It is not a gimmick. It seems that you have not yet tried it. There are a few improvements required, such as resolution and the freedom of movement.

Note that I did not mention price. It will come down – even more, that is.

Also, they need Half Life 2 Episode III. The series ended in a cliffhanger.

No one tried it because it's expensive AF. And you need space. And there are so many of them. And the storefronts don't match. And there are no games. And you sweat. And they're heavy. And you need a monster PC. And it doesn't work. And and and.

It's a gimmick.

Alyx is a $2000 game for a normal gamer, counting an index and a sizeable PC upgrade.

> No one tried it because it's expensive AF.

If you already have a gaming PC, you just need a headset. I got mine for $300 on a Black Friday. Is that 'expensive AF'?

If you are buying a PC for the sole purpose of using it with a VR headset, then fine. But who does that?

> And you need space.

Not that much. And depends on the game. If you are playing flight simulators you need zero additional space. I have a small room and it is enough space.

> And there are so many of them

It's the first time I hear that. There's Vive, there's Rift (and now the Index). Forget about all the Windows reality or whatever it's called. That's not much.

> And the storefronts don't match

Who cares. Get your games from the Steam store. Same storefront.

> And there are no games

Debatable. There's quite a few VR-only games, and even more games that support VR (even the good old Skyrim has VR support).

> And you sweat.

That will never be solved, you are moving after all. If you are talking just around the headpiece, than it's a case of YMMV.

> And they're heavy.

Not really. May be a bit inconvenient, but at least the Rift doesn't seem to weight more than my bike helmet. And, you know, I move much more with the latter.

> And you need a monster PC

No you don't. That's again game dependent. The kid's $600 PC runs all VR titles he cares about just fine. You just have to prioritize the GPU, as you should with any 'gamer' PC.

> And it doesn't work

It works great.

> It's a gimmick.

It's an uninformed opinion. You need to try it, rather than regurgitating opinions you saw somewhere.

Those are all engineering and logistical challenges, and there's no reason to believe that they won't be overcome eventually.

A gimmick is something that, even in its best form, is not compelling in the long run. VR sounds like the opposite - it's not compelling to that many people yet because it has known issues, but fix those issues, and it would be.

That's a lot of challenges.

And even if all that happens: VR takes away a lot by restricting movement to a ridiculous level. And it only adds stuff that is fun for about three times and already looks lame after watching the trailer a second time. You might be right, but I can't see this go anywhere.

The real challenge is no haptic feedback, which I don't think there is any real way to overcome. The better the visuals get the more your brain rebels at not being able to touch anything or feel motion when moving.

> your brain rebels at not being able to touch anything

As long as the game has you using 'tools', then it's fine. The moment it wants you to use actual hands, then it becomes a problem. Haptic feedback would help immensely, but there's no real way to overcome not feeling resistance if you are, for instance, pushing an object.

> or feel motion when moving.

True. This is why people get motion sickness.

Yeah, I have a hard time imagining doing all this stuff in the game without haptic feedback, like loading the gun etc.

> expensive AF

Google Daydream headset and controller are $60, and operate with the smartphone people already own (assuming you've got a decently-beefy smartphone). Price is hitting record lows on this hardware.

60$ of hardware is not the same experience as a $1000 Valve index

It definitely isn't, but you wrote off all of VR as a gimmick, then you gave reasons for your assertion. One of those reasons doesn't apply to all of VR.

That is technically correct.

> No one tried it because it's expensive AF

Uh...what...

HTC has sold over 1.5 million headsets. Oculus over 2 million, and Sony has been leading the way with over 5 million PSVR headsets sold.

You are incredibly uninformed.

Hard to say. VR might be a gimmick in the game space. On the other hand, taking a step back and looking at the hardware, there's been a progression since at least the '70s of working immersive infrastructure getting cheaper, easier to use, and less nausea-inducing.

This local maxima of design and hardware may be a fad, but if it is, I expect in my lifetime to see another fad in maybe 10 years. The tech is just getting too cheap for people to not risk throwing a few mil at it every so often.

Nope. It is not a gimmick and will definitely be a "thing" in the foreseeable future. So we have different ideas of the foreseeable future, interesting.

I've been saying the same thing ever since I tried VR in 1989.

One day it's going to be great. Probably not soon, but one day!

Nobody is going to play games that make them sick. Ever. It will not happen. This is not a solved problem, and VR will never be anything but a niche technology until you can walk in a video game without needing to throw up.

Not all video games involve walking or lots of motion.

I think a game like Myst with puzzles that you manipulate with your hands could be pretty interesting.

Oh for sure. And there are clearly great games that can fully utilize VR, such as beat saber. But obviously VR lends itself best to a first person experience (though maybe that doesn't need to be the case) and the best examples of these games (Doom for instance) are not full experiences in VR.

There are people who are made motion sick by modern FPSs, and the FPS market has absolutely exploded in our lifetimes.

I think we'd need to see hard numbers to estimate that (and the hard numbers would need to factor in that this generation of hardware---the Rift and later---is much higher-fidelity and responsive than its predecessors and tends to trigger less nausea).

Motion sickness is an exaggerated problem in my own experience. Your body adapts, and it kind of just goes away. I never had it with Onward, but the first few times I played Pavlov, and did some quick turns there were times I felt weird. That went away very shortly.

"This is not a solved problem, and VR will never be anything but a niche technology"

Wow, that is a very pessimistic approach to a problem. What are you even trying to suggest here, that we have a problem right now in this new tech, and no one will ever, ever ever, solve it because... you think so? People are solving way harder problems out there than this. Like going to Mars for example. I'm pretty sure we will solve motion sickness in VR.

Do people still get motion sickness from 3D movies?

1. A movie is what 90 minutes?

2. Movies aren't often filmed from first person perspective for any length of time.

I'm merely curious, as when 3D movies came out a major complaint against them was that people got sick from watching them.

From my very thorough research (googling "3D movie sick", and looking at the dates; all from the period 2010-2015) this doesn't seem to be a big problem any more. Now this could of course also be because people have just accepted that it is not for them, the people who get sick don't talk about it any more, or people in general have just moved on from 3D, but it does make me wonder. Could the motion sickness not also just be a temporary thing for VR?

The people who get sick from them don't go to them anymore. That's why it was "temporary". Kids finding out they get sick from 3D don't post about it on the same social media adults use.

But in terms of viability, it is also a matter of degrees: do more than half of your users feel sick after using your product, or only very small percentage?

I definitely have in the past. It's very disorienting and not worth the extra 5-15$

VR may be niche, but it's not a gimmick. I get about 1-2 hours a week to play games. I choose to spend that time in VR because it's the most enjoyable way to game for me. I don't play pancake games anymore.

You need big money, games and studios to help push the tech forward. I think that's the point of this game