So what happened to VR games?

Nebell

Nebell

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I got Quest 3 after not owning VR headset for almost 4 years (Oculus Rift > Index which I sold in early 2020) and while it's impressive piece of hardware, I noticed that the games are lagging behind.
Back when I owned Index there were games like Alyx which apparently is still a benchmark. I checked some new games and they are seriously not impressive.
We went from 2080Ti in Index days to 2.5x faster GPU in 4090 and the graphics have barely improved.
Disappointing. I'm still keeping my Quest 3 to play... Blade & Sorcery and tennis, lol.
 
Same thing that happened with 3D HDTV's. It's a novelty that quickly wears off, because most have realized for at least 30 years that VR is never going to take off until you get rid of the headset. Steve Jobs realized this. Tim Apple doesn't..
 
Nebell said:
I got Quest 3 after not owning VR headset for almost 4 years (Oculus Rift > Index which I sold in early 2020) and while it's impressive piece of hardware, I noticed that the games are lagging behind.
Back when I owned Index there were games like Alyx which apparently is still a benchmark. I checked some new games and they are seriously not impressive.
We went from 2080Ti in Index days to 2.5x faster GPU in 4090 and the graphics have barely improved.
Disappointing. I'm still keeping my Quest 3 to play... Blade & Sorcery and tennis, lol.
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Most games are made for standalone hardware, specifically Quest 2. Because Quest 2 sold 10s of millions of headsets (it actually outsold Xbox), only a fraction of the VR market has high end PCs.

So just like how many flat games target consoles over PC most VR games target standalone headsets (which are essentially consoles too) over PC.

There are a lot of really good VR games though, they just tend to have less demanding graphics.
 
Mchart said:
Same thing that happened with 3D HDTV's. It's a novelty that quickly wears off, because most have realized for at least 30 years that VR is never going to take off until you get rid of the headset. Steve Jobs realized this. Tim Apple doesn't..
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This... 110%....

But people never learn and get sucked into the hype every time "3D" comes back around..
 
sharknice said:
Most games are made for standalone hardware, specifically Quest 2. Because Quest 2 sold 10s of millions of headsets (it actually outsold Xbox), only a fraction of the VR market has high end PCs.

So just like how many flat games target consoles over PC most VR games target standalone headsets (which are essentially consoles too) over PC.

There are a lot of really good VR games though, they just tend to have less demanding graphics.
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I'm not going to play standalone games on Quest 3 as they look way worse compared to PC. Unless it's some MR/AR stuff. I play PCVR wireless on Quest 3 and it's actually great, but I do admit you need a good router for it. Standing I'm at 720-1200mbit/s and this doesn't give me some fps fluctuations while sitting at 1980mbit/s is fine. Going to move my router closer to get a higher bitrate.
I think these wireless headsets are a nice improvement over the wired ones with USBs and DPs (looking at you Index). But the games are very meh. And there must be something wrong when visually the games aren't much different yet they can't really hit 120 fps with hardware twice as powerful.
Also, this is the last time I'm getting AMD GPU (currently on 7900 XTX). Sure raw power is there but literally everything else is trash lackluster.
I do have X52 Pro HOTAS and Elite Dangerous so I'll continue playing that. I heard MS Flight Simulator is also a nice VR game.
 
MrGuvernment said:
This... 110%....

But people never learn and get sucked into the hype every time "3D" comes back around..
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3D hype never got to me. But I do like VR and think it's next gen gaming.
I'll add to above that higher res did get rid of screen door effect and flat lenses from Quest 3 improved the image, so even older games look better... in a way.
 
Years ago I would have assumed that PCVR games would have been developed alongside their flat screen version and released shortly afterwards due to fine tuning etc... but it seems Oculus/Meta's push into the standalone HMD fragmented the market and there just isn't enough active PCVR users to justify the added development costs?
 
funkydmunky said:
Years ago I would have assumed that PCVR games would have been developed alongside their flat screen version and released shortly afterwards due to fine tuning etc... but it seems Oculus/Meta's push into the standalone HMD fragmented the market and there just isn't enough active PCVR users to justify the added development costs?
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We do see modders add VR to a lot of games, but I wish the actually developers would, and yes, I think PCVR market is too small for most developers to justify the cost because only about 2% of Steam users have VR headsets. And most PC games are also made for console which makes the percentage of VR users even tinier. If it's a game that would work well and be easy to do you see it like with Elite Dangerous. But if it's a third person game, or an RTS, or something it just isn't going to work well in VR or be worth the effort. Even if it's a straight FPS it's a lot of work to get it to AAA quality. They actually pu tin the work to Skyrim VR, but sold it as a separate game.

Quest didn't really fragment the VR market, it created a new market, and actually grew the PCVR market. There weren't and still aren't any $300 PC VR solutions, Quest 2 created that market.
You have to spend thousands on a PC and then add a headset on top of that, which was normally another $1000. But with the Quest 2 it was only another $300. Actually over 50% of VR headsets on Steam are Quests. Some people just buy Quests just to play PCVR and some people buy it as a standalone and it's sort of a gateway to PC VR. So there are way more PCVR users because of the Quest, and also way more VR games that would have never been developed without the bigger audience.
 
funkydmunky said:
What is everything else?
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No competition to DLSS3.
AV1 in VR "works" but has higher latency compared to HEVC and Nvidias AV1.
VR issues that only got half fixed lately.
Not as good support for games.
Worse AI hardware.
Confusing overclocking.

I'm sure I missed something.
Besides a few % raw performance increase (at cost of power draw) compared to 4080, what's there that's actually better?
 
sharknice said:
We do see modders add VR to a lot of games, but I wish the actually developers would, and yes, I think PCVR market is too small for most developers to justify the cost because only about 2% of Steam users have VR headsets. And most PC games are also made for console which makes the percentage of VR users even tinier. If it's a game that would work well and be easy to do you see it like with Elite Dangerous. But if it's a third person game, or an RTS, or something it just isn't going to work well in VR or be worth the effort. Even if it's a straight FPS it's a lot of work to get it to AAA quality. They actually pu tin the work to Skyrim VR, but sold it as a separate game.

Quest didn't really fragment the VR market, it created a new market, and actually grew the PCVR market. There weren't and still aren't any $300 PC VR solutions, Quest 2 created that market.
You have to spend thousands on a PC and then add a headset on top of that, which was normally another $1000. But with the Quest 2 it was only another $300. Actually over 50% of VR headsets on Steam are Quests. Some people just buy Quests just to play PCVR and some people buy it as a standalone and it's sort of a gateway to PC VR. So there are way more PCVR users because of the Quest, and also way more VR games that would have never been developed without the bigger audience.
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Too bad the weak hardware in the Quest created a market of shovelware like the Wii.
 
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There are so many VR games that I cant even keep up with everything thats coming out. I play 3-5 days a week in VR and always have something I want to play. 2 days a week I play online with a friend and right now we have Rotten Apple and Hellsweeper that we have been playing, as well as a list of games we have been playing for a while like Wardust, Population one, After the Fall, Devour. A new Devour game came out this week that we are gonna dive into. Plus Arizona Sunshine 2 coming soon looks awesome. And we have a blast every week and always have something to play.

There are plenty of single player games too, as well as VR mods constantly being released. Maybe subscribe to some of the VR youtubers and keep an eye on whats coming out, because there is a lot of new stuff that has come out. IndieVR, Mac-in-VR, Wolf in VR... RenderedReality just started their VR podcast back up after the summer break.

I dont even have time to play everything. I have a backlog of games I still need to get through and new stuff keeps coming out.

I know on the standalone side, yea you got the new headset and no games that take advantage of it, but on the PCVR side, things seems fairly healthly.
 
like all fads VR gaming was just a niche whose 15 minutes of fame ran out

I thought 3DTV's would make a comeback alongside the recent Avatar sequel but it seems even James Cameron couldn't save it for a 3rd time
 
Wow, I've been addicted to VR gaming on my Pico 4. New stuff and repurposed games have continuously been released all over the place. I've recently begun playing the original Blood directly on my headset using RazeXR and I've also been playing a ton of FarCry VR(Original FarCry with newly implemented VR controls including two hand weapon grip) and I'm going to start playing some Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2 Remake using their respective VR mods.

I'm also awaiting Arizona Sunshine 2, ConVRgence, and the consistently updated H3VR game modes. The game that has been eating my time throughout all of this has been Ghosts of Tabor which has been incredibly fun and right up my alley. There's just so much to actually do for VR, that I'm surprised that it gets missed by people.
 
atarumoroboshi18 said:
Wow, I've been addicted to VR gaming on my Pico 4. New stuff and repurposed games have continuously been released all over the place. I've recently begun playing the original Blood directly on my headset using RazeXR and I've also been playing a ton of FarCry VR(Original FarCry with newly implemented VR controls including two hand weapon grip) and I'm going to start playing some Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2 Remake using their respective VR mods.

I'm also awaiting Arizona Sunshine 2, ConVRgence, and the consistently updated H3VR game modes. The game that has been eating my time throughout all of this has been Ghosts of Tabor which has been incredibly fun and right up my alley. There's just so much to actually do for VR, that I'm surprised that it gets missed by people.
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Playing old FPS games in VR is sooooo much more fun than replaying them on a flat screen with minimal graphics upgrades. There are a lot of good ones. I played Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Doom 3. I plan on playing Prey next. That game was so damn good and the upside down sideways portal stuff should be something else in VR. You do need some good VR legs for real FPS movement though.
 
Nebell said:
I got Quest 3 after not owning VR headset for almost 4 years (Oculus Rift > Index which I sold in early 2020) and while it's impressive piece of hardware, I noticed that the games are lagging behind.
Back when I owned Index there were games like Alyx which apparently is still a benchmark. I checked some new games and they are seriously not impressive.
We went from 2080Ti in Index days to 2.5x faster GPU in 4090 and the graphics have barely improved.
Disappointing. I'm still keeping my Quest 3 to play... Blade & Sorcery and tennis, lol.
Click to expand...
Chicken and the egg situation still.

The problem is that there is still not wide scale VR adoption. So, it makes very little sense for gaming companies to make VR specific titles. Games like Vader Immortal, Half-Life: Alyx, and Beatsabers were designed to get more gamers onto the platform. Problem is that didn't really happen. As you may be aware costs of game development are really high. The only way they get investment costs back + profit, is by selling a huge amount of copies. That more or less leaves all the AAA devs out. Too small of a piece of pie.
Indie devs probably can't really afford to make much here either, again as potential profit is low. Other than companies making passion projects, VR just doesn't have the profit motive to push it.

There are other issues like different headsets having different capabilities (from a processing power standpoint), but I won't get into that here.

So, it's going to take Apple and Facebook more or less to sink a huge amount of money into VR in order to get wide scale adoption. Apple's first headset, which is for devs, will cost $3000+, but the point of it is to get more devs making content for what Apple sees as a VR future. Then a more consumer friendly will come at some point in the future.
Facebook is basically doing that now, sinking huge amounts into "Meta" platforms.

And then there is most people who see all of this as costing way too much money and that there isn't a big enough reason to make the leap yet. When people can get into VR for $400 and there is a lot that they can do that a standard display can't, there will be a shift. Likely when VR becomes small, light-weight, easy to use, cost effective, and has "killer" must-have apps. We aren't there yet.

VR as a tech has been pushed far harder than others by those investing in it. But make no mistake, this is early days for VR. It might take another 10 years or so for it to become ubiquitous. It might require that amount just to create an HMD that ordinary people want to buy.
 
sharknice said:
We do see modders add VR to a lot of games, but I wish the actually developers would, and yes, I think PCVR market is too small for most developers to justify the cost because only about 2% of Steam users have VR headsets. And most PC games are also made for console which makes the percentage of VR users even tinier. If it's a game that would work well and be easy to do you see it like with Elite Dangerous. But if it's a third person game, or an RTS, or something it just isn't going to work well in VR or be worth the effort. Even if it's a straight FPS it's a lot of work to get it to AAA quality. They actually pu tin the work to Skyrim VR, but sold it as a separate game.

Quest didn't really fragment the VR market, it created a new market, and actually grew the PCVR market. There weren't and still aren't any $300 PC VR solutions, Quest 2 created that market.
You have to spend thousands on a PC and then add a headset on top of that, which was normally another $1000. But with the Quest 2 it was only another $300. Actually over 50% of VR headsets on Steam are Quests. Some people just buy Quests just to play PCVR and some people buy it as a standalone and it's sort of a gateway to PC VR. So there are way more PCVR users because of the Quest, and also way more VR games that would have never been developed without the bigger audience.
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Quest 2 standalone didn't cleanly create a new market, there was some fragmentation of PCVR, and I recall specific titles that had their superior PCVR versions get abandoned or deprecated because the developers believed that building for Quest 2 standalone would have the greater ROI (can't blame them).

VR developers tend to be small-ish teams (3-10 people) and so for some it meant having to abandon PCVR because they didn't have the resources to co-develop for both PCVR and Q2.

Q2 standalone proliferation was still a net positive for the VR space overall, but coding and optimizing for an android phone's worth of processing power trying to drive the kind of high framerates VR requires did create a bit of a low-poly shovelware race.
 
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polonyc2 said:
like all fads VR gaming was just a niche whose 15 minutes of fame ran out

I thought 3DTV's would make a comeback alongside the recent Avatar sequel but it seems even James Cameron couldn't save it for a 3rd time
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Indeed. Nobody wants to wear a stupid headset. I know I'll never want it. It's a niche gimmick for techno-fetishists. It'll slowly die off, trust me.
 
I haven't touched my Index in over a year. It is too much of a pita to take out and set up.
 
t1337duder said:
Indeed. Nobody wants to wear a stupid headset. I know I'll never want it. It's a niche gimmick for techno-fetishists. It'll slowly die off, trust me.
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There were so many folks here who, back in 2013, said "VR headsets, like 3D TVs, will only last a couple years, 5 at most. Oh, I'm so smart, rub my nipples, bla bla bla"
 
Being cut off from your environment while you game is relatively a big deal, even for those for who it does not create some seasick feeling type.

Making it an hard sale until they get rid of the mask, a bit like 3d tv if it need glasses.

If you play a lot, it will be a comfort issue vs the TV/desktop.
If you play just a little, it will be will I bother with all that versus the browser/small pc games, phones games on something I already own anyway for other reason.
Making it quite niche the big game on VR, I imagine it is a nice success in the already relatively niche sim setup (car-plane) where it make a lot of sense, VR setup work best if your sitted like the caracther you play and don't move like them.

Which should create some feedback, no audience, no budget for killer game.

Playing Elite dangerous on one of the first for developer Oculus Rift, the potential was quite obvious, it was only a bit lighter, wireless or optical wire and higher resolution away to be magic, but I would imagine most people end up not playing it as much they thought they would.
 
LukeTbk said:
Playing Elite dangerous on one of the first for developer Oculus Rift, the potential was quite obvious, it was only a bit lighter, wireless or optical wire and higher resolution away to be magic, but I would imagine most people end up not playing it as much they thought they would.
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Interestingly enough, I played ED for on average 16 hours a day in the past 10 days. It's winter here in Sweden (literally at -15c) and I've taken temporary leave from work.
VR ED can take over someone's life XD
 
Nebell said:
VR ED can take over someone's life XD
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The kit since say (after 2017, 5 years of dev post Dev1) are probably there, back then the resolution made so you had to get close to your ship monitor to read them.

The first time you track an enemy ship simply by looking up or down your cockpit, you tell yourself a time machine me as kid-young teen going from Wing Commander 2 would have lost its mind, just calmly parking the ship in a dock station become a nice experience with VR.
 
Youn said:
There were so many folks here who, back in 2013, said "VR headsets, like 3D TVs, will only last a couple years, 5 at most. Oh, I'm so smart, rub my nipples, bla bla bla"
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And they were right. It never took off, and now you have an extremely small circle jerk community. Good for you guys.
 
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atarumoroboshi18 said:
So, looks like a UEVR Injector(from PrayDog) is about to turn a shit-ton of pancake games into VR capable titles. Racing games, FPS, third person shooters, a whole slew of new and prior titles is about to become VR playable.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y7fkNAaN44
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Problem is - No one cares, because your average person doesn't want to wear a stupid headset. That is the fundamental issue with VR right now. Until you fix the headset problem - It's a novelty / specialized industry/pro device at best.
 
Mchart said:
Problem is - No one cares, because your average person doesn't want to wear a stupid headset. That is the fundamental issue with VR right now. Until you fix the headset problem - It's a novelty / specialized industry/pro device at best.
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Do you have some kind of weird FOMO where you want to do VR but don't want to spend the money so pretend no one else is?
 
sharknice said:
Do you have some kind of weird FOMO where you want to do VR but don't want to spend the money so pretend no one else is?
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You realize next to no one owns a VR headset in real life, correct? Even those that may, use it a couple of times and have never touched it again. It is a very small amount of people who are willing to buy and wear them. Even once Apple enters the market they'll have the same fundamental issue with the technology limitations currently. You're fooling yourself if you think average people want to deal with wearing these things for any period of time compared to just looking at a TV screen. It's the same reason 3D TV tech has constantly failed - It requires the user to wear something.
 
Mchart said:
You realize next to no one owns a VR headset in real life, correct? Even those that may, use it a couple of times and have never touched it again. It is a very small amount of people who are willing to buy and wear them. Even once Apple enters the market they'll have the same fundamental issue with the technology limitations currently. You're fooling yourself if you think average people want to deal with wearing these things for any period of time compared to just looking at a TV screen. It's the same reason 3D TV tech has constantly failed - It requires the user to wear something.
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That's simply not true.

The Quest 2 outsold the Xbox.

I know a bunch of people that play VR daily, even some random people from work that aren't gamers.

VR isn't just playing normal games or watching TV with a screen strapped to your face.
 
MSFS in Quest 2 after all the misfires and patching up until recently has been a crapfest, no longer. I started Halflife:Alyx and am pretty impressed with it. But MSFS is it for me (to a lesser extent DCS) and I actually subbed to SuperNaturalVR (workout program) because it's a kick in the ass and really works you out. It is a niche, but when you throw billions at it, something good might just come out. Can't wait for MSFS 2024.
 
VR did take off and it's doing fine. However PC VR gaming failed hard.

PC VR gaming is a dead end. You need to keep in mind that most PC gaming is done on utterly shit PCs that get curb stomped by consoles into the ground. It's strictly the budget market for the cheap skates of 1080p 60hz lower details and Steam sales/free games/piracy and not even remotely high end.

The Oculus Quest itself is doing fine, and PS VR has always been where high end VR gaming actually happens.
 
I'm strongly of the opinion that 3D and VR "failure" is more hardware limitations than anything else. 3D content that was buttery smooth and did not give you a headache was only achieved in about 2-3 cases - all high end late stage plasma TVs, one of which needed 3rd party goggles. Watching the resident evil movies in these proper set ups turned meh movies into FANTASTIC movies. Current OLED tech is simply NOT capable of achieving this; it's not that 3D is a "fad," it just CAN NOT be done with current TVs (all sample and hold). The only maybe exception would be LG OLED TVs with black frame insertion, but it reduces the brightness too much among other things. FW900 and plasmas still have superior motion than current tech - without flicker you need like 240hz+ to remove microstutter as well as either 240fps or interpolation/fake frames (that can cause more issues again like soap opera) and doing the latter in 3D/VR content is probably challenging.

VR has the exact same problem with display tech PLUS more problems - needs incredible GPU power, comfortable controllers, comfortable headset, tracking, being wired sucks etc, etc. The Apple goggles will be the first device to tackle (at least supposedly) a lot of these problems within the same device.

That said, go play Zenith and you'll see the potential VR has.
 
flegg said:
That said, go play Zenith and you'll see the potential VR has.
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That game looks like a MMORPG from late 90s or early 2000's :p
I couldn't continue playing it. I don't think I've seen an uglier VR game, honestly. For some reason the screenshots look great, but when you get in game, the animation is like, non existent and everything is jagge and ugly. That's on Quest 3.
 
Nebell said:
That game looks like a MMORPG from late 90s or early 2000's :p
I couldn't continue playing it. I don't think I've seen an uglier VR game, honestly. For some reason the screenshots look great, but when you get in game, the animation is like, non existent and everything is jagge and ugly. That's on Quest 3.
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Funny you say that, because It reminded me a lot of playing Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast in 2000.

PSO was the first console MMO and Zenith is basically the first VR MMO and had a lot of the same feelings of everything being new and fresh and really fun to experience the first time. But also flawed and likely massively improved in future MMOs.
I didn't play through the whole game, it didn't really like playing with a bunch of little kids. I would have played more if I had friends that played.
 
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