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VR - a fad or the future?

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I just checked my email, turns out I got one on the 29th September. I usually just ignore those emails though, I shouldn't have this time, feelsbadman.

I was exclusively referring to video gaming, I have heard there is really good use for VR outside of gaming, but I don't much about that stuff. But within gaming, I think many people will get bored of the idea of VR after a while and it wouldn't be worth it for the developers to continue enabling VR support on their games as it'll be too costly.
Original post by NotNotBatman
I just checked my email, turns out I got one on the 29th September. I usually just ignore those emails though, I shouldn't have this time, feelsbadman.

I was exclusively referring to video gaming, I have heard there is really good use for VR outside of gaming, but I don't much about that stuff. But within gaming, I think many people will get bored of the idea of VR after a while and it wouldn't be worth it for the developers to continue enabling VR support on their games as it'll be too costly.


I don't see why VR would be inherently costly to develop for, especially for the AAAs

Posted from TSR Mobile
I saw something like that on the Gadget years ago, back when it was good, not even sure if it's still on. It was like a 360 degree treadmill and they were playing battlefield 3, so back in 2011 iirc. ngl That looked amazing.

Original post by Jammy Duel
I don't see why VR would be inherently costly to develop for, especially for the AAAs

Posted from TSR Mobile


It would take longer to develop for or require a larger team and recently, publishers have been pressuring developers into getting games out as fast as possible and I think it wouldn't be worth investing the extra time for what I think will be a small consumer base in the future.
Original post by NotNotBatman
I saw something like that on the Gadget years ago, back when it was good, not even sure if it's still on. It was like a 360 degree treadmill and they were playing battlefield 3, so back in 2011 iirc. ngl That looked amazing.



It would take longer to develop for or require a larger team and recently, publishers have been pressuring developers into getting games out as fast as possible and I think it wouldn't be worth investing the extra time for what I think will be a small consumer base in the future.


The VR ready base is not insignificant, and it is in the interest of those who have already worked out good ways of doing it to share it, depending on the API it could actually be incredibly simple, if the API works in such a way that as far as the game is concerned head movement is just like moving the mouse or equivalent then it really is simple. If the controllers act similarly then it's a case of coding for three such objects, with extra rules for the controls.

Fromthe demos I've done, which were all one off for a single event for about 6 hours and speaking to the devs it really isn't difficult.

Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by Jammy Duel
The VR ready base is not insignificant, and it is in the interest of those who have already worked out good ways of doing it to share it, depending on the API it could actually be incredibly simple, if the API works in such a way that as far as the game is concerned head movement is just like moving the mouse or equivalent then it really is simple. If the controllers act similarly then it's a case of coding for three such objects, with extra rules for the controls.

Fromthe demos I've done, which were all one off for a single event for about 6 hours and speaking to the devs it really isn't difficult.

Posted from TSR Mobile


Oh, that's nice, but I mean in a few years in terms of gaming I think the novelty will wear off and there won't be a significant number of developers supporting VR, regardless of whether it is easy or not to develop for. We'll just have to see what happens in a few years :tongue:
Original post by NotNotBatman
Oh, that's nice, but I mean in a few years in terms of gaming I think the novelty will wear off and there won't be a significant number of developers supporting VR, regardless of whether it is easy or not to develop for. We'll just have to see what happens in a few years :tongue:


I think it's one of those things that will stay novel for quite dome time because exposure is limited. When it starts potentially going mainstream, Playstation aside, a lot of the kinks should have been worked out. Latency should be reduced with further tech development and hardware better optimised for it. Weight reduction should make it more comfortable too.

Again, the biggest threat to me is Playstation VR. I'm not so confident that latency issues will be minor, and what can be done is limited due to the hardware limitations. If left until next gen for consoles, pc enthusiast rather than ultra enthusiast in a coupleof years and then mainstream with the consoles could easily work.



Posted from TSR Mobile
You can tell that most people who commented on this post never bought it or never even tried it.
I bought it and going by peoples comments online I wasnt expecting to be blown away but it really is incredible!
The graphics are not as perfect as on a tv but its still so much better than I expected. The depth perception is incredible and in some games it does seem like its your arms in the game thats shooting enemies.
It has a lot of potential and is amazing for the horror games.
Sony have sold millions of them so I don't see why they wouldn't keep making games for it.
I suggest everyone tries it before making comments that it wont be good, it will fail, it will be forgotten about etc.
If all that "the latest and greatest" technology has to offer is essentially a screen strapped to our heads instead of the wall, it's just a fad. It might catch the attention of the superficial (iPhone and Beats by Dre do it well), but a genuine revolution will come when you have a totally immersive environment.

Nothing better than porn when it comes to being a barometer for technological development: no point in having a camera, TV or robots if you can't watch or do rumpy with them eh?
Original post by Jammy Duel
The likes of EVE Valkyrie are dungeon crawlers?


"From what I've seen" :wink:
I really hope it catches on, I played on the Vive a while back and it was super fun even as a casual system. The portal demo they put out definitely got me -really- excited! Price is definitely an issue for the mass market, but the systems right now don't cost more than what a lot of people I know will spend on their main desktop/ultra-ulite-look-it-has-LEDs-gaming-laptop anyway!
Now look at VR :wink:
It's a flop, PSVR is the best selling and it's sales are crap, Sony given up really.
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Avatar for Zaspo
Zaspo
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It can be used for people who don't have enough money to pay for their holidays and trips so they can enjoy that for much less at home again and again this could be the reason it might not die down just yet.
Original post by random_matt
It's a flop, PSVR is the best selling and it's sales are crap, Sony given up really.


yeah well the PSVR is not very good but the HTC vive, Oculus Rift and WMR are not flops
Original post by Stephan0
yeah well the PSVR is not very good but the HTC vive, Oculus Rift and WMR are not flops


Sales decide otherwise, PC gaming is a niche market to begin with. Not many gamers have the bare minimum specs to run VR.
Original post by random_matt
Sales decide otherwise, PC gaming is a niche market to begin with. Not many gamers have the bare minimum specs to run VR.


well thanks to the book/movie Ready Player One sales have gone up significantly and if people see this as being the future of VR people will invest
Original post by random_matt
Sales decide otherwise, PC gaming is a niche market to begin with. Not many gamers have the bare minimum specs to run VR.


So niche that there are currently 12.5m people online on steam right now, over a third in game with more than 1m playing pubg alone and steam's monthly active user count is on par with both Xbox one and PS4, in fact when figures we're published last year the steam figure was nearly 30% higher than the Xbox figure and only about 5% behind PlayStation
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by Jammy Duel
So niche that there are currently 12.5m people online on steam right now, over a third in game with more than 1m playing pubg alone and steam's monthly active user count is on par with both Xbox one and PS4, in fact when figures we're published last year the steam figure was nearly 30% higher than the Xbox figure and only about 5% behind PlayStation


Before you start talking out your arse, you probably should find out what the average specs are. They are not great, the majority of steam users do not have a great system, and I'm speaking from being a PC gamer.
Original post by random_matt
Before you start talking out your arse, you probably should find out what the average specs are. They are not great, the majority of steam users do not have a great system, and I'm speaking from being a PC gamer.


Let's take a look at the steam hardware survey shall we:

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?platform=pc

and we'll look at what nvidia give as the recommended specs for VR

https://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/vr/system-requirements

Now let's compare the two, going through the steam hardware survey on the GPU side we get the following being above the recommended VR spec:

1060: 12.32%
1070: 3.86%
970: 3.56%
1080: 2.37%
1080Ti: 1.22%
980: 0.66%
980Ti: 0.60%
1070Ti: 0.44%

All together that's 25.03% with all of those GPUs seeing increasing market shares and the next generation of nvidia GPUs just round the corner and almost certainly dropping the "recommended" cost to below the $200 mark

Not that it was going to be the limiting factor anyway but 76.16% have the recommended 8GB or more on the RAM front

The CPU front isn't likely an issue either given the given minimum is only an i5-4590, the SHS doesn't give the same detail for CPUs but we do get core counts and clock speeds and we see 29.92% CPUs being intel clocked at least as high as the i5-4590 and a further 5% or so on the AMD side topping the 3.5GHz of the Ryzen 5 1500X given by occulus as the AMD recommended minimum and 66.75% having 4 or more cores

Drop things to the Occulus minimum and we get an extra 13.89% of GPUs (again, ignoring AMD).

The majority may not have the specs, but then a majority won't be that interested anyway. VR doesn't need the majority of the 67m monthly users.
Sadly the Steam Hardware Survey doesn't distinguish between the two 1060s although it is false to say that the 970 and 980 are slower than a 1060. 970 might be almost equal to the 1060 3GB but 980 at its base clock speed is faster than a fully boosted 1060 6GB.

You can dispute it but it's what Nvidia, Oculus, and Vive all say

https://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/vr/system-requirements
https://support.oculus.com/1773584749575567/
https://www.vive.com/uk/support/vive/category_howto/what-are-the-system-requirements.html

and while not as good let us not forget that PSVR is designed for hardware with half the performance VR sales are mostly in the mobile space anyway,

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