[b9a2cab5]

Quest 2 is outselling past VR headsets by leaps and bounds according to news reports. The decision to make a standalone headset and build their own app platform was absolutely the right one from a growth standpoint, even if the hardcore VR consumers aren't biting. Early VR adopters are going to buy the next best product and have no loyalty.

[CoolGuySteve]

I wouldn't be surprised if the next gen Switch has a VR headset accessory and blows the entire market away the same way the iPod and NES did to their predecessors.

The required parts to make a 60Hz 1080p headset are entering the $100 cell phone market and that segment of components are more or less what Nintendo traditionally uses in its handhelds.

Nintendo also has a long history of "blue ocean" products that tweak existing technologies to make them more mainstream.

[Tepix]

60Hz 1080p isn't good enough for VR. Bulky hardware that can be built for $100 isn't good enough for mass adoption. There's a reason why Meta is investing so heavily.

[CoolGuySteve]

People have been arguing that Nintendo hardware doesn't deliver high enough fidelity ever since the Wii but that hasn't stopped most of their products from being incredibly successful.

The idea that it's refresh rate or resolution that's keeping VR from becoming mainstream seems ridiculous when even a relatively friendly platform like PSVR ships with this bundle of cables: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/So...

Occulus seems to realize this but their software side still needs work.

[giantrobot]

To have a headset that doesn't make people sick, 60hz is nowhere near a high enough refresh rate. For something with "reality" in the name 1080p isn't a high enough resolution. The displays are too close to the eye and it's easy to make out individual pixels and more importantly the gaps between them [0]. High pixel density displays are a must.

A 480p game on the Wii is still a playable game. An art style that leans into the low resolution will also look fine. While it might not have looked as good as a PS3 it's still playable.

A VR headset with imprecise orientation sensors and a slow refresh rate will make you sick. Your visual input won't match what your proprioception says about your body's positioning. Even if you manage not to get sick such a system isn't usable for non-trivial durations. A low end VR system is not worth any amount of money because it's not practically usable.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen-door_effect

[sangnoir]

Nintendo offsets lackluster hardware with exceptional games. The end result is Nintendo rarely becomes the outright leader in any hardware segment. I agree they are successful, but I can't recall when they last "blew away the market"

[specialp]

5 out of the top 10 consoles sold of all time are Nintendo. They are the outright leader and always have been in handhelds and the Switch has been the best selling console for the past 2 years

[sangnoir]

In the past 2 years, Sony has been cannibalizing the PS4 with the PS5.

Nintendo is the only major player in the handheld category: of course they're a "leader". The success of the Switch supports my prior point: it's a warmed-over Nvidia Shield that has very mediocre hardware (Tegra X1 - Maxwell arch), but has amazing first-party games on it. BoTW is one of the best games I have played.

[Tepix]

Virtual reality is different than gaming hardware. If the quality is too bad you may get motion sickness or not experience immmersion. There is a certain quality threshold you need to cross, similar to the uncanney valley you experience when looking at virtual human avatars.

Yes, cables are also something that lowers immersion.

[int_19h]

It's not an either-or. It definitely needs to be wireless to truly take off, but resolution and refresh rate requirements are also required to provide an enjoyable experience.

[ben_w]

60Hz: I agree with you

1080p: I disagree, that can either be good or bad depending on the content. E.g. original iPhone was only 320x480, but Apple made it feel good.

[advrs]

Have you tried VR at 1080p? I understand your point (one number does not adequately represent "quality of experience") but for VR, 1080p is simply not enough due to the distance to the display (pixels are very visible).

[ben_w]

I’ve tried it on even less than 1080 — a first generation iPhone SE (1136×640) in a one of those £30 plastic head-mounts.

Yes, you can see the pixels. But it’s easy enough to ignore that if the content is compelling.

[int_19h]

FWIW, I own HP Reverb G2 (2160x2160 per eye - the highest I could find when I got it), and it's still not quite enough. 4K per eye might be what it takes.

[Tepix]

The iPhone display takes up just a fraction of your field of view whereas a VR display covers most of it.

The difference is pixels per degree.

[ChildOfChaos]

Very unlikely we will see it from Nintendo, Nintendo have lacked innovation for ages, they just sell cutesy games to kids. They cornered the 'disney' market, don't expect them to do anything great from a tech perspective

[CoolGuySteve]

You're talking about the company that over the past 15 years introduced consoles with motion controls, touch screens, autostereoscopic 3D, proximity-based data sharing, wireless HDMI streaming, and seamless docking support?

That one? That company lacks innovation?

[desiarnezjr]

Their biggest achievement is that they made all those things so cheap and accessible. It really reinforces that newer, innovative or edgier tech (ie: Kinect) isn't always the right approach.

[elliekelly]

I would imagine the Switch gyro controller must be pretty close to the tech needed to make VR games?

[meheleventyone]

https://www.nintendo.com/products/detail/labo-vr-kit/

In a similar vein to phone based VR that we’ve had since Google Cardboard. Modern headsets fuse gyro, accelerometer and camera feature tracking together to stably track the position of the headset and hands/controllers.

[ddragon]

In my experience with a rift s, even though the oculus touch also has gyroscopes and accelerometers, they only help for a few seconds at most when the controllers leave the camera. Those sensors are just not accurate enough (I know little about the details of the sensors, but accelerometers are tracking the second derivative of the position, so any small error will accumulate fast when you want the latter), and you don't want to have your hand all over the place when you're trying to interact with things in VR, which is why, at least for now, you need to measure position directly for it to work, such as the camera/LED devices that are most popular with VR headsets and controllers (and even stuff like the PS Move controller).

[tekknik]

Play Splatoon 2, they nailed motion controls. Every time I read people saying they’re not accurate enough I get confused.

[ddragon]

I mean, I had a vita and the gyroscope control was more accurate than the stick for shooters but that's because I'll naturally adjust if it overshoots (if I go to above I'll immediately push slightly down in a feedback loop - so here what really matters is the precision, not accuracy and in fact I can even adjust the sensitivity to my preference). That feedback loop with the user doesn't work well in VR, if my hand overshoots I don't have means of resetting the position (I can only compensate, but it's extremely uncomfortable when you feel your hand in position x, look at it and it's at position y and that x-y mapping will keep changing over time - and of course it's even worse with your head PoV not matching your head movements). Of course there are lots of issues as well, how do you get the perfect initial position? After all gyroscope/accelerometers only measure movement, it can't know where it starts (for example for jogging you need a gps to get a measurement of position, just like you need a camera/laser sensor for current VR). For gyroscope in traditional gaming you usually use the stick to adjust a solid start position, which is not possible in VR as well unless you force the user to stay in a perfect pose at the start of every level after inputting arms length and height as an example, which would definitely be annoying quickly if you need to reset frequently).

And finally, you example (splatoon 2) only needs to compute 2 degrees of freedom in movement (rotation left-right - or yawing, rotation down-up - or pitching, since rolling isn't relevant with a dot target), while VR systems depend on 6 degrees of freedom (yawing, pitching, rolling, elevating, strafing and surging - all of these for at least 3 devices at the same time: your head, left hand and right hand). Unfortunately controls in VR are quite complicated, and accelerometers, gyroscopes (and magnetometers which are also used in VR systems to know the reference to the floor) are simply insufficient (but necessary since the positional sensors can't keep track all time with occasional occlusion, such as having one hand passing over the other or leaving the tracking area), which is why the same sensors on the switch are used in every VR headset and controls in addition with even more sensors and algorithms.

EDIT: the camera system also helps a lot with defining gaming boundaries in the room and being able to quickly see if I accidentally leave it, I already punched my monitor once and that's with a barrier that always get visible when I approach something in my room.

[charcircuit]

You are confusing precision with accuracy

[thow-01187]

> The decision to make a standalone headset and build their own app platform was absolutely the right one

Not sure whether the appeal of Quest 2 is in the standalone-ness and the app platform - or whether it's about being around half the price of comparable headsets before it, perhaps even being sold at a loss