Is VR dead?

[mr Sw1tchblade]

too heavy on resources- exactly this
Main reason why i don't have vr still. I don't want to buy sli configuration again. I prefer to cange my graphic card every 2 years. And i hate low graphic settings.
Vr headsets are not so expensive already. Each of my monitors cost more than Oculus Rift.

 

[tlsmikey]

I don't think it will die, but its a bit premature right now for a few reasons. There was far too much low quality content at release in terms of hardware and software (PSVR is horrid) and very few AAA titles produced any VR content.

I think it will come around in a year or two when GPU prices drop, but it'll remain on the fringe for now.

 

[davideliasirwin]

I have witnessed VR dying in the 90´s.

Nothing has changed, it´s still too expensive for the mass market and too heavy on resources.

Sad, because it is exciting for everybody and i am sure if development continues VR is able to become the one and only gaming solution and compete with regular monitors.

VR today can't be compared to VR in the 90's.

VR in the 90's was more of a myth than a reality. Back then VR cost thousands, if not ten's of thousands of dollars. It was mostly owned by academic research teams, military research, and amusement parks. The total VR community back then was probably under 10,000 people.

It only ran custom applications developed by the research community.

Nintendo attempted VR(Virtualboy) but it was delivered stillborn and Nintendo officially killed it in under a year.

Compare that VR to today.

You can leave your house, head to best buy, pick up a Oculus Rift and be playing 90% of your favorite modern PC racing games before dinner.

There are millions of VR owners now that can play games from hundreds of developers. Dozens of the largest technology companies in the world have created departments specifically for research and development of VR/AR and are injecting billions of dollars.

90's VR simply is completely different than today's VR.

I understand's everyone's cynicism. VR is not in everyone's household, it doesn't run wirelessly while have the same graphics as 4k games, it's not as small as a set of eyeglasses, I get it.

It's only been what, 2 years? Since Oculus released the first VR headset. They have exceeded their own sales estimate and expect for sales to double year over year for the next couple of years.

The entire community is focused on finding ways to make it cheaper, accessible and performance friendly. Eye tracking and foveated rendering alone should cut performance requirement substantially.

I think what it comes down to is impatience. VR has been available for consumers for about 2 years and a lot of people are expecting it to have already achieved it's final form.

Look at cell phones. They started selling commercially in like 1992? How long has it take for them to be in "everybody's" pocket?

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Hundreds if not thousands of of hours.

Elite Dangerous
Beat Saber
Echo Arena
Golf Club VR
Subnautica VR
Skyrim VR
Fallout 4 VR
Chronos
Every title I listed above I have 50+ hours in. The list could go on and on for non sim racing games.

When you count the hours in iRacing, Dirt Rally, Assetto Corsa, pCars2, RRRE, rFactor2 alone the price of the Rift becomes pennies per hour.

I understand if you think the resolution is too low or that the headset isn't comfortable or that you don't have a dedicated play space and you have to set it up/tear it down each use. Given those conditions I would probably agree.

For me, my first console was a nes in 1991 and since then I have been dreaming about VR. Having played with shitty resolution nearly half my life, I can deal with VR resolution but I know It will get better. I also bought a third party facial interface from VRCover so that it would feel better against my face.

I have a dedicated man cave/ game room where my system is always set up so I don't need to go through setup and deal with the extra "barrier" of getting into VR.

I have 200+ games in my steam library, a PS4 pro and all of the major titles. I play in VR 2x - 3x more than pancake games.

I originally bought the DK2 when it was released and then got the Rift CV1 at launch and have been using it since. I still haven't burned out on it.

Maybe right now, at this moment, VR isn't for everyone. I think the future is bright and many more people will come around when the tech gets better. Right now it is enough for me and I am excited about the future.

You sound like me a year ago when I just got into VR, buying all VR titles possible and trying them all.
Unfortunately my sheer enthusiasm was short lasting and the only thing that still keeps it for me on the float is Assetto Corsa.
Afraid my situation is typical, when new users dipping their toes in VR but quickly losing interest and turned back to flat screen shortly thereafter.
Not saying that there is a lack of hardcore enthusiasts like yourself that do not accept anything non VR and prefer spending hours in Beat Saber instead of playing new big AAA titles.

 

[davideliasirwin]

You sound like me a year ago when I just got into VR, buying all VR titles possible and trying them all.
Unfortunately my sheer enthusiasm was short lasting and the only thing that still keeps it for me on the float is Assetto Corsa.
Afraid my situation is typical, when new users dipping their toes in VR but quickly losing interest and turned back to flat screen shortly thereafter.
Not saying that there is a lack of hardcore enthusiasts like yourself that do not accept anything non VR and prefer spending hours in Beat Saber instead of playing new big AAA titles.

In 2018 I beat the last of us remastered, horizon zero dawn, god of war, and spiderman, uncharted and red dead redemption 2 on PS4. I played hours of Forza horizon 4, assassin's creed Odyssey and completed titanfall 2 on PC. I played 2/3's the way through Breath of the wild using Cemu emulator.

I just spent more hours in RRRE, pCars2, Echo Arena, Dirt Rally and iRacing in VR.

I get that we have different experiences. I don't see the point of reducing my opinion to "someone who only plays VR and doesn't like AAA games". I play anything and everything I am interested in.

I've had some form of VR since 2015 and it still is a part of my gaming experience. I am happy were it is and looking forward to the future. I believe it will get better and better and I am patiently waiting for the future.

 

[Mark Ratzenbacher]

@davideliasirwin i agree with most of your points. Im not cynical though, i´m just old and it comes natural
And i had to wait for 25 years until VR went viral again. Don´t understand what took them so long....

I think what it comes down to is impatience. VR has been available for consumers for about 2 years and a lot of people are expecting it to have already achieved it's final form.

The Rift was announced in 2012, the Consumer version 1 came out 4 years later.
Thus far no VR-company has achieved to provide a display with high enough dpi and even if, there is no gpu in the world that is capable of running these displays with natural FOV, yet.

You are right, eye tracking and foveated rendering are making VR more ressource-efficient.

Look at cell phones. They started selling commercially in like 1992? How long has it take for them to be in "everybody's" pocket?

Cell phones were cheap starting from the 90´s, making them mainstream immediatly. They existed long before that, but like VR in the 90´s they were elitist things back then.

One thing though: I was under the impression that VR is not reaching the numbers that would make it commercially lucrative for the big companies and it is a foreseeable investment hole and therefore the development is stagnating as companies and their executive boards are not willing to take that risk. Especially with the development curve still very steep.

So if you have numbers, that would be very informative.

In comparison, nowerdays, with cell phones the development curve is almost flat after they became "smart".

 

[davideliasirwin]

@davideliasirwin i agree with most of your points. Im not cynical though, i´m just old and it comes natural
And i had to wait for 25 years until VR went viral again. Don´t understand what took them so long....

The Rift was announced in 2012, the Consumer version 1 came out 4 years later.
Thus far no VR-company has achieved to provide a display with high enough dpi and even if, there is no gpu in the world that is capable of running these displays with natural FOV, yet.

You are right, eye tracking and foveated rendering are making VR more ressource-efficient.

Cell phones were cheap starting from the 90´s, making them mainstream immediatly. They existed long before that, but like VR in the 90´s they were elitist things back then.

One thing though: I was under the impression that VR is not reaching the numbers that would make it commercially lucrative for the big companies and it is a foreseeable investment hole and therefore the development is stagnating as companies and their executive boards are not willing to take that risk. Especially with the development curve still very steep.

So if you have numbers, that would be very informative.

In comparison, nowerdays, with cell phones the development curve is almost flat after they became "smart".

I think, for sure, the numbers are not yet there for game developers to dive in and expect a profit/great profit. That's part of the reason Oculus is funding so many developers to release games(Dirt Rally, Dirt Rally 2, VR shooter from Respawn, VR adventure game from Insomniac.(stormland)).

I have seen a lot of articles about google investing( they bought magic leap), micsrosoft( new hololens announcement soon), facebook, apple, amazon, nvidia, etc, etc, etc. But I do not have any official investment statements from companies.

About cell phones in the 90's I was in middle school then high school in the 90's. By time I graduated high school maybe 1/3 students had a flip phone. They were becoming mainstream but they weren't in everyone's pocket( not where I lived anyway). Considering the first cell phone call was made in 1973, then they became available and easily owned by the turn of the century to what they are now.

I agree that the VR still seems shaky and may take awhile to go mainstream. I think facebook said they have a ten year plan to have VR in 1 billion users hands.

I firmly believe VR is here to stay.

 

[maelstrom]

I firmly believe VR is here to stay.

I think that this is a critical time for VR. It seriously needs to get into the gaming mainstream to have any chance of long term survival and a number of factors are currently standing in its way. The cost needs to come down but only high volume sales will do this. Despite what some people may say to the contrary ("it's the immersion, not the resolution that's important"), the resolution needs to significantly improve to make it more attractive. However, without some sort of major technological jump that's not going to happen with the current generation of PC hardware. To make things worse, the latest Steam survey shows that the majority of responders have 4-core CPUs running below 3.3GHz with, at best, a GTX 1060 graphics card. If you have to rely only on people with top-end systems you're simply not going to sell the numbers you need to make your R&D investment viable. Most users struggle to get decent performance out of the existing VR hardware so who's likely to be able to run the true next generation successfully? Not your average gamer (the target market), that's for sure.

Even if they somehow manage to make the next generation affordable, properly high res (not just "higher") and somehow internally smart enough not to need a super computer, there's still going to be a significant number of gamers who can't use them because of motion sickness - life's too short to spend it trying to overcome nausea (I've been there and it wasn't pretty). It would be a shame to see VR go the way of tech like 3D TVs and minidisks - a good idea that, ultimately, just didn't sell in big enough numbers to keep it going.

 

[davideliasirwin]

You have valid points.

I would argue that the potential benefit of 3D TVs or minidisks does not match the potential benefit of VR/AR. For that reason alone the companies are probably willing to take more loss on R&D and "public beta testing" now for potential future gains.

Every hurdle/barrier that you mentioned is mentioned ad nauseum in every article critiquing the state of VR today. The researchers are 100% aware of these challenges. View Michael Abrash's Oculus connect videos and you will see that not only are the aware of the problems, they are already working on the solutions AND are predicting when they will be able to deliver it to consumers.

Ultimately, all of the critiquing I see can be boiled down to impatience. They're aware of the problem, the have the money and dedication to work on it, and they see VR/AR as the next/final platform.

I see a lot of arguments about what it needs to do or it will die. The first generation came out just about 2 years ago. Oculus has said that their product's will release similar to a game console life-cycle(5-7 years) not a cellphone life-cycle(1-2 years).

We can all sit here a claim that VR is dead because the first generation that was released 2 years ago is not the final perfect VR form. We know that the userbase is doubling each year and potentially faster once they find the "killer app". cWhy not wait and see what the 10 largest technology companies in the world can do?

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." - VR

 

[Bjarne Hansen]

3D TV's died as you do not get good 3D effect sitting 20 feet away from a 40-50" screen. Same movie/ game and same distance on a 110-130" projector screen is impressive. There just isn't enough projector setup's to pay for 3D movies.
3D gaming died due to lack of standards. 3D visions while working great was too expensive supported to few monitors (license fee's) and quite frankly was poorly supported by Nvidia.
Tridef could not survive on 3D projector gaming alone.
I do not believe we need a killer VR title!
We need smarter VR software that can run on today's average hardware.
And with that I do not mean a house that will pop-up and you have to jump around in it to find where you put things last time. I am loosing enough stuff in my real house to bother also start looking for things misplaced in a virtual house too.
Why can't we just have a large Virtual Desktop?
SteamVR Home is doing it's best to be just as just less as Cliff House.

There are some rumors about HP working on a new headset.
https://www.roadtovr.com/hp-copper-windows-vr-headset-exclusive/
Res of 2160 x 2160 will work as next step for me.
But a GTX1060 are not going to run a modern game in 2160 x 2160 without software assist.
My RTX 2070 will struggle!

Fove might help but I assume that will take some smart programing to work well?
Would like to see 3D options like no 3D rendering and Z-buffer 3D .
No 3D rendering might sound strange but it really isn't and in most games most people would not even notice.
Things close up will look flat but our brain will construct everything else to look 3D.
Z-buffer 3D is 98% 3D for 15-20% of the FPS cost of Geometric 3D.
Could/ should be an option just like SS and other graphics settings.

Think lighter wireless headsets are needed too. Not for us that mainly use race sims but for everybody else it is an issue.

 

[RCHeliguy]

VR is here to stay and isn't dying, BUT it hasn't hit mainstream yet.

This is why Oculus and Vive are selling standalone headsets to reduce complexity and cost. They are trying to get VR into the hands of many people.

VR on PC will always be a niche market for people with bigger budgets and less fear of complexity.

AR will get huge and eventually be an extension of our smart phones. So people will have a HUD of some kind with them always. That will cut into the gaming market some.

 

[Emery]

Oculus has said that their product's will release similar to a game console life-cycle(5-7 years) not a cellphone life-cycle(1-2 years).

That doesn't give them a very wide moat to protect their business because it allows plenty of room for not-yet-invented tech to shoehorn into their niche.

 

[Pär Öqvist]

VR is quite healthy. Its so cheap to produce vr headsets today even garage firms can do it thanks to the big mobile phone industry. There will always be a market even through we are not Ready Player One yet

 

[Turk]

I don't think VR is ever going mainstream. People just won't want to wear headsets and they don't have the space to make full use of it. AR is what the average consumer wants.

I think VR could have a place in providing group experiences, like laser tag back in the day. People could go to a place that has the space and hardware to give a good experience, that would get people using the hardware. But it wouldn't sell VR headsets.

VR is great in theory, but in reality it lacks luster and you really have to love it to live with it. I think it will continue to improve but it's never going to be mainstream. It will fulfil niches like ours but AR is what the average person is going to want to use because it's more convenient.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

We're all about niche, though!

Gaming is pretty niche > Sim racing > nicher > (insert sim of choice) nichest!

 

[Paul Bennett]

@Fat-Alfie
I'd love to try it before I buy it, tbh. It would mean a significant financial investment for me to move to VR for AC, and the uncertainty over image quality, FPS and compatibility with glasses makes me very reluctant to make that leap (although it does look really cool!)

I'm in the same place as you on VR, better optimizations for the average PC's would be nice.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I think there may actually be hope for average PC's.

I was very surprised by the the lower processing power inside both the Magic Leap AR system and the new Oculus Go and Quest. They were designed to run off small batteries for a few hours and yet provide a good VR experience.

The Oculus Quest has higher resolution than the Rift and is using much lighter weight processing than the Rift and is somehow managing to do it all by itself. The new SDK Oculus built does a good job without requiring the typical monster system that VR has demanded for decent performance.

This tells me that it is possible. Remember this technology is all new.

 

[Turk]

The Oculus Quest has higher resolution than the Rift and is using much lighter weight processing than the Rift and is somehow managing to do it all by itself. The new SDK Oculus built does a good job without requiring the typical monster system that VR has demanded for decent performance.

This tells me that it is possible. Remember this technology is all new.

The tech will certainly get better. Demand plays a big part in that though, companies can't invest unless there's people willing to buy. Without demand companies will just shelf VR again for another decade. Although this time around I think VR is in a different league than the last attempt.

It looks like there isn't enough money in just selling the headsets. They need some ongoing income to cover development costs, which creates the next hurdle, if there aren't enough companies making content people will lose interest.

Hopefully within the next few years the technology will just get dirt cheap and have a smaller overhead. That's plausible. But my interest in VR begins and ends at sim racing. I rarely play anything else in VR. Although, I've gone off gaming in general as I got older, so maybe I'm not representative.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've never been a gamer. I've had the chance since my kids always had XBoxes and Playstations.

It took VR has pulled me in.

The first game that hooked me was "Dirt Rally", then "Eve Valkyrie" sucked me in hard. Being shot out of a space carrier into battle in an 8 vs 8 player Multi-user game in a large number of ships available from the beginning. I dropped 140 hours into that game over a 2 month period which was crazy for me. Then I got into "In Death" which is a room scale game and I've really enjoyed that quite a bit. Beat Saber and a couple others come out to play occasionally.

I've enjoyed the Driving, Flying and room scale sides to VR and like the possibilities for future game play. I'm looking forward to getting Dirt Rally 2.0 when the VR support drops. PC2 has been upgraded to the point where it is actually pretty good and I may get into this whole "track" racing scene. Who knows?

 

[F_B]

As long as VR will be available for simracing I’m fine. There are other titles which I liked in VR (Subnautica, Lone Echo, Alien Isolation, Robo Recall for example) but for me simracing is "the killer app" in VR, I honestly don’t need anything else. I had hope for a faster development regarding better resolution etc but it seems to take a bit longer than expected.