Ask HN: Do you still play with VR actively?

[billconan]

I'm trying to tell if I should invest time into VR development.

HTC vive and oculus owners, are you still actively playing VR after few months, or you put it on the shelf?

[dogma1138]

Both Oculus and Vive have been shelved after 1-2 weeks of use. Played some of the launch titles, Adrift was amazing, the steam VR workshop was nice, some of the creative stuff was pretty darn cool.

But "hardcore" PC gaming on them is just god damn awful once you get pass the "omg it's so fucking cool in in awe" period.

They are heavy, comfort levels aren't there, sweat is an issue especially in the summer, they put strain on your neck and since they give you a considerable smaller viewing angle than what you can do with a display (not to mention an ultrawide/screen spanning setup) they are disadvantaged in just about every game.

Replacing a wide viewing angle and a quick mouse look ability with turning your head is just harder and slower (and after 45 min painfull).

Losing the ability to switch to 3rd person views, zoom and pan the camera or detach it is a huge disadvantage in just about every game that supports VR.

Losing the ability to disconnect from the game for even a second and to focus your eyes on something else, turn your head without affecting the game, take a drink of water, stretch and pretty much just be free to do what you want puts so much stress on you that after 30min you just stop enjoying it.

Overall VR seems to be nice for very very specific applications, ones that are completely impossible to do without it, for everything else it's just worse it turns a completely detached leisure activity in a real life activity and that's a problem. The holodeck concept might sound cool until you figure out that it's actually hard work. Personally I don't think VR would go much further, AR on the other hand (Microsoft Hololens) has a bright future, if Google comes out with a slightly less sucky version of Google Glass and you mate it with Pokemon Go it's game over.

[DiThi]

Most of those problems sound related to early software implementations. E.g. There are ways to "switch to 3rd person views, zoom and pan the camera or detach it" in comfortable ways. The easiest is having a virtual screen (or portal) but not the only one.

Some other problems relate to game play versus screen/mouse users, which I think it's sort of missing the point.

The sweat problem would be easily resolved with a "soldering mask" solution, like PSVR. Some have modded their Vives that way. And I agree the angle could be better, as the resolution.

But hey, it's definitely a gen 1 product and GPUs just started to have features that allow improvements in hardware that don't tax GPUs so much (such as viewport multicast).

[drewrv]

I've had a vive for three or four months now and still play pretty regularly. I only play games on the vive now (though I only have time for a few hours of gaming a week).

Even though there's not a lot of content, "regular" video games seem really lame now. I've felt for a long time that the video game industry is stagnant. The big studios come out with the same shooter franchises and sports franchises. Most indie games use mechanics that are decades old now (puzzles, platformers, etc). In app purchases and pay to win crap has taken over mobile gaming.

VR changes this. Games like tiltbrush and fantastic contraption could not have been built before now. Playing VR makes me feel like a kid again playing mario 64 for the first time.

[SmallDeadGuy]

Fantastic contraption literally was built before now. It's been out since 2008, and was a great game before and after VR.

[nilkn]

I was in the very first wave of Vive shipments and I got a Rift at the very beginning of June. So at this point I've had both for a pretty decent chunk of time.

I haven't been using them much, but that's largely due to lack of content. I used them both heavily when they arrived, and the Vive in particular got a ton of playtime, but after a certain point I just don't want to fire up SPT again. Recently it got to a point where I'm not even all that excited to demo the Vive to others either.

I disagree strongly with those saying monitors are obsolete. They're definitely not, not right now at least. I've recently been playing The Witcher 3 and not only is it far more graphically impressive than any VR content available, but the game itself has a level of complexity that would be very hard to achieve in a VR game.

It's just too convenient and easy to play games on a 1440p or 4K monitor with keyboard and mouse. The extremely crisp resolution, the fantastic and complex and comfortable controls, the ability to trivially do stuff concurrently while playing the game, the fact that you're not blocked off from people around you... there are more than enough reasons to continue playing standard monitor-based games.

I feel I do need to emphasize how much VR blocks you off from friends and family who might be around. It feels very social when you demo it for the first time, but eventually I could definitely tell that my SO was starting to resent VR. From her perspective, it's the equivalent of me just disappearing into the garage and locking the door with little to no communication.

[arielweisberg]

I haven't really had the blocked off issue. With the Rift I can hear things outside the headset and I can pop up one ear to talk more easily. The games are mirrored to our 65" TV so my spouse can see what I see and enjoy games vicariously the way she usually does.

They enjoy when I play horror games and let loose with the color commentary.

I actually pulled her into the game and play Elite with her now. I'm in VR and she is on a screen.

I do agree there is a temptation to use a screen just for comfort and ease of context switching. I think a solid forward facing camera with stellar software support is table stakes for a VR headset. Not PiP, I am talking about always available full screen pass through that can activate and deactivate lightning quick. Heck give me a hardware button on the set.

And wireless. I can dream right?

[chenster]

How does VR do to your eyes after wearing it for a long time?

[vessenes]

I have a Vive, and love it. My kids still use it every day, often with friends over. That said, they are definitely hungry for new and more sophisticated / open-ended content.

Upgrades to tiltbrush are a big deal; a good sculpting tool would be greatly appreciated. Budget Cuts updates also. Easier unity setups to make their own environments would be rad, or that racket-based setup carmack demoed a year ago. They would LOVE that.

I think if you can wait another 18 months you could get a v2 headset with a much larger stable of content, but there's lots to do right now, the experiences are just more bite-sized. If you aren't going to code with it and aren't a highly avid gamer it's possible you'll run out of interesting experiences in a few months.

[raptorpark]

Wow, lots of shelfers. Only two people in here talking about Raw Data, really?

The games are starting to mature beyond games. I would never part with mine because to me it's the cheapest/fastest form of travel. I look for content daily and try to test something new every night. Of course, I'm an aspiring VR developer.

Since nobody's talking about porn, please allow this burner account to speak up for it. I'm talking room-scale VR, not 360 videos. It does take a lot of digging and tinkering since that stuff is not on Steam, but if you know where to go on subreddits, torrents, etc. Try it for science, it's fantastic.

[phodo]

Putting this out there: This is one of those threads that would be interesting to go back and read 3 to 5 years from now... at that point we'd have at least one killer app that redefines what VR is, we would have a sense of what the emergent mechanics that resonate with folks are, etc. Similar to reading old mobile threads, before the inflection point hit and we got the killer apps / patterns we have today. Or reading about the web when it was just "brochure-ware". I would say it is less about killer apps and more about emergent behaviors and new "n+1" techniques that redefine what VR (and AR and MR) means. Exciting times ahead.

[troymc]

It's also possible that there is no killer app, and the whole thing just stays niche, like 3D movies or Second Life.

[swalsh]

I don't think it's going to be a "killer app", I think it's going to be adding the missing "feature". Which is probably locomotion. The teleportation stuff is a handy hack, but it's not immersive. Games are very limited in capability while the locomotion issue still exists.

[super-serial]

Had a Vive for months, still play it 4 times a week.

That's not going to stop because it's pretty much replaced my workouts. Instead of doing a 30 min intense workout, I do two hours in the Vive. It used to be more Holoball, Holopoint, Zenblade... but now it's RecRoom, BattleDome and Pong Waves VR. More stuff comes out than I have to try with a full-time job and a minimalist social life.

[drzaiusapelord]

I use my Vive probably 3-5 times a week, depending on how busy I am. There seems to be a flavor or two of the month release for VR that keeps me busy and interested. Currently its Raw Data with a touch of Battledome and Poolnation. I'm not typically a single person gamer, but I did spend a fair bit of time with Final Approach, which makes you feel like a kid again, standing in front of a model airport and playing with toy planes. Most vive gamers are early access and I'm eager to get back into them after major updates. I haven't had time to try Rec Room, but I heard it really puts AltspaceVR to shame.

I could gush about Raw Data for quite some time, but its really the first VR game to feel like a AAA title and the swordplay is very rewarding.

SteamVR gets updated almost monthly as well and gives much needed fixes and performance enhancements. The Vive is much more user friendly now and the latest batch of video drivers seem to be helping VR performance as well. I did see the Poolnation and Raw Data devs have implemented Nvidia's mult-res shaders which give fairly impressive performance increases.

Now I'm waiting on the full Budget Cuts game and EVE: Valkyrie to get released for the Vive. Its incredible how much content there is right now. That said, its not much considering all the non-VR games on Steam, but its enough for an adult with a FT job or family to be unable to keep up.

[thenomad]

Not only still playing actively but actually changed careers to develop for room-scale VR.

Personally I'd strongly draw a line between sitting-down VR and room-scale walking around and interacting with hands VR. The first one I liked but never really grabbed me. The second... well, see above re "changed careers".

One of the issues VR does have right now is that the audience is small - particularly for room-scale. As a result, the games tend mostly to be quite limited in scope.

There are very few narrative, long-form experiences out there. (My game, Left-Hand Path, is one of the few conventional narrative experiences in an RPG form for the Vive). Most games are arcadey, often wave shooters or similar.

But as time goes by longer games are getting released. This month's actually been pretty amazing for Vive games, with Brookhaven Experiment and Raw Data, both bigger, more polished experiences.

IMO, the future's bright.

(People have gotten annoyed in the past when I didn't link Left-Hand Path in comments like this, so here's a link for anyone curious - http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760 . It's a heavily Dark Souls influenced RPG where you cast spells by drawing symbols in the air.)

[cven714]

HTC Vive owner. Mine is mostly on the shelf. I bring it out when new people visit and want to give it a try, but I haven't played otherwise.

It's still a good time and the novelty isn't completely worn off...games like Chamber 19 (Xortex from The Lab) or Fantastic Contraption are a lot fun once I get myself to turn it on. But I haven't played a really compelling game--I'm hoping Budget Cuts is as good as it looks.

The wow factor is huge the first few times. The VR immersion really works. I just haven't found a game yet that combines that Wow with game mechanics I want to keep playing for more than the novelty of it.

[AgentME]

>But I haven't played a really compelling game

I've liked a lot of VR games, but Out of Ammo was the first that really hooked me. The "sandbox" style -- not sandbox in the sense of Minecraft, but in the sense I felt like a kid again in my sandbox placing little army soldier toys around me and making little barricades and walls defending from imaginary threats -- was great. It's a shame that the game is a bit short and buggy right now. I think that style of gameplay is somewhere the Vive (VR+motion controllers) really shines and has a lot of untapped potential.

[mrfusion]

Yeah plus it seems like a bear to get set up. Plug in base stations. Turn on steamvr wait two minutes for it to detect everything. Move the controllers around so it detects them. Put on the mask. Adjust the straps just right. Wonder if ipd is really correct ...

[superkuh]

Nope. I bought an HTC Vive because Valve promised linux support. It's 5+ months since release and there's still not even a hint that they're working on it.

It was a huge mistake to buy hardware based on promises of software support.

[DiThi]

> there's still not even a hint that they're working on it

The 64 bit version of Linux binaries have been updated on every OpenVR[0] release since the Vive was released. And it seems it works since the version 1.0.1. It's just there's no games for it. The ball is currently on the game and game engine developers. The only things Valve could release other than SteamVR and the API is Robot Repair (the only part of The Lab that is not Unity) and Dota 2 VR spectator mode (released just a few days ago).

Also, most games are currently using DirectX. In the near future when most VR games use Vulkan it will be easy to run them with Wine at full performance (basically impossible with DX because of the high API overhead and game specific optimizations in drivers). That's assuming game devs don't compile for Linux, of course. And if most use DX12 instead of Vulkan, it would be still much better than previous versions of DX and OGL.

[0] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr

[nickthegreek]

I work at a makerspace and we just got our 2nd vive. We also have a Rift and a Hololens. The Vive gets the most use. I go through periods of use and then ignore it for a bit. But as long as games continue to be released, I think I would be using it regularly. I am real excited for more multiplayer games. PoolNationVR is a great example of a quality polished VR experience that you just cant get in any other medium. Cant wait for a multiplayer ping pong experience. Rec Room and AltSpace are 2 other interested free social vr experiences.

[aaronsnoswell]

You might be interested to know that Rec Room has a multiplayer VR ping-pong / beer-pong game - just head to the upstairs loft area.

[cgusto]

I play it a few times a week. Project Cars and DiRT are what I spend most of the time with. I'm also enjoying Chronos right now, which is more of a RPG.

Echoing what a few others have said, there are not a lot of great AAA titles for either the Vive or Rift. This will change over time.

Are you excited about VR, or are you looking somewhere just to make money? If you're into this, then yes, I would recommend you learn about developing for VR. No one I know has tried the Rift and just shrugged their shoulders and said "that's kinda cool'. Everyone, even my most techie friends, drop their jaws and lose their minds. That's exciting.

This is a brand new field with tons of potential. That being said, I don't think it will be a very lucrative market to indie devs for sometime.

[charliecochrane]

Out of interest, I've heard that acceleration I'm VR games is a big cause of sickness, have you experienced this in your racing games at all?

[13of40]

I got an Oculus for supporting the kickstarter, and I'm actually looking to sell it. Beyond the fact that I'm one of the lucky folks who get nausea, a lot of the games I've tried are like exploring the world in an electric wheelchair. (Ironically I think I feel that way because it's a lot more convenient to look around with a thumbstick instead of my neck muscles.) I'm still holding out hope for augmented reality though.

[dawnerd]

Have a vive, I use mine whenever I get a block of an hour+ for setup and actually playing. It's not something you can just impulse play.

That said I haven't found many games that really do vr right. Job simulator nails it I think. I tried Elite Dangerous out briefly and it looked quite amazing. I just don't have the controls down enough to play comfortably with a headset on. American Truck Simulator is okay once you get it working. The screendoor effect is quite apparent though.

So far the best of the games have had cartoon style graphics. Anything that tries to look realistic is hurt by the poor (relatively speaking) resolution.

The other thing keeping from playing more is the price of the "games". I put it in quotes since most of them are just tech demos for 20+ bucks.

[greggman]

Have you tried Cosmic Trip?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/427240/

[untog]

Depending on what you're doing, you probably should invest time in VR development, but I don't think you need to do it now. Still extremely early days, and I have no doubt frameworks/toolkits will emerge that make things easier, development-wise.

One thing I keep coming back to with VR (as a personal observation) is how anti-social it is. Not sure what the implication (if any) is of that, but it leads me to hesitate in using mine.

[monocasa]

> One thing I keep coming back to with VR (as a personal observation) is how anti-social it is

Can you elaborate on this? The potential for social VR seems huge (which is probably why Facebook bought Oculus).

[BuckRogers]

I think Nintendo is going to be the one to knock VR out of the park next year with the NX.

That's what I'm waiting for because I believe it's going to not only be a handheld device/home console in one, but also easily support the holy grail, untethered VR. With first-party support from the world's premier game developer.

Of course, it will be Nintendo art style, easier to render than faux reality. But that style is ideal for the relatively weak VR resolutions that systems have today. Personally, I prefer artistic or cartoonish graphics. If I want reality, I don't want it rendered. I'll walk outside. Go play paintball and obliterate the desktop or HMD VR experiences.

If you want to dip toes in the water and start now, I'd get yourself a Google Cardboard setup. Nintendo is going to make Oculus/Vive and the 90's VR stuff (including VirtualBoy!) look silly as they bring this to mass market. It's going to be the games, simplified setup and console pricing that will win it. There won't be anything else like it.

[arielweisberg]

By play do you mean as a consumer of content or a producer of content?

I have a Rift and play Elite Dangerous several times a week. Otherwise the software situation is quite dire with no content that can match the depth of typical AAA titles.

The lack of motion tracked controllers is a problem right now as it blocks access to a lot of Steam games.

[malnourish]

Are the Oculus Touch controllers motion tracked? And by motion tracked do you mean e.g. how the Vive controllers perform?

[schwabacher]

I have an oculus - I played with it daily for around two weeks after getting it, but can't remember the last time I touched it. I'm not a big gamer though - I mostly was interested in trying out and programming for VR and just have found other projects more interesting.

[bane]

Of three coworkers who bought VR headsets, the Vive user says he plays about once every week or two. The Rift users have completely stopped.

I have a cardboard that sits unused, but that's mostly because my phone doesn't quite fit into it and I can't be bothered to fix it.