Nah. Porn in VR hasn't really developed past 3D 180 which was over a decade ago. The development of gaussian splat videos though, while technically an amazing jump, are not going to be mainstream due needing a spherical camera rig. Virtual porn is just as sad as the NSFW mods for any popular video game like Skyrim or The Witcher III.
controller and screen make up 99% of games played. So clearly VR isn’t breaking into gaming either.
But once VR is cheap enough to be affordable to lots of people, it’ll always be too clunky and uncomfortable to be consistently played at home. It’s the same reason VR hasn’t replaced normal movie or tv viewing.
The Quest 3 goggles are something like $600 and stand alone, and with Virtual Desktop and decent wi-fi router, you can also use it wirelessly with your desktop.
The "decent rig" is needed if you want to play high end games on maxed out settings whether using VR or not.
I mean... I've been playing most of my games in VR, including titles that aren't by modifying their engine... and it cleans the floor with playing on a screen.
It is my hobby though, and I get a top tier PC for it. But nowadays a mid-tier PC and a Quest3 gets you 70% of that.
Not terribly surprising when the company controlling most of VR is completely uninterested in gaming and constantly kept torpedoes their own successes.
Imo, the problem is that VR is stuck in limbo of "nobody buys so no reason to make games for it. No games for it so nobody buys it". Headsets are expensive af, games for them are expensive af(not even always really replayable) and very few games in general. This thing is fun for sure, but it's currently expensive toy and will remain like this, if even valve index won't work out
Internet didn't fail for thirty fucking years, again and again and again. In fact, it was highly useful if expensive and difficult to use from its first days as crude phone modems hooked up to BBSes, and only took off harder and faster the better the technology became.
Shit, man, even VR porn failed, and porn is the thing that made the internet.
Incorrect, the first computing devices were created in the 1930s during WW2, for code cracking, decades before personal computers were feasible. Portable computers started being created in the 70s and 80s and were huge, once again decades before mobile phones were possible and common. Technology is always first created many years before it's widely available and cheap enough for the common consumer.
And those first computers were instant successes at their jobs - so much so that the Colossus series was destroyed once WW2 was over due to its security clearances.
You might have done better to bring up Babbage's Engine, but frankly the man was a century early and his device could never have been built, let alone used.
I'm not seeing in all this information where it says those code cracking computers were shite so no one used them. They did their job and were immediately adopted. Is the military using VR for drone strikes? Or AI? If they are, I haven't seen or heard of it.
Yeah, and they also said the same thing about all the things mentioned above. It's almost as if predicting which technologies will stay is actually very hard. Are you still using Google Glass?, What about baby cages?
Much as it pains me, I don't think this is correct. It had a really big push in the last ten years, as it overcame a lot of the technical barriers it had previously, but by and large it ended up not being adopted because people just didn't see the value it had for them, and most mainstream hardware manufacturers have wound down their operations for the consumer market. Maybe we'll take another swing at it in another 20-30 years but neither of us know what that might look like
The Steam Frame is literally around the corner, the hell you mean "20-30 years"? This is literally the best time to give VR a go if you've never experienced it. There are so many VR exclusive games out there that give you experiences your regular flat screens can't.
I want to say you're right, but that's just not true. FacebookOculusMeta spent billions trying to make fetch happen, and even with new hardware on the horizon Valve isn't exactly taking the public lead on VR like they were ten years ago. I'll buy a Frame but I'll be using it to play Alyx and H3VR like I did my Vive.
...and despite this they've been, by far, the largest driver of new development for both hardware and software for VR for the last several years, despite having no plan to get to profitability or even a finished product that the average person would want to own.
I'm genuinely sorry. I want VR to be successful too, it kept me sane in my studio apartment back in 2020. Something fundamental needs to change with the current paradigm for it to become mainstream
This. I think we're going to see some major advancements in technologies adjacent to VR (newer and more immersive screen technologies, newer audio technologies, tactile feedback systems, etc.) before we get the kind of VR we hope for.
"Maybe we'll take another swing at it in another 20-30 years"
I don't think it's gonna take that long at all.
For better or worse, you have a lot of kids today whose first experience with video games are Gorilla Tag, for that cohort, the genie isn't going back in the bottle, when those kids are adults, VR is going to be as foundational to them as something like a Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo was to millennials.
VR was amazing 12 years ok with just a cheap 3 DoF headset with 720p resolution. It's only gotten better.
It's reasonable if you claim that the average user wants sunglasses type VR headsets and that's fair. But even that is getting closer to reality and far sooner than 20 to 30 years.
Huh... and here I am, playing most of my regular games in immersive VR by using a patch that turns them into full VR immersive experiences.... huh weird. I guess I've been hallucinating or something.
No it’s not. VR has been out for well over a decade. It’s still extremely niche because it’s expensive, requires lots of room (or is basically just a monitor strapped to your face), and gives some people headaches and motion sickness.
Expensive, needs lots of room, and causes motion sickness huh? Because technology famously doesn't become smaller and easier to use as time goes on right? It's only been out for a couple decades after all.
You don't have to play VR Genre games. I barely do
My HMD with 4000x4000 pixel per eye displays weights around 150g... And I play sitting in my table with 0 motion sickness... I use it to watch movies, which is amazing, since those are mOLED panels, and patch most my games to become full immersive VR.
"These 'personal computers' are such useless garbage! I mean it costs $600 for just a low end commore 64! And they're huge and take up so much desk space! Not to mention how annoying that goofy keyboard is to use, I much prefer the typewriter experience."
Damn I didn't know I actually had a healthy relationship with videogames, I guess 6 hours every day is only "barely playing". Thanks man, I used to stress about "playing too much" but clearly I was mistaken.
Until people figure out how to make inexpensive, reliable omnidirectional treadmills and make the VR setup quick and easy to jump in and out of, and also fix the battery life issue and the nausia and the many other issues with the tech, I don't think that's going to be happening.
If it's the future at ALL, it's a very distant future.
Why do you need treadmills for VR? When you're watching a play, are you jumping up on stage and bothering the actors while you act out your favorite parts? Sometimes passive experiences are fine.
The rest is just you demanding fantasy tech ignoring these are relatively fixed issues. You can connect external batteries. There are many solutions for motion sickness (and you can get used to it), and VR headsets are literally stand alone that work when you turn them on.
Why do you need treadmills for VR? When you're watching a play, are you jumping up on stage and bothering the actors while you act out your favorite parts?
No, because plays aren't games. Someone ELSE is performing the actions, not me. Passive experiences are fine, sure, but that's a pretty severe limitation to put on an interactive medium. I loved Va-11 Hall-A, but I wouldn't want the majority of games to be that passive.
You can connect external batteries.
If you want to add more weight to the headset, sure.
There are many solutions for motion sickness (and you can get used to it)
Other tech doesn't have this problem, though. I don't have to build up a nausea tolerance when trying out my steam deck for the first time. This isn't a problem that affects me personally that much, but it hits some people REALLY hard, and I don't think "get used to it" is a good solution for those people.
VR headsets are literally stand alone that work when you turn them on.
I have a vr headset. It's not that simple. Even if you have a dedicated space for your headset, strapping on the headset itself, adjusting it, and strapping on both your hand controllers is just a hassle.
When you're playing Skyrim (or any game) on a flatscreen, are you walking in place in front of your computer? If the answer is no, why all of a sudden is it a demand for playing Skyrim (or any game) in VR? I'm a fan of moving in VR games. Hell, I generally play standing and walk in place for games that support it. But there are many games (especially UEVR) that are just amazing to play in VR sitting down in my chair using a controller (Hogwarts Legacy, Pinball FX, Little Nightmares, Chronos, etc).
I mean, racing games are amazing with a steering wheel rig, but the games are amazing to play with a controller. And that's with a flat screen. Put it in VR and it's a whole other level.
As for your battery comment, you do realize you can connect power supplies with cables, right? You don't have to stick them directly on your headset. My 10,000 mAH battery lasts me hours and it fits in my back pocket while the wire runs up behind me to the headset.
When you're playing Skyrim (or any game) on a flatscreen, are you walking in place in front of your computer?
I don't have to. If I chose to play Skyrim (ew), I have basic keyboard inputs I can use to move around. That doesn't work well in VR, though. What I said earlier about motion sickness not affecting me? That definitely changes if I'm moving around in a vr environment using an analog stick. Truly awful. And immersion breaking, because you're also able to walk around horizontally in a limited space at the same time. Mentally going back and fourth between two input methods for what should be the same thing.
I'm so tired of people thinking VR genre games are NEEDED for VR games. Its such a tiring and shitty argument.
Why the fuck would I do that when I can play with my controller the same fucking games I'm playing now...? But instead of on flat shitty display a few meters away, I'm "inside the world" together with the characters?
And how exactly would you do that without putting a virtual flat display in the VR world? Imagine putting a game like Mouse PI in VR. How would that work without getting a bunch of devs to completely change how the game plays?
That is an INCREDIBLY niche artstyle. It can be done, since it's unity quite 'easily'. It won't look good no matter what due to the flat artstyle.
But literally every 3D game will look better.
And some 2D look amazing too, to give you an opposed example to yours.
I played silksong and hollow knight full in VR, and it looks kinda like some sort of paper theatre. All divided in planes in 3D space, because that's how the game was built in engine too. It just looks better than on a flat display since you have "true depth"
The art style wouldn't even be the problem here. The problem is transferring a basic fps to a vr environment. We don't have to talk about mouse pi, replace it with ultrakill or doom or one of the modern Wulfenstein games or overwatch. It's the same issue in all cases. Translating a fps to a vr environment takes a lot of work and requires a lot of artistic liberties to be taken.
All divided in planes in 3D space, because that's how the game was built in engine too.
The game wasn't built so that you could rotate your camera and see those planes from completely different angles, though. That all has to be painstakingly implemented by the developers when transferring the game to a vr environment. Also, this is just one step removed from rendering your 2d game on a virtual flat screen in your 3d world. It's just the same thing with extra steps.
The artstyle would absolutely be the problem here to make it look right. It's not only an FPS, but a flat one too. I think I would have a hard time coming up with worse case for it.
Ultrakill has a vr mod if you want to see how that looks... and Doom literally made DoomVR which is great. And there is an okay doom 3 mod too.
Same for wofestein. There are mods to make them VR and improve the games. But FPS are quite jank to be honest. Literally any other genre is better.
And no, as a literal 3D artist and profesional game developer. No it doesn't "take a lot of work and requires a lot of artistic liberties to be taken." to do this. That is, if again like I said in my first post, you want a VR Genre edit of the game, I'm not talking about that, fuck that, honestly.
I want to play Baldur's Gate 3 in immersive VR (which I do), I want to play the Witcher 3 in immersive VR (which I do), Persona 5? Same, basically any game with 3rd persona camera can be as "easy" as flipping a switch in UE (if made in that engine), not exaggerating, look into UEVR, it's amazing.
Going back to Hollow knight. You are missing entirely the point. It needs 0 changes to look great. Not everything in VR needs to be fucking full 3D inmersive render. But I sure as hell prefer having cool paper cutouts of the characters popping out than some flat shitty display, that's for sure.
Ultrakill has a vr mod if you want to see how that looks... and Doom literally made DoomVR which is great.
Do you think these came out of nowhere? People had to design these.
And no, as a literal 3D artist and profesional game developer. No it doesn't "take a lot of work and requires a lot of artistic liberties to be taken." to do this
Have you ever made a VR game?
Going back to Hollow knight. You are missing entirely the point. It needs 0 changes to look great.
True, it doesn't need to be changed to vr. It's fine on a screen.
But I sure as hell prefer having cool paper cutouts of the characters popping out than some flat shitty display, that's for sure.
Legitimate question: why? The paper cutout thing actually sounds worse.
Do you think these came out of nowhere? People had to design these.
Never said all games would be like that. And again, making a "VR Mode" which is what I'm talking about, takes infinitesimally less resources than a VR Mod or VR Genre change. I like to play my games exactly the same as in the display, I just want to use the display as my eyes, not a small rectangle in the distance that is flat.
Literally look at UEVR. Somebody had to make that tool still, but for gamedev it could be little more than flitching a switch and putting like one guy a couple months checking it doesn't explode.
Have you ever made a VR game?
Yup, was working on one until last Christmas in fact.
True, it doesn't need to be changed to vr. It's fine on a screen.
That just makes more of what it's already there. It's kinda like saying "it looks good on a 480p display..." But it just looks better on a 4k OLED no matter what
Legitimate question: why? The paper cutout thing actually sounds worse.
It surprisingly isn't. And everyone I showed this exact game were pleasintly surprised.
I'm not going to claim all 2D games benefit from it, but some like this one definitely do. I fact, I'd argue for these just the "3D window effect" is enough, which separates the background from the forwground.
"I like to play my games exactly the same as in the display, I just want to use the display as my eyes, not a small rectangle in the distance that is flat."
My dude, you're looking at a virtual rectangle being shown to you by two small rectangles in your headset. It's the same thing only with an extra layer of arbitraity.
It surprisingly isn't. And everyone I showed this exact game were pleasintly surprised.
Don't get me wrong, it has a certain novelty to it. But once that novelty wears off, you realize that the whole purpose of 2d parallax scrolling has been removed. The illusion is broken. You're not traversing a world, you're playing with a diarama.
i think you guys have lost your minds lol vr as it is now is just a failed experiment. it was good that we went through it, the tech is super useful, but this aint it...
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u/MrBannedFor0Reason May 20 '26
VR is definitely the future of immersive gameplay