I think this puts an undue emphasis on quality. Things don’t fail to catch on just because they’re Not Done Well. Plenty of high-quality, Done Well things don’t catch on. Heck, you can make an argument that most successful things (including the iPad) were Not Done All That Well, Really. Markets are complex things, not very predictable.
I think VR is an important experiment, but so were Motion Controls, and we all know where the Kinect and the PS Move (and even the Wii U) are today. Wouldn’t be totally shocked if VR follows a similar trajectory. Whatever it’s outcome, that outcome won’t have much to do with being “Done Well” or not. It’ll have more to do with market forces beyond the control of any company.
I have had a Rift for about three years now, and even then, I had “killer apps” to enjoy it with. The technology and the content are fine.
But I think all hype is insubstantial. It really doesn’t matter how many people use it. It’s just a tool - if it does what you need, then use it. If it doesn’t - then don’t.
Still, it would be nice to see more new tech areas develop where they have the sense to refuse venture capital.
Most of the face-hugging apps that I’ve tried are mildly amusing. Many of them suffer from the Comin’-At-Ya mentality of cheap 3D movies.
Watching 360 degree films was a different story. I think this is a thing that has real potential. For one, you are freed from the tyranny of having your vision always focused on the subject. People may address you during the film, but you are free to look elsewhere and ignore them right to their smug face. Revolutionary.
I’m recalling Herzog’s 3D film, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” Here’s an opportunity for the public to virtually crawl over every inch of Chauvet Cave without wrecking the joint. This could get very artsy fartsy very quickly. Bring it on.
On the issue of there not being enough games, can anyone explain why they aren’t just porting games that have a first-person mode–first-person shooters along with other games where this is an option like Grand Theft Auto–into VR? I would’ve thought it would be reasonably straightforward to do–one controller could be pointed and clicked to move in whatever direction you want the character to walk, the other controller could point and shoot your weapon, and your character’s head would always face in whatever direction the goggles were facing. Driving games where you’re experiencing things from inside the car also seem like they shouldn’t be that hard to port, especially if you have a steering wheel controller (which anyone who buys an Oculus or Vive can probably afford) rather than the regular VR controllers.
Though it really requires an entirely new vocabulary of film that doesn’t exist yet: narrative structure isn’t going to work as well when you have no idea that the audience is even looking in the right direction. The stuff I’ve seen so far — stuff like two people having a conversation in an area that the viewer can look around — feel very gimmick-y: there’s no reason for the conversation or VR to both be present, and it feels like the attempt at narrative has been added in because it’s expected, not because it’s actually worthwhile.
First person games don’t tend transfer well to VR without a lot of additional work. Those games you tend to move a lot faster than you normally would in real life. That kind of motion would make you sick in VR. If you move in VR without you actually moving, your inner ear picks up that you aren’t moving and those conflicting signals make you sick. If you are moving you have to slow down enough that it doesn’t trigger this conflict or if you are inside a car or other vehicle, if you have enough in your peripheral vision that is staying still.
There’s a lot of other things that are typical in games that feel off in VR games.
The dev kits for VR headsets have been available for some time, but the consumer version only just came out a few weeks ago. Like any new system or console, there will be limited number of games and content on launch but with new content coming out all the time. It’s a very niche market right now, but at the same time the limited amount of content means that anything good will be picked up by the majority of users because of lack of competition.
There’s still issues with nausea and discomfort, etc. There’s still issues about control schemes and lack of exploration with formal issues of the medium, etc. Despite the tech having been around for 20+ years, we’re still having to re-invent everything (or invent it for the first time, since some things were never settled in the last 20-odd years to begin with).
Games are going to be tricky - there’s not enough of a market to justify spending a lot of money making a game targeting VR systems, so we’ll see if the kind of big budget games that would be amazing in VR are quite so great when VR is an afterthought. (And even small-budget indie games designed around it might have a hard time being viable with the flood of tech demos masquerading as games that immediately came out, hoping to capitalize on being first.) Then there’s the compatibility issue - different control devices, “room VR.” Oculus marketplace games not working on the Vive (although Steam VR supports Oculus), etc. that fragments an already small market.
I think Sony VR might have a chance to fix some of those issues - potentially a big enough market with one device and consistent controllers and hardware targets that developers will actually develop for it in number (assuming it sells enough). There just might be a risk that lower specs could mean a sub-optimal experience that will turn people off.
I feel like linear, static narratives are the one thing that absolutely doesn’t work with VR because of this. Interactive narratives, no problem. Environmental experiences (rather than narratives), also no problem. 360 degree cinematic narratives, though, not so much - you end up with a narrative happening in one part of your vision and then a bunch of superfluous stuff in the rest of your potential field of view.
I’m skeptical of anyone who can’t be bothered to type out the entire term social media but thinks smart phones have increased social interactivity. Could the new VR craze be an empty bubble? Of course it could. But nay-saying is its own little cottage industry. Do it regularly and you’ll be more often right than wrong, but you’re just playing a stats game, particularly when you don’t yet know the full extent of the supposedly revolutionary tech being promised.
I was under the impression that the higher framerate of the Oculus and Vive (compared to earlier VR systems along with the modern smartphone-in-a-box version of VR) had mostly solved this problem, in the sense that very few people using them feel nausea provided the game itself isn’t moving you around quickly in a way that doesn’t correspond to the movements of your body.
I got a Cardboard viewer as a gift, and I’m really loving it. But it’s interesting reading this thread and thinking about why I’m really loving it.
I like that the best apps emphasise contemplation and exploring rather than gut reactions and moving fast.
I like the emphasis on place instead of action.
I like the atmospherics.
This argument sounds a lot like the old “it’s better to write on paper with a pen than type on a computer” debate. That a new technology fails when it tries to act like an old technology is not necessarily a bad thing.
I wouldn’t want to play a Doom-ish FPS or Formula 1 driving game in VR (and I like those kinds of games). I would like to walk alongside a virtual coral reef, though.
Disneyland used to have something called the “Circle Vision” theater, it showed footage on a full-surround screen that had been captured with a special panoramic camera (technically a cluster of cameras). I remember it as an interesting gimmick that quickly turned frustrating, because you’d constantly be craning your neck and turning around just to make sure you weren’t missing anything. It felt stressful.
So yeah, not a great way to create a linear cinematic narrative.
This is why I said above that even over the past three years, I have had no shortage of great games for my Rift. It took Valve all but a week or two in their spare time to convert the Half-Life 2 and Portal games. And a few 3rd party softwares exist to stereoize many other games.
That’s what I am afraid of - I don’t want companies to slow down games to make the VR easier to stomach. It takes a few days to get used to the visual/haptic discrepancies, and I would rather adapt myself properly rather than permanently ruin the game.
FFS - that’s the whole point of video games! I can tell you that playing on a low-gravity, high-speed deathmatch server IS a vomit comet, but it is glorious. Well worth the weekend it takes to get one’s “sea legs”.
What if the director made sure to keep all the dramatic elements of the scene happening in one direction, and not just go for wraparound visual spectacle like the Circle Vision movies? Then it could be a bit like seeing a play in a small theater from the front row. Unlike in a play there’d also be extras and scenery behind you, but if directors generally observed this rule, then as you got used to the medium you’d learn the extras in the non-drama direction wouldn’t be doing anything particularly interesting, and the scenery in that direction either wouldn’t be too interesting, or the main actors would move around so you’d get a chance to see the whole “stage” if there were things worth looking at in all directions. There’d still be some of the artistic limitations associated with “long takes” in film discussed in the video below, but there have been some very good films that use a lot of long takes (Children of Men comes to mind)…I think it’s at least possible a VR version of a long take film could “work” if done right.
I think it could provide a certain kind of sense of immersion, of the physical presence of the actors and scenery. The writer talked about this sense of “presence” in the Magic Leap article I linked earlier. It would probably work better with some genres than others, it could lend itself to interesting new experiences with genres that are more visceral (like horror and maybe some action movies) or that depend on the visual interest created by unfamiliar settings for part of the appeal (like science fiction, maybe some historical dramas, or some stories set in parts of the world that are very different from where most of the audience is expected to be from).
The only thing “better” is that you get real, no-gimmick 3D which looks completely real - IF viewing recordings actually made in 3D. But immersive VR with head-tracking was never really meant for delivering linear narratives, it is for telepresence and virtual environments, which are where its real strengths are.
