Well the good news is that the number of steamVR users seems to be growing. But other than that I haven’t been so negative about VR in the last few years … Samsung seems to have dropped out the VR game. Kopin keeps saying in every update to investors that the VR market is developing slower than expected and that they’re going to wait (and whatever happened to that Panasonic headset with kopin displays?) and the other manufacturers are just dead silent. We always used to have some ‘upcoming headset’ to look forward to. Now there’s really just nothing! Why is HTC not releasing a device with 2k*2k for example, they could easily beat HP and Valve…
And then the games, the last AAA game I really enjoyed was HL:A, after that, there’s been pretty much nothing. The big studios seem to be not interested. In fact, the sequel to one of my favorie VR games, serious Sam, is now a flat game instead of VR … What’s up with that.
My headsets are just gathering dust now…
Or what do you guys think? Is there any hopeful sign that I missed (other than the steamvr users growing) ?
Not at all!
I only use VR with my Pimax and Index for X-Plane 11, DCS, Condor 2 and MSFS. In fact I only play in VR. No more watching a movie-like monitor. I rather be in the game/ simulator.
His point is still very valid. Mostly old games and very little new games are being released. VR is indeed in a slump for advancement and game releases.
As for new headsets on the horizon likely a slump with companies still waiting on recovering costs for ones released.
Yeah I think most companies thought VR would take off faster. And that while the corona crisis pretty much was the best thing that could happen to VR. If VR ever had a use case it’s now! But it seemed that even in this best case scenario things are moving really really slowly and in fact it seems companies are abandoning VR and going back to flat gaming (like Serious Sam)…
PSVR 2 just got announced at least. Skyrim VR modding community is very active. Latest Pavlov update is pretty great. And Quest 2 has sold millions now.
But aye, I think it’s just going to take a while for the medium to grow up. Still a lot of teething problems.
While I agree that most companies thought VR would take off like a rocket I don’t agree with your overall thought process that it’s waning or being dropped etc.
VR enthusiasts have a very high software attach rate, roughly 4.5 times the general audience. Lots of developments but Covid affected hardware items more than software items so as a result a bit of a hardware drought occurred for some companies (the supply chain was seriously disrupted for close to 12 months). I don’t think it’s fair to interpret that as pulling back etc.
AAA Class VR Titles either released or should be this year:
MSFS 2020
Star Wars: Squadrons
Doom 3 VR
Falcon Age
Assassin’s Creed VR
Hitman 3 VR
Sniper Elite VR
Wraith: The Oblivion
Splinter Cell VR
After the Fall
Sam and Max
Vertigo 2
Panzer Dragoon Voyage
Warhammer Age of Sigmar
Demeo
Ryte: Eye of Atlantis
Blunt Force VR
Wake Inn
Lots of positive developments lately including PSVR2 and more.
I agree too, but I believe it is mostly hardware related; VR panels are tied to cellphones, until cellphones make the jump to 8K panels and resolution it will follow a VR headset with the same specs. And VR software, i agreed with PimaxUSA.
HTC promised something big this year. Either way, for some reason it (mostly) ditched Valve’s lighthouse technology, and their Inside Out isn’t as good as the competition. on the other hand a complete lighthouse system is very expensive and can hardly compete with HP Reverb
VR panels are not as much important as far as 8k panels as the gpu hardware is not there to support it. There not as tied as they once were though still somewhat tied.
Samsung had for quite sometime boasted about there coming vr tech with special panels like in Odyssy+ and the Ojo? Concept headsets. And then the patents on various panels for vr and some headset designs. Now has become very quiet. HTC has come to a standstill as well with headset development with no real competitive headset release to compete even with the Index as there last offers have pretty much faded from the public.
Sony we knew long ago that a psvr2 was coming though very odd they decided to put it off for as long as they have. Has there been any factual releases on what psvr2 is going to be or is it still mainly rumors?
As for games it might be that real games have been delayed to ensure smooth mechanics as we saw how Medal of Honor VR was received with the initial hiccups.
While sim games are cool SW:Squadrons is honestly at the core just another space flight sim. And we know that there people whom want more roomscale vs seated experiences.
With VR hardware it is in a bit of a slump. If we look at Pimax they had consistently said Wireless info and demonstrations have been going to be done long before covid and yet for example 2020’s ces had nothing and no news since. The controllers have also been the proverbial carrot only being mentioned was trialed out at CES 2020 but not in public.
Pimax has pushed FoV. While things like the Quest & Quest 2(FB issues & stigmata aside) have pushed ease of use/setup and greater freedom of use.
i don’t use this awfull hp2 reverb at all, its hmd imu or what they use for hmd tracking with cameras micro stuttering a lot vive pro with its huge pixels way more enjoyable, O+ with wmr didnt sttutter like g2, i drop all settings on low, all fps 90 20% green, no spikes, no reprojection and it stutters, i just hate this hmd, i reinstalled latest win 20h2 from 2021 and got all feb updates, its just nightmare how hp and ms spoiled this hmd, most hmd work not great but ok like O+, Oculus are also good in this regard but Index, Vives are best, its really game changer if it doesnt lag, stutter and fluent. So steam vr is for users who will use hmd for a long time and enjoy it, quality oculus tracking which was written by Carmack also does the job, but all the rest awfull implementations just disaster for VR (cv1 infrared from Oculus og team also was ok), it will repel ppl rather than spread VR. All those crapping tracking technologies need to be banned until they get certification and enough level of polish. Screens on g2 are great and colours and brightness great for lcd, lenses normal with modded face mask but still old HMDs level in terms of sweetspot. But tracking kills it.
Tracking issues is a bit of interesting thing. There are folks with the g2 without much tracking issues reported. So it might be similar to issues on the 8kX where it seems some units were not calibrated properly(the community is still debugging this as pimax has been mostly silent on it).
One issue is the closed tech and of course companies more and more treating customers as beta testers with their products. Even the Rift S out of the gate had some bad tracking issues at launch.
idk, maybe they less sensitive to it, without tracking test its hard to say. it doea not hard stutters but when you rotate head it often microstuttering, i checked that its not camera data loss, coz if you set boundary visible it stays visible an always on. Most probably software/driver level issue
One question are you by chance using a Ryzen cpu with a mobo with the 500 series chipset? As there have been reports with usb issues on vr headsets. Apparently as posted by another member here he had to switch the pciX from 4 to 3 mode.
But indeed could be likely a driver software issue. Something with the wide variety of hardware software components can and does create a variety of issues. Though with being a MS Authorized brand software conflicts should be less likely. However MS at times is very challenging for introducing frustrations.
I spent over 2 hours trying to debug an issue on a friend’s pc that looked like the graphics card went bad. It turned out to be an issue with W10’s handling of multiple monitors and not disabling the monitors within Windows before shutting down and moving to another room.
Reverb G2 tracking is pretty good for me, a lot depends on your room and lighting though. But I’m still not 100% happy with the headset. I just love the clearness and sharpness in the center, this is what we need but the sweetspot definitely should be bigger and also the FoV should be bigger. I’m just really hoping we’ll be seeing some new headsets this year. Happy to read that HTC is planning someting, thanks @mmorselli I missed that one.
Also I just read the lated investor update from Kopin, they said the Panasonic headset is planned for end of this year/beginning next. Kopin (KOPN) Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool
Although this Panasonic headset will not be the one we all want, due to very low FoV, it’s at least going to be interesting to mess around with such high res OLED headset and it’s extremely lightweight which should be interesting too. Palmer Lucky was impressed with the headset.
I’ve actually been hoping for an Index v2 but pretty sure that won’t happen this year …
I think back to cell phones, and how it took me ~ 5 years to actually buy a smart phone. First mainstream Iphone was ~2007 and I bought a Samsung Galaxy S3 in 2012. We’re at the 5 year mark for VR and it’s obviously not going to catch as fast as smartphones, so I think the rate of growth is fine.
HTC just tweeted a teaser today:
Also, Sony just did a “VR Spotlight,” showing off Doom 3 VR for PSVR, so you have a “big” player releasing a game, even though of course we had Doom 3 VR mod for years. I think devs realize people are tired of short 4-5 hr games, so I think the good stuff will take a while to come out. After the Fall’s cinematic trailer looks basically like L4D VR:
Lots of stuff to look forward to.
I’m loving Pavlov’s WW2 Push mode, which can be found in the Custom game filter. IMO it should become an official mode eventually. It’s supposed to be like Battlefield Bad Company 2’s Rush mode but WW2. Basically there are two sites, attackers have to plant to blow up artillery, and if they blow both sites up, there are two more sites further in the map, same objectives (blow up artillery), and finally one more set of sites to “push” to. There are 6 “classes,” so, for example, if there’s an annoying tank destroying your team, you can go Anti-Tank with a rocket launcher to help get rid of it, or of course get someone to help destroy the tank with your team’s tank. Medic has a healing pack, heavy has mines/extra nades. Snipers snipe, Tankers help repair the tank, then there’s normal Assault which is for people who just wanna shoot. Attackers/defenders switch sides and whichever team blows up the most sites wins. The maps are large and battles tend to be long-distance, but also depends on the map…8KX really shines with long distance.
Here’s a fan-made trailer for it:
To be honest I thought the maps looked pretty bland at first, but since the game mode and openness makes you feel like you’re actually on a battlefield in war it doesn’t matter.
Cool! Hopefully we’ll be hearing something new. They could really easily take over Valve’s lead in the high end VR segment IF they don’t make the same mistake as with the Vive Pro and price it way too high … Also here’s hoping that they don’t go for the lower segment like Oculus did …
This is actually one of the very few upcoming games that I’m excited about (since I really enjoyed arizona sunshine). I went through the list above posted by @PimaxUSA some titles I didn’t know about but none of them (except after the fall) really caught my interest. Of course that’s always highly subjective
I’ll admit I was getting worried with Samsung and Sony(till recently) going silent too. Racing games and now Pavlov keep me going. I have a bunch of single player games I haven’t touched yet too. In a way I don’t want anything better than the 8KX coming out because I feel like I have a new HMD every year, heh. Same with games since I have a huge backlog. Most PCs still can’t handle the full ability of the 8KX/Reverb G2 for all games so maybe Oculus is doing things the right way until most PCs can actually handle 4Kx4K screens at native resolution.
I think VR games are indeed being released at a slower rate, but I don’t think the genre is dead.
MSFS 2020 has VR support and it’s certainly a top-tier game. I expect Valve to release additional VR games, since HL Alyx was a hit and they want to push people to buy their Index headset. I’d rather have fewer high-quality VR titles, than a bunch of mediocre ones.
The VR industry is young, but I’m sure it will eventually be a huge market.
Pavlov VR push is absolutely amazing. I love it. Hands down one of the best experiences i’ve ever had. You really do feel like you are in a battlefield.
Console users predicted the demise of PC gaming. Flightsims have been predicted to be dying before because of their smaller market share. Neither have died, but like VR they are both expensive aspects of electronic gaming.
The cost of admission will affect the percentage of market penetration. VR is likely to be pricey for some time yet. Certainly at the PC level.
That said I can fly hundreds of sim aircraft, drive hundreds of race cars,drive tanks, sail boats, fly a space ship and land on planets, fly a wingsuit, paddle a kayak, hunt with a bow, shoot and manipulate various firearms and other weapons in various scenarios, shoot pool, go bowling, play golf, boxing, scour dungeons, hunt zombies, exercise, explore earth, etc etc etc, All in VR.
Although I am always excited to play new things, i don’t feel particularly short changed with what I can do in VR and on a 4 year old 1080ti and a 6 year old 6600K. If VR is dead, it’s a slow beautiful death from my vantage point.
