I've heard that you're able to watch a movie in a simulated theatre experience, but is there something similar for games where it just looks like you're playing on a big screen? VR sure looks cool but it's going to real hard to justify buying a headset if you're only able to play a handful of indy games. I can't imagine any studio is going to be willing to throw even a moderate amount of money behind creating a VR only game.
Can you play all games with a VR headset?
Nope, VR headsets are not for sale yet (other than development kits). Therefore are there virtually no install base for a VR only game so to make one makes little to no financial sense. When VR headsets becomes freely available will they probably gain a small dedicated following but they will remain a niche product due to price of the kits and the hardware needed to run it.
As for compatibility, some games will fully support it, others will have half baked support and mods will create/hack in support for other games.
Hmm, that's an interesting prospect I've never thought about. Since the games weren't built for VR, it would have to be the platform that supports it. Say, Steam taking the brunt of the work to render that experience in the VR while the game renders in that virtual screen. If this were to happen though I would imagine that it would be a large hit in performance.
The biggest problem VR will have, beyond hardware requirement and price, will be games. If someone isn't developing games for VR no one will have a real reason to buy it. Shoving every game onto VR won't work because I doubt most people want to play Witcher 3 or Bloodbourne while wearing a headset. They'll need specific titles that work well in VR and that convince the consumer it's something they need to buy and not a fancy, expensive, add on.
Essentially they need to not do everything the Kinect did wrong.
I expect we'll see optional VR modes in a number of bigger games, similarly to how we saw 3D modes in quite a few back when that was all the rage. They'll probably vary in quality considerably, but there will likely be some that are good enough to turn heads. I mean, even something like the in development VR mod for Half-Life 2 has its share of people raving about it.
@varietygamer: I think you just sold me on a headset.
Please Log In to post.
Log in to comment