a great game or experience in VR yet. Nothing I would like to call fun gaming or exploration. Put some VR chairs like in Tom Clancy's Special Netforce youth novels by Diane Duane and that might grab my attention. In a VR I do not want to walk around, but I want to control the character and feel like I am really there. And then of course that FB has its hands in play makes the whole thing stink from the start. Who would engage in any kind of personal interaction with that? At least not I.
  - SergeAx 5y ago
    Half-Life Alyx is quite good. It can be played on a decent gaming PC plus Oculus Quest 2. I also adore Beat Saber, but mostly custom maps (Quest 2 version needs to be patched for it to work), and some social component is lost.
  - CoastalCoder 5y ago
    My wife has used some exercise apps for the original Quest. It was really good for workouts when going to the gym wasn't possible. I've had some basic exercise and lots of fun with "Until You Fall" on the Index.
  - elxr 5y ago
    Racing sims are where VR truly comes into its own. Racing sims especially. Many popular racing sims have great VR support, and a lot of them have very detailed textures (compared to the average VR game). Combine that with a good wheel and a structurally solid rig, and you really feel like you're driving an actual race car. The downside is that it does take up significant space and requires extra hardware (wheel, pedals, rig, etc.), which is a dealbreaker for many (me included at the moment).
    - lariati 5y ago
      I think it works exactly because you are not moving in a real car, the car is moving. With a physical wheel then just simulating vision makes it true virtual reality for car driving. Almost nothing else is like this though. Virtual reality swimming I think is the best example of why VR sucks in the general sense. The visual aspect is just a small aspect of the experience of swimming. We can't simulate any other aspect of it with VR goggles. Simulating most real life experience is much closer to the problem of swimming than the problem of driving a car.
  - penjelly 5y ago
    > In a VR I do not want to walk around, but I want to control the character and feel like I am really there these are incongruent. > Who would engage in any kind of personal interaction with that? tons of people do regularly. see https://playtracker.net/insight/game/2704 https://playtracker.net/insight/game/2704 do note: not all vrchat users use VR everytime. but still the numbers arent insignificant. not to mention disabled people who cant participate in society as well as the average person, may want to experience a world where they can walk, go to the theater with their friends or swing around like spiderman. as for fun games in vr? try pavlovVR, into the radius, until you fall, beat saber, legendary tales...
- f6v 5y ago
  > Most people are not nerds like us and prefer to interact with people in person. People are also glued to phones. Children are making TikTok videos. My point is that people do interact online. The issue with VR is fidelity. It just doesn’t live up to what people imagined yet. Compare what we have to TV series like “Upload” from Amazon.
  - lariati 5y ago
    There is also a problem that is exemplified by VR chess or VR poker. Anyone who wants to play chess or poker online most likely already has without VR. Sitting across a virtual table with a virtual person with an annoying headset on to play chess or poker online is practically a downgrade from what we have now. It is a one off parlor trick.
    - wan23 5y ago
      VR Poker is a HUGE upgrade from online poker on the web or an app because a poker game is a social experience that benefits from the sense of presence you can get with VR. Chess, not so much.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Because VR is expensive and the value of the experience is limited. Decent VR experiences require space. Room scale requires, well, pretty much a whole room to play it in. A room free from obstacles. An entire empty room just to play a game. I have one such room, and several times I've found that games still insist on placing objects outside the designated walkable area. Most people do not have an entire room to dedicate to VR. And most VR experiences really aren't worth it. They're largely novelties rather than something you want to interact with every day. The only exception I've experienced so far is Beat Saber, but even that with it's minimal around-the-room movement frequently has to throw up the guardian because I swung my fist too close to a wall.
hangsi 5y ago
The chip shortage/pandemic has stunted what would have been a massive scale up in vr production in the last 2 years. This has been a brake to economies of scale applied across the industry, so the existing players can put their logistic efforts in to keeping up their supply of existing products at the same price as they launched, which is enough to start competitive. Without the shortage, I expect we would have seen many more and cheaper Oculus Quests being sold. For a point of reference, see purchasing the Valve Index, which last I saw if you buy from valve has a lead time of at least a month, despite launching in 2019.
iLoveOncall 5y ago
Because the effort required to play is absolutely huge. If I want to play a game on my PC I just double click the icon and I can start playing. If I want to play a game on my VR headset I need to move furniture to make space, then I need to unbox the headset, I need to put it on and take 3 min to adjust it because my girlfriend is the last one that used it, then I need to define the space available in the room, and then finally I can enjoy a 720p game, interrupted by the red walls of the guardian when I get too close to the limit of the space I defined. Then I'll need to move back the furniture and everything... The reason I barely play VR is because it's a chore to setup and I'll have to spend at least 15 min before being in an actual game.

I'm curious if you have any thoughts on why VR remains so niche. Decent VR hardware has been available for years. And yet relatively few people use it.

by Breza 5y ago

I'm curious if you have any thoughts on why VR remains so niche. Decent VR hardware has been available for years. And yet relatively few people use it.

grumple 5y ago

Most people are not nerds like us and prefer to interact with people in person. They cook dinner, they make babies, they read, they play with their dog. They use computers for work. Then you have the gamer segment. VR games are generally casual / active. Not playable in most apartments due to space needed. Most gamers are into either shooters, dark souls style games, or moba-style games. And action/rpg - which is great in VR, but there are also only a couple of them. Metaverse? Live in VR? Why? You can live in real life. People have other things to worry about.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>Not playable in most apartments due to space needed. Maybe in places like Tokyo or Hong-Kong as even in my small European apartment, I could find the 2x2m space needed for VR.
zelphirkalt 5y ago
Personally I have not heard about a great game or experience in VR yet. Nothing I would like to call fun gaming or exploration. Put some VR chairs like in Tom Clancy's Special Netforce youth novels by Diane Duane and that might grab my attention. In a VR I do not want to walk around, but I want to control the character and feel like I am really there. And then of course that FB has its hands in play makes the whole thing stink from the start. Who would engage in any kind of personal interaction with that? At least not I.
- SergeAx 5y ago
  Half-Life Alyx is quite good. It can be played on a decent gaming PC plus Oculus Quest 2. I also adore Beat Saber, but mostly custom maps (Quest 2 version needs to be patched for it to work), and some social component is lost.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  My wife has used some exercise apps for the original Quest. It was really good for workouts when going to the gym wasn't possible. I've had some basic exercise and lots of fun with "Until You Fall" on the Index.
- elxr 5y ago
  Racing sims are where VR truly comes into its own. Racing sims especially. Many popular racing sims have great VR support, and a lot of them have very detailed textures (compared to the average VR game). Combine that with a good wheel and a structurally solid rig, and you really feel like you're driving an actual race car. The downside is that it does take up significant space and requires extra hardware (wheel, pedals, rig, etc.), which is a dealbreaker for many (me included at the moment).
  - lariati 5y ago
    I think it works exactly because you are not moving in a real car, the car is moving. With a physical wheel then just simulating vision makes it true virtual reality for car driving. Almost nothing else is like this though. Virtual reality swimming I think is the best example of why VR sucks in the general sense. The visual aspect is just a small aspect of the experience of swimming. We can't simulate any other aspect of it with VR goggles. Simulating most real life experience is much closer to the problem of swimming than the problem of driving a car.
- penjelly 5y ago
  > In a VR I do not want to walk around, but I want to control the character and feel like I am really there these are incongruent. > Who would engage in any kind of personal interaction with that? tons of people do regularly. see https://playtracker.net/insight/game/2704 https://playtracker.net/insight/game/2704 do note: not all vrchat users use VR everytime. but still the numbers arent insignificant. not to mention disabled people who cant participate in society as well as the average person, may want to experience a world where they can walk, go to the theater with their friends or swing around like spiderman. as for fun games in vr? try pavlovVR, into the radius, until you fall, beat saber, legendary tales...
f6v 5y ago
> Most people are not nerds like us and prefer to interact with people in person. People are also glued to phones. Children are making TikTok videos. My point is that people do interact online. The issue with VR is fidelity. It just doesn’t live up to what people imagined yet. Compare what we have to TV series like “Upload” from Amazon.
- lariati 5y ago
  There is also a problem that is exemplified by VR chess or VR poker. Anyone who wants to play chess or poker online most likely already has without VR. Sitting across a virtual table with a virtual person with an annoying headset on to play chess or poker online is practically a downgrade from what we have now. It is a one off parlor trick.
  - wan23 5y ago
    VR Poker is a HUGE upgrade from online poker on the web or an app because a poker game is a social experience that benefits from the sense of presence you can get with VR. Chess, not so much.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

Because VR is expensive and the value of the experience is limited. Decent VR experiences require space. Room scale requires, well, pretty much a whole room to play it in. A room free from obstacles. An entire empty room just to play a game. I have one such room, and several times I've found that games still insist on placing objects outside the designated walkable area. Most people do not have an entire room to dedicate to VR. And most VR experiences really aren't worth it. They're largely novelties rather than something you want to interact with every day. The only exception I've experienced so far is Beat Saber, but even that with it's minimal around-the-room movement frequently has to throw up the guardian because I swung my fist too close to a wall.

hangsi 5y ago

The chip shortage/pandemic has stunted what would have been a massive scale up in vr production in the last 2 years. This has been a brake to economies of scale applied across the industry, so the existing players can put their logistic efforts in to keeping up their supply of existing products at the same price as they launched, which is enough to start competitive. Without the shortage, I expect we would have seen many more and cheaper Oculus Quests being sold. For a point of reference, see purchasing the Valve Index, which last I saw if you buy from valve has a lead time of at least a month, despite launching in 2019.

iLoveOncall 5y ago

Because the effort required to play is absolutely huge. If I want to play a game on my PC I just double click the icon and I can start playing. If I want to play a game on my VR headset I need to move furniture to make space, then I need to unbox the headset, I need to put it on and take 3 min to adjust it because my girlfriend is the last one that used it, then I need to define the space available in the room, and then finally I can enjoy a 720p game, interrupted by the red walls of the guardian when I get too close to the limit of the space I defined. Then I'll need to move back the furniture and everything... The reason I barely play VR is because it's a chore to setup and I'll have to spend at least 15 min before being in an actual game.