QOTW: Was virtual reality just a fad?

[littlebitstroud]

When an art form isn't accessible to the poor (the masses) it will be a fad. When it's approachable to the masses, it will take off. You'd have to be a fool to not know how this works.

[aniilv]

considering there is only one game (alyx) it will never actually get anywhere... other "games" are not designed in vr, they are just ports..

[QuorTek]

First we gotta have actual good GFX cards for this..

Our Rift is powered by an RX 570. Really, the hardware bar is *really* easy to get over these days. When I got the thing you needed a £400 GPU and an expensive quad core i7 to get usable results; now more power can be had on a £150 GPU and a Ryzen 3600.

I said the hardware is not up for 4K yet, and it is not ready for proper VR yet, it is an expensive investment for little use, and no proper forecast in how long the items will still be working well, speaking of +10.000 hours of active use, they have been all around about VR since Doom II from back in the 90ish.

[markzero]

I think there's a place for both VR and AR, but AR really needs integration into regular style glasses, instead of phones. Imagine if AR gets approved for driving use: street names overlaid on bridges and exits, not to mention destination arrows. Even just as a pedestrian, imagine coupling that with voice recognition ("where can I get some tacos around here?"). Look across the street at a bus stop and see time til the next arrival.

[Joe91]

Headset VR definitely has significant potential. I remember trying the Google cardboard thing with my phone some years ago, and though it was severely limited in everything, as my first VR experience I was still impressed. Things improved greatly with the Oculus Rift, though yes, the clarity wasn't the same as my higher res monitor. I'm currently waiting on the Reverb G2 and coupled with one of the next gen cards about to be released (likely RDNA2) I already know the experience is going to improve greatly, again. Yes, some games made me feel nauseous though that stopped after playing for a while for most of these games (not all).
The big barrier for the new purchaser is cost...at the expensive end the vive + all required addons costs c£1000 + another £700 upwards for a suitable PC (you'll need a monitor too). Heck, even a suitable PC with an unsuitable GPU will cost you c£400 upwards to upgrade that GPU. Standalone headsets e.g. Quest2 are much more cost friendly and promise an excellent experience...but...the owners, Facebook, now require you to use your FB account for the headset to work. That's gonna put folk off.
Unfortunately, We're still a year or two away from a holodeck - that's gonna get a population uptake of 100%, guaranteed.

[Gentle Viking]

I am a grumpy old man.
But i still want to try VR at least, but i doubt i would buy into it, though of course if i was hooked i would.
I am also into most new things, but i also have to say many new things are down right stupid, and from a environmental perspective a waster of the raw materials that make it.

I would also like to try AR, and even without having tried i can say that if i was able to get a AR goggle what would superimpose a radar/ lidar image on top of what i see, or just a IR image, like some form of deluxe NVG, that i would be interested in.

For instance this,,,,,, i really think should be banned from sale in any decent country, it serve next to no purpose, it is maybe inventing a purpose,,,,, to sell.
It is something made to sell, and nothing else, actually i would look down upon a person having one of those in his / her car.



I will even say some new things are making people more stupid ( looking at you smartphones )
Take cars, so why cant people turn on the light now ? it have worked fine since the invention of headlights, and why cant people turn on wipers, it have worked just fine since vipers was invented.
And many more things.

Just BECUZ you can do something, dont mean you have to.

[DanceswithUnix]

considering there is only one game (alyx) it will never actually get anywhere... other "games" are not designed in vr, they are just ports..

... and yet I can't play the VR port of Elite Dangerous on a flat monitor any more because the experience is just so dire compared to VR.

Oh well, I guess people who want to believe there isn't anything worth playing can't be convinced. So I won't waste any more effort, I'll go play Beat Sabre instead

Take cars, so why cant people turn on the light now ? it have worked fine since the invention of headlights, and why cant people turn on wipers, it have worked just fine since vipers was invented.

To be fair, I have been observing people (with difficulty!) driving around at night having forgotten to put their headlights or even sidelights on at night for decades. It could be argues that such people shouldn't be allowed to drive (which is a bit harsh, we all make mistakes) but that is a simple bit of tech that removes a dangerous mistake from people's hands.

[cheesemp]

I've looked into it a few times but £300+ on a headset after upgrading my GPU. No chance. If the price dropped a bit (and facebook couldn't ban my account and render my device dead) I would be interested but its too expensive to take the risk. (£300+ is more than the cost of a new xbox I know I would enjoy.)

[tonyd2233]

Easy answer - yes and no. The technology was not right, too expensive, units too big, too heavy, not wireless, needs room pods, needs higher refresh rates, needs an expensive driving pc/console... The idea is a good one and I'm sure it'll come back as more advanced, more useful AR

[nar53]

I can honestly say I have absolutely no idea.

[Buzzark]

For the right games, VR is an incredible and immersive experience but it's still a niche market.

Elite Dangerous, Half life - Alyx, Creed - Rise to glory, Assetto Corsa are all great examples of VR done well. (Creed has some weird movement design choices but the boxing is sound) Flight and driving sims are obvious ideal matches but Half life - Alyx showed how it can be for traditional games.

[davesom555]

I had a dk2 and was I using for Elite Dangerous... I can't play it without a vr headset any more... It lacks the immersion. For this type of game, it's amazing. I would probably invest again in future. FS 2020, more elite etc.

[Spud1]

I guess i'll go against the trend here and say that no, its not a fad and is getting better year on year.

I invested in a DK2 which sold me on the concept, and then upgraded to a Rift CV1 when it game out and didn't look back. My interest did admitted drop off for a period where content was limited at best, but things have really changed in the past 2 years and there is a lot of AAA style content available now, with more on the way.

The biggest issue for me has always been the faff factor. So many times I decided I wanted to spend a few hours in FSX or Elite...only to give up at the thought of setting up my sensors, calibrating them etc etc..just a PITA.

Then last week I bought a Quest 2..and wow, what a difference. VR is now truly plug and play (no need for sensors etc), the display quality is hugely better, and I have the best of both worlds - i can play "mobile" experiences anywhere i want, but I can still play PC VR either wirelessly or via USB cable..it's really got me back into it.

Playing Star Wars squadrons on a "flat" monitor is dull and not at all engaging now - I would not go back for that sort of game.

[John_Amstrad]

VR can cause permanent brain damage. The human brain hasn't been made for this rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish. Lanier should be sentenced to a VR cage for life.

[DanceswithUnix]

I've looked into it a few times but £300+ on a headset after upgrading my GPU.

When I first got my Rift I was playing on a 2GB R9 285. It isn't ideal, but your RX480 8GB is fine.

Or put it another way, you could upgrade your GPU for the same (probably more) money, but would it give you any new experiences? It just makes the same old games a bit quicker and a bit nicer looking. That's not an upgrade, it's a rut.

In a VR headset playing Elite, you can look down whilst scooping a sun in your Asp Explorer and see the sun boiling away beneath your feet. In dogfights you can look around you to try and see where that second ship went after getting the first one. Sometimes you lean forwards when looking up to see past some beam that is blocking your view of the enemy. Firing up Dirt Rally in VR in the campaign mode the first car was a Lancia Fulvia. My brother owned a Fulvia once, and I spent a few minutes just gazing around the interior of the car boggled by the amount of detail they had put in there.

The simpler games, like Beat Saber, a Quest can play without even plugging into a PC.

The biggest blocker to VR is frankly the amount of space you need around you to play games like Alyx. If you can play in a living room then you are probably OK, but that isn't very family friendly.

[pastymuncher]

I don't think it's a fad, more like a improving all the time tech. I would love a VR setup but for one thing it's too expensive and you seem to need a beast of a system to run the better setups without turning details down. Oculus seemed to be the go to brand but they can go and do one having sold their souls to Facebook. I will never ever have a Facebook account and want nothing to do with them. There is the HP Reverb G2 coming later but having such a high resolution is again going to need a beast of a pc to drive it. I should imagine that there are a limited number of games that support VR and probably hardly any of the ones I play (mostly simulators such as ETS2, ATS, TS2021).