

What Games Are: Virtual Reality, We Hardly Knew You - chiachun
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/30/vr-we-hardly-knew-you/

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newhouseb
Meh, has Tadhg actually tried the Valve VR room demo? If he has't tried that
demo, I question his credibility in claiming that VR doesn't work.

I'm as skeptical as any about the Oculus acquisition, but having experienced
the Valve VR room demo (now owned by Oculus), I think we're a lot closer to
the Matrix than anyone would have thought after looking at DK1. My first
thoughts after taking the demo rig off was "wow, I'm going to have to
reconsider what the next 10 years looks like for humanity."

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jblow
He obviously did not try the demo. The demo meets all specs that Mike listed
in his talk and it exists today, thus nullifying the entire thrust of the
article.

The demo is not consumer-product-ready, as it is currently expensive and the
tracking requires you to paper your room. But those things are all solvable
(inevitably with a bit of time, which is why Mike said 'within two years').

A number of the key people responsible for the Valve work are now at Oculus
with a mandate to consumerize the best tech possible. So yeah, it is going to
happen. Do not believe this article. Oculus CV1 may not get all the way there
but it will be better than is necessary to show clearly the writing on the
wall (the main factor in its quality being cost, which the Facebook deal
helped tremendously with). CV2 will, I expect, be pretty badass.

(I have tried the Valve demo and then spent a few days working with my game on
their hardware.)

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nasmorn
Also if conditions need to be perfect but the effect is incredible we will
just see the return of the arcade. The OP can have fun with candy crush 2
waiting outside while I fly my cowing through the death star for real. If VR
is good people will queue to pay for it, even if doesn't work at home for
another 10 years.

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beloch
Argument: VR is a non-starter because it only works with gaming PC's, which
only uber-geeks still own and normal people think of as being just for work.

Response: What is an Xbox, if not a proprietary gaming PC? Sony is working on
VR for the PS4. Meanwhile, Valve is trying to bring linux gaming PC's to the
living room. This stuff is not going to be limited to work computers.
Eventually, with a wireless connection or a sufficiently powerful mobile
computer (i.e. Your phone in a few years), VR will be available wherever you
feel like putting on a headset.

Argument: VR is only going to attract the hardcore gamers, and they don't
trust Facebook, so nobody's going to buy.

Response: Oculus is just one of several big firms currently making major
pushes into VR-land. Sony is another and you can bet MS won't be far behind.

Argument: Presence doesn't work if not everything is perfect, so VR is doomed.

Response: What do you have when you play a game through a monitor? Imperfect
presence. You interact with a virtual world through a window. You frequently
walk around in that world as a humanoid avatar speaking to other humanoids and
you completely forget you're looking through a window into their world.
Imperfect presence works. It even worked back when you could see pixels the
size of your avatar's head. VR simply puts your head through the window and
lets you look around. Why didn't it take off sooner then? Up until now, 2D
windows had clearly superior lag properties and limited resolution meant
things looked better on smaller displays. It's also pretty wasteful to blow
pixels on peripheral vision, so we didn't bother when pixels were expensive.
VR headsets don't have to be perfect to take off. They just have to be as good
as 2D displays in the ways that matter.

P.S. Bluray cannot be considered dead until a viable alternative arises that
addresses its market: Audio/Video-philes. This is a niche market, but a stable
one.

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eli_gottlieb
So what about the following?

Argument: VR will be a niche market because most styles of gaming have
diminishing returns on increased immersion. After all, even with continuous
rises in graphics quality in the hardest of the hardcore market, the mass
market seems to have refocused its preference-attention on game design around
the time mass mobile gaming became a thing and game consoles started costing
$400.

~~~
beloch
AAA PC/console titles are out-grossing Hollywood and continue to grow every
year. This explosive growth continued through the last console generation
despite the high cost of the Xbox360 and PS3. A bigger danger for console
makers is hardware saturation of the market. If gamers don't see compelling
reasons to update to the new consoles, we could have another 1983 on our
hands. VR, besides offering a potential edge in the console wars, could
present a way to combat saturation. This is no doubt why Sony is pursuing VR
so aggressively.

The mobile market is still comparatively tiny in terms of gross, but it must
be pointed out that it is not incompatible with VR. Current handsets are not
powerful enough to support VR but that will change in a few years. The
question is, how much immersion do mobile users really want?

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interpol_p
I disagree with many of the arguments in the article. I think VR — especially
on consoles — has a real chance of making it into gaming.

But I agree that it's not going to go mainstream, not in the way that
smartphones have. VR is probably going to get popular with console and PC
gamers, but I think many others simply will not care about presence. I say
this as someone who has played with the Dev kits. They are fun, and magical
experiences the first few times. But ultimately they get put away for more
convenient entertainment that is just as engaging.

Edit: which is why the Facebook thing is so weird. I don't think anyone
actually wants a metaverse. I think people want fun and interesting unique-to-
VR game and simulation experiences.

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rdw
Won't take off in the marketplace? Seems plausible. Doesn't produce novel
experiences? Already false but maybe this can be spun convincingly. But _the
technology can 't possibly work_? That just seems silly.

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XorNot
The Facebook acquisition really seems to have broken some people's brains.

Either you think it works or doesn't, whether or not Facebook bought a company
doesn't speak to the technology or possible market.

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mentos
I think we'll be able to have great solutions to supplying our eyes and ears
with believable virtual realities. But I'm not sure what we're going to do
about our arms, hands and legs. I'm really interested to see how the
experience on a VR treadmill is, I have a feeling it will leave a lot to be
desired.

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TulliusCicero
From what I've read, the problem of motion sickness present in the earlier
Rifts (including Dev Kit 1) is mostly fixed in recent versions that
incorporate positional tracking, because it reduces the disconnect between
your head movement and what you see.

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sixQuarks
These arguments are so poorly constructed, I hope this was just meant to be
link bait. Otherwise, the writer is quite ignorant of both the current state
of VR and overall history (in my humble opinion).

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tiler
All this Oculus bashing makes me want to order my dev kit even more.

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lazylizard
he's apparently thinking its tablets and mobiles all the way down? - The Wheel
of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend.
Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave
it birth comes again.

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platz
curious if Meta
([https://www.spaceglasses.com/](https://www.spaceglasses.com/)) is going to
fill this niche.

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movinvan
"I think there is a world market for about five computers"

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socalnate1
Someone is going to post this article to Hacker News in 2022, and we are all
going to have a good laugh.

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frontier
Yep and I bet this guy was writing articles about the epic failure of tablet
computing in the 2000's too...

