EXos said:
CrystalShadow said:
EXos said:
CrystalShadow said:
-snip
Perhaps... But if anyone can afford that kind of risk right now, it's valve.
VR is an additional expense, sure. But it's not that bad in the scheme of PC hardware generally.
Do you recall the actual half-life 2 release? The source engine was a monster...
Nobody had hardware powerful enough to run HL2 back then. In fact, it took several years for the hardware to catch up.
Actually... I have the original Dvdbox right next to me. Minimal specs were:
- OS:98/2000/ME/XP
- Processor: 1.2 Ghz
- 256mb Ram
- HDD: 4.5Gb
And here is the counter argument
- DirectX7 Compatible Graphics Card.
Direct X7 was rolled out in 2000.
You needed a high end card to play it with all the bells and whistles but you didn't need a monster to run the game.
Even 1.2Ghz wasn't that impressive in 2004 as the highest cpu available was already 3.0 at that time.
Valve made sure everybody could run it which is another blow to the Mandatory VR argument.
With all due respect, there are plenty of articles from that time showing the source engine to be too demanding for even high-end systems back then. Quoting minimum specs doesn't really prove much one way or another.
It also demonstrates nothing whatsoever about VR either really.
CrystalShadow said:
Major PC upgrades make VR equipment look comparatively cheap. (even if VR demands framerates that also dictate rather serious Hardware to back it up)
VR really needs a 'killer app'. A company that has the resources to absorb the potential losses, and which is involved with the design of such hardware may well decide it's worth the effort.
Not for the sake of one game, but to push the take-up of the hardware.
That's another thing about VR. There is no practical reason to pick it up, only aesthetic. As you just mentioned you need some beefy hardware to run VR and for most people choosing between everything looking as good as it gets on a screen or compromising on VR; I think most would go to the screen.
This not including the fact that some people get nauseous after using VR too long.
I don't find this a particularly valid point. It is almost always only said by people that have never even tried VR.
And strictly speaking you don't need beefy hardware to run VR. Not at all. It's just a trade-off.
You need to be able to run a game at a stable 90+ fps (as in, 90 fps is the lower bound, not an average)
Any hardware can do that if you want it to. But the graphical quality suffers.
The reason for needing beefy hardware is just the choice that was made. Rather than comprimise graphical quality, you push the hardware specs up.
This has been a known trade-off in PC game design for decades. It was a choice made largely by oculus. It's not essential, it's just the path they chose to take.
My 2006 era laptop (with I might add, low-end graphics even for the time) can run quake 3 at 300 fps. Or... I can ask it to run portal 2, and get maybe 22 fps.
It's a choice a dev can make. Not an absolute requirement.
Anyway,
VR doesn't really work as a tacked-on feature. The nausea you mention is partly a result of using games which were never intended to be VR based in VR.
A lot of rules and techniques you can get away with in regular games are disastrous in VR.
VR titles need to be designed with VR in mind. What makes a good game design for VR, makes it worse as a regular game, and vice versa.
The mistake is in thinking of this as a game with a few aesthetic tweaks. That assumption, and what game designers do if they follow it, leads to disaster.
VR just isn't what so many people assume it is. Just as there's a difference between a tv series and a feature film.
I also highly doubt your assertion about people choosing regular screens over VR by default merely because of graphics.
That's about on par with saying that people inherently prefer boats to trains or something.
As an argument it is practically a non-sequitur, and rests entirely on a faulty premise.
VR isn't regular gaming played with an unusual display.
Still, it is hampered by people not being able to understand the difference without actual experience with it.
It's also hampered by the state of technology involved.
It's a bit like comparing the difference between late era high end 2d games consoles (say, the neo-geo, to take an extreme), with the early 3d consoles. (or parhaps even more primitive. Say, the 3d graphics seen with starfox on the snes)
They are fundamentally different things, but one is a stable, mature technology, the other has only just started to be remotely practical as a concept.
Regular gaming is basically at the end of it's path. It has nowhere left to go. All the elementd involved are basically as complex as they are likely to get, and we are now merely refining smaller and smaller details.
VR is at a rather early stage, and rather crude. What it is working towards is something a game could never become. However, the primitive nature of the technology obscures what VR is.
The endpoint of traditional gaming? We're already there. What we have now is it. The endpoint, more or less.
The endpoint of VR (conceptually. The present technology is different) is stuff like the holodeck, and the matrix.
That's quite a different endpoint than current game techology.
Unless of course you'd like to imply that games and reality are basically the same.
That say, playing an actual tennis match is the same as playing virtua tennis.
Because that's what VR is. It's in the name. Creating a replacement for reality. Something which seems as real as our actual reality, but perhaps functions by different rules, or otherwise contains elements that simply wouldn't be plausible (or reasonable) to actually do.
The technology is nowhere near that level, but that's what VR aims for. Actual substitute for reality.
That is not domething conventional games can ever truly do, even conceptually.
Remember, to get to half-life 2, we had to get to pong first, and pass through everything inbetween.
VR won't reach it's endgoal without passing through the stuff in the middle.
If VR takes off now, it'll likely be something incredible in 2030 or so.
But, cut it off at the knees now, in 2015, when it is primitive, and really rough around the edges, and it won't ever have the chance to be more than it presently is.
Someone has to be willing to take the first few steps, even if it looks rather gimmicky at first.
CrystalShadow said:
This cost barrier is only a thing while nobody has the hardware.
It's like the problem of convincing people to buy a new games console.
To convince other devs to go through releasing games for your system, there has to be some guarantee of a market. (people who can reasonably be expected to have the hardware)
One way to try and make this happen is to release games that you are fairly sure a lot of people would want.
I highly doubt that... The comparison with consoles does make a point but, again, there is a difference between a brand new system and forcing the consumer to buy this (unnecessary) peripheral.
Again, I find your premise to be inherently faulty. VR isn't optional. It cannot succeed as an 'optional' component of games. You either design games around it, or you might as well not bother. Treating it as an optional extra is fundamentally going to lead to near guaranteed disaster.
VR isn't a peripheral by design. It's a peripheral because that's the easiest way to introduce it.
You call it unnessesary, but, that is a misunderstanding of what it is.
Optional bolt-on extra to existing games, it most definitely is not.
It is a new medium that shares technology with an existing one. Treating it as anything less than that is a fundamentally broken way of looķing at it.
It's like saying you don't need the ability to play DVD movies, because you can play games instead. That might be true for an individual if they prefer playing games, but it's not a valid reason to say you wouldn't ever want to watch a DVD, and therefore nobody needs or desires a DVD player.
CrystalShadow said:
Valve is in a position where they could afford to do this if they chose to...
Doesn't mean they will, but I wouldn't be too quifk to rule it out...
Seeing how hard they've tried in the past to make their game accessible for everybody (Just look at TF2) I am certain we can expect HL3 to do the same. While I wouldn't rule it out I can guarantee that the backlash of making HL3 VR mandatory is one of the reasons why valve would never do it.[/quote]
Accessible, huh? I xan't especially say I've noticed that really in comparison to pretty much anything really. Sure, there are notable examples of more demanding titles (crysis comes to mind, which to this day, still seems able to cripple some computers, 8 years later)
In general though, PC games have largely been tied to the console generations. There's a reason after all that my 6 year old upper-midrange PC can still run almost anything at reasonable reamerates and quality...
It's largely because since last gen it has been consoles that have dictated the pace of technical development in gamee, where prior to that it was PC's.
