I’m surprised by how many people think VR isn’t a hype technology after tech industry having tried for 40 years* to make it mainstream (and it really isn’t).
@thomasfuchs I was really hoping to see more branching out in game development for VR and there was a bunch of it initially, but a lot of the content coming out now is narrowing to immersive horror or simulation.
Which is certainly where it shines, and I do love a good flightsim - but perhaps things will diversify again eventually. There’s a lot of traditional genres people tried to shoe-in where it doesn’t fit so well.
It’s ultimately a niche, but it’s pretty cool to have a personal holodeck.
@aviancer there's no money in it for gaming companies. the penetration in the by far biggest market it has (in the US) is 10% of households, and of those 10% maybe a quarter use it regularly; so you're at 2.5% -- and of those maybe a quarter use the headset with a gaming PC, so you're at maybe 1% of households.
in comparison, 75% of households have at least one person regularly playing video games
@thomasfuchs It’s pretty hard sell for big gaming companies on the long term to make VR specific content yeah, the market target is way smaller than doing something more generic and not actually designed for VR. Tends to be more of a “tack-on” for most AAA type things.
So it kinda is a landscape for indie devs to experiment in as far as that goes, which lands in some regard to hobbyists and having a personal interest in the first place.
@thomasfuchs I think currently one of the strongest aspects and likely long term developments for VR/AR is social experiences, hanging out in VR worlds with friends no matter how far they are, or perhaps sharing a movie or virtual lan party or the like.
It’s been pretty heart warming to be able to “hug” a friend on the other half of the globe.
@thomasfuchs I’m certainly not making any claims about it being/becoming a mainstream thing ^^ It’s something that has potential if it became more convenient.
I identify more of as a hobbyist when it comes to VR and things, and have way more tolerance for things not being perfect as a result.
It does afford some very special experiences already today if ones willing to put up with a bit. There’s so much art and creativity within VR worlds to experience, which makes me personally quite happy.
@thomasfuchs yeah, it may have a few niche use cases, and I personally enjoy some of those and value the improvements and affordability we’ve gotten in the last few years, but it’s not going mainstream anytime soon
@thomasfuchs VR is never going to be something everyone uses just like flight sticks and steering wheel controllers will never be mainstream. For most peoole, the barrier to entry isn't worth it. For those who find it worth, you do you. I think VR it's neat but almost no one seems to want to make a good VR game meant to be played more than 30 minutes at a time. Closest I saw was Resident Evil Village and that felt like it was a bit rough IMO
@ADisorderlyFashion There's a few issues with VR, mainly that 50% of people get insta-sick (no matter how good the headset is) and probably also that 90% of people don't want to look like total dorks
@thomasfuchs VR sickness is definitely a thing, and I had to deal with it a bunch myself for a start. But most people overcome it pretty quickly as long as they take care to take some breaks when nausea starts to set in and don’t force it.
It may well be more effort than a lot of people are willing to make though :)
I might add still that the nausea is heavily dependent on the type of an experience you’re having. Room scale natural moving about type things with ~90hz update rates tend to be fine for almost everyone unless you have special sensitivity, while anything involving movement without your actual body moving also is the bit that requires getting used to.
(Don’t mean to be another ‘reply guy’, just a topic I’m interested in)
@nosrednayduj
Mmm I thought about it. (What year was LambdaMOO the language from?)
I think lambdaMOO has a magical place as a particular extant virtual reality. @thomasfuchs
@nosrednayduj
okay, it's just the one I'm a tiny bit familiar with then... What's the difference between an MMO and a VR? We could invoke @Albatross @thomasfuchs
@screwtape@nosrednayduj@thomasfuchs I'm not sure I follow all that's being discussed, but MMO and VR are of course different and non exclusive. You can have an MMO VR, such as Meta VR Chat. MMO is the type of application, and VR is a presentation layer. You could have an MMO chat without VR (Jabber) and VR without MMO (Meta's lobby.)
@thomasfuchs Yep. Here's an acronym to make us fellow very early web design/development geeks feel old:
"VRML"
It came and went back in the 90s, before the web was really all that popular, and when the hardware really was not up to snuff for that sort of thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML
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