[ubb_server]

I agree that VR gaming is a niche, but I think it could be explosively improved if we had the kind of all-in idealism that the previous commenter referred to. I think because VR gaming IS niche, we haven't yet delved into what VR/AR could do in non-gaming.

An idea that I've had before is like 'augmented curated experiences' for all kinds of things--for example imagine playing a Magic the Gathering (or similar) card game, and watching your cards come to life on the board in hologram-esque 3D. Or while watching a sports match, being able to pull up the stats or numbers of any players, or flip through channels of POV camera from helmets. Car navigation that shows you what turns to make by augmenting lanes or signs with highlighting. Brick and mortar stores having a live wayfinding route to products in their store based on your grocery list, recognizing and highlighting items you like.

[tsimionescu]

> for example imagine playing a Magic the Gathering (or similar) card game, and watching your cards come to life on the board in hologram-esque 3D

This is the kind of thing that buries VR ideas. It's very cute in a demo, but as an actual product, the cost of coming up with 3D models and animations for all MTG cards currently being played is many orders of magnitude more than the total number of people who would pay for this. Ultimately this is completely unnecessary fluff for the game, like chess games where the pieces actually fight: irrelevant, and it actually detracts from the game because it interrupts the flow of what you're actually doing.

[jdprgm]

I remain convinced VR gaming is niche because despite these companies being willing to drop boatloads of money on all kinds of things they for some reason never decided to just allocate a few billion to create a handful of true AAA games and jumpstart the industry. I think even just 3 proper games with several hundred mil budgets and VR gaming might be in an entirely different space than it is now.

[xdfgh1112]

Facebook made a very expensive new Batman game in VR, there's also Resident Evil, Assassin's Creed, a ton of other high budget games like Red Matter.

It just isn't taking off. In my experience even though VR is unique and amazing, it's not that much better than playing those games flat screen. I tend to spend most of my time in Beat Saber.

[jdprgm]

Expensive in the context of other VR games sure. I couldn't find any official numbers but i'm sure it pales in comparison to dozens of other games that came out this year.

Also i'm not sure what these single player relatively short playtime/runtime games accomplish as you buy it play it in less than a week and are done. What I would like to see is the large scale infinitely playable MMO type game done on VR with at least at 250M budget.

[tsimionescu]

I think this is extremely doubtful. The reality remains that it's impossible to make a first person or even third person VR game with free movement, because of fundamental limitations in how human brains process movement. Having your eyes tell you are moving but your muscles and inner ear tell you that you are not makes you extremely sick very quickly, and technology can't actually fix this. The better and more immersive the visual illusion of movement, the worse the movement sickness you'll experience.

And without free movement, you can't build any of the mainstream game genres. You can't build and get people excited in a Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed or Fortnite or Elden Ring or Zelda where movement works like Riven, the sequel to Myst. Valve actually tried with the first Half-Life game in a decade, and even that didn't work.

Add to this massive gameplay limitation the second massive issue that you can't get a mass audience to pay hundreds of dollars extra for a peripheral without which they can't play your 70-80 dollar game.

[WhiteNoiz3]

> Valve actually tried with the first Half-Life game in a decade, and even that didn't work.

Half Life Alyx is still considered to be one of the best VR games ever made and one that is still consistently recommended to new users even years after release. IMO people buy hardware because of the exclusive content. If a standard game console came out and it only had one AAA game on it, I probably wouldn't bother buying it. But if there were 3-4 games that looked really interesting it starts to look more worth the investment. Playing VR games takes a lot of committment (time / physical space / $$$) so the payoff has to be worth it or you'll lose people. With the huge amount of money spent on R&D for new hardware I think it's a valid argument to say that maybe funding content would have been a better investment in terms of ensuring platform growth.

Also, side note but not every game requires free motion. Plenty of hits had no movement or teleport etc. A lot of these were completely new (sub-)genres that didn't exist or hit the same as they would in a traditional pancake game. Plus lots of kids seem unaffected by free movement (maybe as high as 50% of users by my rough estimate).

[xdfgh1112]

Those games literally exist now. Almost all new VR games use free movement not teleportation. It is frustrating that you seem to be talking confidently when your knowledge is 5 years out of date.

[swalsh]

10 years out of date. Free motion has been the norm for indie games since HTC vive. The bigger studios kept using teleportation because that was the "best practice" gamers got their VR legs and preferred free motion.

[bee_rider]

Maybe a really high budget VR shooter game could be successful, I don’t know.

I played some VR sword-fighting games and they were bad in a way that AAA budgets would not fix. Stuff like an attack animation being pre-scripted feels incredibly goofy in VR.

I think this is a general problem. VR worlds need to be more dynamic than typical games. AAA games tend to have higher quality assets, but arranged in a more restrictive and scripted configuration. More innovative indie work is needed to work out what the language of VR should be (it is a bit weird compared to the past because stuff like Quake was innovative, AAA-equivalent for the era, but also small and independent enough to be innovative).

[Aeolun]

We should re-watch Dennou Coil every few years to be reminded of what we’re working towards :)