People get very stuck on this part, and I genuinely don’t think it’s the issue.
Look, l have very decent “VR legs” at this point, but I’m still not a likely spender and I don’t play long games in VR or crack out my headsets very often at all.
The issue is not motion sickness or space or tracking stations. The issue is having to put something on my face and not being comfortably on my couch, free to go pee or get a snack without removing a thing from my face.
And yeah, it’s uncomfortable. That’s part of it. A version of it that looks and feels like glasses would be less of a problem. But the thing is, those aren’t a thing that exists, they are not even an incremental step that we can get to at any point, and also TVs and monitors look just fine.
VR is a neat trick, and I gladly keep my headsets around for any time when something actually interesting pops up. But it was never going to be the next big thing.
That’s solvable with good pass through, I am speaking from experience. It’s kind of surprising how little focus that aspect got, even most modern headsets still lack proper stereo-correct passthrough and instead just fudge something together via tracking cameras (e.g. Pico4 looks like a butchered photogrammetry scan due to having only a single RGB camera).
With Apple VisionPro that will hopefully change and motivate the rest of the industry to catch up.
A version of it that looks and feels like glasses would be less of a problem.
BigScreenBeyond gets pretty close (but no passthrough at all). Some AR headsets like Xreal Air get even closer, though those come with tiny FOV.
To be fair, with good enough passthrough you can get your pee wherever it needs to be.
I genuinely can’t believe how quickly you glossed past the mental image of yourself peeing with a headset on. I feel I can rest my case right at that point, honestly.
Bigscreen Beyond is a new vr headset that is a little bigger than pool goggles. It’s manufactured based off of a lidar scan of your face, and is supposed to be very comfortable.
Additionally full color passthrough is becoming more of a common feature so you can see the real world in good definition while wearing the headset. Also some models hinge the display upwards off of your face.
We are getting there. Personally I play for hours a day. Sometimes multiple 4 hour sessions if it’s a free weekend for me. I agree we need more experiences. But it will come.
See? No, this is what I mean. It’s not this. It’s not even Apples insane thing.
It’s not an incremental progression that will take us there. I will not pop out a headset of any kind and put it on my face as my default mode of engagement. Won’t happen. Not a thing.
It could be shaped like pool goggles, it could have color passthrough, it could have perfect resolution and field of view, it could solve the nausea problem, it won’t matter. Because the reality is that anything that straps to my face and substitutes my normal free field of view is by definition and by design a secondary device.
It’s cool that you like what they offer, and hey, unlike the weird people out there mourning Stadia you can still use all of these things.
But a replacement for PCs, TVs or consoles they are not.
Oh. It’s just that you listed these reasons as detractors. I don’t really know what you mean by default engagement. I’m not understanding your use case. Do you expect to be wearing VR goggles while you walk down the street to the convenience store? They are for play right now… not so much work.
Let me put it this way: I reach out for my PC handheld or my Switch to play small indie games all the time. Specifically to avoid even turning on my TV or going over to the living room.
Wearing a headset is an extra step of complication, discomfort and annoyance over turning on my TV, and my TV is losing out to more convenient devices even right now.
VR, no matter how advanced, is currently the third in a list of convenience when I want to play some Tetris Effect.
To be mainstream, VR needs to be at least as convenient as a TV, or ideally a handheld device. And the reason it can’t be that is not the tech, it’s that by definition VR requires a screen strapped to your face and a couple of dangly motion controllers.
Summed up my feelings 100%. I love VR and almost every experience I’ve had with it have been great, but I’ve touched my Index probably 5 times in the past two years (and probably 3 of them were to watch VR porn). There’s just a big setup and time commitment required to VR game that a lot of people don’t have time for.
People get very stuck on this part, and I genuinely don’t think it’s the issue.
Look, l have very decent “VR legs” at this point, but I’m still not a likely spender and I don’t play long games in VR or crack out my headsets very often at all.
The issue is not motion sickness or space or tracking stations. The issue is having to put something on my face and not being comfortably on my couch, free to go pee or get a snack without removing a thing from my face.
And yeah, it’s uncomfortable. That’s part of it. A version of it that looks and feels like glasses would be less of a problem. But the thing is, those aren’t a thing that exists, they are not even an incremental step that we can get to at any point, and also TVs and monitors look just fine.
VR is a neat trick, and I gladly keep my headsets around for any time when something actually interesting pops up. But it was never going to be the next big thing.
That’s solvable with good pass through, I am speaking from experience. It’s kind of surprising how little focus that aspect got, even most modern headsets still lack proper stereo-correct passthrough and instead just fudge something together via tracking cameras (e.g. Pico4 looks like a butchered photogrammetry scan due to having only a single RGB camera).
With Apple VisionPro that will hopefully change and motivate the rest of the industry to catch up.
BigScreenBeyond gets pretty close (but no passthrough at all). Some AR headsets like Xreal Air get even closer, though those come with tiny FOV.
To be fair, with good enough passthrough you can get your pee wherever it needs to be.
I genuinely can’t believe how quickly you glossed past the mental image of yourself peeing with a headset on. I feel I can rest my case right at that point, honestly.
Bigscreen Beyond is a new vr headset that is a little bigger than pool goggles. It’s manufactured based off of a lidar scan of your face, and is supposed to be very comfortable.
Additionally full color passthrough is becoming more of a common feature so you can see the real world in good definition while wearing the headset. Also some models hinge the display upwards off of your face.
We are getting there. Personally I play for hours a day. Sometimes multiple 4 hour sessions if it’s a free weekend for me. I agree we need more experiences. But it will come.
See? No, this is what I mean. It’s not this. It’s not even Apples insane thing.
It’s not an incremental progression that will take us there. I will not pop out a headset of any kind and put it on my face as my default mode of engagement. Won’t happen. Not a thing.
It could be shaped like pool goggles, it could have color passthrough, it could have perfect resolution and field of view, it could solve the nausea problem, it won’t matter. Because the reality is that anything that straps to my face and substitutes my normal free field of view is by definition and by design a secondary device.
It’s cool that you like what they offer, and hey, unlike the weird people out there mourning Stadia you can still use all of these things.
But a replacement for PCs, TVs or consoles they are not.
Oh. It’s just that you listed these reasons as detractors. I don’t really know what you mean by default engagement. I’m not understanding your use case. Do you expect to be wearing VR goggles while you walk down the street to the convenience store? They are for play right now… not so much work.
Let me put it this way: I reach out for my PC handheld or my Switch to play small indie games all the time. Specifically to avoid even turning on my TV or going over to the living room.
Wearing a headset is an extra step of complication, discomfort and annoyance over turning on my TV, and my TV is losing out to more convenient devices even right now.
VR, no matter how advanced, is currently the third in a list of convenience when I want to play some Tetris Effect.
To be mainstream, VR needs to be at least as convenient as a TV, or ideally a handheld device. And the reason it can’t be that is not the tech, it’s that by definition VR requires a screen strapped to your face and a couple of dangly motion controllers.
deleted by creator
Yeah I’ve been interested in replacing my index eventually, this headset looks pretty promising:
https://store.bigscreenvr.com/products/bigscreen-beyond
Each one is custom to your face, and it’s extremely light. I’m sure the future will bring more headsets like this
Summed up my feelings 100%. I love VR and almost every experience I’ve had with it have been great, but I’ve touched my Index probably 5 times in the past two years (and probably 3 of them were to watch VR porn). There’s just a big setup and time commitment required to VR game that a lot of people don’t have time for.