R.I.P. PC VR

[RonsonPL]

740 Euros for the crappy 95-100 FOV 1080p VR in 2016, with no support from AAA core-gaming crators, no support for VR controller, and overpriced hardware both in terms of HMD and PC parts.
I sustain what I've said: Even 899$ price would be good if the VR was the best VR PC could handle in 2016/17. It's far from it.


Well...


It was obvious since just a little after FB bought Oculus, but we all had hopes despite the continuous stream of bad news pointing towards the worst scenario.


Seems like EVERY single big company thinks nowadays that core gaming is not existing and not worth putting any effort.
The industry we have now:
Ubisoft creates Tetris which struggles to maintain 30fps, and wants a pay subscription for Tetris DLC. Games with $300M for marketing are given to some crappy dev studios in third world countries, ending up with non-fixable, broken PC ports (Batman, AC:Unity). Gaming CPUs are so good that I can sell my CPU for 110% of what I payed for it... 3 years ago. New CPUs are overpriced and build with crappy cooling solutions (lesser OC, damage from cooler mounting issues in Skylakes), AMD doing anti-progress in terms of gaming performance (Bulldozer actually performed worse than the old architecture), recent news about GDDR5x instead of HBM, 120Hz monitors for 500% of the normal price, not even 3D standard in new HD Blu-Ray specifications, etc. etc. etc..

Let me explain what just happened.
Oculus just killed the last pieces of hope that wasn't killed yet. The hope that core gaming/PC/PC VR will be in good shape in this decade.

I was really worried when I heard that Oculus will give free CV1s to backers. Seemed obvious to me that this could be a move to prevent bad PR flood that could happen when people realize the difference between what Palmer promised and what came out of this promises.
Now every time a person like me writes anything bad about Oculus, tons of fanboys and ignorant people will say "hey! Shut up! They're great! They gave the backers free CV1s! We should love them!".

Well. How about no.

Let's summarize:
1. Oculus abandoned PC VR totally. They'll releae "something" so people won't scream at them, but at this price, at this date, at this specs, at this shape, at this shape of VR industry (99% focused on low-end hardware and mostly non-core-gaming content), it's pretty obvious PC VR for core gamers will not achieve even 10% of the potential it could achieve in 2016/17 if not for typical big corpo thinking.

2. Bundling a useless controller at THIS price is even more stupid than I though. No core gamer needs an additional joypad, and if anyone does, there's not a single one that don't know how to buy it. Or what to buy. There are much cheaper and 100% sufficient joypads if someone didn't have one (or many) already

3. Oculus ignored PC VR as soon as Facebook realized they can do easier money on mobile. No controller needed, no expensive PC needed, lots of casuals with much smaller expectations. Talks with big companies in PC industry started much too late, and were much too small. Specs are laughable. The same FOV as mobile VR justified by "PC is not powerful enough for more". Crappy resolution, just 90Hz, not even 95Hz that Abrash presented as bare minimum. Even PSVR has 120Hz. No controller. No big move towards AAA core-gaming content sooner than later.


It's basically "well, we'll just do something, and that's it". Half assed Rift. That's what world gets after almost half a decade of waiting.




Intel and AMD are NOT focusing on single-thread performance and low latency. Quite the opposite. They simply think there are no gamers that would like better physics, view distance, less latency etc. There was no Oculus or any other company that explained to them that they're wrong. Oculus had a HUGE chance to do that. But instead of saving the gaming industry, Oculus added another knife stabbed at it's back.
Nvidia had plans for low-latency-friendly HMC based GPUs, but delayed them. Now there are not even plans to use HMC for gaming. Instead of HBM revolution (latency is still crappy, but at least bandwidth is great) we'll get some shitty GDDR5X.
No hardware company thinks high quality core gaming exists.
No game publisher does.
No VR company does.

All that could've changed thanx to the huge success of Oculus kickstarter.



There's no other way to put this:


Palmer. You f.. this up.

[nosys70]

World of Warcraft was released in 2004, it has received some tweaks to improve the graphics, but it's still made to run on a potato

so what, in 2016, there is nobody to write proper code to display a nice world like in WoW and run on a potato.
That is progress, you need now a stellar machine to run a crappy VR demo ?
where is the problem here ?


and i would not mind to VRwalk in such world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esjIBC41fXI

[Twitchmonkey]

"nosys70" wrote:

so what, in 2016, there is nobody to write proper code to display a nice world like in WoW and run on a potato.
That is progress, you need now a stellar machine to run a crappy VR demo ?
where is the problem here ?
and i would not mind to VRwalk in such world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esjIBC41fXI

WoW would be one of the easier games to run in VR as it's one of the easier games to run outside of VR, but that would require them implementing the Oculus SDK or some other VR integration, which as far as I know they haven't chosen to do. Not sure if there are any third party mods to get VR working in Wow, might be. Now if you wanted to make a new WoW-type game specifically for VR, you would run into some issues. The texture quality is going to look even worse in VR because your eyes are so close to the screen, so you couldn't get away with as much in that regard, and WoW just has a ton of content. The reason no one has made WoW for VR is because making an MMO takes a team of many people working for thousands of hours.

[nosys70]

that was not the point.
neither about WoW , neither about creating it for VR.
The point was in 2004 we were able to display a full world in 3D, even stereoscopic if needed with a "potato"
And today, oculus claim that out of the latest CPU backed up by the latest GPU, there is no hope ?
On the other hand oculus put a lot of effort to push VR on a smartphone ?
From the software point of view, there woudl be a simple solution requiring almost no change.
Since VR must be stereoscopic, you could add a simple flag into any software that says "stereo needed".
if 2 video cards woudl be present, then the soft would just calculate the picture twice as required , with small change in camera position and alternate render on each card (in fact it does not even require SLI).
you just get a flag that tell CPU wich card to render to.
I think that is what Nvidia VR drivers are looking for, adding the deformation mesh required for the headset at the end (so no need for heavy calculation from the game). This way just by loading another deformation mesh data, you could make easy compatibility with other headset.
So from the point of view of the developper, there is no change to develop for screen or headset.

[Twitchmonkey]

"nosys70" wrote:
that was not the point.
neither about WoW , neither about creating it for VR.
The point was in 2004 we were able to display a full world in 3D, even stereoscopic if needed with a "potato"

No, in 2004 you needed a decent PC to play Wow, not great, but decent. The reason you can play it on a potato now is that its core aesthetic was designed to be played on a computer from 04, and it's 11 years later.

And today, oculus claim that out of the latest CPU backed up by the latest GPU, there is hope ?
On the other hand oculus put a lot of effort to push VR on a smartphone ?
From the software point of view, there woudl be a simple solution requiring almost no change.
Since VR must be stereoscopic, you could add a simple flag into any software that says "stereo needed".
if 2 video cards woudl be present, then the soft would just calculate the picture twice as required , with small change in camera position and alternate render on each card (in fact it does not even require SLI).

The SDK doesn't just split the image up into different perspectives for each eye, it also handles the distortion mesh, the asynchronous time warp, all of that stuff. You can't just tick a box to make a game compatible with VR, and I'm not sure SLI integration is as easy as you make it seem either. Granted my games programming is limited, but I'm guessing yours is as well, but if it was that simple my guess is it would be supported by now.

I think that is what Nvidia VR drivers are looking for, adding the deformation mesh required for the headset at the end (so no need for heavy calculation from the game). This way just by loading another deformation mesh data, you could make easy compatibility with other headset.

As far as I'm aware, you still need to integrate Nvidia Gameworks into your game to make their VR integration work. You can't just download something locally and have VR work for all your games. Even if you could, most games aren't built with VR in mind, and that can create problems. Certain tricks with sprites and normal maps don't look as good in VR as they do on a monitor, the scaling might not look right, and certain effects don't transfer over either. Not to mention most modern games would struggle to be played at the necessary FPS in VR on most machines because they're typically optimized for 60FPS monoscopic.

[nosys70]

No, in 2004 you needed a decent PC to play Wow, not great, but decent. The reason you can play it on a potato now is that its core aesthetic was designed to be played on a computer from 04, and it's 11 years later

So hire back the developer from 2004 to write today's software...

[Twitchmonkey]

"nosys70" wrote:

So hire back the developer from 2004 to write today's software...

If you want graphics from 2004, there are plenty of indies that can help you with that, but they don't have the time or resources to make a game as large as WoW. People generally want modern graphics in modern games, and MMOs aren't doing so well as a genre last I checked, at least outside of the Chinese F2P market, so it's unlikely we'll see another WoW.