Oh VR I Want You So

I was able to use an Oculus Rift DK1 at a hackathon where someone had made a quick program with Unity where you sit in the captain's chair of the Enterprise from Star Trek Next Gen, and I definitely thought it was pretty neat. I can see a lot of potential in how you were describing it. I just recently watched a YouTube video about the Steam/HTC Vive, but even though it seems like it has a lot going for it, I'm quite a bit more skeptical of it. If you haven't seen it, look it up, but my issue with it is that it seems like (at least for the moment), it assumes that you have a fairly large area of free space. On top of that, the freedom of motion is limited by that space. Because of these, the games will be niche for that specific platform, which I think may be a problem for it. Honestly, from what little I've seen, it seems that something like the Oculus, Sixense STEM, and Virtuix Omni together would be a better system. Expensive, but better, as the space limitations disappear. I think that it will grow and new game genres will evolve around these new peripherals, but I have my doubts on some that seem to try to do too much. (Although I'm still wary of Oculus being owned by Facebook.)

I addressed VR in my comment on your last video, but I did want to add there must be something to it if this many companies are pouring this much money into it. And I agree that VR games will become their own sub-genre rather than take over all genres the way 3D did. I'll be interested to see what comes of it after developers have had enough hands on time to really learn the tech and capitalize on its potential with innovative games. As for your drops below 60 fps, you should really keep an eye on G-Sync/FreeSync monitor prices. I have one and it's hugely beneficial; you can still notice drops to lower frame rates, but it takes away the jutter you get on traditional monitors. I would say that the main benefit is that it allows you to take a sort of "set it and forget it" approach to graphics settings, whereas on a traditional monitor I'd worry about staying above 60 fps 100% of the time, without question.

People are skeptical about VR right up until the time they try it, literally everyone that has had a go on my Oculus Rift DK2 has had an extremely powerful and positive experience, a few have got motion sick some time after using it but that's something most people get used to extremely fast. I agree that basically we cannot VR all the things, the most compelling VR experiences won't be slapping VR ontop of existing games, it will be the games that are tailored for it from the ground up, I know that Carmack even theorized that some of the most popular content might have limited interactivity and be more on rails and movie like, which after some reflection I think I agree with could be the case at least for the majority. The problem right now is severe lack of really good content, there's a few tech demos which are fun and a few unfinished games which are fun, but nothing that has a lot of repayable value, it's early days though. I agree that pretty much any sim game works really well with it, I tried some WarThunder with it and it's amazing just to look around your cockpit and get a feeling for how the wings of your plane really span far away from you and how high you feel. The main issue is that you can see less than with 3rd person view so you're at a competitive disadvantage. Not surprisingly tagging it on to an FPS like TF2 wasn't all that great of an experience, although it was absolutely BOSS to look down and see your own body as the character you're playing, especially the heavy who puts the Sandvich up to your face to eat it. One of the best experiences I had with the DK2 recently is with a little spy themed puzzle game called I expect you to die. Oh Alien isolation, now THAT was a fucking nightmare, I played that game with a friend through most of the way on his PS4 and we both really loved the terrifying feeling of being so vulnerable. But at a LAN party a friends PC copy intersected with my DK2 and we tried the hacked together demo they had for DK2 which is simply a small custom made area in the game where you have to sneak past the alien. That is super terrifying and really immersive especially when you have to hold the scanner/radar thing and look down to actually see it, they made that game absolutely terrifying. Most of us spent the entire time hidden in lockers pretending to admire the inside of it.

Another great video, I do agree with your statements about VR, it isn't going to be for everything/one and every game. Its still in its infancy so we will see as things progress and people warm up to it. That was the first thing in Arma that got me was the free look, of course that was backed in the first Arma days, it was so epic back then to be able to look freely around. As far as the format goes, I think its good, I think you should do the first half of the each episode as a sort of response to comments on the last video. Second half could be about a new topic, just my thoughts on the matter. Keep it up, look forward to more videos!

Entirely depends on if there is a game that comes around that brings a crowd to VR and properly showcases the usefulness of it. Otherwise, it will like you said become another peripheral for simulation games. However, it is already more useful than any other past peripherals like motion controls. You don't have to build an entire game around it like with motion controls. The price can also make people look at it as just an expensive toy.

... Wow. I just got to the part where you're talking about your specs and they're pretty close to mine.... Although my processor is a relatively inexpensive AMD from the same time and really needs to be replaced before my GPU. (Yes, I'm replacing it with an Intel, I've learned since high school.) Going on the whole spec issue, I'm at a point right now where I haven't really been playing any graphically demanding games recently because I've been playing old games from GOG, so the GPU can definitely wait, but I kind of hate my current CPU in many things. Oh well.