This doesn't hold true for FPS games. You absolutely need to tell the game where you are aiming so it can draw crosshairs, even for on-rails shooters favored by VR.
I think part of the problem is this weird insistence that VR means having to physically move arms around etc. For most games, the visual experience of VR can vastly improve immersion, but control schemes nearly universally suck. Simulators work so much better largely because they don't fall into the same trap - if you're playing a flight sim, say, you're still probably using the same stick/throttle/pedals as you would without the headset. For space sims, I find that headset + mouse combo works amazingly well (End Space is a good showcase of what can be done there). And so on.
But for some reason there's practically no uptake on any of this outside of sims. I would love to see a first-person shooter that is fully VR enabled while still allowing me to use WASD + mouse. In fact, I already kinda sorta do that by using 2D theater mode with games like Insurgency: Sandstorm, but that doesn't give you the actually useful VR stuff like the ability to turn your head to look around etc. If somebody were to make an FPS that did all that, they'd have my money in a heartbeat.
This is a very uncharitable take. What about games like Holopoint or Pistol Whip?
Besides, in some genres, "X but in VR" can make for a very big difference. Space and flight sims - even very arcade ones - are a prominent example. The ability to actually look around and track enemy craft easily is huge - I wouldn't even consider playing something like Project Wingman without VR anymore, even though it is available.
Nobody seems to mention the fact that most of VR games out there require using the hard-to-familiarize hard-to-memorize joysticks to interact with the game.
I own a Valve Index and I mostly don't play it because of it's just really a hassle to have to physically stand up (or even seated) and to wave your arms around, only to forget how to reload your damn gun after a couple of weeks/months of not playing.
I wish that people built simple keyboard-and-mouse VR games that I could enjoy the VRness of the experience using my fingers and palms like I'm used to in the past 30 years.
I want CSGO VR, not a good-looking-cheap-knock-off that I need to figure out how to reload each gun and where to draw the grenade from. I want Cities Skylines VR where I can see my city from above wherever I look.
I want Red Alert VR.
The most enjoyable games I currently have that is worth whipping VR out for are those I can play with a regular XBox controller which I'm quite familiar with already.
Traditional run-and-gun FPS games are not well suited to VR, despite how badly many seem to wish they were. There are workarounds and I've read about some truly silly ones (blow a fan in your face to simulate motion, take a preventative dose of Dramamine first, run on an omni-treadmill so there's no mismatch between motor and visual stimuli, etc.)
And it sort of bums me out because it feels a bit...lazy? short-sighted? FPS in the way we think of them now were uniquely suited to a flat screen in front of us. They offer a sense of freedom of movement that is great in games. But trying to shoehorn that old approach into VR seems like missing the point.
I think the real trick (at least as demonstrated to me by the 100 or so games, applications, and demos I've tried on Rift over the past couple of years) is to find formats and conventions that are uniquely suited to the platform rather than trying to rehash and cram what's already a big seller into something that doesn't make you puke after an hour.
For me the kinds of games I mostly play do not translate well to VR. Or at least yet. But for stuff that does translate like shooters, its unreal how much better they are in VR.
You can use gun sights in the real world while keeping both eyes open (and some schools of thought recommend it for situational awareness). It's not even that hard so long as your dominant eye is the one looking through the sights, and you don't get wink fatigue either.
I suspect the VR game isn't correctly simulating what this actually looks like, though.
Sure, it has limitations but do you not see any applications of VR besides games? I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of games are not first person shooters, or ones that require you to control the movement of a character.
This is true for most games, the difference that with VR you're strapping on figurative horse blinders. As I mentioned in my sibling post, there are some games taking advantage of the disconnect.
Sorry to break it to you but many games (like first person shooters) currently have no depth perception and would be greatly enhanced by it. Literally every 3D game you play today can and will be enhanced in VR because of this reason.
I could see this happening for quite a lot of games, sure. But... I'm skeptical just because the experience for some games would be so, so much worse. Anything requiring fine input goes straight out of the window, such as a tactical FPS like CS:GO, or VALORANT. MOBAs, maybe, except when you get to a high level where it, once again, requires precise inputs. Hell, even CoD, FIFA require it when laying against other players. Fortnite gets quite difficult when you consider the prevalence of building in that game - lord knows I struggled with accuracy even on a good machine. I guess Destiny 2 has demonstrated some aspects working, but AFAIK, quite a bit of the game is PvE.
I can't think of an analogous comparison for this in other media, to try and make a comparison to. Either something groundbreaking needs to happen (and doesn't physics prevent this?) or if the transition truly happens, these types of games will require a fundamental change in how they work.
Another thing - if VR ever actually gets any traction, I can't imagine cloud streaming working here.
Well, it's based on some totally arbitrary assumptions, such as that people in VR wouldn't typically be aware that they are in VR.
This is certainly not the case nor the intention with video games (from which the whole argument is extrapolated), no matter how realistic they can get
That strikes me as a software design problem, you can make movement in VR 1-1 with the real world, for many non-game's it makes a lot of sense to do that.
Maybe also a latency problem (a big part of why it's in the list above).
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