Valve's return to City 17 is poised to make sales record headlines next week. PlayTracker Insight tracking is showing Half-Life: Alyx has already surpassed 300.000 owners ahead of its launch on Monday, March 23rd.
This already puts the game within striking distance of the biggest Steam releases of 2020 so far like TemTem, Wolcen, Borderlands 3, Metro Exodus, and, amusingly, Black Mesa - Crowbar Collective's re-imagining of the original Half-Life game. Launch sales should propel the game into first place, pending a surprising over-performance by Doom Eternal this weekend.
VR owners account for only 1% of Steam users according to the Steam Hardware Survey, making this sales performance quite an impressive achievement.
Muscular Beaver wrote on Mar 23, 2020, 00:50:
I want to act like in real life, or very close to it, in a VR game. Thats the point.
Qvark wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 11:43:Razumen wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 11:06:Qvark wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 08:08:
The main stumbling block for VR is the crappy controllers any headset comes with.
They are to me, the main thing that can break VR, as there is no standard and they are always clunky, demanding too much space and really, they don't do anything that a mouse and keyboard can do.
Um, they allow for 1:1 movement in 3D space, a M&K definitely can NOT do that.
And if moving your arms is harder for you than pushing a mouse, I think you have bigger health issues to work on other than "immersion".
Many people can't move their arms about, and this has nothing to do with health. Simply with the space available.
Controllers really don't add much in space apart from you flailing your arms around. So if you want to break away from the abundance of wave-shooters VR is suffering from (for this very reason). controllers quickly become non-essential. You don't move through a room any better with a controller. Far worse even.
Muscular Beaver wrote on Mar 23, 2020, 00:50:saltedicecream wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 12:37:Muscular Beaver wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 04:51:ForgedReality wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 03:03:Same.
My main issue with VR is that you are standing there and you have to teleport around. It removes a lot of the freedom you would have with a traditional game. Seems like it would be a lot of stop-and-go gameplay and it would be easy to overwhelm the player if they had enemies rushing at you. Not to mention the fact that it takes you out of the immersion because you're not actually walking.
There are 3D treadmills but they have other limitations, like you have to be in a ring, so you cant duck very well, not to mention jump.
Not really interested in VR before that is solved. I cant have a VR-room with padded walls so nothing and nobody gets damaged/hurt.
There are several misconceptions here.
Teleportation is not a requirement of VR and nor is it the dominant form of play anymore. I'm looking at the top 5 pure VR games (in terms of player count) right now--Pavlov VR, Boneworks, Blade & Sorcery, Walking Dead: S&S, and Beat Saber--and only one of them doesn't have smooth locomotion (Beat Saber) and none of them support teleportation. With the exception of a minority, most gamers can get their "VR legs" after some training and leave teleportation behind. It will absolutely be an issue for casual gamers but there's a very large untapped market of more hardcore gamers that will adapt.
The second misconception is that VR treadmills address the simulator sickness problem. Simulator sickness comes from the disconnect between your visual sense of motion and your vestibular sense of motion, but VR treadmills do nothing to solve that. Outside of maybe VR arcades, they are a dead end for many other reasons as well.
Lastly, you're partially correct on the point about space consumption (and I'll add energy intensiveness) being issues for the current VR market. However I don't think this is inherent to VR but rather just an unfortunate design decision by today's developers (much like the teleportation focus of early VR games). With a swiveling chair for minor rotations, snap turn for faster rotations (basically implemented by all VR games), and vertical movement on one of the joysticks (smooth transitioning between prone and standing), you basically have the full capacity of standing play without requiring very much space. The space required is basically what is encompassed by rotating 360 degrees in a chair and reaching your arms out. The unfortunate thing is that only a few games (e.g. Boneworks) support artificial vertical movement but I think this will change over time.
Never said that only teleportation is the problem. Walking with a stick (pun intended) is almost as bad.
Me nor him talked about motion sickness. I dont have issues with it, even though I get it in cars if I look down for too long while being a passenger.
I want to act like in real life, or very close to it, in a VR game. Thats the point.
Sure, its not an issue if youre playing flight sims or racing games, but I actually dont play those anymore because I know how much it sucks to not have a butt-o-meter, AKA not feeling the acceleration/gravity when you turn or your car starts to lose traction in a curve. And I wont put some huge thing in front of my PC that costs thousands of dollars and is only good for specific games.
But normal FPS VR games are possible. I just dont like how they are done so far. Software and hardware-wise.
saltedicecream wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 12:37:Muscular Beaver wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 04:51:ForgedReality wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 03:03:Same.
My main issue with VR is that you are standing there and you have to teleport around. It removes a lot of the freedom you would have with a traditional game. Seems like it would be a lot of stop-and-go gameplay and it would be easy to overwhelm the player if they had enemies rushing at you. Not to mention the fact that it takes you out of the immersion because you're not actually walking.
There are 3D treadmills but they have other limitations, like you have to be in a ring, so you cant duck very well, not to mention jump.
Not really interested in VR before that is solved. I cant have a VR-room with padded walls so nothing and nobody gets damaged/hurt.
There are several misconceptions here.
Teleportation is not a requirement of VR and nor is it the dominant form of play anymore. I'm looking at the top 5 pure VR games (in terms of player count) right now--Pavlov VR, Boneworks, Blade & Sorcery, Walking Dead: S&S, and Beat Saber--and only one of them doesn't have smooth locomotion (Beat Saber) and none of them support teleportation. With the exception of a minority, most gamers can get their "VR legs" after some training and leave teleportation behind. It will absolutely be an issue for casual gamers but there's a very large untapped market of more hardcore gamers that will adapt.
The second misconception is that VR treadmills address the simulator sickness problem. Simulator sickness comes from the disconnect between your visual sense of motion and your vestibular sense of motion, but VR treadmills do nothing to solve that. Outside of maybe VR arcades, they are a dead end for many other reasons as well.
Lastly, you're partially correct on the point about space consumption (and I'll add energy intensiveness) being issues for the current VR market. However I don't think this is inherent to VR but rather just an unfortunate design decision by today's developers (much like the teleportation focus of early VR games). With a swiveling chair for minor rotations, snap turn for faster rotations (basically implemented by all VR games), and vertical movement on one of the joysticks (smooth transitioning between prone and standing), you basically have the full capacity of standing play without requiring very much space. The space required is basically what is encompassed by rotating 360 degrees in a chair and reaching your arms out. The unfortunate thing is that only a few games (e.g. Boneworks) support artificial vertical movement but I think this will change over time.
ForgedReality wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 03:03:
My main issue with VR is that you are standing there and you have to teleport around. It removes a lot of the freedom you would have with a traditional game. Seems like it would be a lot of stop-and-go gameplay and it would be easy to overwhelm the player if they had enemies rushing at you. Not to mention the fact that it takes you out of the immersion because you're not actually walking.
heroin wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 13:14:
it will just become smaller & sleeker.
HoSpanky wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 11:50:
Keep right on with your invalid complaints against VR. Tomorrow, I'll be playing the new Half-life game. Meanwhile, you'll be watching videos of it on Youtube, not understanding why it's slower paced and using that as a crutch to help you feel better about missing out on it.
If it gets stellar reviews, you'll claim reviewers are only saying it's amazing because of some agenda. If it gets so-so reviews, you'll say it's flat-out awful and the worst thing to ever happen to gaming. Either way, it'll help you sleep at night.
In a few years, when you finally pick up a VR headset, you'll kick yourself for being so closed-minded. But you'll never admit to it.
VR isn't going to replace monitor gaming. It'll be another way to game, with its own types of games. If you want to play those games, you'll need to pick up the hardware for them. It's literally that simple.
Drayth wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 15:11:
And yes there are VR games that work with M&KB. Those are generally all games that have 2D modes as well.
Wolfen wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 10:51:jacobvandy wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 09:00:
How can you have actually tried VR and not understand that handheld controllers are a part of the package for a reason? Keyboard and mouse can't track your hand motions in 3D space, it's a bunch of buttons and a 2D pointer...
Depends on the game doesn't it? If it's just an FPS shooter like Serious Sam, or Alien Isolation, Resident Evil, those are all primarily controller based and could technically work with a Mouse and Keyboard. Seated VR experiences.
WaltC wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 12:54:
Anyway, if people wanted the kind of "immersion" VR markets and touts, it's my belief that people would have been strapping their televisions to their faces long ago...;)
Retired wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 00:32:
Well, we have been talking about HL3 for how many years? So yea sure, but please, tell me how the 3D movie thing went........weren't we supposed to have it in every home?
VR doesn't interest me in the least right now. It is not that I do not like it, I think it is cool, it just isn't where I want it to be to invest time and money into it.