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The Big VR Thread

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What makes you think he was "thrown out"? The article doesn't say much about why he left.

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I'm just making a guess based on his last year's shitpost history and the court case with Bethesda. No facts, just guessing they have had enough of him. He was already moved to the sidelines at Oculus some time ago.

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I think if he was gonna get fired for the shitpost thing it would've been back when it happened, not half a year later when it's died down. And the Zenimax court case isn't really because of anything Luckey has done(as far as I can tell).

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I actually believe the opposite, that firing him with this delay makes them look less like idiots for taking him on board in the first place and lets them just go 'doop de doo nothing to see here just parting amicably.' This way the bad thing is not brought to people's attention again within the outrage window.

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Yes, that's basically what I think too. Because he was sidelined from the Oculus frontlines around the time the shitposting thing came up.

 

Now that everything has started to normalize, they released him from his contract.

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Alrightey, I've had the Rift for 3 weeks, and finished 3 games. Reviews time!

 

ADR1FT

 

In this you play an astronaut whose station has had some sort of catastrophic accident. As you prepare for evac you'll need to travel to different parts of the ruined station. Along the way you find audiologs detailing the events leading up to the accident. The story and the voiceacting are very good. The gameplay is a tad monotonous with a lot of just floating slowly through space and the objectives are basically just a series of fetch quests. I did appreciate the complexity of the flight system though, with full controls over pitch/yaw/roll.

 

The VR implementation is both good and bad. On the good side, it looks amazing, and really makes you feel like you're in a space movie, like 2001 or Gravity. On the bad side, this is one of the more nauseating games I've played with the Rift. I couldn't play for more than an hour at a time.

 

Robo Recall

 

There were times while I was playing this, when it felt like the most revolutionary action game I'd played since Max Payne. The very act of shooting things in VR is cool enough on it's own, but Robo Recall heaps so much added complexity on that core mechanic. It allows for experimentation on a similar scale as Epic's earlier Bulletstorm game. And I was initially skeptical of the teleportation movement, but after a while it felt like an obvious part of the game. Not a limitation of VR, but an essential power in your arsenal.

 

That's me, kicking robo-butt.

 

Yet, for all of that, Robo Recall is missing something. It's amazing as an experience, but not so much as a game. My play sessions rarely went for longer than a level at a time, and I was never really dying to get back into it. The story is too lightweight, and so is the challenge. I don't think I ever died in this game, only failed missions occasionally because I didn't recall robots fast enough. And though it initially looks like a AAA game, it's not. The entirety of it's 10 levels are spread out over the same 3 environments(which all look very similar). Reportedly it had a budget of under $10M. It's impressive what Epic has done here, and it shows the way for future VR shooters, but it's not the VR killer app we'd hoped for.

 

Chronos

 

In contrast to Robo Recall, this doesn't do much with VR(besides the occasional neat trick), but as a game it shines, at least if you're into Souls-alikes. Started playing this late last week and I've been spending several hours with it every day since, finished it last night. Unlike Dark Souls, you don't drop souls when you die, instead pressure to not fuck up is provided by the fact that your character ages one year every time you die. You start the game at age 18. I played on Medium and was in my mid-40's by the time I reached the end, but apparently you can play until your late 80's before it's over for good. The combat is very Souls-like, but it has considerably less complexity to it's systems. Only 7 weapons(IIRC), and 4 stats to level up. Also there's more focus on adventure gaming and puzzles solving. The story starts out so-so but gets increasingly interesting the further you get, and the ending is a real mind-fuck. Overall, yeah, I loved this.

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Pretty sure Luckey leaving Oculus was over the lawsuit and not the meme-magic. 

Facebook is not a company that seems to be super concerned with optics. After all they are infamous for selling their users data to advertisers, not to mention that they got literal turbo-republican vampire Peter Thiel on their board of directors. But what they are very concerned about is to not lose millions of dollars over illegal and sloppy decisions. 

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So I'm doing some VR Development currently. We aren't sure what the game will be but you will be shooting things at a thing. I think.

 

VR development is aided by VRTK, a free unity asset that has a bunch of motion control scripts and objects. We've managed to make our own self-launching slingshot/cannonball thing. Thus far we did early prototyping with Google Cardboard (which really sucks) and our buddy's DK2 (which sucks less)

 

Main games I've played with VR that I've been impressed with have been Assetto Corsa (I'm a huge driving game nerd) and Euro Truck Simulator.

 

Motion controls in a lot of games I've played have felt like the early motion control era of the Nintendo Wii, or swipe/touch controls of the early iphone era. Folks are going after gimmicks hardcore.

 

I'm currently in a space with other VR developers, I think we are all using Vives, I don't see a single Oculus kit except for random DK2s.

 

Biggest challenge in VR is funding. Kinda hoping some moneybags will swoop in

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The Oculus Medium update has made that tool FAR more useful for hobbyist game development. There is now an option to generate UV maps and a very flexible mesh-reduction system. It is awesome.

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I've started VR development as well, integrating support into my Wizard Jam game In Search Of Paradise.

 

 

Not sure yet on far I'm gonna take it. Might just add it as a free update to the existing game, or maybe I'll turn this into something more ambitious.

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If anyone lives in the LA area and is curious to try out the Oculus Rift, check out Joymode. It's a fairly new company that rents out "experiences". Kinda like a cool party rental company, I guess? They've got the Oculus Rift with touch controllers to rent (and comes with a gaming laptop) for $75 for four days.

 

I rented it over the Easter weekend and they offered to let me keep it for another week for $25, so I've got it a bit longer! (and here I am shilling for them, so I suppose their goodwill worked!)

 

It's been fun to show the system off to people, but I already feel the excitement winding down in me. Only game that's really grabbed me is Super Hot. I'm excited to play through that whole thing, but otherwise nothing else has made me want to play for more than 15 minutes. Still need to try out Eve Valkeryie, Chronos, Adr1ft (I get motion sick, so I prolly won't last long with Ad1ft), and Lucky's Tale. The thing came with about 6 pages worth of games/experiences, so I should do a quick metacritic scan for them all to see what else is worth checking out that isn't one of the big names.

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I tried Google Earth VR last night. Seeing a scalable map in the FOV of a one-story wall is cool on its own. I haven't really been able to see how areas are related geographically at that scale while still being zoomed in enough to know where I am. 

I visited some of the various places I've lived and a lot of why it works well works with street-view on a typical computer-screen, but this felt more fluid and dreamlike. Flying down streets and seeing buildings and trees that weren't notable enough for my streamlined memories made me somewhat emotional. 

The places with 3d data are intimidatingly detailed. I felt a little nervous about having the opportunities to be so voyeuristic. I probably spent 30 minutes looking around Tokyo and saying "I didn't realize Tokyo was so big!" outloud involuntarily. Flying down and chilling in a park long enough for the low-poly tree-captures to render in was just astounding after seeing the area from 1000 feet above and chosing to visit arbitrarily. What a stunning demonstration of both VR and Google's collection of data.

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On 4/11/2017 at 5:53 AM, hellojed said:

VR development is aided by VRTK, a free unity asset that has a bunch of motion control scripts and objects.

 

I've also been poking at VRTK for a few days. This is what I've made so far.

 

 

Really pleased with how well the scope works. :)

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On 4/15/2017 at 11:09 AM, clyde said:

The Oculus Medium update has made that tool FAR more useful for hobbyist game development. There is now an option to generate UV maps and a very flexible mesh-reduction system. It is awesome.

 

I was just coming on to mention this. I went back in the thread and watched that video for exporting Medium objects into Unity, then I went into Medium and all the features were there already. Very cool. I'd agree this has been the killer app so far. I even used it to sculpt some silly backgrounds for my game.

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After all the hype it got ITT, I went and poked at Medium a bit, and ended up spending a lot of the weekend with it. It's a lot of fun, and I was surprised by how enjoyable the tutorials were. There's something so mellow and relaxing about those VR sculpting classes that I'd recommend them even to folks with no interest in 3D modelling! :tup:

 

Anyway, I've mostly just been making food.

 

 

I also made breakfast, which was a bit more complex, but that video's not viewable in the US because of the Hank Williams tune I soundtracked it with.

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That's a very cool  video Henke! I got the Oculus Touch last weekend, and have been trying a number of free experiences so far. I've been enjoying playing with Medium, and have got as far as  making the caterpillar :p! As you say, it's very relaxing, even though I'm not feeling particularly creative at the moment. Similarly Quill looks great, and there are some very cool drawings made by other people, but I've only really doodled so far.

 

I am very impressed with Google Earth VR, especially with the stuff with extra 3d modelling data... it was very cool looking under, around, and through the Golden Gate Bridge. I think it's a pity that Touch is required, when a gamepad would probably get the job done (in a less cool way).

 

Waltz of the Wizard is silly fun, but it doesn't seem to be scaling to play space (unless it is vindictive), so I can't reach everything that seems to be on offer without bashing a window or something. I also can't pick up anything from the floor, and there's a snow globe I would like to try out.

 

Robo Recall seems very well made, but  reinforces the fact I'm really not into shooters, or having things jump at me. I might give it another go in bigger play space, as I am very good at hitting the window, and ceiling.

 

Horror games? Absolutely no chance, I am far too wussy!

 

Even with the software I've tried so far, I think the Oculus Touch is worth the current upgrade price over the rift... I'm not sure about release price though!

 

I can't see anything overthrowing Elite Dangerous as my predominant Rift use, though I have a feeling that Medium and Google Earth VR might give it a run for its money. Elite is very well suited to VR, putting you in a flying / driving space chair, but is a niche game; also, judging by my GTX 1080, even a 1080 Ti or a Titan XP would be unable to run ED at max VR settings in all situations (planetary surfaces and inside space stations are very demanding)

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Played through a couple more VR games over the past few days.

 

SUPERHOT VR

 

To compare this to the non-VR version, this feels more like a puzzle. Being able to move around freely in regular Superhot I found myself experimenting a lot on each respawn, trying out new paths that might lead to success, but here, because of your fixed position and the enemies' behaviour (they're either stationary or they're running towards you) you're more or less locked into one path, and success comes from refining that path until you're doing it perfectly. Normally I'd balk at something like that, but Superhot VR's scenarios are so beautifully crafted that I loved playing them over and over again. However, there are still some slight variation of certain variables on each restart, for instance it didn't seem to be entirely consistent whether an enemy would fling his gun towards you on death, and that often being a crucial factor in whether a run was successful or not it sometimes felt like failure was caused by an unlucky roll of the dice, rather than player mistake, which is annoying.

Still, regardless of any complaints I have about it, this is still a fantastic experience. I enjoyed it more than non-VR Superhot and Robo Recall. With RR I often took days between sessions, but with this I was so enraptured I finished it's (maybe 2 hours-ish) campaign over the course of a day.

 

Conductor

 

Very atmospheric VR adventure, where you ride a small train along a track, and occasionally stop at stations to do puzzles that'll clear the path up ahead. My fave part of this, though, is when you've finished a puzzle and cleared the way, you climb into your train, load it up with coal, throw in a match, and push the lever into forward motion. You don your conductor's cap, pull the lever on the steam whistle a couple times and watch as the previous station dissappears into the darkness behind you. Then you turn on the radio, tune in to a station playing moody music and look ahead as you chug along through the dark, creepy woods.

My only complaint is that the ending is very abrupt. But still well worth a tenner!

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My friend came into town a couple weeks ago and we were able to get a couple nights of good VR fun in. And we even managed to successfully stream a good portion of it!

 

Here's a couple highlights from our experience with The Lab (The Lab is a load of fun with multiple people) and with Minecraft in VR via Vivecraft:

 

 

 

 

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I noticed that a couple of Steam VR games I was watching actually came out (Cosmic Trip and EVERSPACE) and the new Star Trek bridge simulator is coming out next week. I haven't played around much in VR lately, but now I'm considering a new video card to help alleviate some of the issues I was having in VR before and maybe be able to play Elite without frame doubling kicking in.

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GTX1070 bought, I get silky smooth framerates in Elite now and Star Trek Bridge Crew awaits me when I get home.

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5 hours ago, Dewar said:

GTX1070 bought, I get silky smooth framerates in Elite now and Star Trek Bridge Crew awaits me when I get home.

Glad to hear about the smooth Elite experience, though I don't think any current GPU will deliver 90 fps everywhere at max settings! Elite is by far my biggest VR time sink, I must have put in well over 100 hours now, since I just ticked over 1100 hours total, and it was 900 and something when I got my Rift. I do have a fairly extensive wish list of other VR titles though :)

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I'm not anywhere near a busy Base at the moment, but I'm getting steady 90 at VR high settings in the initial menu with the buggy regardless of head movement. I used to be at 45 frames about half the time.

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