
Oculus and Vive Usage Appears to Be Flat or Declining - Kroeler
https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2018/10/vr-active-users-steam-september-2018-road-to-vr.html
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bni
Anything based on Steam survey is suspect at best, since it does not reflect
the whole ecosystem.

That said, I think there are problems with VR mainstream adoption. Number one
being the convenience problem. I takes effort to setup and start a VR gaming
session, as opposed to flat-screen couch gaming. It has to be insanely good
and addicting for it to be worth it, and its a few hardware and software
generations from being there. Flatscreen games also get better and have ever
higher production values (Try RDR2 and you see what I mean). This is the
competitive environment for VR.

VR might remain niche, and the problem with that its not commercially viable
on its own like that. Hence the situation we have now with Facebook basically
being the Patron of VR.

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kruczek
Hm, as far as I understand these statistics count people who have had their
headset connected at the time of measurement. I wonder how much this skewed
the numbers, since for example I connect the headset only when using it. So
despite using it daily, I still likely wouldn't appear in these stats.

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mrguyorama
Interesting, meanwhile my headset is connected 24/7 while I have decreased
usage over the past several months (though this is in general for all video
gaming, not just VR)

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LUmBULtERA
I like my Rift, but I can't actually run content very well on it with my
current hardware. I was hoping to upgrade my hardware this year, but GPU and
RAM prices have been atrocious. Maybe next year...

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mrguyorama
The previous generation's flagship, or one level below flagship, level
hardware runs VR pretty damn well.

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Paraesthetic
I have yet to find a decent enough reason to use or even upgrade one. I have a
feeling that this will be like 3D Tv's they will come back every couple of
years or so with some company saying 'hey do you want this now? no? ok" and
then disappearing again for a few years.

I think the biggest problem is that the FOV is tiny on these things, its good
for a while, but I'd much rather use a giant screen than use googles where my
head gets sweaty and takes a while to set up.

~~~
Sir_Substance
The biggest problem for me is that in order to use it, I have to buy into
their respective ecosystems.

I actually don't want an ecosystem or an oculus account or a vr storefront, I
just want a monitor for my face. If I can't have that without the nonsense, I
guess I'll just wait until they go bankrupt and sell all the patent IP.

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mrguyorama
The Vive is an open ecosystem. The hardware is all semi-open and off the
shelf, and the software is all on github. The only hangup is that I am not
sure whether you can actually BUILD the software on your own or not, as I've
never tried.

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Sir_Substance
I tend not to compile my own monitor drivers from source. If I have to do that
to use the vive without steam, then I'm not sold on your assertion that I
don't have to buy into their ecosystem to use their face-monitor.

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mrguyorama
Ah, right, I'm not sure if you can run the Valve provided binaries without
Steam. Although a quick google search offers up
[https://community.viveport.com/t5/Technical-Support/Vive-
wit...](https://community.viveport.com/t5/Technical-Support/Vive-without-
Steam/td-p/14146)

~~~
Sir_Substance
Yeah. I did some googling and it seems that all non-steam options are in the
"technically you can, here run this cmake file and then hand-calibrate the
coordinate mappings in this json file" stage.

It might be that we get to a point where it's more open, but I hoped the same
for a bunch of other products (lytro comes to mind) that never made it.

It's not like I don't have steam installed on every computer I own, but it's
more of an on principal thing. I don't buy razer mice because I don't want to
spend $50-100 on hardware that doesn't work properly if the vendors download
servers go down, and razer mice have very strange profile defaults if they
can't talk to the razer desktop program. If razer goes under it won't really
be possible to move razer mice to new computers after a while.

Similarly, I'm really not keen to buy $800 worth of kit that could become a
paperweight if I get VAC-banned. I'm a big fan of separation of concerns on
this front. I might part with $100 with a dependency on steam because that's
throw-away money, but not $400 and certainly not $800.

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beerlord
If Steam are not going to subsidise hardware, then they are a parasite on VR
gaming instead of an asset - charging 30% commissions for any VR games sold
whilst developers take all the risks.

The future of VR is with a PS5 console that can have an official VR backpack
and headset, maybe even a battery pack, and thus be inherently portable with
good enough power to run a 1440p display.

VR games need to be so optimised (1440p or 4k @ 90fps) that I don't think the
experience will be good enough on anything except console device, that
developers can target and build for precisely.

On a side note I think PC gaming could be seriously threatened if console
makers ever get their act together with keyboard and mouse support - even
going so far as to allow developers to sell games that require KBM to play.
There are too many greedy actors like Nvidia and Valve that are ripping off PC
gamers, and the physical dimensions of a PC case are just too big - the
platform hasn't been modernised to make everything smaller and more compact.

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intellix
Love my Vive. Got a beast of a machine to run it on and just bought the Deluxe
Audio Strap and the Wireless adapter. The wireless adapter is a game changer
for me. The wire was driving me nuts and breaking immersion entirely.

Got addicted to Beat Saber for a while but it's not very comfortable to play
for long as you have this huge headset strapped to your face and you're
streaming with sweat before long.

Took it to the office for a week about a year ago and then again about a month
ago. All of my colleagues were asking me what new experiences I had and you be
honest I could only really suggest Beat Saber.

Seems to me like the content stream has dried up a bit but then again I
entered the scene late and downloaded years of content at once.

Astrobot looks awesome and I'm a bit miffed it's exclusive for the PSVR

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snlnspc
personally I won't be buying in until (at least) another generation of
improvements to the technology, and I'm sure there are many others that feel
the same. there will surely be a tipping point in price/quality of the
device/software that will make it worth it for a lot of people.

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koiz
Its what valve always feared when Oculus went their own way... why would an
oculus user use steam?

I tend to stay away from buying stuff for my rift on steam simply because the
experience is better within the oculus ecosystem.

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paulmendoza
Buying a vive was the biggest waste of money. Just sits in a box in my closet
now. It was never enjoyable enough to want to play after the first week or so.

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mrguyorama
What games do you play? Both in and out of VR?

It was a good purchase for me because I already own most simulation games that
are VR compatible and love simulation in general.

