11 ms·

Valve's SteamVR solves big problems and poses bigger questions

191 points by jsnell 12y ago

marze 12y ago
Does anyone doubt this will technology will be the biggest advance in human-computer interactions in decades?
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  Sane people?
- aluhut 12y ago
  At least for those who can afford it. We'll see how this works out over time. But I really look forward to it. Especially together with some "real" SciFi-Style Cyberspace. I however don't see me running around with that in my room. Maybe I'm too old for that but it's not what I have in my mind when I think about VR devices. What I think of is Cyberpunk. Gibson. Guys starving in their chair having such a device on my head. I still have a Wii flying around somewhere in the dust...
  - WalterSear 12y ago
    IMHO, it will be stupid cheap in no time at all.
    - zemvpferreira 12y ago
      Agreed - Even now we're talking a about spending a ballpark $200-$500 for a VR headset, plus $1500 on a computer to run the software (that a lot of us already have). That's not a trivial amount of money, but it's hardly outside the reach of anyone in the developed world. Consider that computers, microwaves and maybe even TV's started at tens of thousands of dollars - and that's before adjusting for inflation - and it's hard not to say it's already stupidly good value for money for an entirely new medium.
      - endergen 12y ago
        I have the Gear VR and the DK2. I think mobile VR is going to take off just as fast as a category than desktop VR. I personally find it being wireless/portable to be worth the loss of positional tracking. I'm sure they'll get mobile positional tracking working in no time and then it will just blow hardline VR out of the water (caveat, minus having less fancy graphics), and it will definitely get cheap fast. It's already only $250 for the VR holder plus a Galaxy Note 4. Once they fuse these things together into one project and also streamline the hardware even more it will only get cheaper and lighter.
        runewell 12y ago
        I agree, I love my Gear VR but I think the mobile solution needs to be an all-in-one device. I could see mobile and desktop VR using the same headset. With USB-C they could charge the headset battery while allowing you to power the display via your desktop computer, then when you disconnect it will switch to the on-board mobile hardware capabilities.
- Signez 12y ago
  Me. It will, for sure, improve some human-computer interactions in a few domains where it is easily deployable (mainly entertainment and industrial manipulations). Other than that, I don't see it used that much. It is still cumbersome to wear, doesn't seem to be usable in mobility, and won't solve common problems in a business environment. (But I'm still waiting for it, heh.)
  - reilly3000 12y ago
    I think that real time data visualization is the killer app for VR in business. That and building business processes in Minecraft with redstone. srsly. There is a generation of kids that it will be like a second tongue to.
    - XorNot 12y ago
      I'd pay several thousands of dollars for a headset which was high enough resolution to code on (in normal font sizes). Just drop the monitors altogether and have a virtual environment for it. Lighthouse is really exciting in that way because being able to get peripherals into virtual space accurately would be a boon.
  - isaiahg 12y ago
    I had my questions too. That was until I tried VirtualDesktop. It literally makes your desktop into a big screen display floating right in front of you. For a background you can have a space scene with a planet similar to Saturn and asteroids floating around you. Immediately I fired up and watched 2001 A Space Odyssey on my new virtual big screen display. I could also work on code in any editor. It's just your desktop in virtual space. But this gives me some neat ideas, especially business applications. Startups that exist only online are not that uncommon. Imagine a virtual office application where employees across the world can work together in a virtual space. It could be a office setting or on the bridge of the Enterprise. Each employee has a workstation with displays that you could check out in real time. For example, say you're having an issue with a database, you could get up and move over to the work station of your admin and help resolve it and see what he does on his screen. You could have meetings on the moon. And all while working from home, thousands of miles apart. Combined with voice group chat, it could be a killer app. As someone working on an indie studio in Texas, with my partner based in New Jersey, the idea of doing that makes me very excited.
- endergen 12y ago
  I feel that zeal occasionally, but smart phones and having a portable computer on you at all times probably deserves that award. But why do we have to play favorites?! I love all tech children equally. Especially when they combine into Mobile VR!! :)
- Throwaway90283 12y ago
  I'm hoping it brings some fun, education uses. For example, VR cooking with Gordon Ramsey, where you're in a virtual kitchen, cooking along with a professional chef. Or VR public speaking. Most people are scared of speaking in public, so you can practice in front of a VR crowd. You could have DLC for classroom speaking, weddings, boardrooms, etc. I figure you could setup a 3D 360 camera in front of a group of volunteers, and then just use that video for the VR experience. It would also be great for training. Ever run a backhoe? A typical setup is two sticks for moving the bucket, so you could make an easy simulator with the Valve VR controllers to give people practice in a variety of situations. Or driving simulators for new drivers, where they can practice their parking. You need real world training for all of the above, but I'd be curious to see how the VR training could help people get started. I wouldn't buy a VR headset for any of these things alone, but combine it with games, entertainment, virtual workspaces (you could be sitting in a 10x10 basement, but feel like you're sitting at a desk in a penthouse overlooking New York), and I think they could be quite versatile, and a worthwhile purchase. I can imagine big business in creating alternate reality assets, such as virtual homes. I wonder if you could combine the real world and the virtual world as well. For example, I'm building a new home, so I make a 20x20 room, dividing a 5x20 and 15x20 section with a sliding door. I put a bed in the 15x20 area, and a railing in the 5x20 section. There's nothing passed the railing, it's just a railing 2ft from a blank wall. However, I create a virtual world that matches the geometry. I put on the headset, and I can sit down on my virtual bed, or walk across the room and slide the door to the balcony. With the headset, the balcony looks like it's on the 20th floor, overlooking the ocean. I can lean on the railing and look down at the world below, while in the real world, I'm just wearing a headset staring at the wall in front of me. I could put a fan in the 5x20 room, so in VR, it feels like there's a breeze on the balcony. It sounds a little crazy, but is it? You can turn an unfinished space, such as a basement, into a billion dollar VR dream home. There could be a VR home generator, where you enter the floor plan of your basement, and it generates a VR home with rooms and doors that match that space. I'm curious to see where things go, it'll be an interesting decade.
  - runewell 12y ago
    Great ideas, I can see public speaking becoming a large attraction. VR-based conferences may gain popularity where you can watch presentations and do a live Q&A at the end. Imagine a programming conference where you get a digital goody-bag of software and/or source code.
- pikachu_is_cool 12y ago
  It's not virtual reality. It's just headphones for your eyes.
- runewell 12y ago
  Yeah, it does surprise me when technical people still show skepticism towards VR. I could see how a person could assume it's going to take another 5 years of iteration to be worthy of mass adoption but after the recent MWC and GDC conferences it seems clear to me that VR is here to stay and will only improve over time. The enthusiasm alone is driving innovation in this market at an insane pace and the consumer devices haven't even launched yet.
- DonGateley 12y ago
  It has that potential but corporate greed will turn it into a tower of incompatible babble.
Animats 12y ago
Ah. He just tried a VR headset in an environment where you can move around. If you haven't seen that before, it's impressive. You need a lot of floor space to get the real effect of movement. You also need reliable motion tracking and a display image solidly aligned with the real world, or users will fall down, or, in a non-flat environment, fall off things. This could bring back laser tag.
- funkyy 12y ago
  When did the laser tag go away?
- gerbal 12y ago
  IIRC there are some algorithms that can subtly alter headset feedback vs actual motion to make a VR user walk in circles instead of into a wall.
  - swimfar 12y ago
    Yeah, that's a pretty cool concept. Here's an example: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-virtual-reality-team-infinite-environments.html http://phys.org/news/2013-04-virtual-reality-team-infinite-e... edit: Actually, that doesn't seem to be what I was thinking of. Here are some examples of redirected walking: http://eprints.utas.edu.au/109/1/AISAT-Redirected.pdf http://eprints.utas.edu.au/109/1/AISAT-Redirected.pdf http://vrguy.blogspot.com/2013/07/redirected-walking-can-save-you-from.html http://vrguy.blogspot.com/2013/07/redirected-walking-can-sav... http://cb.nowan.net/blog/2008/12/02/redirected-walking-playing-with-your-perceptions-limits/ http://cb.nowan.net/blog/2008/12/02/redirected-walking-playi...
    - Animats 12y ago
      That's a good idea. People can't tell very accurately through what angle they turned. People are good at walking straight without visual cues, though. They have to force the users to make a lot of turns to keep them in the workspace. This probably requires a gym-sized space to work well. You could have multiple people in it, if the game kept them bunched up and on the same illusory axes, so their relative positions matched in the real world and VR. This could bring back something like LAN parties. You need a big empty space, and everybody brings their headgear.
bglazer 12y ago
I developed a mild fascination with omnidirectional treadmills a while back. It's such an interesting engineering challenge. Anyways, the large size and hefty cost of these treadmills seems almost unavoidable, and therefore makes them unappealing to a large consumer market. It also seems like this technology is the obvious next step for VR. So, that leads me to the conclusion that perhaps there might be some future resurgence of the arcade. Except they'll have VR headsets and omnidirectional treadmills instead of Pacman. Wait, maybe there will be Pacman, but you'll be running.
- endergen 12y ago
  I think natural walking is more likely to take off. Why abstract it when you can just walk. Sure there will be issues with running out of real world space. But that can probably be solved via some sort of body based gesture. I say this, after going through the original Crescent Bay demo at Oculus Connect, where being able to walk around even within a 4x4 foot cube of space it was amazing having real world movement match your characters.
  - bglazer 12y ago
    I think it's running that opens up a lot of possibilities. That's really not possible in the vast majority of spaces, especially with a headset. Maybe I'm overestimating the amount of physical effort people are willing to take for video games, but there's some precedent with Dance Dance Revolution for example.
    - jay_kyburz 12y ago
      No, I think you are right. You can't play Counter Strike or Team Fortress and casually walk around the map. If you're making a dash for the flag you need to run. Also, walls.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - 12y ago
mml 12y ago
Excuse me while I pen a letter to Mr Newell re: building an arcade at every destination mall in the country. Brb.
- m_mueller 12y ago
  I'm really looking forward to the return of game centers / arcades to experience VR. I was a bit too young in the 80ies to see the end of the arcade craze that could even lead to coin shortages in Japan. I could even see asymmetric multiplayer games to come out of this - players sitting in arcades around virtual tables are the generals having a situation overview, while players on their home consoles are the FPS foot soldiers / pilots. Imagine planetary or space battles unfolding like that... [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders#Impact_and_legacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders#Impact_and_legac...
siavosh 12y ago
Does anyone have a sense yet of how the Oculus and Steam sets compare?
jay_kyburz 12y ago
All this VR stuff is just another fad like 3D TV and movies. I've tried the Oculus DK2 and the headsets are still too heavy on your face, too low res, and not responsive enough. The problem is that "immersion" is just not important enough. It doesn't add enough to the experience to overcome the downsides.
- cma 12y ago
  Crystal cove is supposedly way lighter. Sony Morpheus attaches to your head in an entirely different way. Valve's is still supposed to be a bit heavy. DK2 is pretty damn responsive, but only if you have everything set up just right and are on a beefy GPU. Resolution is going to go up rapidly, we already have 1440p phones. Playing half-life 2 with Razer hydras converted me even back on dk1. I expect room scale walking to be even more immersive than moving around with the joystick on the hydras, but way limited in what types of games translate well due to room size. But I think they can do some great things, a lot of what we do in the real world is room-scale. Just hanging out in a virtual theater with friends watching content is pretty awesome already, your friends just aren't there yet. It does separate you from your body and give you a blindfolded feeling, lots of improvement needed there. For that reason AR will probably overtake it for a lot of uses for a long time.
- dcre 12y ago
  While I was not as plugged in to tech news back then, I'm pretty sure no one emerged from demos of 3D TVs barely able to speak because they were so impressed. And I do see that a lot in the VR press these days. I also own a DK2.
- gambiting 12y ago
  I don't know if you realized, but DK stands for "development kit". PS4 development kit is a huge metal brick which weights like 10kg and is super loud, but I wouldn't judge the retail console based on the development product. Also - the bit about the immersion - it's just your opinion.
DonGateley 12y ago
I fear that all of this is a race to produce incompatible consumption devices for proprietary paid content channels. I do not expect to see open content for them via open channels and sincerely hope I'm wrong. Steam is just one of the players that will give you access to their content exclusively via their channel on their device. It's all modeled on Apple. I was once very excited about VR but watching what is happening has cooled my interest considerably. It will probably be a long time before the shakeout that can make it interesting again.
- matthew-wegner 12y ago
  Valve is going to give away their "Lighthouse" room-tracking technology: "So we're gonna just give that away. What we want is for that to be like USB. It's not some special secret sauce. It's like everybody in the PC community will benefit if there's this useful technology out there. So if you want to build it into your mice, or build it into your monitors, or your TVs, anybody can do it." http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/04/valve-vr-input/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/04/valve-vr-input/
  - DonGateley 12y ago
    That is indeed a good sign if not definitive. Given your creds you've made me much more optimistic.
- on_and_off 12y ago
  At least Steam is available on all desktop OSes and once you buy a game for one platform, it is available for all of them. I share your concern on the absence of ownership and the DRMs though.
sago 12y ago
I hope this isn't the way it goes. For purely selfish reasons. As a wheelchair user, VR has the potential to provide sets of experiences that are difficult for me to find elsewhere, like running, jumping, exploring spaces with verticality. But not if I have to wheel myself slowly around a 15' area doing n-point turns with my controllers on my knees. Ah, I can't blame them, but it will be sad not to be able to access these experiences. And, even for able bodied folks, isn't part of the fun of games being able to do virtually things you're not able to do in real life? Limiting games to walking around a small room - might give you immersion, but is that really going to be fun in the long run?
- cma 12y ago
  You should support OSVR, people would be able to modify the SDK to support moving the head around with a joystick regardless of whether an individual game supports it or not. Multiplayer cheat detection might have a problem with it though :/ Oculus is open enough that you could do this on PC, especially once they start working with DLLs instead of static linking for their SDK. But the future with them is grim, you can't touch anything at that level in GearVR, or even sideload an app without a Facebook key signature. The last license change to the PC SDK added a copyright assignment clause; this could either be so that they can close everything in the future, or so that they can open it--with Facebook I'm guessing it's the former, but I hope not.
- gnarbarian 12y ago
  I bet we will see MORE ways to interact with simulations rather than less. That will mean there are new input methods you will not be able to take advantage of, but you will also have more choices for input. The xbox controller came out a long time ago but competitively the controller can't come close to the keyboard and mouse.
- nhaehnle 12y ago
  I'm torn about whether to agree with you. On the one hand, I absolutely see your point. On the other hand, having played around with two iterations of Oculus' VR headset, I absolutely understand where this direction is coming from: VR can be absolutely disorienting if there is in-VR motion that is unrelated to your physical motion. I've tried playing TF2, for example, and I couldn't stand it for very long. I imagine that I could get accustomed to a slower, single-player FPS eventually, but it would take some time. The people who are currently most visibly developing and pushing VR are careful about it because they don't want VR to get bad press from people getting sick, and I totally respect that. I do believe that there is hope that if/when VR becomes more widespread and socially accepted, developers will start pushing the boundaries over time, and we'll get the kind of VR that you're wishing for.

191 points by jsnell 12y ago

marze 12y ago

Does anyone doubt this will technology will be the biggest advance in human-computer interactions in decades?

JetSpiegel 12y ago
Sane people?
aluhut 12y ago
At least for those who can afford it. We'll see how this works out over time. But I really look forward to it. Especially together with some "real" SciFi-Style Cyberspace. I however don't see me running around with that in my room. Maybe I'm too old for that but it's not what I have in my mind when I think about VR devices. What I think of is Cyberpunk. Gibson. Guys starving in their chair having such a device on my head. I still have a Wii flying around somewhere in the dust...
- WalterSear 12y ago
  IMHO, it will be stupid cheap in no time at all.
  - zemvpferreira 12y ago
    Agreed - Even now we're talking a about spending a ballpark $200-$500 for a VR headset, plus $1500 on a computer to run the software (that a lot of us already have). That's not a trivial amount of money, but it's hardly outside the reach of anyone in the developed world. Consider that computers, microwaves and maybe even TV's started at tens of thousands of dollars - and that's before adjusting for inflation - and it's hard not to say it's already stupidly good value for money for an entirely new medium.
    - endergen 12y ago
      I have the Gear VR and the DK2. I think mobile VR is going to take off just as fast as a category than desktop VR. I personally find it being wireless/portable to be worth the loss of positional tracking. I'm sure they'll get mobile positional tracking working in no time and then it will just blow hardline VR out of the water (caveat, minus having less fancy graphics), and it will definitely get cheap fast. It's already only $250 for the VR holder plus a Galaxy Note 4. Once they fuse these things together into one project and also streamline the hardware even more it will only get cheaper and lighter.
      - runewell 12y ago
        I agree, I love my Gear VR but I think the mobile solution needs to be an all-in-one device. I could see mobile and desktop VR using the same headset. With USB-C they could charge the headset battery while allowing you to power the display via your desktop computer, then when you disconnect it will switch to the on-board mobile hardware capabilities.
Signez 12y ago
Me. It will, for sure, improve some human-computer interactions in a few domains where it is easily deployable (mainly entertainment and industrial manipulations). Other than that, I don't see it used that much. It is still cumbersome to wear, doesn't seem to be usable in mobility, and won't solve common problems in a business environment. (But I'm still waiting for it, heh.)
- reilly3000 12y ago
  I think that real time data visualization is the killer app for VR in business. That and building business processes in Minecraft with redstone. srsly. There is a generation of kids that it will be like a second tongue to.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    I'd pay several thousands of dollars for a headset which was high enough resolution to code on (in normal font sizes). Just drop the monitors altogether and have a virtual environment for it. Lighthouse is really exciting in that way because being able to get peripherals into virtual space accurately would be a boon.
- isaiahg 12y ago
  I had my questions too. That was until I tried VirtualDesktop. It literally makes your desktop into a big screen display floating right in front of you. For a background you can have a space scene with a planet similar to Saturn and asteroids floating around you. Immediately I fired up and watched 2001 A Space Odyssey on my new virtual big screen display. I could also work on code in any editor. It's just your desktop in virtual space. But this gives me some neat ideas, especially business applications. Startups that exist only online are not that uncommon. Imagine a virtual office application where employees across the world can work together in a virtual space. It could be a office setting or on the bridge of the Enterprise. Each employee has a workstation with displays that you could check out in real time. For example, say you're having an issue with a database, you could get up and move over to the work station of your admin and help resolve it and see what he does on his screen. You could have meetings on the moon. And all while working from home, thousands of miles apart. Combined with voice group chat, it could be a killer app. As someone working on an indie studio in Texas, with my partner based in New Jersey, the idea of doing that makes me very excited.
endergen 12y ago
I feel that zeal occasionally, but smart phones and having a portable computer on you at all times probably deserves that award. But why do we have to play favorites?! I love all tech children equally. Especially when they combine into Mobile VR!! :)
Throwaway90283 12y ago
I'm hoping it brings some fun, education uses. For example, VR cooking with Gordon Ramsey, where you're in a virtual kitchen, cooking along with a professional chef. Or VR public speaking. Most people are scared of speaking in public, so you can practice in front of a VR crowd. You could have DLC for classroom speaking, weddings, boardrooms, etc. I figure you could setup a 3D 360 camera in front of a group of volunteers, and then just use that video for the VR experience. It would also be great for training. Ever run a backhoe? A typical setup is two sticks for moving the bucket, so you could make an easy simulator with the Valve VR controllers to give people practice in a variety of situations. Or driving simulators for new drivers, where they can practice their parking. You need real world training for all of the above, but I'd be curious to see how the VR training could help people get started. I wouldn't buy a VR headset for any of these things alone, but combine it with games, entertainment, virtual workspaces (you could be sitting in a 10x10 basement, but feel like you're sitting at a desk in a penthouse overlooking New York), and I think they could be quite versatile, and a worthwhile purchase. I can imagine big business in creating alternate reality assets, such as virtual homes. I wonder if you could combine the real world and the virtual world as well. For example, I'm building a new home, so I make a 20x20 room, dividing a 5x20 and 15x20 section with a sliding door. I put a bed in the 15x20 area, and a railing in the 5x20 section. There's nothing passed the railing, it's just a railing 2ft from a blank wall. However, I create a virtual world that matches the geometry. I put on the headset, and I can sit down on my virtual bed, or walk across the room and slide the door to the balcony. With the headset, the balcony looks like it's on the 20th floor, overlooking the ocean. I can lean on the railing and look down at the world below, while in the real world, I'm just wearing a headset staring at the wall in front of me. I could put a fan in the 5x20 room, so in VR, it feels like there's a breeze on the balcony. It sounds a little crazy, but is it? You can turn an unfinished space, such as a basement, into a billion dollar VR dream home. There could be a VR home generator, where you enter the floor plan of your basement, and it generates a VR home with rooms and doors that match that space. I'm curious to see where things go, it'll be an interesting decade.
- runewell 12y ago
  Great ideas, I can see public speaking becoming a large attraction. VR-based conferences may gain popularity where you can watch presentations and do a live Q&A at the end. Imagine a programming conference where you get a digital goody-bag of software and/or source code.
pikachu_is_cool 12y ago
It's not virtual reality. It's just headphones for your eyes.
runewell 12y ago
Yeah, it does surprise me when technical people still show skepticism towards VR. I could see how a person could assume it's going to take another 5 years of iteration to be worthy of mass adoption but after the recent MWC and GDC conferences it seems clear to me that VR is here to stay and will only improve over time. The enthusiasm alone is driving innovation in this market at an insane pace and the consumer devices haven't even launched yet.
DonGateley 12y ago
It has that potential but corporate greed will turn it into a tower of incompatible babble.

Animats 12y ago

Ah. He just tried a VR headset in an environment where you can move around. If you haven't seen that before, it's impressive. You need a lot of floor space to get the real effect of movement. You also need reliable motion tracking and a display image solidly aligned with the real world, or users will fall down, or, in a non-flat environment, fall off things. This could bring back laser tag.

funkyy 12y ago
When did the laser tag go away?
gerbal 12y ago
IIRC there are some algorithms that can subtly alter headset feedback vs actual motion to make a VR user walk in circles instead of into a wall.
- swimfar 12y ago
  Yeah, that's a pretty cool concept. Here's an example: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-virtual-reality-team-infinite-environments.html http://phys.org/news/2013-04-virtual-reality-team-infinite-e... edit: Actually, that doesn't seem to be what I was thinking of. Here are some examples of redirected walking: http://eprints.utas.edu.au/109/1/AISAT-Redirected.pdf http://eprints.utas.edu.au/109/1/AISAT-Redirected.pdf http://vrguy.blogspot.com/2013/07/redirected-walking-can-save-you-from.html http://vrguy.blogspot.com/2013/07/redirected-walking-can-sav... http://cb.nowan.net/blog/2008/12/02/redirected-walking-playing-with-your-perceptions-limits/ http://cb.nowan.net/blog/2008/12/02/redirected-walking-playi...
  - Animats 12y ago
    That's a good idea. People can't tell very accurately through what angle they turned. People are good at walking straight without visual cues, though. They have to force the users to make a lot of turns to keep them in the workspace. This probably requires a gym-sized space to work well. You could have multiple people in it, if the game kept them bunched up and on the same illusory axes, so their relative positions matched in the real world and VR. This could bring back something like LAN parties. You need a big empty space, and everybody brings their headgear.

bglazer 12y ago

I developed a mild fascination with omnidirectional treadmills a while back. It's such an interesting engineering challenge. Anyways, the large size and hefty cost of these treadmills seems almost unavoidable, and therefore makes them unappealing to a large consumer market. It also seems like this technology is the obvious next step for VR. So, that leads me to the conclusion that perhaps there might be some future resurgence of the arcade. Except they'll have VR headsets and omnidirectional treadmills instead of Pacman. Wait, maybe there will be Pacman, but you'll be running.

endergen 12y ago
I think natural walking is more likely to take off. Why abstract it when you can just walk. Sure there will be issues with running out of real world space. But that can probably be solved via some sort of body based gesture. I say this, after going through the original Crescent Bay demo at Oculus Connect, where being able to walk around even within a 4x4 foot cube of space it was amazing having real world movement match your characters.
- bglazer 12y ago
  I think it's running that opens up a lot of possibilities. That's really not possible in the vast majority of spaces, especially with a headset. Maybe I'm overestimating the amount of physical effort people are willing to take for video games, but there's some precedent with Dance Dance Revolution for example.
  - jay_kyburz 12y ago
    No, I think you are right. You can't play Counter Strike or Team Fortress and casually walk around the map. If you're making a dash for the flag you need to run. Also, walls.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - 12y ago

mml 12y ago

Excuse me while I pen a letter to Mr Newell re: building an arcade at every destination mall in the country. Brb.

m_mueller 12y ago
I'm really looking forward to the return of game centers / arcades to experience VR. I was a bit too young in the 80ies to see the end of the arcade craze that could even lead to coin shortages in Japan. I could even see asymmetric multiplayer games to come out of this - players sitting in arcades around virtual tables are the generals having a situation overview, while players on their home consoles are the FPS foot soldiers / pilots. Imagine planetary or space battles unfolding like that... [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders#Impact_and_legacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders#Impact_and_legac...

siavosh 12y ago

Does anyone have a sense yet of how the Oculus and Steam sets compare?

jay_kyburz 12y ago

All this VR stuff is just another fad like 3D TV and movies. I've tried the Oculus DK2 and the headsets are still too heavy on your face, too low res, and not responsive enough. The problem is that "immersion" is just not important enough. It doesn't add enough to the experience to overcome the downsides.

cma 12y ago
Crystal cove is supposedly way lighter. Sony Morpheus attaches to your head in an entirely different way. Valve's is still supposed to be a bit heavy. DK2 is pretty damn responsive, but only if you have everything set up just right and are on a beefy GPU. Resolution is going to go up rapidly, we already have 1440p phones. Playing half-life 2 with Razer hydras converted me even back on dk1. I expect room scale walking to be even more immersive than moving around with the joystick on the hydras, but way limited in what types of games translate well due to room size. But I think they can do some great things, a lot of what we do in the real world is room-scale. Just hanging out in a virtual theater with friends watching content is pretty awesome already, your friends just aren't there yet. It does separate you from your body and give you a blindfolded feeling, lots of improvement needed there. For that reason AR will probably overtake it for a lot of uses for a long time.
dcre 12y ago
While I was not as plugged in to tech news back then, I'm pretty sure no one emerged from demos of 3D TVs barely able to speak because they were so impressed. And I do see that a lot in the VR press these days. I also own a DK2.
gambiting 12y ago
I don't know if you realized, but DK stands for "development kit". PS4 development kit is a huge metal brick which weights like 10kg and is super loud, but I wouldn't judge the retail console based on the development product. Also - the bit about the immersion - it's just your opinion.

DonGateley 12y ago

I fear that all of this is a race to produce incompatible consumption devices for proprietary paid content channels. I do not expect to see open content for them via open channels and sincerely hope I'm wrong. Steam is just one of the players that will give you access to their content exclusively via their channel on their device. It's all modeled on Apple. I was once very excited about VR but watching what is happening has cooled my interest considerably. It will probably be a long time before the shakeout that can make it interesting again.

matthew-wegner 12y ago
Valve is going to give away their "Lighthouse" room-tracking technology: "So we're gonna just give that away. What we want is for that to be like USB. It's not some special secret sauce. It's like everybody in the PC community will benefit if there's this useful technology out there. So if you want to build it into your mice, or build it into your monitors, or your TVs, anybody can do it." http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/04/valve-vr-input/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/04/valve-vr-input/
- DonGateley 12y ago
  That is indeed a good sign if not definitive. Given your creds you've made me much more optimistic.
on_and_off 12y ago
At least Steam is available on all desktop OSes and once you buy a game for one platform, it is available for all of them. I share your concern on the absence of ownership and the DRMs though.

sago 12y ago

I hope this isn't the way it goes. For purely selfish reasons. As a wheelchair user, VR has the potential to provide sets of experiences that are difficult for me to find elsewhere, like running, jumping, exploring spaces with verticality. But not if I have to wheel myself slowly around a 15' area doing n-point turns with my controllers on my knees. Ah, I can't blame them, but it will be sad not to be able to access these experiences. And, even for able bodied folks, isn't part of the fun of games being able to do virtually things you're not able to do in real life? Limiting games to walking around a small room - might give you immersion, but is that really going to be fun in the long run?

cma 12y ago
You should support OSVR, people would be able to modify the SDK to support moving the head around with a joystick regardless of whether an individual game supports it or not. Multiplayer cheat detection might have a problem with it though :/ Oculus is open enough that you could do this on PC, especially once they start working with DLLs instead of static linking for their SDK. But the future with them is grim, you can't touch anything at that level in GearVR, or even sideload an app without a Facebook key signature. The last license change to the PC SDK added a copyright assignment clause; this could either be so that they can close everything in the future, or so that they can open it--with Facebook I'm guessing it's the former, but I hope not.
gnarbarian 12y ago
I bet we will see MORE ways to interact with simulations rather than less. That will mean there are new input methods you will not be able to take advantage of, but you will also have more choices for input. The xbox controller came out a long time ago but competitively the controller can't come close to the keyboard and mouse.
nhaehnle 12y ago
I'm torn about whether to agree with you. On the one hand, I absolutely see your point. On the other hand, having played around with two iterations of Oculus' VR headset, I absolutely understand where this direction is coming from: VR can be absolutely disorienting if there is in-VR motion that is unrelated to your physical motion. I've tried playing TF2, for example, and I couldn't stand it for very long. I imagine that I could get accustomed to a slower, single-player FPS eventually, but it would take some time. The people who are currently most visibly developing and pushing VR are careful about it because they don't want VR to get bad press from people getting sick, and I totally respect that. I do believe that there is hope that if/when VR becomes more widespread and socially accepted, developers will start pushing the boundaries over time, and we'll get the kind of VR that you're wishing for.