I think games where the player is static is a good place to start. In addition to simulators, I could see god games, rail shooters and puzzle games all working well in VR. Even a game with restrained movement like a slow-paced mech shooter or old-school first person RPG (think Ultima Underworld) could turn out great. Making the player aware of the dissonance between the virtual and physical worlds is the immersion-killing poison that VR game developers must avoid.
Finally, I'd like to make note of the many non-gaming applications of VR that could turn it into a compelling platform. The platform has tons of potential in fields such as art [1], manufacturing [2], education [3][4], health care [5] and the list goes on. VR can be used to enhance these applications but not if it's treated like a cheap gimmick.
If VR flounders it will be because developers failed to tap into the vast market of VR software waiting to be unlocked. The key is imagination.
[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/leoking/2014/05/03/ford-where-vi...
[3] http://www.roadtovr.com/it-time-we-started-talking-specifics...
[4] http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/17/museum-collections-enter-vr...
What are some really cool situations in which you can simply be present and be completely immersed? When I refocus my perspective this way, I think about being at a movie -- in a movie. Maybe I'm the gunner in the Millennium Falcon. Maybe I'm just a spectator on a nearby ship. Or maybe I'm sitting in a sports arena, as if really at the game, watching it and taking it in in a way I can't through my TV alone. Maybe I couldn't afford tickets to the Radiohead tour, but I can buy a virtual seat at any of the worldwide tour venues and see the concert with those crowds. That seems really fucking cool. I want to do that. I want to do that right now. And I don't need to run or jump around when I'm there. All I want to do is sit, and watch, and listen, and be present. And be immersed.
Whenever people think of VR, their thoughts immediately turn to gaming, and then they get disappointed when they realize that VR Skyrim or VR Grand Theft Auto (or what have you) isn't in the cards anytime soon. Instead of thinking about awesome scenarios where VR will fall short of the status quo, we should think of fun scenarios where VP will be a big step up from the status quo.
Does anyone have links to actual examples? The Rift dev kit has been available for a while now. Developers should have gotten past the 'VR makes too many people sick' phase and started looking at new ideas. What are these new ideas?
Personally I'm a little disappointed that most of the hype around VR has been explicitly focusing on the gaming aspect. The non-gaming applications of VR are much more exciting to me. I want a meditation room, where I can sit on a stormy mountain to think. I want to program in a virtual room with monitors on every surface, and pieces of code fixed in space, where I move to the code instead of the other way around. Maybe it'll work and maybe it won't - its impossible to know until the hardware gets good enough to try.
VR has been around since the 60's, and has not "unlocked" anything noteworthy.
Sure, this "round" of VR might be the best yet graphically, but it still hasn't solved any of the problems that prevented the original 1960's implementations from taking over in storm.
These being: No "AAA" support, too few games, too expensive of devices, motion sickness, and more!
It's almost like folks think this is the first time VR has come to market... "imagine all the possibilities!" - the same promises time after time after time again. What makes this iteration anything different?
Maybe some folks have high hopes due to the Facebook stewardship - I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, but Facebook has been anything but a good steward of Oculus.
They have not used their size or bank accounts to convince "AAA" studios to embrace VR, nor have they subsidized Oculus purchases to lower cost-of-entry for consumers. About the only thing they have done is go against all of their initial promises to not "Facebook-ify" VR[1] and turn the thing into yet another extension of the Facebook Social machine.
> The platform has tons of potential in fields such as art [1], manufacturing [2], education [3][4], health care [5] and the list goes on
VR will ultimately do nothing for these fields. AR advances will ultimately be what these industries end up embracing. You lose far too much environmental awareness when both eyes are staring at a narrow-focus screen without peripheral visibility, etc. AR allows the user to work and behave like normal, only their vision is augmented with additional useful information. It's less intrusive and disruptive, and has very few of the issues that plague VR.
AR is already widely deployed and in mass use. Any HUD is a form of AR (this covers everything from airplanes to cars to robots to google glass, camera viewfinders, etc...).
[1] http://www.wired.com/2016/02/mark-zuckerberg-plays-zero-grav...
> it still hasn't solved any of the problems that prevented the original 1960's implementations from taking over in storm.
So much progress has been made with VR since then. A lot of problems have been solved.
Motion sickeness has been solved - when your motion 1:1 matches that of your virtual body there is no problem. Where there is a mismatch, there can be a problem (for about 30% of the population who are sensitive to this). So informed developers know how to create experiences that induce no sickness.
Regarding no AAA support / too few games - they are working on it. There will be over 50 games usable for the Vive at launch. There are some pretty big name games, like Elite Dangerous. Google, Valve and other big names are working on/have made stuff.
>What makes this iteration anything different?
Because it's actually at a point where it's usable now. Mobile phone popularity was one of the things that made this wave of VR possible as it drove forward the technology used.
>VR will ultimately do nothing for these fields.
There are VR applications that are currently for those fields mentioned, for example Tilt brush is generally received very well by artists and creative people.
I believe VR and AR will converge somewhat. VR has a headstart, and AR will adopt many of the technology, tools and techniques that VR uses. The Vive has a camera and can do limited AR, as can most mobile VR headsests.
I agree, that for a lot of applications - especially work-related then AR is better.
But when I game, I don't care about peripheral vision, I want to be in another world. Ultimately I want a headset that can switch between AR and VR modes.
I would nitpick this.
Regardless, I don't see anywhere near the level of give a shit for AR that there is for VR from the press and investors.
Supremely frustrating as an AR dev.
and in two years, nothing major has really changed. This makes me think that we're in for yet another VR "thrust and bust".
But AR, AR stands a chance. It is not hugely different to our existing uses of media technology - one more screen, in a different location, supplementing the existing experience. And it has good cross-over into VR for the remaining experiences that do work well in immersion mode. That might buy VR time to develop gradually for a few decades, like silent film. There are some things that are worth exploring with VR, but the tech really needs to be in mass adoption first.
There are several instances in last 150 years where a patent or some other restriction caused others to innovate around a restriction and the end result was far superior because of it.
I definitely see that happening with vr.
Remake of N64's Pokémon Snap
We're talking about big-budget "AAA" games, which drive console and pc sales alike. Excluding them, immediately destroys any notion that VR may become anything more than a niche product and go fully "mainstream".
> As an example I've tried a lot, sim games
I enjoy these games as well, but recognize their market appeal is very narrow. These games don't drive sales of consoles or PC's.
> I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that there are and will be more new games that fit VR well
Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen until VR becomes mainstream, which it probably will not for the reasons listed in the GP post. In order for a studio to take the enormous risk of developing something entirely new, they need as close to a guarantee as possible to get back at least their investment. With VR poised to be nothing more than a niche product, this becomes a huge risk.
Now, maybe Facebook and their deep pockets could subsidize development of these games (effectively pay "AAA" studios to natively support VR), but that doesn't appear to be happening... otherwise they would have done that before the flagship product launched, and "AAA" studios are not in a "release cycle" at the moment (which tends to be October-November for the really big "AAA" projects).
VR has been around a long, long time. I know, most folks say "but this time it's different", but in reality it's plagued today by the exact same issues it has been plagued with all along.
No "AAA" support, too few games, too expensive of devices, motion sickness, and more!
> AAA games are generally of a certain type now, but that is not a universal law which will remain true forever
Essentially, it is. These are the games that grab people's attention, have grabbed their attention, and will continue to grab their attention. Nobody is going to spend $600+ to play Bejeweled in VR... but they might to play CoD, Fallout, Battlefield, GTA, Skyrim, etc. All are "AAA" titles, and all could offer a new level of immersion with VR - but none support VR natively (and they had plenty of opportunity to do so before launch).
Well, they don't drive PC and console sales, perhaps in part due to the limitations of the existing platforms.
Driving and especially flying games suffer more from the limited point-of-view. I'm often switching to the 3rd-person view to get a better handle on how my car is placed on the track.
For combat flight sims, one of the UI staples for the last 20 years has been showing markers on the edge of the screen to indicate the current target. You spend a lot of the time in those games without your enemy in view, which, frankly, stinks. But that's the limitation of the current platforms based around a monitor / TV. There have been hacks to help with this, but they aren't that great IMHO.
VR could really help these types of games have a much broader appeal, because of the immersion.
I could also imagine a Window Manager where every window is placed in a large (huge) sphere that surrounds you and your chair (you are stationary in the middle). You could turn you head to see and interact with windows that are nearby or you could zoom out and rotate the whole sphere by using some shortcut or other device (maybe an ergonomic mouse with a ball on top of it [1], such that the sphere around you rotates in the same direction as the ball of the mouse). You could still map virtual desktops to a zone on the sphere (or perhaps just create virtual spheres). With some handy keyboard shortcuts I could imagine this to became quite awesome. Especially for programmers that use many windows at the same time.
1: http://www.ergodirect.com/images/Logitech/16728/large/Logite...
Then don't make those games for VR.
This might be cliche, but VR is not just a new accessory for an existing platform. It's a completely new platform. It needs new content that fits it -- shoehorning existing content into it will generally suck. Wandering around Skyrim sounds cool but will not work. Sorry.
As an example I've tried a lot, sim games (car, plane) work really well with VR. If there clearly is a cockpit around you and a seat you are sitting in inside the virtual world, your brain is fine with you sitting in your comfy chair.
Of course, not everyone will enjoy sim games. However, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that there are and will be more new games that fit VR well. These will probably include entirely new genres of content that are not compelling or interesting on a monitor but work well on VR. Conversely, some genres will never translate well into VR.