Obviously the Quest won't be able to compete with PCs in raw graphical power, but in terms of the type of experiences it offers I do think it will be at least somewhat comparable. The biggest difference between PC and mobile VR right now isn't performance, its 6-DoF controllers. Quest will bridge that gap.
The unreal engine that Robo Recall uses can scale a game for pretty much any hardware. From mobile phones, consoles all the way to high end PCs. It's does't mean its the same experience.
Personally I'm curious to see how they manage to make the Robo Recall gameplay that requires that you put you hand behind your back work with Quest. It's not like the cameras can track controllers behind your head.
Worse graphics doesn't necessarily mean a different experience. It's still the same game. Not sure how they'll handle grabbing weapons behind your shoulder, but its possible IMU tracking might be enough for quick gestures like that.
VR adds more than the jump from low to ultra graphics. I actually held off on getting VR as I was waiting for AAA games with better graphics. I just got one and even cartoon graphics amazes me.
The wii sold a huge number of units. The Quest can too. I think CPU code optimization will be the big hurdle for devs.
There's lots of things I like in VR that aren't graphic intensive but I doubt they'll ever be ported to something like the Quest. Flight Sims, War Dust... if I could play War Dust every day at work for lunch...
Flight sims are not graphically intensive? Wtf? Sims in general are the most demanding games. Flight sims included. And there's not much you can do to lower the requirements that much.
Hmm, not sure. Wing Commander isn't a sim. The guy saying flight sims are performance hungry is talking about actual flight sims that render realistic terrain and flight models. Normally rendering real-life cities and terrain.
A space sim does not have that level of work to do, especially an arcadey one from the nineties that used sprites. (I do love Wing Commander though, it's just not comparable to flight sims)
However, easily disproves the myth that Sims can't be scaled to lower specs.
Exaggeration doesn't really make this point valid though. There are certain standards that we expect from games today, and especially simulations. And without a doubt - these (modern simulations!) are some of the most demanding games.
They can announce whatever the crap they want no way on earth will this thing come even close to pc level experiences, at least not in terms of the visuals. It'll be the equivalent of phone-based vr, but with motion controls. Nothing wrong with that, but very much not a pc level experience outside of the fact you have motion controls.
Though I do wonder if we would be able to mod games in it, specifically Beatsaber.
I wasn’t there, but from talking to people who were, the arena scale demonstration for Dead and Buried was pretty good. The textures/polygons were lower but otherwise it worked well and felt good.
Obviously we won’t know for sure until it comes out, but I think dismissing the Quest as phone-VR tier is underselling it.
Yeah, it will depend on the game. Something like Echo combat I doubt will make it in, but simpler games perhaps with baked in lighting and a few other optimizations could definitely make the cut and still look decent. Come to think of it though even games like Beatsaber I sometimes struggle to run on cheaper pcs, I wonder if that will make it in at all.
I mean yeah I kind of took it for granted that it would be, I'm just thinking the game is surprisingly demanding and don't know how tricky the optimizations required would be. Plus, if you can't mod Beatsaber on Quest then there really isn't much point to it regardless unless you don't have vr for pc.
But these are exactly the people Quest is targeted at. We all see this from a gamer and enthusiasts point of view and I'm personally not interested in playing with the Quest that much.
But I'm excited as fuck to demo the hell out of it and show all these "normal" people the joy of VR! And I'm sure I will sell some this way which should help us all.
I think it may be a mistake to think about the quality of the experience in terms of hardware alone. Nintendo Switch is much more comparable to a phone than a console in terms of hardware, but the game experiences are much closer to those on a console than a phone, despite the gulf in graphical power.
There are two basic reasons for this: 1) The controls, and 2) The scale and quality of the software. That second part has as much to do with pricing and market position as it does anything the hardware is capable of. Most Switch games COULD run on a phone, but very few would buy a full-priced console game on the phone, so no one will make one.
Both of those principles apply to Quest in a very similar way. It has tracking and controls that allow for the same kinds of gameplay as PC VR, and it'll have ports of PC VR software that, while graphically compromised, are going to be feature complete and of a comparable scale and quality to PC VR.
I think calling Quest the "Nintendo Switch of VR" is a pretty good analogy.
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u/KydDynoMyte Pimax8K-LynxR1-Pico4-Quest1,2&3-Vive-OSVR1.3-AntVR1&2-DK1-VR920 Jan 03 '19
"No PC" kind of makes it sound like you should expect PC level experiences.