Locomotion in first person experiences

[SuperChino9000]

Hello,

a few weeks ago I received a CV1 after backing the early kickstarter and playing around with DK1. I tried a few games (mostly Lucky's Tale, Eve Valkyrie and Farlands), watched reviews, and I read online about existing apps and games.

I'm interested in what's going on in terms of supporting locomotion in games. With that, I refer the ability to move over large areas, which is something I'm traditionally used in most first person games (shooters primarily, but also others). I'm thinking specifically for games and apps where you are in control of your virtual avatar and things are up to IRL scale (and not for instance where you are a god floating above the world).

My understanding is that at the moment we have:

- Teleportation. It seems to sickness free, and suitable to achieve locomotion, but I wonder if it's really a viable option. Personally, find it clunky at best. I understand it's a solution to a problem, but it makes me feel trapped inside a transparent cage, and stresses the issue that I would like to run outside but I cannot.

- Room-Size. I've mostly read about this, but my understanding is that both oculus and vive allow some tracking within the room you're in, with the vive generally covering a larger area. While this is cool, I wonder how much that changes the issue at hand. Yes, the cage is larger, but it's still a cage.

- Hiding acceleration. It seems that if you only have sparse small objects around you, you can pretend it's them moving and not you. Space sim with just small ships would be a good example. Large stations/asteroids/wrecks however would still be a problem. I tried Eve, and it gave me sickness pretty fast when maneuvering near those objects.

- Enduring sickness. It seems some player are just getting used to the sickness and feel it less eventually? I haven't really tried so far. But is this really viable for the large market?

Have I missed anything? Are there good news on the horizon about this problem? What makes you stay confident about VR and first person games?

[edmg]

SuperChino9000 said:

edmg said:

For you, perhaps. But I've spent more time in Skyrim than anything else in VR.

How long did it take for your to get used to it?

Hard to say. Took a few days of playing for half an hour and quitting before I could play for several hours at a time.

I'm not sure how much of it was getting used to the erratic frame rates, and how much was finding mods that improved the experience. It was the stuttery head turns that made me feel queasy when I started playing, and installing the ENB graphics mod seemed to improve that, maybe because it caches textures in RAM in a separate process, rather than having to keep loading them from disk.

[sparkie14]

There must be a way to do it within the mechanics of the game.  I can play all the affected levels for as long as i like with no sickness whatso ever so they must be doing something right.   I cant see it should have been any different in ethan carter but it is..

[mbze430]

I can drive in VR games for hours... 2-3 hours... PCars, iRacing etc.... but as soon as I have to move in a FPS I feel like throwing up.  No matter how long and consistent I "train" myself.

I can be inverted for 30-40mins underwater  (SCUBA) I don't get sick.  Inverted while skydiving, won't get sick... but for the life of me.... as soon as I have to turn in a FPS with VR.... I can only last 10 more minutes from that point. 

[LZoltowski]

@mbze430  I dont think the FPS model is quite VR ready, your body expects for you to move while it perceives the world around you moving. If you try and move at the same time as you move your stick and mimic walking in a single spot, it seems to get better, only further demonstrating that the FPS model is not suited for VR, not at this stage. And I think is FANTASTIC, because new modes of play are going to show up, devs will seize this opportunity and delight us once again with new ways of playing games.

[Anonymous]

Try out Subnautica to get a taste for FPS locomotion, it supports the rift. I use the Xbox One controller that came with the rift with Subnautica and have no problems. I thought FPS styled games would be a problem as far as VR goes but it actually works out fine. The analogue stick is used in conjunction with the head tracking to look around/reorient your view.

Also fun is getting up and walking around the interior of your ship in Elite Dangerous. Walked around the pilots seat last night on a long trip, stuck my head outside of the cockpit as well to check out the stars. 🙂

P.S. Don't look behind your seat in Dirt Rally, the rear of the cars isn't modeled in the cockpit view. 🙂

[SuperChino9000]

LZoltowski said:

@mbze430  I dont think the FPS model is quite VR ready, your body expects for you to move while it perceives the world around you moving. If you try and move at the same time as you move your stick and mimic walking in a single spot, it seems to get better, only further demonstrating that the FPS model is not suited for VR, not at this stage. And I think is FANTASTIC, because new modes of play are going to show up, devs will seize this opportunity and delight us once again with new ways of playing games.

I appreciate that this might drive out of the box thinking, but I'd be happier if there was a solution to this. I really would like to explore worlds in VR, but I feel inside a cage.