My problem wasn't with the software. I expected a weak launch line-up. Most software launch line-ups are weak. I didn't expect to be underwhelmed by the hardware. Drew not getting into the driving because of the screen door effect dampened my excitement. I still think VR is starting on solid ground unlike the first attempt long ago but better software isn't going to bring me back in.

I rather get a new video card and pick up a version 2 or 3 when the price may be cheaper, motion controllers are packed in, screen is higher resolution, and the headsets have eye tracking inside.

The funny thing though is if this is what the PC VR headsets are starting with I can't imagine how underwhelming PS VR will be. PS4.5 can't come soon enough

@colourful_hippie: Yea i think thats generally where i land as well, but your reasoning is kinda why i wrote this, i dont think you should judge it based on 15 minutes Drew spent with a year old port you know?

@brotherbran: the screen door effect comes from a resolution limitation of the headset not so much the game

@brotherbran: I disagree completely with the "wait and see"

This is the launch of a brand new set of hardware, which is very, very expensive to your average consumer, with the hope to pull people in. What they showed didn't do that, and in business you don't often get many second chances, especially with such pricey products. You have to make this showing strong and grab the consumers attention, because their attention spans are short, so if your product looks uninteresting, lame, or just not worth the price point, you risk people moving on and never looking back. Maybe VR stuff will be amazing in a years time, but the fact is their big global launch is now, and all eyes are on them now.

This iteration of VR will likely go the way of Kinect. A cool idea that could have been big, but didn't have the backbone support to make it anything more then a niche product. Some people will scream loudly that VR is the rage and everyone is missing out, but if the rest of this first year of VR is anything close to this initial catalog and general reaction then a lot of people will be skipping these $600 mini-game collection goggles.

@takayamasama: I don't think this is the big push at all, it's their launch and it needs to be successful and I think it has been in terms of what they wanted. Some major headlines and nothing negative about the device in itself. The average consumer isn't ready for this, they know that, they have the numbers, they know how many PCs are even capable.

@colourful_hippie: right but it's been mostly solved was there another mention of it in the entire 12 hours? I didn't notice.

I'm going to call bulls**t on Ted Price' argument that VR (game) development has been for a very short time. The DK1 has been out since late 2012. It did not take 4 years for developers to craft entertaining, fun and engrossing experiences when they were switching from sprites to polygons. You do not need 4 years to find out that your prototype game isn't that fun to play in VR. Good games that don't make that much use of VR don't kill a platform, it's terrible games that abuse the gimmick that kill a platform.

It's telling that of the games that were shown yesterday, the games that simply treated you as a head-controlled camera were the more interesting ones.

They took their time with the Oculus Rift especifically saying "we have to do this right", and supported developers years ahead of time with many iterations of hardware until we got closer and closer to the final revision, and even with all that prep time we didn't get one single sign or experience that made it seem "oh THIS is why we need VR" instead every one was "eh, this works ok in VR I guess..."

I think disappointment is totally justifiable, and there's no need to defend the companies behind VR, if they fail to deliver they fail to deliver.

There is potential there, but I think most game developers have proven time and time again that they definitely don't want to make exclusive experiences, they want to make the lowest common denominator type games and put them out on everything to maximize their profits. I bet we will see a TON of shoehorned VR experiences in games for a quick buck, and that could potentially muddy the waters enough to where people won't even want to bother with the steep investment upfront.

As an aside, seeing a microtransaction driven game in a US$ 600 piece of hardware was soul crushing.

If they can charge for it, we can judge it.

I'm not defending the companies at all, they have a long way to go to sell me, like I said. Just that I'm not making my final decision on VR (as it seems so many people have) based on the stuff we've seen so far.

Also I don't think it's fair to call bullshit on Prices comment, he says most of us, meaning larger devs, who couldn't devote the time until it was clear there would be a decent install base. I also don't think it's fair to compare this to early 3D development because it was in fact mostly trash as well, or glorified 2D games. Games are also so much more complicated and expensive compared to when that shift happened.

You are straw-manning. You are setting up your personal view of what Oculus was meant to achieve and then saying they missed that mark.

I realize this is just your opinion, but i feel like that's unfair. Or misguided anyhow. Oculus will be the ones to decide if they hit their goal or not. I feel like they were very forthcoming about the fact that this ISN'T their "big global launch" as you put it. Palmer Lucky has been very forthright in saying that this is just the first salvo and is intended for early adopters.

This is where I stand on it.

If I'm going to spend the money on getting a PC that can run these headsets, and then spend the additional money on the PC itself, then there had better be something already here to make that investment worth it. "It will get better" is not going to cut it.

I agree that people shouldn't write of the entire future of VR based on this first consumer ready wave, but they should absolutely judge it for what it is.

If not now then when? This it the moment that people have been evangelising.

@bananasfoster: I think it doesn't matter if this is their "global launch" or not, information travels too fast in this current age, this is their big launch whether they want it or not. Word of mouth will get out to people interested or even not really interested, and if after a full day of steaming what it has to offer the general feel is a resounding "that's it?", it's not good for them our their product. They need as many people to buy in as possible, and right now too many are going "this seems not great".

I don't think that's what straw-man means, and he's not wrong. No matter what Oculus was aiming to achieve here, the fact is that since this is their launch into market, this is the time the most eyes will be naturally drawn onto them. There can be big pushes later, but that consumer attention will never be as easy to get as it is right now.

I'm a bit more optimistic about VR, though. It might not a paradigm shifting game changer, but I don't think most people were looking for that. And I think VR has more to it than what the Kinect did, at least in a video game space. And if that big push happens, and there are some great new experiences to be had, I'll buy a VR headset then.

I don't get why so many of you think this is their shot, all eyes are on them. No way man, they haven't done any advertising, they got that Facebook money boys, they haven't even begun to push this thing. Like yea this is big news in the echo chamber of fans hardcore enough to post in a forum but hardly anyone else is paying much attention to this stuff yet

@brotherbran: in all of the preview coverage the guys have made mention of screen door effects. They're minimal but it's there. As someone who usually plays games at 1440p I'll certainly be sensitive to seeing pixels on these headsets. I'm waiting for better screens before dumping hundreds of dollars into any of these headsets.

And those who are spouting doom and gloom for VR not blowing off the hinges of the door are completely blind to the insane amount of investor money that is pouring into the VR industry. This is a long, slow, and steady race to the mainstream. Nobody is starting this marathon with a sprint.

Well I've already judged it as not worth my 600$, so it's too bad they released it before it was ready. Overall the games all seem to use the motion tracking as a camera, and then it's 3d. I don't care about that stuff, especially when the games feel old in terms of gameplay. Hopefully the next version has a better screen, detachable or better headphones, and some good games. Nothing they played interested me at all.

@spoonman671: Obviously you have to judge for yourself, but the fact remains that it is not ready

@colourful_hippie: Right but I have heard Jeff and Brad say it's been mostly solved, which is why I feel like it's more on that game specifically. I feel like they would have mentioned it more if it were still that big of an issue. Then again we can't see what drew saw, which is honesty the biggest hurdle of this entire thing.

When you say this iteration, I assume you're referring only to the Rift, right?

I just dont think you can judge it without experiencing it yourself, its so new that who knows how different an experience each person will have. I personally feel like I'll get sick right away but i wont really know until i try. Its also hard to judge by its launch lineup as it will take time for developers to focus test enough to understand what they can and cant get away with as people may have different reactions to the platform. I remember how bad the early 3d games made me sick as a kid until they finally started figuring that stuff out. Also launch games suck 90% of the time

I really think they should have waited for the software to live up to the quality of the hardware. All releasing it with bad tech demos does is make a bad first impression.

I really hope that future AAA games will have VR support I also hope Vorpx will work on CV1 eventually cause GTA5 in VR and F.E.A.R. is what I want more then anything to play in the Rift. I want to go back to my fav games and experience them in Virtual Reality that's always been the dream of VR for me.

Honestly, the thing that kills it for me, and I'm assuming will kill it for a lot of people, is the fact that from most reports, wearing glasses is straight up bad with the Oculus. This isn't like 3d where it's not optimal to wear 3d glasses over top of regular ones, but most people are okay after a while. I've heard zero positive reports about Oculus use while wearing glasses.

There are so, so many issues dependent upon exactly what sorts of vision impairments people have, that the first VR device out of the gate, arguably the biggest one, not addressing it at all, is completely crazy to me. That's the thing Oculus should be raked over the coals for, since the games being sort of disappointing is nothing compared to that.

Guess I'm more down on it than anyone else to post so far. I thought the launch lineup looked terrible. Most people I know thought 3D TV was neat, but they didn't want to wear glasses to get the effect. That was with (the potential of) all movies & shows to back it up. Now you have bad-to-mediocre content paired up with even bigger goggles?

I honestly hope I'm wrong, but this stuff seems dead already :( Your average person isn't going to buy it, and companies will only keep pumping billions into a product that people aren't buying for so long.

Some people on this site are so oddly against VR. I don't get you, Oculus haven't taken your dog to the backyard or anything.

@takayamasama: I think it's totally possible to recover from a lousy initial offering, but it takes a heck of a lot of persistence, and more than a bit of gambler's/future seer's blood. The first iPhone was pretty terrible, but by the fourth one they were the most popular phone. VR does have a future, but it'll be ten years from now when they're completely untethered and internally powered, when using one on a city bus won't make you look like a lunatic. But I do wonder if anyone currently in the game will stick it out that long, or if anyone else will bother to gather the pieces that fall out from this series of headsets to build the next one, the real one.

I have a feeling that some of the peculiar ire being directed at the Rift's launch is coming from this sort of expectation that VR is coming to replace your old flat 2D screen games. So by seeing a weak launch line-up people are rushing to call VR dead on arrival. VR is going to have legs and probably won't hit mainstream till 5-10 yrs from now. The hardware to power these things need to get cheaper and the headsets more approachable. These first few years are for enthusiasts to begin dipping their feet in over time as thus industry gains traction.

As much as I'm criticizing this product I also acknowledge that VR is starting from the strongest foundation it has ever had. Things will only get better from here on the software and hardware front and I couldn't be more excited.

VR is here to stay, and it will only get better from this point onward. We are at the inception of VR as a real consumer product, it is like the first consumer PC's and the first video games of the 70's and 80's.

We are judging VR based on three decades of hardware and software development experience. Given enough time the experiences and the hardware will get to the point that no one will want to go without one, the same way that no one wants to go without a smartphone.

In 5 years we will be using headsets that have insane resolutions with eye tracking and rendering techniques that will allow for increased performance on cheaper hardware. Anyone who thinks that this is a flash in the pan sort of technology are not really doing the research and coming to the right conclusions. The Gianbomb guys have all said that the hardware is there, it puts you in the game, but the software isn't there yet for the most part.

Luckily I am into space flight games and Elite Dangerous is going to be a blast to play with the Rift. No Man's Sky is also looking very promising for VR. There will be games within the next year that are worth playing, and will make people want to own a Rift headset, it will happen.

Wait, so you're saying that the first-gen VR designed for journalists/tech industry because it's too expensive for your average blue collar worker.................is DOA? I'm surprised that it works this well already. This is the generation where people 5-10 years will look back and laugh at how antiquated they are. They will probably become collectors items as well since they are a rare commodity.

VR will likely hit it off for games, but the real future is in business/taking over the smartphone niche. VR is obviously the future.

The second they released it for general consumption announcing that it's "done" and put it on store shelves along with a price tag was the moment we could all judge it. At this point in time there is very little that differentiates the Oculus from the Kinect apart from about $400.

I'm not saying this to be mean or to be reductive about the tech, or even as a defensive mechanism against VR somehow replacing my precious videogames. I'm just being realistic here. They said "our thing is done, buy it and have an awesome time!" and then everything we saw on the stream looked super underwhelming and the people playing and experiencing those games were likewise underwhelmed for the majority of the time. This is their first showing, it's their chance to make an awesome impression on people, and that completely didn't happen. So this obviously doesn't mean that VR is dead or anything, it just means they'll now have to work a little harder to win people over in the future when better software does come out.

@dudeglove: I agree with you, I think there's plenty of uses outside of video games, but we're on a video game forum and most people are probably just interested in it from a video game perspective.

I thought the two most interesting looking things where Airmech because it looked like a fun game and made me think of playing something like VR 40K or Warmachine and the sports video stuff. Live sports would be amazing and something I hope they get to one day. I'd love to watch something like the Superbowl or NBA playoffs from the 50 yard line/centre court and VR could potentially do that. But, the Gear VR could probably do that and it and the phone that powers it would be about the same as this Rift unit.

And on the money side, I think it's already a bubble. With any bubble we'll get some cool stuff out of it, but a lot of investors are going to lose a lot of money on failed VR projects.

Finally, as soon as they started selling it commercially it was ready to be judged.

I'm with the crowd that says with the claim that it's out and a price tag it is open for judgement. That judgement can obviously change over time but for now it seems like a bad deal for $600 USD (plus potential PC upgrade costs). I am with Will Smith on this one for now.

I don't know, man. I disagree.

All I see, honestly, are a bunch of hipster VR poo-pooers saying "this seems not great". If we want to talk about the general public, you go to Youtube and find 100s of videos of people being BLOWN AWAY by VR. I even see a lot of tech journalists blown away by VR. I see VIDEO GAME JOURNALISTS sneering. I see lots of silly arguments like, "you look dumb in the helmet" or "I can't wear this for 8 hours.". Well, Joe average is

a) not caring what he looks like while wearing a VR helmet

b)Has no intention of wearing one for 8 hours

c)isn't planning on getting one for years.

I think the gaming industry gets caught up in... well, we'll call it "5 Nights At Freddy's syndrome". They become myopic about what the world looks like outside of their walls because they never care to go outside of their walls.

I think vr will succeed best with regular real ass games. The immersion will be the main draw. Maybe vr can benefit a little more from increased close up detail and character interaction (i.e. basically increased fidelity), but i don't think there's something new game design wise that really needs to be done. Hell, i have a feeling first person gta v in vr would be awesome simply due to the nature of the game. I guess that's probably the problem, too: to me, at least, it doesn't seem like they have to do something radical game design wise to make the most of vr. It won't feel truly new and different as a result, even if it still works amazingly well.

@hayt: I really enjoy that whenever someone makes a link between VR and Will Smith I never know which Will Smith I'm going to get.

Waaaait a minute, isn't advising people to "wait and see" a form of judgement?

I haven't watched the stream or played with a headset so take this as you will, but I agree with this.

I feel the same way when people try and tell me a TV show gets good in its second/third/fourth season, except at least those don't come with a £500 up front cost.

@brotherbran: I don't disagree with the general sentiment that people maybe should show some patience here, but the reality is that people aren't patient. VR is being judged on what it is right now, not what it might become. I could make arguments for that being both fair and unfair. On the one hand, they're happy to take people's money for it right now, so they should simultaneously be delivering on arguably more of the promise of VR than they are. On the other, this surely isn't the best we'll see from VR, so dismissing it over a lackluster semi-launch seems premature and could lead to the death of something that could be amazing before it has really had a chance to get its feet under it.

Regardless of whether you feel it's fair or unfair to judge VR in its current state, Oculus' ho-hum launch lineup did not do VR any favors. Personally, it was highly disappointing to see the majority of the "games" be little more than tech demos leaning heavily on the mere concept of being VR (that you have to buy on top of the unit, no less). What they're asking of consumers at this point is to drop a large chunk of change and essentially take it on faith that proper video games making real use of the technology in meaningful ways are coming. It's the exact mistake Microsoft made with the Kinect, except with a far higher asking price. Speaking as someone who bought a Kinect based on its "promise" and similarly assumed massive financial backing would all but ensure its success, it doesn't always work out like you hope. It doesn't matter how many smart people or how much money is behind it if the demand beyond early adopters isn't there. If it stops being viable, it's abandoned.

If we don't see some impressive games (or some real utility elsewhere) soon, odds are that the Oculus will spectacularly crash and burn. And if things play out with competitors as feared to where Vive proves prohibitively expensive and PSVR fails to perform in satisfactory fashion, the VR industry on the whole might not even survive 2017. Someone with more stones/wealth than I could very well make a fortune short-selling those who stand to lose big in this deal. I'm still too much in "wait-and-see" mode to play that risky game, as it's certainly possible that Oculus gets some good games, Vive finds a niche with the Steam crowd, or PSVR catches on via appeal as an entry-level VR experience to the "average consumer", but if I had to bet based on what we know right now, it would be against VR.

@jesus_phish: @dudeglove:I don't mind Oculus focusing on more experiential stuff like VR movies and 360 degree experiences, but the initial pitch was...

Step inside your favorite game.

Oculus Rift is a new virtual reality (VR) headset designed specifically for video games that will change the way you think about gaming forever. With an incredibly wide field of view, high resolution display, and ultra-low latency head tracking, the Rift provides a truly immersive experience that allows you to step inside your favorite game and explore new worlds like never before.

We're here raising money on Kickstarter to build development kits of the Rift, so we can get them into the hands of developers faster. Kickstarter has proven to be an amazing platform for accelerating big and small ideas alike. We hope you share our excitement about virtual reality, the Rift, and the future of gaming.

Credit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game/description

The problem is not that the tech doesn't work right: the VR movies and experiences looked impressive and fun. I'm sure that programmers and designers will build immersive environments in which I am fully willing to lose myself in.

The problem is that, as a $600 gaming platform that has had freely available dev kits in the wild for four years now, officially launching with this line-up of games is severely disappointing. But you know what the weirder thing is? In those four years, we've seen enough videos on this site and on the internet that show what this technology is capable of. That over half of the launch games can't even match those is damning.

While I feel that the current VR launch lineup isn't strong enough to justify a purchase, the fact that the headsets are selling out faster than they can currently be produced is a sure sign that development will continue for at least another year or two while developers make their first and second rounds of games for the platforms. If there aren't "feature length" games available in VR by 2018 I could see developers abandoning VR development, but my guess is that we will see some quality games and a drop in headset costs two years from now. If people don't want to buy in at the moment they don't need to, as Oculus and Valve are already at higher demand levels for their headsets than they are able to accommodate for, and as long as there aren't warehouses full of unpurchased VR headsets there will be a market for VR games, which will mean developer interest in game production and game improvement.

I think the prices more than justify being judged. However, the tech has a long way to go and will get a ton better I think so I get your point and agree. I just think as a product now VR is extremely lackluster which is an issue I hope they resolve before the whole thing risks flaming out.

I'm excited for the tech, but not for the coverage. I can't afford it and no software is must-have currently. Just hit me up when something interesting is released. Then I still can't afford it. It'll be several years before I could probably afford VR. In addition, the VCR started out $1000+, but watching movies at home is something the whole family can do on a TV, so the demand was inevitable. One person can wear a headset... VR has to prove itself and find a way out of it's niche to reach a wider market. And costs have to come down. It'll all take time, by then some good software should be available.

@humanity: @jinoru: the problem with this thread is saying to not judge. Technically we are all making judgements on the device and we should. Like all first gen tech products there is room for improvement on the software and hardware but my main issue is with those looking at this launch and then spout doom and gloom as if VR is done.

@colourful_hippie: I simply did not like the rhetoric that we should hold off from judging VR too harshly because it's brand new. If they are taking peoples money, and it's not an insignificant amount, then this is a product that people have every right to scrutinize right here, right now, without ephemeral gazing into a possible future. I agree that this isn't "the end of VR" or anything, but it's also no reason to get defensive when people claim that it doesn't look very good at this moment. For those that feel ok with spending $600 so they can wait 1-2 years until something worthwhile comes along, then sure go ahead, but that doesn't change the fact that this launch hasn't done them any favors in getting more people to buy into this future. When Palmer Luckey is out there saying this is the start of a revolution, it doesn't look good when you see the Oculus in action and it feels like it hasn't even left the garage yet.

As soon as its available to watching eyes, its ready to be judged. How else would it improve? Its not a static yardstick just because its now a retail product, either. Software has to be engineered and variables need to be product to understand what will work best on this platform. I took a couple of fascinating things from the stream. Namely how you've always got the human brain reacting to things that wouldn't happen if you're just in front of a TV in your room. That's something to capitalise, as well as the ability to play with cameras and perspective.

I wish them all the best of luck in figuring this stuff out and hopefully there's enough money and expertise in the ring to take it forward for years to come.

I would be excited to see VR in Universities as a teaching tool (e.g. medical students) and new ways to explore film and story telling, but I'm just not seeing this massive revolution people are talking about.

I think I'm more interested in "experiences" from VR than I am games, at least so far. I don't want to play a Zelda-like with the monitor attached to my face. I don't want to play a driving game for more than a few minutes in a headset. It'll probably take some time for VR-centric games to be developed and then probably even longer for them to be truly worth buying a headset. Until then, just give me your weird, trippy drug simulators and your crazy art pieces in VR and I'd probably be more likely to buy one.

This. There is totally room for judgement on the current state of VR.

How else will there be improvement?

The first games using polygons game out in the early 80s. Consistently good 3d games didn't start happening till the early 90s. It took nearly a decade for people to start really using 3d environments in consistently entertaining ways and even then it was pretty rough in the early 90s sometimes. Building up design language to make things in a new way and to make them fun takes time.