VR Megathread: Valve's VR Has Entered The Game

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Heran Bago: Aug 18, 2006

What do you use to watch those 360 degree youtube videos in VR?

# ? Sep 20, 2016 17:26

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# ? May 9, 2024 23:35

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Heran Bago posted:

What do you use to watch those 360 degree youtube videos in VR?

Virtual Desktop is probably the best one, most of the dedicated players I've seen don't directly play youtube videos.

# ? Sep 20, 2016 17:36

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

Yeah, virtual desktop

# ? Sep 20, 2016 17:39

Heran Bago: Aug 18, 2006

Thanks, sounds interesting. Looking into it I found out audio visualizers in VR are a thing with that. gently caress yeah. I'm guessing there is just one big seam on a side if you make it a sphere around you?

Also, has anyone tried any PS2 games in VR? I imagine it would suck without codes to prevent culling.
http://vrfix.wikia.com/wiki/PCSX2

I'm also interested in that Virtual Boy emulator. So much to try!

# ? Sep 20, 2016 17:57

ChickenArise: May 12, 2010; POWER
= MEAT +
OPPORTUNITY
= BATTLEWORMS

Truga posted:

Yeah, virtual desktop

In my experience, though, FPS still matters. Some 360 roller coaster videos made me pretty ill.

# ? Sep 20, 2016 19:23

HerpicleOmnicron5: May 31, 2013; How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?

Bobcats posted:

Onward looks awesome. How does it handle sights and aiming with two hands?

You pick up the gun, you move your arms, put them to your eye and pull the trigger when you want to make dead people.

# ? Sep 20, 2016 19:53

Cojawfee: May 31, 2006; I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius

https://widmovr.com/

I just got this today and it's great. The VRCover I got a while back sucks rear end so I won't bother buying their latest offering. This product though its great. Holds onto the facial interface and is very comfortable.

# ? Sep 21, 2016 03:03

Mordaedil: Oct 25, 2007; Oh wow, cool. Good job.
So?; Grimey Drawer

Virtual Desktop doesn't work for me to see videos, but it downloads them, which in turn allows Simple VR player to play it.

# ? Sep 21, 2016 06:57

EdEddnEddy: Apr 5, 2012

Cojawfee posted:

https://widmovr.com/

I just got this today and it's great. The VRCover I got a while back sucks rear end so I won't bother buying their latest offering. This product though its great. Holds onto the facial interface and is very comfortable.

I am still pissed I included my AboutFace covers for the DK2 with my DK2 when I sold it. :argh:

Those things used Velcro to attach to the frame they came with that replaced the DK2's stock foam, and would probably have fit perfectly on the Vive and if I took of the frame piece, I bet it could have fit on the CV1 just fine as well.

Those things make the DK2 comfortable for hours over the stock foam's 30min + and things just got hot/itchy.

And the guy that made them hasn't responded again on any new stuff coming out. Those Heather collection pads were the most comfortable pads ever.

# ? Sep 21, 2016 18:49

GlyphGryph: Jun 23, 2013; Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:

You pick up the gun, you move your arms, put them to your eye and pull the trigger when you want to make dead people.

Be careful about the direction the gun is facing or you may make the wrong people dead.

https://oddshot.tv/shot/LIRIK/Uzo1B5TU1B5GbZupeEN77bP1

https://oddshot.tv/shot/LIRIK/UzqObzjeObxM5ZYx-fvaUYRH

https://oddshot.tv/shot/LIRIK/UzrIQ8Z_IQ9EHr7ZzInSF6nH

# ? Sep 21, 2016 18:57

FuzzySlippers: Feb 6, 2009

Oh man Minecraft in vr like constantly gives me vertigo moving pretty much at all in immersive mode. Do I just not have my 'vr legs' or does it require better than average motion sickness aversion? I was surprised people were saying they enjoyed it as I thought standard fps movement in vr was always bad.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 03:18

Bremen: Jul 20, 2006; Our God..... is an awesome God

FuzzySlippers posted:

Oh man Minecraft in vr like constantly gives me vertigo moving pretty much at all in immersive mode. Do I just not have my 'vr legs' or does it require better than average motion sickness aversion? I was surprised people were saying they enjoyed it as I thought standard fps movement in vr was always bad.

Unless they specify the official version, they might actually be referring to Vivecraft, which uses a completely different system.

I was talking to a Rift owner about Minecraft, and it was like we were talking past each other the systems are so different. Is it true that if you turn your head and then move forward it still moves you the direction you were facing before you turned? That sound like barf city to me, but I guess it makes sense if they assume you're playing it sitting at the computer.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 03:34

iRend: Jun 21, 2004; MOTHER, DID YOU eeeeeayyyyy.... ooooooaaa... ff.

NITROUS DIVISION

I can't wait to get my hands on proper VR.

I've been playing with my galaxy s6 and a gearVR, and am able to watch movies etc for hours without feeling sick at all. I've been mostly doing Netflix, and apart from the phone overheating after 2 hours it's excellent. Slight decrease in quality compared to watching on an actual screen, but having it fill your entire field of vision is great.

Also I loaded up a certain type of 180 degree video and gave it to my girlfriend. She thought having a virtual penis was fun, but didn't like when a lady got too close. The device has totally redeemed itself from her screaming "NO I DON'T WANT YOU TO SIT ON MY FACE".

Oddly, she can not tolerate the rollercoaster thing at all, but I wasn't feeling any vertigo.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 03:36

FuzzySlippers: Feb 6, 2009

Bremen posted:

Unless they specify the official version, they might actually be referring to Vivecraft, which uses a completely different system.

I was talking to a Rift owner about Minecraft, and it was like we were talking past each other the systems are so different. Is it true that if you turn your head and then move forward it still moves you the direction you were facing before you turned? That sound like barf city to me, but I guess it makes sense if they assume you're playing it sitting at the computer.

This was on Gear which also mean you can add frame rate drops to the experience. I played so little I can't recall the controls exactly. I think it was just standard 360 controller fps controls except you use your head for looking. So it was look where you want to go, take step forward, feel like your brain is being sucked through your stomach, try to steady yourself for another step.

iRend posted:

I can't wait to get my hands on proper VR.

Me too which is why I was dumb enough to buy Minecraft on the Gear. I'm not that upset about losing $6 on it but it still seems kinda crazy the Oculus store doesn't do refunds. Like I know VR experiences can be so short you might not want to do Steam's refund policy but at least 15 minute refunds or something for checking if something zaps your brain seems necessary.

I had been favoring the Rift so I was thinking of waiting for them to show off whatever in Oct before I decided on a headset but that bit of Minecraft definitely pushed me towards a Vive.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 03:49

Ludicrous Gibs!: Jan 21, 2002; I'm not lost, but I don't know where I am.; Ramrod XTreme

FWIW, Minecraft Gear VR made me nauseous at first, but that faded after a few tries, and now I have 35 hours logged in it. I still get mild motion sickness every so often, but nothing compared with what I experienced early on. Interestingly, certain actions seem to cause more issues than others - I can ride horses or minecarts without much issue, as well as look in a direction other than the one I'm moving in, but if I let water currents start dragging me around... :barf:

# ? Sep 22, 2016 03:57

Cojawfee: May 31, 2006; I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius

VR is too expensive and will just die off as a passing fad.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 04:15

Nalin: Sep 29, 2007; Hair Elf

I played a bit of the Dragon Front beta today for the Rift. It is a CCG with booster packs and everything. Kinda like Mojang's Scrolls in a way.

The beta has four factions: one does poo poo with walls and catapults and fancy formations, one can spawn lots of units really quickly, one has cheap units with lots of flying and haste abilities, and the last has creatures that excel in doing lots of damage on odd ways.

Each player starts with 15 life and has a "hero" unit inactive in their base. The play area consists of a 4x4 grid. At the start of each turn you draw 1 card and receive 1 mana, plus 1 extra mana for each creature in your "spawn row" (the row closest to your castle). Unspent mana is carried over to the next turn.

You summon creatures and place them in your spawn row (you must have a free spot in the row). If you "activate" a unit that doesn't have summoning sickness, it will move forward 1-2 spaces (depending on card). If it meets up with an enemy, both units will attack each other simultaneously. If your unit reaches the enemy spawn row and there is no creature there, you will attack the player's health directly. You cannot enter the enemy's spawn row. Also, creature health does not regenerate between turns.

Your hero unit costs an accumulated 15 mana across multiple turns to summon. There is no limit to how much mana you can bank per turn. Additionally, for each point of damage you receive, you bank an equivalent amount of mana in your hero unit. They are powerful, have effects that trigger when they spawn in and/or are in play, and you only get one of them.

I had a pretty fun time with it. There is a good variety in abilities and strategy (like double-wide creatures). The game makes you play every single faction as part of its tutorial. After that, it asks you which faction you want to start with. I selected mine, and then it reset all my tutorial progress. I have no clue if it is a bug or not, but eh.

One thing that really bugged the hell out of me is that the selection crosshair is off-center to the left. It can make things awkward when you are trying to activate your hero in the bottom-right corner.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 04:50

SCheeseman: Apr 23, 2003

Here's a good writeup from a VR developer (the dude behind the excellent and innovative Hot Dogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades) about challenges faced from VR development.

quote:

Hey folks, A little late to the party, but I thought I'd add my two cents to this conversation, and share a bit of the challenges that I've faced, and some observations I've drawn from tackling the problem space of scaling systems/spaces/etc. for VR games.

There are a number of challenges faced by devs moving to VR (big and small) that I don't think folks who don't do game dev are quite aware of the magnitude of. These relate to what are called implementation patterns, patterns used for things like character controllers, physics objects, spatial event triggers, visual effects, the list goes on. Games from AAA to one-person-indie are in a sense, always resting on, building on top of this shared body of arcane knowledge on 'how we do things'. All the little stuff that contributes to things in games that you don't notice when they work well, but DO notice when they don't:

How a character model walks across a bumpy surface, or up and down stairs.

How heavy vs. light objects interact with the player/other forces, when and how they come to rest

How a door works

Fire/explostions looking like fire/explosions

The ability to rapidly jump between gameplay and interface manipulation situationally

A Main menu

The list goes on. In many ways, the 'indie revolution' in gaming, and frankly the rising across the board software quality of AAA games has occurred because of the fact that successful patterns, in abstract and in code, have become significantly easier to share/spread over the past decade, and many of those problem spaces have been effectively 'solved', meaning that there are 1-3 ways to do a given thing, because its the most reliable/easiest to implement for a desired behavior/context, and everyone just does that.

Now imagine a majority of it has been thrown out the window. THAT is where we are at.

And not just for one reason/property of VR, for several of them. The most prominent that I've dealt with are:

Stereoscopic Rendering
Far more of the content in traditional games we play is flat than you'd imagine. One can occasionally get a glimpse of this glitching a camera into an effect, or if its just poorly built, but seriously think for a moment about how pretty much every visual effect you see in a game is a bunch of flat 'cards' overlapping each other. Most of these look immediately wrong/bad the moment you introduce stereo (this is also incidentally why vfx in post-converted 3d films often look so stupid). We have just gotten to the point where its performance efficient enough to have truly volumetric effects in regular games (fog, pyroclastics, simple liquids, etc.), but all of these effects get GEOMETRICALLY more expensive for larger resolutions/higher framerates. Which brings me to:

VR Resolution and Framerate
1080x1200x2x1.4xPrewarp Supersamplingx90fps = 326592000 pixels (assuming a single pass, no overdraw at all) This is more pixels than full 4k gaming at 30fps, but in a context where using motion blur is out of the question (as most AAA games do), and dropped frames result in physiological discomfort. Plus, due to having two views involved, despite some major recent advancements in the common engines, the cpu overhead is much higher than rendering single 4k frames.

How to put this... we have gotten used to, especially with AAA games, of eating frame stability in the name of content. Other than Order 1886's rock solid 'cinematic' 30fps, and the latest DOOM (which is a technical tour de force), I can't remember the last time I played a major release game that didn't oscillate WILDLY draw-time wise. Even shops like Blizzard that used to be way better about this feel like they've knocked this down a few notches on their priority list.

So we now have a situation where the way we make everything, measure and create content, compose scenes, and combine everything at the end is a gun to our head. AAA productions in particular are not ready for how game-changingly hard this is. Those big games like Assassins Creed and Watchdogs? Yeah, major scenes, assets, mechanics, etc. were integrated into the final build mere weeks before those games went to cert. That ain't going to fly making VR games. An entirely new philosophy needs to be adopted oriented on significantly more organized pre-production, technical iteration and perf. testing in cycles throughout productions, frankly... constraining content production in ways that these large edifices aren't used to having to do. There is no longer a 'well, it doesn't run perfectly, but it works well enough' grey area. You hit frame-time, or you don't.

When it comes to the first AAA VR titles, expect some of them to cock this up ROYALLY. DOOM VR will probably run amazingly, because ID locked that poo poo down. Fallout 4 VR will probably run unreliably. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that 90+% of their resources in making that happen are about perf.

Physics
This is one that will hit folk differently based upon what type of game is being made, that I've grappled with to a preposterous degree in H3VR, because Anton made the quixotic decision to go 'everything's a physics object'. But even if you're not going to this extreme, it's important to realize that game physics engines are not architected to handle what we're already asking of them for VR games. They handle coarse interactions between man-sized objects very well and very fast. They handle vehicles... pretty drat well, if you're willing to throw 2-3 NERDS at the problem for the entire dev cycle of your game, and especially if you're building off a code-base that's been refined over a series of games (which is why we have so rarely new break-out IPs in those areas).

What they DONT handle well, is things the size of your fingers, or even your hands. Or the size of most of the objects you hold in your day to day existence. Keys and locks, glasses, mice, realistically sized levers/handles/etc. Even something like... using a crow-bar to twist-break a chain off. Utterly outside the realm of said engines to do without it being mostly non-physically canned. This is why thus far, most folk have gone with very arcadey, very loose/forgiving, non-physics-based solutions for common interactions that.. could be physics based (I almost said 'should', but that's just my position on things, certainly not a board truth).

One of the core value propositions of VR is this ephemeral notion of 'presence', which in part is this idea that we stop perceiving the interface between us and the content, and are merely acting and seeing and hearing and being. We have the tracked controllers for being able to give you hand-proxies, but at the moment it is actually game engine tech stack that is preventing use from making those hand-to-thing and hand-to-hand-to-thing interactions feel more solid, feel more reliable, and most importantly, have physics-based interactions at small scales that map to our received experience of the world. Part of this is a perf issue, part of it is a fundamental design/architecture where we need a physics engine tuned for inserting a key into a lock, not a roadster drifting around a turn.

Anywho, I hope this ramble has been at least somewhat interesting/illuminating to those of you who don't do VR dev, and helps to illustrate the degree of technical challenge that we're all embarking on at the moment. Many of these problems are things that disproportionately hit AAA-size developers, as they are behemoths, are slow to change, and are rife with inefficiencies, poor organizational structures, and are frequently crewed with underpaid, overworked, semi-burned out folks who don't want to be given another half dozen challenges on top of what they already deal with. I'm not saying it's hopeless, but I am saying that the big VR games (that really feel like things BUILT for the medium), are probably going to take a while.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 12:59

ljw1004: Jan 18, 2005; rum

FuzzySlippers posted:

Oh man Minecraft in vr like constantly gives me vertigo moving pretty much at all in immersive mode. Do I just not have my 'vr legs' or does it require better than average motion sickness aversion? I was surprised people were saying they enjoyed it as I thought standard fps movement in vr was always bad.

I've played about 15 hours of Vivecraft mod for Minecraft on my (brother's) Vive. I always use roomscale (physically walking around my playroom) for small movements, and teleport for everything else. When I mine a block under me and fall down then I need to close my eyes to stop from getting motion sickness. I tried the "walking not teleporting" mode for all of five seconds and gave up.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 14:15

Warbird: May 23, 2012; America's Favorite Dumbass

SwissCM posted:

Here's a good writeup from a VR developer (the dude behind the excellent and innovative Hot Dogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades) about challenges faced from VR development.

It's a good piece. I think I said it here and not the Vive thread, but we're Pong era development for VR. The tech and techniques are rudimentary and evolving.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 18:20

w00tazn: Dec 25, 2004; I don't say w00t in real life

Warbird posted:

It's a good piece. I think I said it here and not the Vive thread, but we're Pong era development for VR. The tech and techniques are rudimentary and evolving.

This is why i haven't started development yet and why if i was going to start VR dev.. I'd start with a "traditional" 2D game concept and see how to port / translate that over to VR.

Use that experience to solve the problems that plauge all devs, and then learn from that experience as a stepping stone into a truly immersive VR experience.
It's sort of why I ~get~ why Oculus is pushing for controller based games for now, so that once those problems are ~solved~ the collective can utilize that for solving the ~immersion~ problems

For example:
2D games to VR still need to solve how to handle stereoscopic vision, the frame timing, volumetric effects, etc.
VR games (room presence, tracked hands) add entirely new levels of complexity to the mix both technically and in design. (hand physics, event triggers, scalable play spaces, locomotion)

I'd personally want to leverage all the existing knowledge and build out something that could work in VR (and still sale to traditional 2D / console) folks before moving on to try and tackle building an interaction sandbox that is controlled/uncontrolled.

tldr: I'll let someone else be the pioneer. our findings will be mutually beneficial.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 19:04

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Cojawfee posted:

VR is too expensive and will just die off as a passing fad.

that computer was $8000 because it had a MCA bus, which was an expensive passing fad. I'm a big fan of VR and intend to get it, just sayin'

e: wait was that :thejoke:

d0s fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Sep 22, 2016

# ? Sep 22, 2016 19:37

Warbird: May 23, 2012; America's Favorite Dumbass

w00tazn posted:

tldr: I'll let someone else be the pioneer. our findings will be mutually beneficial.

Take chances, make mistakes, get messy m'dude. If I ever get around to making a VR specific game dev thread, that poo poo's going to be the title.

# ? Sep 22, 2016 20:51

Ludicrous Gibs!: Jan 21, 2002; I'm not lost, but I don't know where I am.; Ramrod XTreme

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...ia=twitter_page

quote:

A Silicon Valley titan is putting money behind an unofficial Donald Trump group dedicated to �shitposting� and circulating Internet memes maligning Hillary Clinton.

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey financially backed a pro-Trump political organization called Nimble America, a self-described �social welfare 501(c)4 non-profit� in support of the Republican nominee.

I blame the home schooling. Anyone got a link to the Vive thread handy? :v:

vvvvv Yeah, I'm not getting out the torches and pitchforks just yet. But Luckey has always kind of rubbed me the wrong way, so it wouldn't surprise me if this is true.

Ludicrous Gibs! fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Sep 23, 2016

# ? Sep 23, 2016 03:17

Bremen: Jul 20, 2006; Our God..... is an awesome God

I'm guessing that's probably a joke, but Vive Thread

I'll give things at least a little benefit of the doubt until there's more confirmation, but unless that article is pretty much pure libel it looks pretty bad.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 03:29

orange juche: Mar 14, 2012

Palmer Luckey has to be wacky, this is his new version of sandals with a business suit.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 03:52

Bremen: Jul 20, 2006; Our God..... is an awesome God

Tokyo Sexwhale posted:

Palmer Luckey has to be wacky, this is his new version of sandals with a business suit.

He's playing the long game. The more the world becomes a hellish nightmare, the more people will want to escape it with VR.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 03:55

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Bremen posted:

He's playing the long game. The more the world becomes a hellish nightmare, the more people will want to escape it with VR.

That is the actual reason I bought a VR headset, so its working

# ? Sep 23, 2016 03:56

NRVNQSR: Mar 1, 2009

Bremen posted:

I'll give things at least a little benefit of the doubt until there's more confirmation, but unless that article is pretty much pure libel it looks pretty bad.

The claim that he's using a different reddit handle to do this does seem a little out of character. I mean, sure, common sense would suggest that you shouldn't use your corporate PR account to do weird pro-Trump lobbying, but common sense would also suggest that you shouldn't use your corporate PR account to moderate r/NyanNekoSugarGirls, so.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 04:00

Ludicrous Gibs!: Jan 21, 2002; I'm not lost, but I don't know where I am.; Ramrod XTreme

I'm suddenly reminded of the couch interview with him I once saw, where he out of the blue tossed a pillow at the interviewer's face. He doesn't strike me as the most emotionally mature person, even for his age, so this seems like it could be in character.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 04:41

Kazy: Oct 23, 2006; 0x38: FLOPPY_INTERNAL_ERROR

https://twitter.com/TTLabsVR/status/779155770927480832

Looks like I'm not the only one cancelling Touch support.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 04:43

Lemming: Apr 21, 2008

I don't see any reason why a news article would just make something up wholesale, so I believe it until I see something proving otherwise. Hope Oculus cuts him off for that, he can get hosed.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 04:43

Al-Saqr: Nov 11, 2007; One Day I Will Return To Your Side.

Ludicrous Gibs! posted:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...ia=twitter_page

Oh wow Palmer Lucky is a human trash bag.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 04:46

KakerMix: Apr 8, 2004; 8.2 M.P.G.

Now we can sit back and wait for when people starting tossing around words like 'morals' and 'freedom' if/when Facebook ejects Palmer and revel in the irony of the ~free market~ doing what it does.

KakerMix fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Sep 23, 2016

# ? Sep 23, 2016 04:46

Warbird: May 23, 2012; America's Favorite Dumbass

Oh my sweet jesus, the ride never ends. I can't deal with this right now.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 05:01

Tom Guycot: Oct 15, 2008; Chief of Governors

Ludicrous Gibs! posted:

I'm suddenly reminded of the couch interview with him I once saw, where he out of the blue tossed a pillow at the interviewer's face. He doesn't strike me as the most emotionally mature person, even for his age, so this seems like it could be in character.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 05:15

NRVNQSR: Mar 1, 2009

Kazy posted:

Looks like I'm not the only one cancelling Touch support.

Also
https://twitter.com/ScrutaGames/status/779134849512857601
Unless that's you, of course.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 05:26

Unlucky7: Jul 11, 2006; Fallen Rib

I am not defending the jerk, but I thought that he wasn't employed at Oculus anymore, since he sold to Facebook?

# ? Sep 23, 2016 05:31

Kazy: Oct 23, 2006; 0x38: FLOPPY_INTERNAL_ERROR

NRVNQSR posted:

Also
https://twitter.com/ScrutaGames/status/779134849512857601
Unless that's you, of course.

That is indeed me :v:

# ? Sep 23, 2016 05:35

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# ? May 9, 2024 23:35

NRVNQSR: Mar 1, 2009

Unlucky7 posted:

I am not defending the jerk, but I thought that he wasn't employed at Oculus anymore, since he sold to Facebook?

He's not CEO any more, but he's still in an executive role doing PR and developer relations. I think his official title is "Founder"?

For now.

NRVNQSR fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Sep 23, 2016

# ? Sep 23, 2016 05:37

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > VR Megathread: Valve's VR Has Entered The Game

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