Suttonian's comments

A considerable number of people did buy a PS5 for the Remake/Rebirth, myself included. Definitely not what they hoped for though.

I feel strongly enough that I'd argue that it isn't bad. The quality of the game is excellent - the graphics are great (the amount of detail in the environment alone is amazing), the additions and amount of content, gameplay, voice acting, minigames, all around a great game. They did a great translation of the original game to this era of gaming.

When it comes to reviews, they are also overwhelmingly positive.

I'd also like to see verifiable stats.

Anecdotally, when I tried Gab, the ratio of violent racist content to normal content was way way higher than on other platforms (even if the absolute amount is much higher on twitter due to popularity, the ratio is lower).

It's because it's spelt "Ku Klux Klan".

I think you are talking about sickness when you are talking about human physiology.

>only a lucky few are totally unaffected by it

That is true, but what you aren't covering here is that when software (and hardware) is properly designed, almost no one is affected by it! Vive games with physical locomotion do not have complaints of sickness.

> Right now it looks like certain games won't work on every headset. This immediately tells consumers to wait for standardization. It's a fucking monitor. You don't get to have exclusives for your monitor.

Alright...I'm triggered, let's do this!

Here's what a VR consists of, which makes it substantially more complex than a monitor:

* Image warping. This is currently built into drivers, specific devices may require specific warping so that the images look correct after lens distortion.

* Latency reduction techniques - both the Rift and the Vive have different techniques for handling what happens if your FPS drops. I believe both of them take a rendered image that is out of date, and re-project it so its now up to date with your current head position. That is some complex math.

* Head position tracking. This is a combination of accelerometer/gyro and a lower latency but higher accuracy tracking solution like the lighthouse.

* Input devices. For example the Vive controllers communicate directly with the headset. The input devices also track physical position.

* Output - as well as sending position back to the computer, they may also send other information such as controller button presses, your IPD (because different IPDs require different graphical output).

In the future we will have some crazy optimizations going on to improve efficiency. Such as splitting each eye into four renders. Foveated rendering, which would mean the headset would contain a very low latency pupil tracker so that only the area you are looking at would be rendered with high detail, and so your eye direction can be known to the software.

All that said, yeah it's possible to create a standard wrapper around this stuff, but saying it's a monitor is not really true.

>As an aside, I like moving my focus with my mouse. It's incomparably more accurate than hoping my deviated septim is pointing exactly where I want to look. If you can't disable headtracking that's an immediate red flag for me.

Also talking about mouse input makes me feel like you haven't tried the Vive. It's not about giving you an advantage, the draw of these technologies is that they can make you feel like you are there. Think about the difference between playing angry birds on your phone, vs actually picking up a giant bird, putting it in a slingshot and destroying some houses.

Wow!

> it still hasn't solved any of the problems that prevented the original 1960's implementations from taking over in storm.

So much progress has been made with VR since then. A lot of problems have been solved.

Motion sickeness has been solved - when your motion 1:1 matches that of your virtual body there is no problem. Where there is a mismatch, there can be a problem (for about 30% of the population who are sensitive to this). So informed developers know how to create experiences that induce no sickness.

Regarding no AAA support / too few games - they are working on it. There will be over 50 games usable for the Vive at launch. There are some pretty big name games, like Elite Dangerous. Google, Valve and other big names are working on/have made stuff.

>What makes this iteration anything different?

Because it's actually at a point where it's usable now. Mobile phone popularity was one of the things that made this wave of VR possible as it drove forward the technology used.

>VR will ultimately do nothing for these fields.

There are VR applications that are currently for those fields mentioned, for example Tilt brush is generally received very well by artists and creative people.

I believe VR and AR will converge somewhat. VR has a headstart, and AR will adopt many of the technology, tools and techniques that VR uses. The Vive has a camera and can do limited AR, as can most mobile VR headsests.

I agree, that for a lot of applications - especially work-related then AR is better.

But when I game, I don't care about peripheral vision, I want to be in another world. Ultimately I want a headset that can switch between AR and VR modes.

The positional tracking is useful even if you don't walk around though. Imagine you lean to the side in your chair but you view doesn't change at all - how weird would that be? Or you're stood on the edge of a building, and try to lean over to see below, but you can't because your viewpoint doesn't change. Positional tracking means that would work as expected - it's good even for seated experiences (where a cable isn't really a problem). Besides from what I hear, users get used to the cable after a while, even though all recognize that it's not ideal.

No I don't think it's a passing fad or will fail miserably - but I do know you're not alone.

Yeah - VR is expensive right now. Maybe the price will drop a little - but this is one of the reasons why it will be niche for quite some time.

I totally agree with you that I don't think many people will watch the superbowl in VR...but!

What I predict (take with pinch of salt) is that as the Oculus and Vive are delivered there will be the common realization of some of the limitations and problems with VR (motion sickness, people who wear glasses etc) and the popularity will go down a little - but long term this type of thing just has so much potential I can only imagine it growing in the long term.

Something I notice in your comment is that you seem to be assuming that you can't have social experiences in VR, I see social in VR as one of its greatest strengths. You could see your buddies in VR as legendary warriors fighting demons. Or maybe some of your buddies are the demons. There's a huge market for that type of thing (or there will be).

AR like Google Glass (HoloLens, Magic Leap...) is also going to take off. Eventually AR and VR may converge. Want presence and to be fully immersed? Switch to VR mode.

No, it's not. I've said this a few times before and it's a little romanticized, but it's the difference between playing a game, and being there - in the game.

You can look up and see out of the top of your spaceship. You look to your left and the holographic display of your ship appears. You look down and you see your body, wearing a cool spacesuit. But most of all, it feels like you're piloting a ship instead of watching a ship fly around on a screen.