My experience with low end VR graphics

[soxfan335]

Everyone is harping on about how lower end graphics are OK in VR cause well, system requirements and what not, and the "sense of presence" is enough to make it OK. In my opinion it is much the contrary.

When I first got DK2 I was blown away by the simplest thing, such as the desk demo. At this point everything in VR looked awesome cause it was all so new, not much different from when you get a new next-gen console and even the crappiest games are fun, because the graphics look so fresh and un-dated. However I could only run a limited amount of things and at the lowest settings because I didnt have a powerful machine.

Fast forward to recently when I built a new rig (i7-6700, 980ti). The normal VR experiences are great but what I noticed is that the demos which have simplistic graphics (for the sake of VR) aren't really doing it for me at all, it makes no difference that I feel a sense of "immersion" while in these cartoony lands, because I have already gotten over the hype-phase of VR. This is not to say however that the realistic experiences are not amazing however. For example, I can play ETS2 with just as much, if not more interest than previously, mainly because it actually works now, and sets you in a realistic scenario with a high comfort level, VR wise.

[r00x]

Interesting subject! I find as long as the quality of the overall experience is good, the graphics themselves are less important.

For instance the new Leap Motion Blocks demo is very absorbing, yet in terms of graphics it almost couldn't be worse fidelity - it's a dark, empty world populated only with a handful of monochrome low-poly shapes. You're still engrossed in it though because the music is nice and atmospheric, the sound effects are spot on (the heavy, echoing thump of the shapes gives them weight as they hit the floor and makes the large hollow space feel more convincing) and the little visual cues they give to object interaction (the edges of all the shapes glowing when hitting something or going in and out of gravity) is well implemented and effective.

That said, I agree the Oculus desk scene included with the runtime isn't quite as thrilling as it once was :lol:

[Fazz]

"soxfan335" wrote:
Everyone is harping on about how lower end graphics are OK in VR cause well, system requirements and what not, and the "sense of presence" is enough to make it OK. In my opinion it is much the contrary.

When I first got DK2 I was blown away by the simplest thing, such as the desk demo. At this point everything in VR looked awesome cause it was all so new, not much different from when you get a new next-gen console and even the crappiest games are fun, because the graphics look so fresh and un-dated. However I could only run a limited amount of things and at the lowest settings because I didnt have a powerful machine.

Fast forward to recently when I built a new rig (i7-6700, 980ti). The normal VR experiences are great but what I noticed is that the demos which have simplistic graphics (for the sake of VR) aren't really doing it for me at all, it makes no difference that I feel a sense of "immersion" while in these cartoony lands, because I have already gotten over the hype-phase of VR. This is not to say however that the realistic experiences are not amazing however. For example, I can play ETS2 with just as much, if not more interest than previously, mainly because it actually works now, and sets you in a realistic scenario with a high comfort level, VR wise.

People are blown away with everything at at first and then it slowly becomes apart of your life. Be it new mobile phone technology, new car technology and every other new technology, we all get used to it after a while and await the next best thing. Graphics wise the Rift is a step backwards in terms of graphics compared to what we see on our 2D monitors, but the Rift is all about immersion at present. I'm still excited to see new stuff in the Rift, like I am to see a new game on a 2D mointor. I've just played Back to Dinosaur island 2, on the Rift and have to say it looked and played awesome.

I should also point out that you pay for what you get. There's no point having a crappy computer and then saying you aren't blown away by the Rift because of poor graphics. You need to have the best graphics available if you want a good experience, just like you do on a 2D monitor. I'm not going to buy some cheap ass camera and say the picture isn't good enough.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, unfortunately the human mind is amazing in it's capacity to get used to new and amazing situations.

Just think about when you're driving to work every day, handling a complex heavy machine travelling at speeds exceeding anything a human would ever be capable of. That's supposed to be a thrilling experience, yet, most people don't give that fact a second thought.

The cardboard I got was pretty neat for a couple of days, but got bored of it really quickly. Mostly due to the lack of quality experiences though. It's not the resolution that will keep people playing, it's the content.

Fortunately the new video for Rift games looks promising! 😄

[soxfan335]

I tried cardboard and it was simply pathetic, it did absolutely nothing for me. Maybe I'm just too on the other end of the spectrum from everyone else.

Everyone seems to be caught up in all the hype for all these stupid little games, the only reason being that it's VR, but here's the thing, VR isn't even "there" yet. So what we have on our hands is a perfect storm brewing whereby people are letting themselves get carried away in the hypes for dumb shit like mine craft when it doesn't even work comfortably and even ms has to include a laughable "living room mode" where you sit on a virtual couch and play it on a virtual 2d screen, because they don't want people to get sick. There isn't enough software and real, compelling, story driven games... Everyone is going to get bored, fast.

I understand that it has been a long wait and everyone is excited, and everyone wants VR to do well etc, but I come from the other end of the spectrum (I am skeptical until convinced otherwise - sorry marketing people) and from this viewpoint there basically just isn't anything except one or two games to convince me. And by convince I mean REaLLY convince, as in, quake multiplayer over broadband for the first time convinced. I just do t see me reaching that hype level with these half ass little kid games and other pathetic crap like "job simulator" you have got to be shitting me. If you expect me to actually pay real money for crap like that, I'm sorry

[Anonymous]

"plogarn" wrote:
Yeah, unfortunately the human mind is amazing in it's capacity to get used to new and amazing situations.

Just think about when you're driving to work every day, handling a complex heavy machine travelling at speeds exceeding anything a human would ever be capable of. That's supposed to be a thrilling experience, yet, most people don't give that fact a second thought.

Yea, I agree. And it will be that way forever. Though, once you take something away that we are accustomed to, we really learn that we take it for granted. Have you ever gone say a week, to 2 weeks without driving? You start to re-live that exciting moment again.

You can actually induce excitement from something that you are currently "bored" with. It just takes some dedication, but force yourself not to use, or have it. Then you truly appreciate what it is, or how exciting it actually can be.

Here are some examples with tech that affected me.

NES -> SNES - Sure after 5 years with SNES I was used to it...but going back to NES was horrible...I wanted my SNES graphics.

HDTV -> 3DTV - I used it a few times, it was exciting, but I ended up going back to regular 2D HDTV. To me, 3DTV tech was a failure, I can easily live without it.

With 2D gaming -> VR gaming there will be a lot of people that get used to it, and lose the wow factor. But I think when you take away the VR experiences and only have 2D, those people will crave VR.

"soxfan335" wrote:
I tried cardboard and it was simply pathetic, it did absolutely nothing for me...

I agree, I tried cardboard too and was disgusted by how bad it was. But if that's all you have experienced, then you haven't really tried true VR (Rift / Vive).

Cardboard to Rift, is like NES gaming to Xbox 360 gaming. Huge difference.

[christopherbarn]

"soxfan335" wrote:
If you expect me to actually pay real money for crap like that, I'm sorry

k, bye.

[r00x]

"soxfan335" wrote:
There isn't enough software and real, compelling, story driven games... Everyone is going to get bored, fast.
[...]
I just do t see me reaching that hype level with these half ass little kid games and other pathetic crap like "job simulator" you have got to be shitting me. If you expect me to actually pay real money for crap like that, I'm sorry

Have you considered that the industry is still trying to figure out what works well in VR? Nobody really knows until it's out on the market. There aren't many willing to commit huge amounts of resources to games/software that might not take off. The ones that are putting their all into it are mostly indie studios, by the looks of things, and they obviously have limited resources anyway.

Many of what I feel are the most compelling VR experiences weren't developed exclusively for VR (Elite Dangerous, ETS2, Project CARS) and seem to be more "complete" - but then that makes sense, because they're building full games and integrating VR almost as an afterthought.

I anticipate there will be more pure VR "AAA" titles as the platform stabilises and the things that don't work are weeded out from the crowd, and it becomes clear to devs and publishers what money is available in the market.

Right now, that's not much... there are only several million PCs in the world that can run these headsets, and only a fraction of that number of headsets will exist - these game devs probably have a potential audience of a few hundred thousand at best (less than several hundred thousand I expect). That's including existing dev kits in the wild which might make up the lion's share for now. This is STILL very optimistic because we're assuming that (a) all these kits are used for playing games, which they aren't and (b) we still haven't considered that not everybody in that "VR pool" has the same tastes and interests in games.

That might whittle your potential audience for your super expensive awesomely compelling story-driven VR experience down to tens of thousands of people.

To put this into perspective, a modern AAA title can expect to sell into the millions. An order of magnitude greater sales, if not more. For example, the aforementioned ETS2 has sold more than 2 million copies. Starcraft sold more than 11 million.

I hope this helps explain why we might not see many ultra-crazy deep and involving VR titles until the platform gets a little further off the ground (except where they can also be sold outside of VR).

[soxfan335]

What you say may be true, however, how long have potential developers had dev kits for now? 3 years? Even with all the sdk changes and lack of funding, that's still enough time to cobble together some basic foundations for a "real" VR game and not just a bunch of gimmicky mobile ports that get boring after 20 minutes cause all you do is play around with toys like you're a kid in a pediatric waiting room. That's not my idea of fun and certainly nothing the average person (with no ties to the industry, a related job prospect, or financial interest) would be interested in.

The problem is that everyone wants to get rich off VR so they are trying to capitalize the most on what will give the biggest ROI at this point, for some reason everyone thinks that flimsy mobile level games and glorified demos will do that, I'm not convinced this is the right way forward for VR, but it appears to be unavoidable because so many different companies now have their filthy greedy hands all over it

Edit: stupid phone

[Georgio]

Anyone remember the Amiga red/white bouncing ball way back when, I almost fell over when I saw that in a shop window back in the 80's and bought a machine there and then on the strength of that demo.
Give current VR 20 years and it will be so immersive as to be indistinguishable from 'real' reality... 😉