Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

I spent an hour last night doing what I guess everyone does when they first jump into Google Earth VR: I visited everywhere I've lived. There's something about the rendering that gives it a stylised, tilt-shifted, miniature model look when you're flying close to buildings, and I love it.

Turning off the comfort mode and flying around got me wobbly on my feet a couple of times, especially at speed, but I enjoyed that.

The controls aren't great, especially rotation. I feel like it needs to not just rotate around a static pole. Panning is fine.

Let my kid sister in law play and she took to it like a duck to water. Watching kids use VR with no fear or preconceptions is amazing sometimes. I try new VR experiences with some trepidation. She just jumps right in.
 
Canalys made a breakdown of the worldwide VR market in Q1 2017:

https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/me...japan-unseats-china-take-second-place-q1-2017


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(People means People's Republic of China)

PSVR accounts for over 60% of US' market and 90% (!!) of Japan's. It doesn't look like they're counting with smartphone-based headsets like the GearVR and Cardboard look-alikes (which supposedly sell a lot more units).
There's talk of Vive being the top seller for PC. There's also mention of HTC and a couple of chinese headset makers getting into contracts with chinese schools to introduce VR activities in their curriculum.


Oculus is completely absent from the article's abstract.
Demand for PSVR in Japan seems to be crazy right now.
 
Not surprising about Japan. Most Japanese gamers (generally students) can't afford a PC capable of doing PC VR. And most of the Japanese people that can afford it, don't play a lot of games (6 day work weeks, and often 10-12 hour work days when including the commute to and from work) so won't invest in a PC VR capable PC.

It's one of the reasons mobile gaming is so popular there.

Also considering that the only news WRT to HTC was focused on the Chinese market and the Chinese education sector, it's not surprising there's no mention of Oculus in the short PR brief.

Regards,
SB
 
Not surprising about Japan. Most Japanese gamers (generally students) can't afford a PC capable of doing PC VR. And most of the Japanese people that can afford it, don't play a lot of games (6 day work weeks, and often 10-12 hour work days when including the commute to and from work) so won't invest in a PC VR capable PC.

Doesn't sound like you're talking about Japan at all.

Japanese people have very high salaries and have probably the widest age spectrum of active gamers in the world (definitely not just students).
They generally choose not to purchase powerful desktop PCs because they take up too much space, consume too much power, let out too much heat and noise, and most of the domestic games they prefer to play (JRPGs, visual novels and 2D fighters) either end up on consoles or can be played in a small and silent laptop.

The motives for PC gaming not being big in Japan are mostly cultural, not financial or demographic.


Also considering that the only news WRT to HTC was focused on the Chinese market and the Chinese education sector, it's not surprising there's no mention of Oculus in the short PR brief.

PSVR is the top seller in the US and Japan, the Vive is the top seller headset in China.

Oculus is the top seller nowhere, apparently.
 
Doesn't sound like you're talking about Japan at all.

Yup definitely don't know much about Japan when I generally spend 3 months out of most years there since the early 1980's and where some of my relatives live. Yup, definitely not. Working there as well for much of the 2000's and having a circle of Japanese friends in Japan. Definitely don't know as much about Japan as someone who has likely never lived or worked there. Yup.

Japan now, WRT disposable income is nothing like it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago when it was already in decline. Salaries for some may be high, but cost of living is also quite high. Free time is also generally not spent doing console or PC gaming (to the extent of most Westerners) for most working people.

Regards,
SB
 
Not surprising about Japan. Most Japanese gamers (generally students) can't afford a PC capable of doing PC VR. And most of the Japanese people that can afford it, don't play a lot of games (6 day work weeks, and often 10-12 hour work days when including the commute to and from work) so won't invest in a PC VR capable PC.

It's one of the reasons mobile gaming is so popular there.
Japan now, WRT disposable income is nothing like it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago when it was already in decline. Salaries for some may be high, but cost of living is also quite high. Free time is also generally not spent doing console or PC gaming (to the extent of most Westerners) for most working people.
Hmm, are there still places with 6 day work weeks in Japan? In 1980s maybe.
I'm fed up with such broad claim about disposable income of people in Japan, they have money to spend when they feel the need. Look at the twitter cover pic of Alex Kipman
https://twitter.com/akipman
or the news of Palmer Luckey visiting Japan.

That said, it seems the huge demand of PSVR right now in Japan is probably due to the recently added PSVR support by the DMM (Japan's No. 1 porn conglomerate).

(NSFW!)

 
That said, it seems the huge demand of PSVR right now in Japan is probably due to the recently added PSVR support by the DMM (Japan's No. 1 porn conglomerate).
(NSFW!)


What? This is outrageous! The Playstation Brand cannot be tarnished by this! It was supposed to be a source of family-oriented entertainment, not this blasphemy!

Where can I find this terrible "DMM" thing? How can I access it? Is there a tutorial in English on how to do it?
I'm just asking because I want to direct my outrage and honest concerns towards the proper entities, of course.
 
They have their own standards, in Japan they likely show this on children's TV. But they might have some other rules e.g. if one of the girls is impolite to the teacher this will be ban-hammered!
 
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Hmm, are there still places with 6 day work weeks in Japan?

Yes, just like there are still 6 day school weeks. I was just there 4 months ago, on a 2 month stay.

What? This is outrageous! The Playstation Brand cannot be tarnished by this! It was supposed to be a source of family-oriented entertainment, not this blasphemy!

Where can I find this terrible "DMM" thing? How can I access it? Is there a tutorial in English on how to do it?
I'm just asking because I want to direct my outrage and honest concerns towards the proper entities, of course.

Well, if you REALLY want to know.


You can choose English when going there. :p But some content is locked to Japanese customers only. Or at least it used to be like that, but I haven't used the service recently. Also while DMM has porn (just like Amazon) it's not just a porn portal (although that's how it got its start). It's an all purpose digital media outlet (movies, music, games, and of course porn) portal now. They even offer gigabit internet service now.

Regards,
SB
 
Yes, just like there are still 6 day school weeks. I was just there 4 months ago, on a 2 month stay.
Aren't they private schools? In public schools it's written in the law about 5-day school week but it doesn't completely prohibit a Saturday class with some reservations (attending special classes, sports activities, etc.)

Back on topic, PC VR in Japan is still in the phase of market research and most commercial efforts are meant for location-based entertainment, but an example like this Vive exclusive game by Square Enix
http://gematsu.com/2017/05/kai-ri-sei-million-arthur-vr-now-available-pc-via-steam-japan
is starting to surface on the market. It is developed by my previous employer which also does funding http://www.gvrfund.com/
 
Was going to wait until CV2 but caved in yesterday for the CV1. Was pleasantly surprised to recieve £200 of store credit for Oculus Home with my purchase. That's a lot of gaming, especially when taking the free stuff you get with touch.

I understood there would be a £100 store credit with the purchase, but it appears that for the next week or two you get another £100 on top. Happy accidents ftw.
 
Is there a release date or even release window for CV2?
I thought the 2nd-generation of headsets were planned for somewhere in 2018, according to the interviews and statements I saw so far.
 
If you did decide to wait, the sale should start at 6pm today in UK time. Feel free to add me in Oculus Home and if we're on at the same time we could crew up. User name = bigtabs

In the other thread you mentioned not having played Superhot in VR yet. I played a bunch more yesterday and it was a fantastic gaming session. Definitely recommend picking it up in the sale.

Because of the "one hit and you're dead" mechanic, where you might have to redo a couple of scenes to get back to where you were, I found myself having that good kind of frustration that some games can deliver that leads to a greater payoff when you succeed. Thankfully the scenes you redo are the ones you've just learned so chances are they'll only take you a few seconds each to complete.

It's comparable to Robo Recall in that they both make you feel heroic and can put a shit eating grin on your face when you do something particularly cool, but I feel that Superhot needs to be played in a fairly serious manner in order to progress. Both games compliment each other very nicely and scratch quite a different itch presuming you feel like killing some baddies while prancing round in your underpants with the curtains drawn.
 
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I ended up getting Star Trek bridge commander. Only played a couple of missions so far and my initial impression when I played a few days back was that for the single player game, the command system is a bit cumbersome. However played again today and they've now introduced the voice commands which make it much, much cooler. I understand multiplayer is best but I want to get more experience in the single player before I jump in there. The graphics are pretty crap but I can live with that given that I get to command a starship!
 
This would be cool if it turns out to work. But I'm not holding my breath until more details are out. Could be much hype for something niche inside niche inside niche

A Finnish startup is positing that they’ve come up with a way to bring human-eye level resolution to VR headsets through a technique that will direct a pair of insanely high-resolution displays to the center of your vision. With current technology, the company claims this will enable perceived resolutions north of 70 megapixels.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/19/this-startup-wants-to-build-vr-headsets-with-human-eye-resolution/
 
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