Hoping we get more "local social" games

[Anonymous]

While I don't really agree with the current stigma that vr is isolating and isn't social (riftmax/vrchat/karaoke anyone?)
I do believe there's something to be said for involving those around you.

I really hope we start seeing more people being involved in vr games locally.. they don't have to have a headset just participate with a controller somehow.

For example say, my wife could be playing Lucky's Tail in vr while I control a sidekick while watching the monitor view.
keep talking and nobody explodes had a great idea for a party like game too.
I can't recall the name of the demo but there was one that came out of a game jam where one person in vr looked around and could see certain aspects that the person on the monitor couldn't and vice versa, they had to work together with communication to avoid ghosts.

I am lucky that my wife and I both have decent gaming pcs and we could both get hmds... but there is still something to be said for sitting right next to each other playing something together... or maybe my opinion will change with dk2 lol

What are some of your ideas for local social experiences?
Do you think it wont really matter that much once we all have rifts?

[cybereality]

Yeah, I think multiplayer games are great in VR. I had a ton of fun with some guys in the office playing Minecrift together. It was one of the first (or really only) co-op online games I played in VR, and the experience was amazing.

[HiThere_]

As far as building an early demo goes : Pacman.

And by that I mean up to 4 players playing the ghosts on the 2D screen, and one player playing Pacman from within the rift, with some limitations and additions (such as a temporary invisibility ring ?) to make it fair.

Basically you could develop a whole range of asymmetric games where one player is using the rift in one way, and up to 4 players are using the 2D TV as a shared or even split screen (even as only a basic 2D User Interface that consumes minimal GPU performance, which you could use to make the Rift user shreak).

Think of it as : What would you play with your friend(s) on your PC, if it had two screens pointing away from each other.

Which makes me think about the Wii U : It does have a second screen which the other players can't see (although in this case the one using the gamepad screen and also use the TV screen, and is not hearing his own separate sounds from wearing an audio headset). You could check what games Wii U is providing with it's asymmetric screens, as an inspiration for what you could do by combining the display of a Rift HMD with a 2D TV.

Being able to plug in at least two Oculus Rifts into a single PC/Steambox would be even better (well worth halving the GPU between both HMDs to achieve), but I guess that won't happen (we'll skip straight from requiring one PC per Headset to requiring zero PC per Headset to streaming Headset content straight through the lag free internet of the future... without a local PC ever being used to display things to more the one HMD, not even used to stream the display content for the second HMD from the second PC you have upstairs which you have available as part of your lag free home network right now...).

Anyway in short there's my answer for you : Check asymmetric Wii U games for inspiration on what asymmetric games could look like with a Rift/TV combo 🙂

[cubytes]

agreed 🙂 local co-op will be great for VR. it would be nice if two units could share the same PC but that's another story....

[mscanfp]

"cybereality" wrote:
Yeah, I think multiplayer games are great in VR. I had a ton of fun with some guys in the office playing Minecrift together. It was one of the first (or really only) co-op online games I played in VR, and the experience was amazing.

I could be wrong, but I would think that just playing hide and go seek would be awesome.

"Cyril" wrote:


Which makes me think about the Wii U : It does have a second screen which the other players can't see (although in this case the one using the gamepad screen and also use the TV screen, and is not hearing his own separate sounds from wearing an audio headset). You could check what games Wii U is providing with it's asymmetric screens, as an inspiration for what you could do by combining the display of a Rift HMD with a 2D TV.

)

I'm a proud "early adopter" of Wii U (2 kids), and when we first played Nintendo Land, I immediately thought of how cool it would be to use a second screen with VR.

[owenwp]

I think one of the core benefits of VR is that you don't have to be there physically to get the "local multiplayer" feeling. When its done right you would swear the other player is right there with you no matter how far away they really are. You don't feel alone. And since you can't see outside of the Rift, even if they were right next to you, you would not know the difference unless they elbowed you in the face.

That said, few people have sufficiently explored this in their own games. There have only been a few demos with multiplayer at all, and fewer with body tracking, or positional voice communication. Things like TF2 don't really count because the characters don't move in a convincingly human way, and are in any case bouncing around like pinballs.

Riftmax might be the only real example out there right now, and it is still quite primitive.

[HiThere_]

"owenwp" wrote:
I think one of the core benefits of VR is that you don't have to be there physically to get the "local multiplayer" feeling.

I think one of the core problems of multiplayer VR gaming is going to be Internet lag : You're used to online players jumping positions over a few pixels on your 2D TV (and mysteriously missing your perfect headshot on them), but you might not want them bouncing around like that in a VR multiplayer FPS game (specially when being even a few pixels off now represents a MUCH wider Virtual Distance then it did on your TV screen).

Which I guess can be compensated with tricks like making VR players use lock-in missiles and tracing machine guns to shoot at distant spaceships, instead of making them shoot off face to face with a handgun.

A Riftmax type experience might be the perfect counter-example example where that online lag would hardly matter (short of wanting to exchange glances with perfect timing or something).

So the idea is that multiplayer VR is best done with zero lag (what's the point of having a zero lag display screen and controllers, if the Avatars you are trying to interact with are only updated once every 10 frames), so the ability to create a local network of Rifts (such as being able to plug more then one Rift per PC, instead of having to bring your desktop from your home to create a local network), matters a lot more then it would in a lag free Internet world, or for non VR gaming.

Just my opinion though : To reduce the online lag problem the same tricks being applied to the Rift Display (such as predictive head tracking), could and probably will have to be applied to multiplayer online Avatars (such as predictive Avatar tracking).