Goodbye immersion I’m supposed to be playing as a character, not a floating camera. This behavior is great for exploring but extremely painful when it comes to anything gameplay related (i.e. shooters, rpgs, etc). I want the freedom to look around without having it affect the game. My head is a view, not a controller.
Hopefully this can be a toggle/property in the future! I’m planning on adding VR support to my RPG so it would be great if this was supported out of the box, and I didn’t have to modify the corescripts!
The first 2 months that I owned a headset I felt this way, but after I was done playing “explore this 3D model” games and started wanting to feel immersed in a game, you get sick of the head controlling you. The head should be an offset to where your character is facing, not controlling where you face.
When playing a shooter I was crouched walking up to a corner. I want to look to my left and peek around it. Not rotate my entire body to point there.
When playing an RPG as I run away from an enemy, I want to be able to glance over my shoulder to see where the enemy is. Currently, that would make me run towards it.
Don’t get me wrong it’s great for looking around a static map but once you try to play a game using even the slightest hint of tactics, it ruins the immersion. If I have spare time I’ll try to recompile a demo I had working (where you were being chased by the enemy) and send it to you. I only have a DK1 though so I have to simulate head tracking based on rotation.
When playing an RPG as I run away from an enemy, I want to be able to
glance over my shoulder to see where the enemy is. Currently, that would
make me run towards it.
I’ve not had that problem when using a controller, since I instinctively rotate the stick as I look around. Is that not normal?
You were pro “move towards wherever the camera is looking”. How does a controller solve that? This behaviour is the same regardless of input. Edit: Oh I see, you mean on PC you couldn’t accomplish this without VR. True. VR should add a new depth to the game however, not act as a “better right joystick”.
Here’s a diagram of the issue. If you can only move where your camera faces, you cannot do what is depicted in this diagram. However this is a perfectly reasonable scenario to have arise in a shooter or RPG, or any type of game that requires making quicker decisions in real time.
I naturally feel like my controls are relative to my camera, not my character. So it’s jarring for me to suddenly have a disconnection between where I’m looking and where I’m moving.
In real life your controls aren’t relative to your camera. For a “virtual reality” I feel (and have experienced) that you have much more control when you can look around freely. This might be difficult for new users of VR however because in video games we are so used to moving relative to the camera so I guess the industry will have to decide with their games if they want to keep the current trend or move towards a “you’re inside the game” feel.
As I said, this is somewhat controversial. You’re not the only person who dislikes this type of control.
The problem is that lateral movement is generally not comfortable. Turning around while moving is great, but moving forward constantly while looking sideways is not so great. Some people intuitively adjust the character rotation with a controller but a lot of people just feel bad.
I agree that we’d have to work more on this. Maybe there’s a better middle-ground that turns you slowly or maybe it’s just an option.
There is something I am confused on. Will we get to the point of using cardboard without using unsupported software such as TrinusVR on the desktop/laptop, with USB tethering, when it is fully shipped? When I tried it with TrinusVR, I was getting pretty good frame rates and camera panning when in first person, but the mouse is annoying.
I will need to upgrade my laptop to have 16 GB of RAM if I want to use Trinus VR, because it was using enough RAM where task manager wouldn’t even work.
While it’s obviously premature to say, I doubt that. We’re targeting Cardboard as the mobile product. Trinus VR does not even have an SDK last time I checked, and mapping head motion to mouse input is nowhere near the level of polish we want to be at. Plus the latency should be well above that for either mobile or desktop games…
If there’s a popular low-cost option for desktop we’ll be happy to support that, but for now it’s not clear if there will be one that has significant user base.
EDIT: I should mention that we support Vive through OpenVR SDK. I don’t really see a future for any small company building headsets that are not compatible with either Oculus Rift or HTC Vive in terms of software - but since Valve seems to provide an option to ship drivers for OpenVR, odds are any OpenVR-compatible device will work. If OpenVR effort takes off we’ll be happy to support various devices that work that with that SDK.
Any idea if Project Morpheus (PlayStation VR) will work with Windows? I read it needs a USB and HDMI input from the PS4, but can find nothing if it will work on a laptop/desktop. A $400 pricetag is a lot nicer to me than a $600 for the Oculus Rift. And if it is going to work with a Windows machine, and extra support going to be done to allow it to work with Roblox?
Note that $400 is just for the headset. They assume you already have the camera and two controllers, which will run you about $150. So it’s not that far off from oculus.
For the PSVR? I don’t know if it even works on windows, but you’re probably right about the controllers. The headset can provide rotational tracking but I imagine you would not have a fun experience without the camera’s positional tracking.
If you want absolute minimum VR experience then go for the PSVR I guess, but if you’re putting that much money down then you might as well just pay a little more to get all the accessories that VR games are going to expect you to have.
I think that’s the big thing at the moment. Lots of people are seeing the CV1 being $200 less than the Vive and thinking the Vive is way overpriced, but they’ll quickly realize they need controllers for most games and end up spending that $200 anyway.
“Most games” is a mischaracterization. Since Oculus Touch will not ship until second half of the year there will be lots of games for Oculus that work with the gamepad. Even after it does ship lots of games will keep supporting gamepad. PSVR will be in the same boat.
You are right. I missed this part - I was assuming that a tracking camera is included but it does not look like it.
If this is the case we’re probably looking at something like 450 for a bundle of PSVR, PS Eye and some games. Or I’m guessing around 500 for PSVR + Eye + 2 Move’s (the base price for this is 560 but it’s pretty standard to discount bundles…).
The real question is what will Oculus Rift + Touch cost once Touch is out
I’m supposed to be playing as a character, not a floating camera. This behavior is great for exploring but extremely painful when it comes to anything gameplay related (i.e. shooters, rpgs, etc). I want the freedom to look around without having it affect the game. My head is a view, not a controller.
