I drive an 89 supra, it was kind of a smaller car in it’s day, but certainly far from as small as it feels now. My head is below the “blind” on the newer style headlights that make sure they aren’t blinding drivers despite how crazy bright they are. It’s not alot of fun… but the car is… so I put up with it. I have night driving glasses that severely cut down on that type of glare. It helps, but isn’t magic.
Dude, don’t worry about it, like I said, save your money. If it’s not important to you, it’s better to keep it that way.
It is important to me, I’m gonna keep doing it.
As we get higher and higher frame rate, there are certainly more and more people that won’t care.
But you can’t say it doesn’t make a difference, in blind testing(name of the testing style, obviously) people who freshly walked into a room with a game running and were asked if it was 60 fps or 120 fps guessed right 100% of the time, literally no errors made, they were not gamers. But they did have one training attempt each of walking in on each setting knowing which one it was that time.
So literally everyone -can- see the difference, but not everyone cares.
It is a real thing anyway, unlike cable quality for digital audio.
I very much know how other people feel about it, we can be different and both our opinions can still be valid. I don’t think at any point in there I said that everyone is wearing their headset 16 hours a day.
But the matter remains that one headset has sold 4x as much as the steamdeck, and the second most sold is 2-3x as much as the steam deck… so why is the steam deck considered a good seller and VR is considered dying?
I was just making a pre-emptive counterpoint to the arguments people usually make against VR. That the headsets “aren’t comfortable”, which has been less and less true for the out of the box experience over time, and has never been true for people that are willing to tailor the experience to their individual headshape and preferences. I have always worn my headsets for 8+ hours even right from the dk2 days, first step: battery bank on the back, to get the weight counter balanced and for older headsets a different choice of facial interface was often a good idea. Eventually, once I tried a few options, I determined my personal best comfort came from “halo” style headstraps. So I have since just been buying BoBoVR’s kit for each headset I buy that is an all-in-one cenversion kit to take headsets from 2 hours of play time to infinity with no other adjustment needed.
I think honestly most people have only tried VR once or twice, and don’t even know what state it is in now. The Quest 3 crossed a threshold, now that you can use it as a 4k 120hz screen, it’s the first headset I would say is clear enough that normal people would find it worth using. I do still think the tech barrier is a bit too high. I’m very aware that if I didn’t show her how, my Mom would have had trouble figuring out on her own how to do virtual calls with my sister in New Zealand. But she very much appreciates being able to sit in the same room as her and have face to face conversations now. And even though desktop streaming is something built right into the headset, the default option isn’t the one that would sell people on it, Virtual Desktop is so much better. If in the future that becomes the default, and the desktop streaming client half of it is just baked into the headset software. Or if the default solution just learns from Virtual Desktop and at least looks as good as it even without all the extra bells and whistles… either one would be a huge help. The built-in desktop streamer just hasn’t been revisited since the screens are clear enough to actually see 4k, so it’s still unoptimised and kind of muddy looking.
But, my Mom did figure out on her own how to launch and play Tetris Effect, she loves it. Also Puzzling Places and Cubism. My mom is a bit of a gamer though. She doesn’t like anything with killing, but she has made some exceptions like for Stardew Valley. My Dad on the other hand still needs me to launch games for him from the phone app, hehe. He just “doesn’t want to break it”, to be fair he prefers the Quest pro, which is still a pretty expensive headset. So I can understand his hesitation, he’s used to windows 95… where you very much could break it by clicking the wrong thing. But he loves city building games, and there are a few good ones to choose from in VR. Cities:Skylines VR for “professional” city building ported to VR, and Little Cities for “fun” city building made for VR first are his favourites so far.
My brother only really got into it when I gave their family my old Quest 2, he still just plays the default “normal people” games like beatsaber and other exercise stuff. But he doesn’t have his VR legs yet, he does want to play adventure/rpg games with me, but they tend not to have comfort settings, as they would be kinda ruined with teleporting and stuff. I explained to him how to go about training for not needing the safety features any more, but he keeps taking it too far any time he tries, he likes the games so much that he doesn’t want to stop playing so soon when he first starts feeling the symptoms. But that is the most important part, otherwise you are working to make your VR sickness worse instead…
So yeah, there are definitely hurdles still. Maybe there should be supervised programs for getting your VR legs. You very much need to stop as soon as you notice the very first symptom for you, usually face flush, but can be different per person. The earlier you stop, the more you convince your brain it doesn’t need to “save you from the poison berries”. The bodies reaction to a vestibular mismatch is to assume you must have eaten poison, and it should save you by throwing up. But you can train it to leave you alone. Done well, you can gain as much as 5 more minutes of playtime each attempt. Doesn’t take long until you don’t even have to think about it any more.
What game would you finally consider good? Do you even know what people play in VR? There are literally thousands of games. I personally own 250 from over the 10 years, and that’s me holding back. There are so many more that I wanted to play if I had more time to do so.
And even outside of bespoke VR games, a VR headset is an awesome monitor replacement now for your regular computer games too. My Virtual monitor is 4k 120hz, that I can use while sitting in a recliner.
Fps matters for everything, 120 fps is just the new normal, can’t go back. When we used to play games at 15 fps and the new normal became 30, we couldn’t go back, 15 fps looked so bad once you got used to seeing stuff at 30 fps. Same for 60 fps in it’s day, and 120 fps now.
If you haven’t gotten used to 120 fps yet, and you want to save money, put it off as long as you can. You won’t be able to go back.
Yeah true, not having to switch phones every couple years is a plus. I don’t do contract, just buy the phone I want and pick the network I want to use it with. Then use that phone for as long as I can stand to. Eventually the upgrade is positive enough to outweigh having to get used to the physicalities of a new phone. New muscle memory, especially for typing on a screen based keyboard is so annoying.
Hehe yeah, nice added benefits to everything, but ourside of gaming it would be hard to justify the price of a high-end phone. Heck even with gaming it can still be hard, lol.
Presumably, they want to get everyone used to their environment so that when their hardware lead doesn’t mean as much in the future, there will be hesitation to leave. We know they aren’t currently doing anything untoward as there is plenty of overlap between paranoid tech experts and people interested in pioneering new tech. Can’t hide from them. The software and network traffic has been thouroughly vetted and everything is so far doing exactly what it would need to or purports to do.
As long as you go into it knowing you will be changing platforms at some point in the future and hedge all software purchases against that in your mind, the only remaining downside is whether you can stomache giving them your money.
And if that ever changes, it won’t go hidden.
There is also something to be said for the fact that everyone in the Meta community see VR as thriving and growing, and everyone that is outside of it sees VR as stagnating or shrinking. So their money is doing that too presumably.
Their ultimate main goal is also, of course, marrying the tech from VR headsets to the tech from AR glasses. Which will be a true ubiquitous product. Being the first one there will be a huge pay day.
Generally for gaming. It’s like PCs, you can totally get by with a 100 dollar second hand computer… unless you want to play a game made this year.
Typing this on a 120hz 4k gaming phone.
Stand alone headsets can play PCVR games too, especially steam games, that is the most accessible market for PCVR on standalone. Most do it wirelessly, which likely isn’t as bad as you are thinking, but some also still do it with wired and some even with uncompressed video over wire. But honestly, as the resolution and bitrate keep going up, the difference between raw and compressed gets harder and harder to spot. At this point, you can only really tell in side by side comparisons of still frames which feed is compressed.
The main remaining problem of compressed streams is the total latency added, most importantly the decompressing time, since it’s done on the headsets mobile hardware. And the networking time. Though a dedicated network device, either a router or a bespoke VR streaming tool can get that down to 5ms or less now. My streams total latency to my wireless headset is about 30ms now. I wouldn’t be able to professionally compete in a frame counting fighter game… but that is about the only type of game where that level of latency is too much. Heck, people of my generation grew up through a point in time where TV screen latency was over 100ms… And while I will admit that there is still a benefit to sub 14ms latency, it’s not as big of a difference as it used to be. And that is only when I stream PCVR stuff, it’s still under that for stand alone content. Which also is not as bad as you likely think it is.
I have a total of about 250 VR games currently, and I only buy about 10% of the ones I want to buy. But I have also been in VR for 10 years now. About 150 of my games are standalone and about 100 PCVR. With about 30 of them being titles that gave both versions for the price of one. There is no shortage of games, I could not possibly play even all of just the good ones.
A VR headset is basically a console now, except one you can stream your PC to if you want. Even just for flat games too, I have a Virtual 4k 120hz monitor in my VR headset because in real life my 4k screen is an older TV that can only do 60 hz pc input or a very janky 120hz for 1080p. The nice thing about streaming to a VR headset instead of some hand held device, other than 4k 120fps, is that I don’t have to look at my hands or hold my hands up to my eyes to play. My neck feels so much better than it did when Phone, Switch, and Steamdeck were the best way to game away from a computer.
My headset is comfortable, I can, and unfortunately often do, wear it for 16 hours a day. I have a single third party mod for it that was less than 100 dollars to convert it from a 2 hour headset, to an infinity headset. There are multiple options, but I went with BoBoVR, dumb name, but quality product.
But my headset has basically replaced my computer monitor, I haven’t used my computer in person in like 2 years now. When I want to play a game on my computer, I just stay in my recliner, put my headset on and open Virtual Desktop, the same software I use to stream PCVR when I’m in the mood to be in the game instead.
There is basically no downside anymore, they aren’t even expensive. While a Quest 3 is notably better, the lower end 3s is a totally viable headset at 300USD, notably cheaper than most consoles. Just do yourself a favor, if a Quest 3 seems too expensive, do not try it on. Stay with 3s and don’t see how much greener the grass is for a little bit more, it’s very easy to talk your way up to a real Quest 3.
Also, Steam deck has sold about 5 million units extrapolating from last known good data, Quest 2 sold over 20 million, Quest 3 is seemingly up to 10-15 million so far judging from old sales data for pacing and some recently reported hardware ratios from game devs, and still has about 4-5 more years left of active sales.
So if the Steam deck is a “huge market”, then I don’t know what you would call the stand alone VR market now. Considering that is just one brand of standalone headset. It’s the market leader, sure, but there are other brands that do at least as well as the steam deck. Distant second as that may make them, seems like it’s still relevant to include given the context.
Yes, I have no facebook account. It hasn’t been a problem. Other than the logo on the headset, I haven’t seen any other downside to it being a meta ptoduct. The money they have put in to make sure they are and remain ahead of everyone else for tech means that until there is an actual downside, I pretty much have to use their headsets. But I will have no trouble jumping ship if there ever is a downside, or if anyone else even comes close to catching up.
Wait, doubling it -to- 15 dollars an hour? Holy shit, I knew it was bad, but that is insane. Ours is already starting to feel too low at 17.40 here in Canada, granted that is about the equivalent of around $12.50 USD. So it’s lower than what she is proposing, maybe if she manages it, we’ll be able to get ours up.
Lol, my client apparently parses markdown in titles, so the hashtag at the start of this headline just made the headline giant.
Back in the day, people wiresharked it all and said nothing untoward was going on back then. And a meta account in this regard is just an Oculus account. It has nothing to do with facebook.
But yeah, ultimately, I don’t care if other people don’t want to use it. I only care if I want to use it, and I do.
Also none of my androids came with facebook and still don’t have it. But I don’t buy subsidized from carriers, I just buy the phone I want and use the carrier I want separately.
Mario games have remained consistently fun, you just stopped being within the demographic.
Most people still play it on a monitor, but yeah, it’s great in VR. There can be a bit of a learning curve on monitor. Kind of like the difference learning to drive rally on a monitor versus learning in VR, you can just tell when everything is going right without having to train yourself to notice little signs, you just feel it intuitively. Having said that, I still recommend going through all the training, and when you are done the training, stay with the free beginner sudewinder for a while. Make sure you can afford your first ship a few times over before you upgrade, so you have a cushion if there is anything important to learn.
You don’t have to be good at elite for it to be fun. And you won’t be good at it for a while. But you will eventually be good at it, and it will be all the more fun then. The first time you slip an agile ship into dock in a smooth motion, amazing feeling.
Famed for hating illegal or unlicensed emulation. Well known for using legal, licensed emulation all the time in everything.
I think it won’t be quite as existential, despite how well they make it all feel rooted in reality, it’s still pretty easy to keep in mind that it is a videogame. And with default settings and leaving “flight assist” on, the space ships handle more like planes. You can always disable flight assist, or have it on a toggle, or “disable when button held” setup too. Or, enable when held, if you want to be free flying most of the time, but still have a “stop” button when you want to cancel out your inertia, or more accurately match it with your current frame of reference.
Basically, by default, you don’t have to think about your frame of reference. The fact that it is a videogame basically takes care of that. It’s a convenient way to hide that the instance you are in is faking(incredibly accurately) everything else that is not in your current frame of reference. Despite space travel feeling pretty seamless, it’s just cuz they hide the load screens and instance transfers as just part of navigating space. Any time you are unable to touch the controls, that is a load screen. Even if it otherwise looks the same, most notably when entering or exiting a planets frame of reference and switching between the “space” graphics of the planet to the “terrain” graphics. When approaching a planets gravity well, you basically do an uncontrolled glide that transitions you from space appropriate speeds to surface appropriate speed. That speed transition is the loading screen.
Probably the only thing that might give a similar sense for a few seconds is if you jump to a binary star system at a time when the star you aren’t jumping to just happens to be in the same direction you just jumped in from. It will look as though you flew through that star. The odds are pretty low, even full time explorers rarely see it, but it is something that can happen.
I should probably get some hours in on shutoko revival, now that Genki is making a new Tokyo extreme racer.
Hehe yeah, we played it once as a family and of course died right away. Almost everyone was done there and accepted that as the end of it… so me and my sister just went and played the rest ourselves.
I get their mentality, choose your own adventure, see where your choices lead and that’s the ending you get… makes sense with alot of content like this. But in the case of that specific adventure and the ending they got, it was pretty clear you are supposed to try again, not accept that ending. Ah wells. Consequently they thought it was stupid. And me and my sister loved it.
But this sort of stuff is doomed to fail no matter how good it can be, cuz there is way more of them than there is of us. So it doesn’t make enough to justify it’s cost. And that is of course the other problem, “money” is the most important thing to too many people right now… good art can’t exist when its financial cost needs to be justified.