First impressions from a game development POV
A few notes after an evening of messing around with the Rift.
Polygons are really noticeable. Textures look more like wallpaper, normal mapping doesn't help hide polygons, it just makes them look even more unnatural. Objects rendered with tessellation shaders, like in Museum of the Microstar, look really good, and natural.
Art styles that aren't aimed at photo-realism, seem to work a lot better. In Team Fortress 2 for instance, it just feels like you are inside a cartoon, which is fun, and it doesn't break immersion. In the Tuscany demo, it feels like you are in a bad B-side of the real world, you constantly notice things which don't look/feel right.
Particle systems look really fake, but are also really amazing, and have an order of magnitude more "wow" factor than in 2D. I think they justify their rendering load in VR.
There's no sense of light/brightness. Looking at a light bulb in meatspace will cause your eye to have sunspots, the same does not happen in VR.
Along with a sense of scale, there is also a sense of weight. The mind also seems to impute a lot more onto objects, when there is scale. When I see the castle in the RIft coaster demo, I get a feeling like "oh wow, it must have a taken a lot of people a lot of time to build that!", even though it is just a collection of vertices with some textures thrown on.
Also, there is a sense personal space with bipedal avatars, and the sense that they are actually people. Standing in the crowd in the ready room in Team Fortress, it felt like there was an awkward silence, and I wanted to break it, but couldn't. Then people would stand too close, which was awkward as well. Voice communication seems to be the most natural fit for VR.
There seems to be a correlation between the amount of immersion and the likelihood of feeling woozy. I find games where my Avatar is standing up, to be far more immersive if I play them standing up. However, I am also much more likely to feel woozy, than if I played the same game sitting in a chair, with less immersion.
The Hydra adds a lot to immersion, having your hands represented in VR is a giant leap in terms of immersion. Which is interesting, since without the Rift, the Hydra is yet another gimmicky controller. Whereas with the Rift, it seems like it should almost be a requirement. So far the most compelling experience I've had is just tossing stuff around in Tuscany. However, it can compound the problem of not having positional tracking on the head, as you are much more likely to try to lean over and pick something up off the floor, which makes me feel woozy when I can't do it.
Polygons are really noticeable. Textures look more like wallpaper, normal mapping doesn't help hide polygons, it just makes them look even more unnatural. Objects rendered with tessellation shaders, like in Museum of the Microstar, look really good, and natural.
Art styles that aren't aimed at photo-realism, seem to work a lot better. In Team Fortress 2 for instance, it just feels like you are inside a cartoon, which is fun, and it doesn't break immersion. In the Tuscany demo, it feels like you are in a bad B-side of the real world, you constantly notice things which don't look/feel right.
Particle systems look really fake, but are also really amazing, and have an order of magnitude more "wow" factor than in 2D. I think they justify their rendering load in VR.
There's no sense of light/brightness. Looking at a light bulb in meatspace will cause your eye to have sunspots, the same does not happen in VR.
Along with a sense of scale, there is also a sense of weight. The mind also seems to impute a lot more onto objects, when there is scale. When I see the castle in the RIft coaster demo, I get a feeling like "oh wow, it must have a taken a lot of people a lot of time to build that!", even though it is just a collection of vertices with some textures thrown on.
Also, there is a sense personal space with bipedal avatars, and the sense that they are actually people. Standing in the crowd in the ready room in Team Fortress, it felt like there was an awkward silence, and I wanted to break it, but couldn't. Then people would stand too close, which was awkward as well. Voice communication seems to be the most natural fit for VR.
There seems to be a correlation between the amount of immersion and the likelihood of feeling woozy. I find games where my Avatar is standing up, to be far more immersive if I play them standing up. However, I am also much more likely to feel woozy, than if I played the same game sitting in a chair, with less immersion.
The Hydra adds a lot to immersion, having your hands represented in VR is a giant leap in terms of immersion. Which is interesting, since without the Rift, the Hydra is yet another gimmicky controller. Whereas with the Rift, it seems like it should almost be a requirement. So far the most compelling experience I've had is just tossing stuff around in Tuscany. However, it can compound the problem of not having positional tracking on the head, as you are much more likely to try to lean over and pick something up off the floor, which makes me feel woozy when I can't do it.