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The Big VR Thread

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This morning I was just making surreal hallways in Medium. It is so cool. Making a clay hallway, scaling it so I'm standing inside it and then just making holes in the wall is surprisingly satisfying for me.

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I think I'm ready to jump on the VR train in the next month or so. I think I'm leaning toward the Vive, but now I'm starting to wonder if we're anywhere near seeing new versions of the Vive or Rift. It sounds like there was a rumor that a new version of the Vive might come out "early 2017" but without an official announcement of anything, I'm not sure if it's worth worrying about. Thoughts? Advice? Reassurances?

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Considering that the Oculus touch didn't come out that long ago, I wouldn't expect a new Oculus headset for a while yet. A new Vive seems possible, but I don't think that Valve has iterated on any of their other hardware (Steam controler, Steam link) since release. That seems to match up with the corporate culture of "work on whatever you want to work on" which translates to "get bored with a toy, then walk away."

 

All this is just supposition though, who knows really.

 

Edit: Apparently Gabe mentioned in an AMA that other manufacturers will be able to put out Steam VR headsets, so that's probably the most likely vector for another new headset soon.

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Tried out some more VR stuff.

 

Farlands: When i first saw this, I thought it was pretty much just fluff, but it's been one of the more enjoyable experiences so far. It has a Super Mario Maker style unlock each day thing going, which turns it into a bunch of bite size pieces that are just perfect. Also, the most "real" looking and feeling thing I've played so far.

 

The Foo Show: I balked when I found out the Firewatch episode was 20 minutes long, It turns out that I actually rewound a bit so I could play around in the fire tower some more. I never thought that looking at the back of things you're not supposed to see could be so much fun. I can't wait until new episodes come out,

 

Subnautica: While I like the game a lot, the poor performance and texture pop-in was super apparent in VR. It didn't make me sick, but it pretty much ruined the experience. Hopefully this will iron out as early access continues, because swimming around in the ocean in VR seems like it could be really cool.

 

Keep Talking and No One Explodes: It's a great game, but I didn't feel like VR added that much.

 

Obduction: In theory, this seems like a great game to play in VR, especially because I dropped off right when I was getting to the really alien stuff. Moving from hot spot to hot spot feels very Myst like as well, but I had problems interacting with control panels where the vision dot didn't seem to be activating the right things, or I had to hover just above or below the object to get it to activate. That fiddliness was dissapointing so I gave up after 5 minutes. I might try again later when I have more patience.

 

SteamVR Big Screen: Not sure what else to call this, but I played a little bit of Darkest Dungeon on the large 2D screen in SteamVR. I was surprised how cool it was to play a game on the fake big screen. i wouldn't want to play everything in there, but for pixely or cartoony things, it seems like a fun alternative and you don't notice the decrease in resolution too much.

 

 

 

 

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Touch controllers arrived yesterday:

 

Rec Room: I've already seen a lot of this on Giant Bomb, and it was pretty much what I expected. It's fun to play around with but I dunno how much time I'll spend in it. The only thing I'd add is that frisbees fly way to far, and everything else doesn't fly far enough.

 

RipCoil: This was free with any Oculus store purchase, so I didn't think it would be that good. Turns out it's a pretty awesome Windjammers-type disk throwing game. I would have played a ton of it if I didn't have to wait so long for a match.

 

Medium: I made a bad chair, I'll post a picture when I'm back at home. There's a lot of really cool stuff with making different layers and moving them separately that Tiltbrush lacks. It feels like it's missing a more freeform mode. I'd love to be able to take a tool or my fist and interact with the clay with physics, but I understand that would be pretty tough to model.

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More free stuff packaged with Oculus Touch:

 

Dead and Buried: Multiplayer shooting game with a really cool undead cowboy theme. I enjoyed my time with it, but I'm also really bad. The gun aiming doesn't quite line up with where I'd expect them to point given my hand position, and the reload action requires a flick of the wrist that I just can't seem to do right all the time. I really wish there was a reload button or something, because I found the rest of it pretty fun.

 

Bullet Train: I know it's just a demo, but people were talking this up a bunch and I thought it was pretty crap myself. I don't think you can die, and half the fun of these things is dodging. Grabbing bullets out of the air and throwing them back is interesting, but when you have an infinite respawning assault rifle why would you bother?

 

Toy Box: It's a silly fun toy, but the use of vibration when you touch one thing against another was so great I thought I was actually in the world for a second or two.

 

Vive Lab: Maybe it's just the multiple layers of software (Oculus App, then Steam VR, then the game itself) that it takes to make this work, but I actually found the Vive lab to be somewhat janky. No matter where I stood, it felt like I was standing in the wrong place, things were a bunch taller or shorter than they should be, etc. Most of the sub games aren't that gripping either.

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I'm still loving Thumper, and seem to have got over the eel-in-face nope-factor. I've not played for a huge amount of time in total, because it gets a bit much after half an hour or so. I'm up to level 6  now, having beaten the level 5 guy perfectly; this a surprise because I found the Level 4 boss really challenging. I'm not sure what the new mechanic for level 6 is yet, but the checkpoints are getting really far apart now!  I can see that simply finishing the game is only the begining, since there's so much more finesse involved in fitting every blue beat :). I am also very tempted to try Play+, where you get one chance and a snazzy gold beetle.

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@Dewar I had some trouble with Steam VR at one point, but I went through the Steam VR setup again and it works very well for me. I think the archery game in it is super fun.

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I assume because they were in a hurry to get it posted. The article also mentions that pictures were provided by Oculus, but they're just the Waypoint boilerplate. 

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I saw that announcement... but does it really effect us Rift owners? I'm not being condescending or anything - I'm genuinely asking. I mean, it's still a huge VR format right? Just because the company took a hit I don't know if that means that developers will shy away from the install base. (Or am I being optimistically naive?)

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13 hours ago, noiseredux said:

I saw that announcement... but does it really effect us Rift owners? I'm not being condescending or anything - I'm genuinely asking. I mean, it's still a huge VR format right? Just because the company took a hit I don't know if that means that developers will shy away from the install base. (Or am I being optimistically naive?)

 

There was mention of Xenimax perhaps trying to get an injunction to prevent further Rifts from being sold. That would effect us some, as a developer might not want to make a game for a piece of hardware that's not current being sold.

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Hmm, it looks like from the legal documents that Xenimax won half the cash for violation of one of these Trademarks. I guess maybe they used it in marketing somewhere? I can't recall any of this ever being mentioned by Oculus except in relation to Carmack working with ID.

 

The Doom Name

The Doom 3 Name

The Doom II Name and Design

The ID Name

The Rage Name and Design

The Skyrim Name

 

The other half of the money is from Carmak copying some Xenimax files on the way out (dumb) and Palmer's failure to comply with an NDA (dumber) with a little side of copyright infringement. 

 

https://www.slideshare.net/secret/IKLD8poJzVhQ4X

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Destinations looks really cool and it's free! Here is an RPS article that gives a decent overview of what it is and what you can do: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/02/03/destinations-vr-review/ 

 

(side note: it bums me out that Alec Meer is such a damn VR curmudgeon but the fact that he said anything positive at all about this tells me it might not be half bad)

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On 2/3/2017 at 1:11 AM, Dewar said:

 

The other half of the money is from Carmak copying some Xenimax files on the way out (dumb) and Palmer's failure to comply with an NDA (dumber) with a little side of copyright infringement. 

 

https://www.slideshare.net/secret/IKLD8poJzVhQ4X

Amazing, Palmer did yet another thing to show what a crapper he is?

 

The Rift is really tainted by being associated with him.

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This is just a friendly reminder not to store your head-set where sunlight can hit it as the lenses can act like magnifying glasses and burn the screen.

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2 hours ago, clyde said:

This is just a friendly reminder not to store your head-set where sunlight can hit it as the lenses can act like magnifying glasses and burn the screen.

Uh oh, did this happen to you?

I didn't realize CCP made non-EVE things, could be fun? I am glad companies are willing to try this sort of thing out


https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/02/27/sparc-announced-tron-disc-combat/

 

 

 

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I got the third sensor for my Occulus this weekend. It's somewhat underwhelming, but nice to be able to turn around without it glitching quite as much.

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21 hours ago, Cordeos said:

Uh oh, did this happen to you?
 

 

No, I just forget that it is the case and then freak out every time I remember.

 

20 hours ago, Dewar said:

I got the third sensor for my Occulus this weekend. It's somewhat underwhelming, but nice to be able to turn around without it glitching quite as much.

 

After playing the Budget Cuts Demo, my wife is telling me to get a 3rd sensor. I'm fine with working around the limitations of two, but when she needs to pick up a knife from the floor in the heat of the moment and can't, she doesn't care about why she can't do it, she just wants it to work.

I don't know how we are going to place it in this room. We have a weird setup.

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I went ahead and ordered a 3rd sensor lasr night. I downloaded RoboRecall while I slept and I'll try it this morning.

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