What happened to the virtual reality gaming revolution? | Hacker News Reader

What happened to the virtual reality gaming revolution?

arstechnica.com

11 pointspseudolus16 comments

I dont know why the oculus keeps getting promoted. It’s low quality and has poor graphics. Connecting it to a pc is ok’ish but nowhere near the htc vive pro of valve index. I know its cheap but the lowest bidder mentality stimulates low quality. VR is an amazing experience but not if gets bastardised by facebook.

It's 1/3 the cost of the HTC Vive Pro/Valve Index. That's significant. The resolution is acceptable enough that the price differential makes it a good deal. Games have not gotten more fun as the "AAA" studios chase higher and higher resolution. Regardless, it appears few people besides hardcore gamers are enthusiastic at putting a heavy device on their head that shuts themselves off from other people in the room/world for hours at a time.

Having the vr market polluted by low quality headsets just ruins the overall vision of vr. The price of a vive or index is barely comparable to a high end graphics card. For now i would say vr should be dominated by high end headsets until we get an idea of how it should work. Otherwise people will be under the impression that vr will follow the path of mobile games, with low quality content and ads; and thats rather harmful.

Now that Ethereum moved to Proof of Stake, the price of high end graphics cards has descended from the stratosphere. A 12GiB 3080 is around $700USD, that's $300-500 cheaper than an Index or Vive Pro. VR will be dominated by whatever the market will bear, which seems to be mostly Oculus and PSVR. VR is great, but it will always be niche because it is incredibly isolating from the environment and other people. That is the main disadvantage, not the canard of "low quality graphics".

I think oculus is scaring people away from vr due to its appaling graphics. I mean how many beat sabers and vr chats can people play before they realise oculus has no capability whatsoever for an immersive experience. The oculus is a glorified mobile device with attached lenses and as such it suffers from its limitation.

VR is precisely meant to isolate you from the environment, its right in the name - virtual reality. Not real reality. The whole idea is to interact with objects and people that exist outside your reality.

I think it's actually good that Oculus has an easy-to-use solution for people without an expensive gaming computer. That will attract a wider range of people to VR so they can get their feet wet without spending thousands of dollars.

I use my Rift S for racing and space sims as well as some FPS games. Yeah, the HUD text is not the best, but I prefer to run HUD off for the ImmErSioN, which is fine. A Quest 2 would increase the resolution I suppose, but I enjoy the headset I have. If your standards are so, no offense, snobbishly high, why are you touting Vive and Index when you should be demanding Oculus build 8K VR headsets like Pimax or XTal? More expensive/better headsets are in the market. The market isn't buying them, so graphics fidelity doesn't seem to be the issue.

The question isn't really about my own standards. I own an Oculus as well as the others. The question is whether a low quality device is beneficial or detrimental for the industry at this stage.

For instance, when Oculus came around, most people were put off by VR due to the quality of mobile VR headsets. Similarly, they may be put off because of the quality of oculus, assuming that that's all VR has to offer.

Therefore for a period of time I think it may be best that VR sticks to higher quality headsets and content as to promote the WOW factor of what VR can do. At the moment, the appeal is either a half an hour "horror" game experience, usually promoted by a screaming female, or beat saber. Beyond that casual users don't know much about VR. Bombarding them with VR chat videos is not beneficial either. It's a bit like when you want to prove a technology you prove it at its best not at its average.

But I suppose since the best argument against is that users / developers like me are "snobbish" then VR is really dead. At least for a while.

Like I said, don't take it the wrong way, I've been snobbish, too. I spent a lot of money over the years chasing the "best" gaming experience. I've seen VR come and go since Sega's VR Shades that never made it to market.

You've got to consider that there are many tiers of gamers out there. Not very many are going to spend the thousands needed to get a top-shelf VR experience. If the only VR headsets out there require a huge (for many) investment, VR will always be a niche product. 2% of Steam gamers have a VR headset.[1] These are, arguably, savvy, more hardcore gamers than the average person, and it's still only 2%!

60% of those VR headset owners have an Oculus, 14% have an Index, 7% have a Vive. Price wins, like it or not.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

edit: fixed link

Low graphics doesn't imply low quality.

In oculus quests case it does mean low quality. The experience is not as immersive as it should he when all you see is blocky low poly content with artefacts everywhere. When connected to a pc it’s okish until it starts loosing tracking as it gets startled by heck knows what lighting conditions.

The Quest 2 is pretty good when connected to a PC and is way cheaper than most alternatives

Resolution on the Quest 2 is significantly higher than on the Valve Index or Vive Pro. It also has inside out tracking, so its much simpler to setup and you can play with it anywhere. Besides being standalone or PC tethered. It's an amazing device. Not perfect, but quite a step from a $600 device that needs to be plugged into a gaming PC to do anything, and needs base tracking to be fun.

Because its not practical? Driven by the hype of speculators?

Letting Meta take the helm is a strong disincentive for the "virtual reality gaming revolution". They're trying to reach feature parity at a lower price point and I get it but it's misguided.

They shouldn't be trying to take the lead here. It's not their wheelhouse. They should be focusing on AR, not VR. That's their wheelhouse.

Let Vive and Valve and HTC and whoever work on the VR side of things.

I do my morning workout in vr, but its far too active and involving for grown ups.

After work and after the kids are sleeping, My husband plays his oculus quest 2 hooked to his gaming pc on the couch. He has some kind of mods for his games that allow him to have the camera in VR, but he plays on the xbox controller. He has been obsessed with dark souls remastered vr.

Imo there's still too much friction in tethered VR and not enough good content in standalone VR.

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