I have a DK2, and the display is just terrible. I'm going to have to wait until they get at least 16 times the resolution they have now, and video cards capable of filling that many pixels at 90Hz actually exist. My eyes just lock on to the pinpoint pixel lights too much for it to look good. I estimate it'll be 10-20 years before I get into VR.

That... and many kinds of camera motions make me motion sick. It's not a good combo for VR.

I predict VR will remain a niche for a long time yet, just like "3D TV" did. Sure there's a lot of money going into it, but if pouring money into things guaranteed success, well, history would have far fewer funny stories about foolish venture capitalists.

I pretty much fall in to this camp; sure it's cool but most people don't have the hardware to run it well which will limit it and unless your game can map to a subset of controls... well, the player is gonna be shit out of luck immersion wise.

For me Elite:Dangerous was going to be my Reason to get it... but then I remembered how many keyboard controls I still use even with my HOTS setup and the though of losing that just doesn't sit well.

Eve : Valkyrie would probably do well, I've played the alpha and it is a 360-style controller game so no 'balls, where are my hands?!?' problems there.

I guess racing games would work too, at least that is only a wheel.. but we are getting into subsets of games at this point.

Cool tech, sure... but the longer the hyper has gone on the less convinced I've become.

Edit:
For the record I tried a DK1 a long while back with surprisingly good results (I've a whole vision thing...) so it's not that I couldn't use the tech I just... if I'm gonna put down what will probably be £500 I'd rather buy a new gfx card to power my 34" ultra widescreen than a VR headset.. I guess that' where I am with it...

I really would love to have one, but I'm afraid I can't wear one. A friend of mine got the original version and let me try it. The instant I put it on I felt dizzy. I couldn't wear it for more than a few seconds.

For me Elite:Dangerous was going to be my Reason to get it... but then I remembered how many keyboard controls I still use even with my HOTS setup and the though of losing that just doesn't sit well.

I rented a DK2 for a week to try it out with ED. It was amazing, so much so, I've found it hard to play the game since.

To get around the problem of keyboard controls, I used Voice Attack with the ASTRA package

.

It is frickin awesome to say "punch it, chewie" and have the ship jump to hyperspace. :D

I have the DK2 right now and it is sufficient for developing my VR game on it for the time being. I am in no rush to purchase another VR headset at the moment, though that may change in the future when we know more about the Oculus Touch controllers and their capabilities.

I'm pretty interested in seeing what this upcoming HTC Vive announcement is going to be about. It's a bit of a wild card, so it's prudent to wait and see rather than rush into any early commitments.

I've been working on a VR game for almost a year now. I think the developer who knocks it out of the park will be the one who doesn't think of VR as just fancy goggles. VR is more than just a headset which gives you stereoscopic 3D. It's a bit of a UX design paradigm shift, where the focus moves towards creating highly interactive and immersive environments. Immersion is more than just what you can see with your eyes, it's about involving as many senses as possible to convince people into believing that everything they see, hear and touch is real. Some of the tricks you can get away with in traditional games no longer works in VR (large quads, large point sprites, lots of UI, etc). VR also introduces some new tools a designer can work with that no other medium can do:
-Give players a true sense of scale for the size of an object
-Everyone has a range of 'private' space which surrounds them. If someone else invades it, it's either a threat or something intimate (which can also be creepy).
-Your ability to look at things becomes another form of input (ie, gaze selection)

-Touch input controllers can create some really new ways to interact with the game / environment

There are some hardware issues with the existing VR hardware which get resolved with hardware updates.

DK1:

-The resolution sucks
-It makes me dizzy (or it was the crappy laptop)

DK2:

-The resolution has been improved, but still kinda sucks. You can't see small distant objects very well.
-The LCD causes smearing and ghosting when you have a high contrasting color change (black->white)
-It's kinda heavy and hurts the bridge of my nose

Dev Kit Vive:
-The resolution is almost perfect
-It's very light weight and comfortable in comparison to DK2
-The hand controllers are very responsive and there is minimal occlusion issues.
-it's kinda big and bulky on your face. You only notice this if you move your hands very close to your head (such as to pull back an arrow on a bow and aim it).

CV1:

-???

I think the biggest problem with VR right now is the lack of high quality content. With proper investment from the hardware companies and success of early adopters, that won't be a problem forever. From what I've seen, most of the VR content at the moment is simplistic. That may be because it's very new for a lot of developers and all the good stuff probably hasn't been announced yet. Once the VR content ecosystem gets a lot more fleshed out with VR games, movies, and apps, it will be the must-have hardware platform. Right now, everyone is learning about how to use this new medium effectively. To put it into film industry terms, the VR industry is currently doing silent black and white film with charlie chaplin.

I'm most excited about pushing the bounds on the narrative story telling capabilities VR offers. I think there's a lot of unturned ground waiting to be found in terms of narrative techniques and immersion.

Hah bumhug.


I predict VR will remain a niche for a long time yet, just like "3D TV" did. Sure there's a lot of money going into it, but if pouring money into things guaranteed success, well, history would have far fewer funny stories about foolish venture capitalists.

Agreed.

The problem is that although core gamers love it, for the average consumer who likes to flirt with technology it is just a gimmick. Apple watches and Google glass are both amazing bits of technology but, they haven't taken off because if you wear one in public you look like a complete tool. The same goes for VR. I've used Oculous Rift and the experience was amazing but, I've also watched other people use it and they just look like they are having some kind of seizure. I think any member of the public who sees somebody else using one would be immediately put off by this.

Also those of us older than around 30 can remember the Amiga based virtuality machines back in the 90s and although the technology is far more impressive now it is still "just VR".

I have a DK2, and the display is just terrible. I'm going to have to wait until they get at least 16 times the resolution they have now, and video cards capable of filling that many pixels at 90Hz actually exist. My eyes just lock on to the pinpoint pixel lights too much for it to look good. I estimate it'll be 10-20 years before I get into VR.

That... and many kinds of camera motions make me motion sick. It's not a good combo for VR.

I'll only look at any VR that X-Plane supports, so I guess the Rift is not for me. Any notes when they intend to support OpenGL?

I sold my DK2 recently awaiting the first consumer releases. I had a decent amount of time on a Vive recently and was pretty disappointed, I was expecting it to be much better than the DK2 but honestly I didn't think there was much difference...you still very obviously have a heavily pixellated screen strapped to your face. I didn't think the tracking on the touch controls was particularly good either.

Personally I don't think it's worth getting into the v1.0 consumer devices. I'm going to hang on for for the next gen of GPUs and 4k+ headsets.

I would have got it if I was not a 17 years old and actually had some job.