[Legion]

The fact that consumer VR remains a niche category even in its best use case - gaming - tells you everything you need to know about whether or not it's ready for development in the non-gaming consumer space.

Until VR tech is strong enough that it becomes a must-own product type for the average gamer, any other consumer-focused use case should be considered dead in the water.

[crooked-v]

I think the gaming VR space is extra-weird because so many devs aren't really designing for VR. They're just making the same games they already have, but with VR instead of a screen.

For an example of what I mean, look at the many, many FPS-style VR games that have the barest of bare-bone adaptations to the medium (stick movement, often button-based menus, etc), and then compare to Gorilla Tag. Even the big-name games like Half-Life Alyx have similar failures of imagination; the Half-Life series made its fame in part due to physics-based nonsense and yet in the VR game you can't even use objects to hit things.

Even weirder is that the games that would benefit from "VR as a screen" without many of the downsides—think, for example, playing Civilization on a big floating globe you can move around, completely sidestepping any nausea issues—just don't exist for the most part.

[Fluorescence]

> games that would benefit from "VR as a screen" without many of the downsides—think, for example, playing Civilization

As a kind of ex-VR enthusiast and strategy fan, I don't see much value there.

A single strategy game like Civ are 10s of hours of playtime or if a paradox game, 100s. The magical experience of VR presence fades pretty sharpish so it quickly comes down to comfort and practicality. This also applies to MMORPGs like Elite Dangerous - it's a breath taking experience docking your ship the first few times but as soon as you are into the grind, a headset just becomes sweaty nuisance.

These are games that benefit from the external world e.g.

- eat a sandwich, sip coffee, tickle the cat on your lap... as you ponder your next move

- have 30 browser tabs open - the wiki, a strategy guide, a tutorial, the patch notes, a thread about a bug, and that random history rabbit-hole because you are accidentally learning things about the Carolingians or whatever.

- ideal games to play along with some TV/netflix/youtube that only deserves partial attention. These are not games that benefit from 100% undivided focus. Kind of the opposite, a thoughtful game benefits from "gazing out the window" type defocussing.

- if playing something new/tricky, then I also have a todo list and spreadsheet for calculating some things going too

I think motion controllers have untapped potential but even then, they are are going against mouse/keyboard. When the task is wrangling complexity with both precise selections, data navigation/entry and bulk actions, filtering, searches etc. then it's difficult to see an advantage. You can enjoy some Minority Report navigation for a bit but after a few hundred hours... a keyboard shortcut is the real, truly valuable innovation you want.

Instantly jumping from location to location / screen to screen is better than whatever visual journey VR would typically insist on. I generally have zero issues with VR sickness but I actually get kind of nauseous micromanaging multiple wars on different sides of a map in 2D because of having to rapidly flip back and forth every other second. I can't imagine how bad that would be in VR!

[madamelic]

> playing Civilization on a big floating globe you can move around, completely sidestepping any nausea issues—just don't exist for the most part.

You've now made me realize what I am missing.

All I can think about is having a palette that I pick buildings from then bow down to arrange them on the map. In multiplayer, you would see the other player's God avatars walking around commanding their little troops.

[crooked-v]

For a VR game that does something like that, check out Gods of Gravity (https://godsofgravityvr.com). It's a mini-RTS where you can see each other player in the environment, so part of the gameplay is trying to actively watch out for what they're doing at the same time you're doing your thing.

For something with a similar element but cooperative, there's Demeo (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1484280/Demeo/), which tries to blend the best parts of a board games in person (easy communication and body language, hangout lobbies, etc) with the benefits of VR (like being able to arbitrarily manipulate and zoom the game environment).

[jayd16]

It's not winning the console war but its certainly in it. Quest install base is at parity with Xbox. That's incredibly impressive considering Meta is coming from outside the industry entirely.

[actionfromafar]

That's incredible. I had no idea the XBOX install base was so low.

[piva00]

Install base I can imagine, a better comparison would be average usage time in a month.

Everyone I know who bought an Oculus has it laying on some shelf accumulating dust after 2-3 months.