249 - The Case Against VR

[matt]

Most of the talk coming out of GDC is about the future of virtual reality. While I am super excited about it and would love to develop VR games, I think there are many reasons why NOT to at least at this point.

[RightClickSaveAs]

Have you tried out the Oculus Rift DK2? I'm wondering how well the head tracking works out, and what kind of framerate you need to make it actually practical. I briefly entertained the thought of wasting some tax refund money on the DK 2, but have pretty much talked myself out of it. It wasn't that hard to do, given that A) I'm not a developer and can't even name a single title I'd want to try out at this point and B) my PC would probably need an upgrade first anyway.

The thing that's making me skeptical as a fairly cheap potential customer is first off, the fact that there are still no consumer models of any of this VR tech available. I mean it's been almost three years since the Oculus Rift was funded on Kickstarter, and still no release date in sight. The second issue is, like you discuss in the video, the fact that VR games are very much a genre, and at this point a REALLY niche one. Since it's not publicly available, there hasn't yet been a killer app for VR that makes everyone want to buy one, like say, Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64. I'm sure that game sold so many N64s when the hardware was still brand new. I'm sure people are working on what they think the VR equivalent of Super Mario 64 right now, but until we actually get a chance to see it in action, I'm on the side that isn't convinced.

[matt]

I've tried DK1, DK2, Gear VR, and Morpheus version 1. I haven't tried Crescent Bay, which is Oculus's latest nor Valve or HTC's headsets.

It seems like actually setting up your computer to output to the Oculus Dev kits is a long and confusing process too, so it's definitely not consumer targeted.

Valve/HTC's Vive is supposed to come out this year, so it may be the first (non-mobile) VR headset. Gear VR had the best resolution out of any of them, which is a huge deal due to the way the optics work, but it doesn't have a lot of 3D horsepower. :-/

There are lots of people working on cool stuff in VR like my buddies at Owlchemy who did the Job Simulator VR game that Valve featured. I've also met the Classroom Aquatic guys, and their game is pretty hilarious. SoundSelf is amazing - especially in VR, but it seems pretty niche given that it's like an interactive meditative journey or simulated acid trip. haha

Personally, I think the best game for VR would be something like Jon Blow's The Witness, but that doesn't need VR and puzzle games aren't really my thing, so it may not be a killer app for me.

The peripherals VR makers are developing are interesting. Valve showed theirs, Sony has the Morpheus, but Oculus hasn't announced anything, and I imagine they aren't going to release anything consumer facing without that piece of the puzzle. However using that makes the job of developers harder since there aren't many (any?) good PS Move games (well, Kung Fu Rider was absolutely hilarious when I played it at E3, but I never picked it up). In my mind, it seems like the killer app is years away, and if that is the case, then they aren't going to move that many units until that is developed. I think the killer app may rise out of the indie space because I can't imagine developers investing a AAA budget of say $50 million into developing a VR-only game until the market is there.

So it seems like a chicken and egg sort of thing. Maybe Oculus will use some of that amazing facebook moneys to make something cool or maybe Valve will design Half Life 3 around it, but I think for a while, we are going to be looking at glorified tech demos or ports to VR that are cool but don't really require it.

[RightClickSaveAs]

Oh wow, I didn't even realize there were that many different VR systems in the works. I may not be the exact target market for this!

The Valve one sounds promising. It seems like Valve really commit to something when they decide to, and one of their autonomous, independent cabals happen to coalesce and converge on the project or whatever weirdness they do over there. Oh man designing Half-Life 3 around VR would sell me on their kit in a heartbeat.

[matt]

Some people felt let down by Steam machines and the Steam controller, but I think it's better for Valve to take their time than half ass things. I wrote a REALLY long piece of feedback to Valve a while back about how they needed an analog stick as well as a cross on the Steam controller, and I am very pleased that they added both. I am anxious to get my hands on the final hardware. It'd be nice if devs could get early hardware, but I'm not sure if that'll happen. Neverending Nightmares supports the old Steam controller at least.

It seems like VR is going to be like mobile hardware where there is a new (better) version every year (or 6 months). If you don't have a lot of money to spend on it, it'd probably be better to get version 2.0 or wait for a price drop.

In my opinion, I think the key things for VR are:
1) Higher rez - 1920x1080 isn't enough (at least not in the DK2). It is possible that they can make the pixels less obvious with different optics
2) High framerate - 60 Hz might not be enough
3) Great tracking - Supposedly Valve's is the best for this but it might need a lot of space.
4) Wide field of view

I don't care quite as much about the input mechanisms personally, but what I think they really need to be working on is eye tracking. It is really weird to look around only to see things out of focus although that might tie into the FOV.