On my case after trying Vive and rift games yesterday, the nausea persist in the next day.
Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality
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What's the install base for VR like? What's sort of target numbers is a VR dev looking at? I'm guessing there's literally not a large enough audience to justify spending any time or effort on VR games, making it a horrific, self-defeating Catch 22.
Edit: Number from the article 0.18% of Steam owns Vive and 0.1% own OVR. Taking Steam as 70 million (last number I heard, probably more than that), that's 200,000. You'd need a killer, must play, everyone want game with very high percentage purchase to make that a market worth pursuing IMO. So VR is more likely to be a tag-on feature on a 2D display game.
Edit: Number from the article 0.18% of Steam owns Vive and 0.1% own OVR. Taking Steam as 70 million (last number I heard, probably more than that), that's 200,000. You'd need a killer, must play, everyone want game with very high percentage purchase to make that a market worth pursuing IMO. So VR is more likely to be a tag-on feature on a 2D display game.
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That's why Oculus and Valve are helping offset costs in places. It's not quite so dire as having small third party indies taking on 100% of the risk of financing a game, and there's the benefit of the library not being particularly competitive with larger budget AAA titles, so new small developers stand a chance at carving out a name for themselves in the new medium at the very least. But yeah, something in that range of a few hundred thousand headsets is probably about right, and expectedly the top selling titles (not including the bundled) are in the tens of thousands. There is some overlap with GearVR and Rift though - there were some subtle recommendations over the last couple years that it might be smart to design your game to work across both platforms in order to better maximize profits. I doubt anyone is getting rich from this though unless they happen to be a one-man operation coupled with very strong sales.
Or if they are based in Asia with weak currency
Anarchist4000
Veteran
I still see the consoles providing the cinema experience for it. While they may or may not have the horsepower for games, driving multiple VR devices should still be in the realm of possibility. Couple HMDs and a subwoofer in the room could provide a compelling experience, just difficult to interact with others.
Currently, but that may still be a hardware limitation. I'm not that knowledge of the research here, but I'd imagine higher DPI displays and refresh rates for motion tracking would help significantly. I've seen mention of 120Hz displays for the next generation, and I'd have to imagine that comes from hardware limitations. Those displays, that likely aren't consumer tested, may provide more insight on the matter. At least the companies developing the headsets seem to think that direction is warranted.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
For virtual cinema (2D and 3D stereoscopic movies) the slight feelings of nausea from very quick action cuts, pans, etc. aren't enough to detract from the experience, hence I still consider it an overall positive experience considering the benefits. Immersion is far higher than most people who do not have a home cinema with a 120+ foot movie screen will be able to experience. And 3D stereoscopic movies are far better served in VR than on a traditional viewing platform. However, that greater immersion and 3D stereoscopic effect from watching it in VR versus traditional screens means it has a increased effect in potential nausea in a VR theater than it does in an actual theater.
I only made note of that to show how significant the nausea induced by various experimental VR movies and shorts are. Those are orders of magnitude worse and go far beyond just very slight lingering discomfort. The most comfortable ones to view were those with a stationary camera. But of the ones I watched that used stationary camera, it either meant they were less impressive than traditional movies or were far more annoying (movies that make you look around to the side or back to find where the action is, for example).
I've been keeping track of this somewhat as it's something that is going to need to be solved to a greater extent if VR wants to have more than a small niche following, IMO. But I remain cynical about the prospects.
Regards,
SB
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Greater visual reality will only serve to increase the physical disconnect between what your visual system perceives to be reality and what the rest of your body expects to feel in regards to what your visual system is seeing. IE - it can only increase discomfort or at best maintain a similar level of discomfort, not reduce it.
Regards,
SB
I really don't understand why they can't use a couple of motion controllers strapped to your ankles to simulate walking/running (with the user just walking/running on the spot). Or perhaps a balance board/dance matt type floor based detector.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
That helps in that your body is now performing the actions that your visual system perceives, but it still lacks the actual physical forces that your body expects to feel. Think of treadmills. After a bit of adjustment you get used to running on it, despite your body not feeling some of the physical cues of actually walking or running. Get off it and your body needs to re-adjust to both the visual and physical cues (walking or running motion) that go along with walking/running.
And that's relatively simplistic without the added input of visually seeing yourself moving through the world while your vestibular system is telling your brain that you aren't moving. On a treadmill your visual system still matches your vestibular system. So the mismatch between visual and physical inputs is far more limited and impacts your vestibular system in a negligible manner (IE - they both tell your brain you aren't moving). Throw in VR that completely immerses your visual system and the mismatch between your visual system and vestibular system are now completely out of whack. One system is telling your brain that you aren't moving while the other system is telling your brain that you are moving. BTW - I'm including the cochlea into this even though it's technically a separate entity.
Depending on the person you'll be more or less sensitive to this disconnect.
Regards,
SB
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The current tracking implementations are not perfect however, and do contribute to how comfortable the experience feels. 60Hz < 75Hz < 90Hz < etc, and also the precision of the camera/lighthouse are some of the relevant factors here. For me to have the most comfortable experience in something like Elite Dangerous, I actually have to move the Oculus camera as close as feasibly possible (< 3 feet) to reduce the Z-axis precision wobble. And that's 'reduce', not eliminate. Future tracking implementations (and particularly those from multiple vantage points) will help reduce this beyond the point of perception, but it's going to be quite some time yet before this can be considered solved.
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Anarchist4000
Veteran
My only concern with the movement issue is that a person driving a car without accelerating should only feel gravity. That activity generally doesn't make people sick. Sure there are always minor forces and bumbs, but maybe the ultimate solution is as simple as stimulating the rest of the senses with something? Stick a person in a rumble chair possibly with force feedback and let the eyes do the rest. People keep saying drinking first helps, so I still think it's a matter of getting faster feedback on the display.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
You feel a whole lot of things when driving if you pay attention. Acceleration and deceleration are both easily felt as are centrifugal forces anytime there is a change in direction. Those are easily felt in daily commutes, but are massively more noticeable the faster you go. You can also notice this if you watch your passengers. Accelerate with anything more than modest speed and you'll see them pressed back into their seat. Conversely, decelerate quickly and you'll notice their body moved forwards before their muscles react to counteract those forces. Turning will see people brace as well.
Even in a case where you maintain a constant speed, you still have forces, however faint, applied to you as your vehicle is constantly having to apply force to counter the forces causing the vehicle to decelerate. You can see this with a bowl of water.
The easiest way to see this is to place an open container of water in the vehicle. If the container is anywhere near full, it will be virtually impossible to operate the vehicle without the liquid spilling out of the container. That mimics in some ways how your body's vestibular system and cochlea monitor your body's movements in reaction to forces acting upon it so that your body can then react according to maintain balance and spatial awareness.
As to driving without accelerating as you mentioned, there is a solid framework around you that moves with your body. As such for most people, their visual system uses that to align with the vestibular system. And for the most part it works.
But it falls apart for a greater number of passengers if there are frequent changes (braking following by acceleration, followed by braking, followed by acceleration, etc.) that cause a disconnect from one to the other too rapidly for the brain to reconciles. Hence you have many people that can and do suffer motion sickness in vehicles.
Experiments with that in VR are successful to a greater and lesser degree. Hence Eve Valkyrie doesn't cause everyone to feel sick, but there are still a significant number of people that get sick in Eve Valkyrie that don't get sick in a car. Same goes for racing games.
It's likely that in a driving game where you sat in the car and the interior was rendered around you and you only had forward motion with no turns, accelerating or braking that the vast majority of people probably wouldn't have a problem. Once you start accelerating, braking, or turning, however, suddenly it doesn't match what your body and mind are accustomed to. That's likely why even in those game genres there's a percentage of people that get sick where they normally wouldn't get sick in real life.
A rumble chair wouldn't work in the slightest. But a motion chair with 6 degrees of motorized movement (like I linked previously) may be enough. However, those are expensive.
Regards,
SB
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scooby_dooby
Legend
It's way to early in the lifecycle to write off locomotion as a lost cause. We're just now figuring everything out, and already there are many tricks up the sleeve that can be used to mitigate sickness.
We're learning that blocking peripheral vision helps a lot (Eagle's flight)
We're learning that constant move speed is better than accelerated
We're learning that slow deliberate (realistic) movement is much more forgiving (Onward)
We're learning that head bobs and running in place, can trick the brain into not feeling sick.
Personally, I think the future is "run in place" locomotion for people who get sick(like me), and basic trackpad locomotion for the people who will want that. We have an in-house system that works great, it combines a number of these techniques. I'm just itching to find time to build an adventure game around it.
I think a key part of designing a VR game will be making them more realistic in terms of distance travelled. In real life, we don't want to walk 2km to get somewhere, we really don't like back-tracking, and a good VR game will need to do away with some of that. Slower, more deliberate movement, coupled with a good fast-travel system is one combination that would work great. On the other hand, one cool thing we've found with run-in-place, is that you can really crank up the run speed, and it doesn't induce sickness, so that actually can let you get around quite quickly, running around at basically Usain Bolt speeds
We're learning that blocking peripheral vision helps a lot (Eagle's flight)
We're learning that constant move speed is better than accelerated
We're learning that slow deliberate (realistic) movement is much more forgiving (Onward)
We're learning that head bobs and running in place, can trick the brain into not feeling sick.
Personally, I think the future is "run in place" locomotion for people who get sick(like me), and basic trackpad locomotion for the people who will want that. We have an in-house system that works great, it combines a number of these techniques. I'm just itching to find time to build an adventure game around it.
I think a key part of designing a VR game will be making them more realistic in terms of distance travelled. In real life, we don't want to walk 2km to get somewhere, we really don't like back-tracking, and a good VR game will need to do away with some of that. Slower, more deliberate movement, coupled with a good fast-travel system is one combination that would work great. On the other hand, one cool thing we've found with run-in-place, is that you can really crank up the run speed, and it doesn't induce sickness, so that actually can let you get around quite quickly, running around at basically Usain Bolt speeds
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I'm not sure that would be a significant issue within the limits of normal human movement speed. Relatively slow fowards or backwards movement doesn't cause much if any discomfort in VR for me. It's the turning motion or fast movement that's the issue. So turning would have to be performed naturally rather than on a control pad. This obviously has implications for getting wrapped up in cables but I wouldn't say they're insurmountable
I think that very few people actually get ill from driving games. The centrifugal forces can be missed, simply because you don't feel them much anyway in a real car if you are going at low speed and some cars have it more than others. I think the closer you are to something like walking, where your mind is used to the movements of exactly your body, the more likely you will get ill. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if by practicing using a Segway or something similar, you could get used to VR, and conversely mimicking a Segway in VR for transport could really help too.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
http://techreport.com/news/30638/report-oculus-touch-controllers-may-arrive-in-november-for-199
So looks like at least one online retailer either knows the price or is speculating on the price of the Oculus touch controllers.
Looking at them again, I wonder if you can use them together as one X-input device? That would make playing some games that don't make use of the D-pad a lot more relaxing.
Regards,
SB
So looks like at least one online retailer either knows the price or is speculating on the price of the Oculus touch controllers.
Looking at them again, I wonder if you can use them together as one X-input device? That would make playing some games that don't make use of the D-pad a lot more relaxing.
Regards,
SB
I'm sure it's no accident that they ended up with as many buttons, triggers and analog sticks as a regular gamepad has. The most clunky part of VR right now is the act of picking up and setting down motion controllers and getting the wrist straps off/on while completely blind, so I would expect Touch to do away with any need for the XBox controller for their games. Granted that the Touch controllers have a magnetic snap that attaches themselves to each other in order to allow you to hold both with one hand, but ideally you would only have to do that when you're going in and out of VR, rather than every time you're changing games.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
So Oculus + VR controllers costs absolutely the same as Vive, except that Vive does room scale detection.
Good going, Oculus. The screw-up just goes on and on.
Good going, Oculus. The screw-up just goes on and on.
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
You did read that along with the Touch controllers you also get an additional Rift sensor in order to enable room scale detection, right? It's right there in the article.
Regards,
SB
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