On: Announcing the Acquisition of Surreal Vision

[charriu]

I'm writing this from the standpoint of someone who did a small game project with the rift dev kit 2: It's good that they're taking their time.

When the DK2 was released, the drivers were a horrible mess. The hardware was kinda okay, if you didn't mind seeing the pixel grid. Blurring was better than with DK1, but still an issue. Lots of people still got motion sickness from just wearing the rift for a short amount time.

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm exited for VR. But I don't want a piece of so-so hardware that's just gonna lie around on my desk. I want something that's actually supported by software (games) I use (play) and fun to use.

[mattdotc → charriu]

It's useful to add that, generally speaking, when you get the motion sickness the effects can be intense. I found out the hard way that even if you've never suffered from motion sickness via regular vectors (car rides, boating), you're not immune.

I've only had one bad experience that resulted in motion sickness - during and following an extended play of Half Life 2. The feeling stuck with me for several hours, to the point where I couldn't even look at the TV screen from the couch.

It was a miserable experience; afterwards, I was careful to never ignore the signs, and stopped playing any demo that started to feel just a little 'off.'

Something like this could be a platform-killer and doom your project before it ever reaches critical mass.

[orionsbelt → mattdotc]

Agreed. When I first got my DK2, I played for about 10 minutes despite feeling sick, and was really ill for like 48 hours. It was a horrible experience. Thereafter, I was very careful about giving up on demos that were glitchy rather than try to play through the glitches, and even more importantly, never ever strafing or moving in a way that is unnatural for the human body. With those two changes, I usually felt fine in VR.