Half Life Alyx should have been VR's big moment.

Yeah there haven’t been much weight put behind VR yet, so it’s a bit premature to say what I did I guess. If some of the best studios really tried I’m sure they could do awesome things in VR.

never mind i was planning on looking at intel but it's not even competivive with ryzen at the moment, so i just gave up :)

Lol, all good. Thanks for trying.

yeah seems like you got the best/price performance already down with your setup. however the rtx 2060 is considerably cheaper than the super version, so if you want to save like a 100$ , that's not such bad tradeoff, price/performance wise.

but again i caught myself on a mistake, you can't trust really google for everything, the fake info is everywhere

on doom eternal it does surpass 6gb vram on 4k, allthough i doubt this will ever be an issue since the 2060 super is not going to be able to run 4k doom eternal on highest setings anyway, for vr that is, since you're going to be running at 54 fps.

the rift s is running at 80 hz, and frankly that's not a high fps for vr anyway. 54 fps will be barf central.

so yeah the rtx 2060 seems to be the best price/performance. You'll get a bit more performance with the super, but not 100 bucks worth of performance. far from that actually.

Vita memory cards sure did :P

But will anybody care? I don't think I've ever seen anybody say that they're not interested in VR because of a lack of software. Rather, the overwhelming majority of customers -- including gamers, who are the primary target market -- simply aren't interested in playing games that way.

It's like the 3D television phenomenon all over again. It wasn't a lack of hardware and content that caused it to fail. Rather, it was simply a lack of interest.

Exactly, i dont have interest in playing games that way... anytime i bring it up on these forums the VR fans just say that im lying and its because i cant afford it lmao!!

well nobody saying that you should have interest in vr , but that 's not what your thread was about was it.

@commander: the thread is about how VR will remain niche for many more years because the majority of gamers dont have interest in it.

@dzimm: Bingo.

Calling someone who's gamed for 30yrs a casual is a new insane way to spin it. There is a reason you VR people are referred to as nutjobs.

VR is not successful though, the hottest one on the market is owned by less than 5% of PS customers.

There are more factors why VR is failing other than price, most of the games are glorified tech demo's, wiring everywhere, you look like an idiot using it.

VR will always be niche if it lasts that is.

5 million psvr headsets and a couple of million pcvr headsets is not niche for something that is in this early stage of development and/or that is so expensive.

If it was that niche , sony wouldn't even bother with a second headset.

the hottest one is the worst one and gimped in many ways. and it's only hot because it's accesible, now imagine how many will sell if it's actually a good headset like the psvr2.

and yeah many games are tech demos but there a couple of good ones, it is not failing it is growing. It was already 2017 when the first headset that was actually not handicapped, the oculus cv1, came at an acceptable price, and that was still 450 bucks and you still needed an expensive pc.

sure if the cost remained this high it will stay niche, but that's just not going to happen, and more games will be made/ported for it.

people aren't interested in vr for various reasons, but a lot more people are interested than you make it out be , you would be surprised how lack of interested and money goes hand in hand, and sure you might be able to afford it, and not be interested but that's not really an argument now is it. Maybe you should look on more populated forums like reddit, and see how much interest there is, this while it is still very expensive.

Go to any dedicated forum, and you'll find "lots" of people interested in that particular topic. That doesn't prove anything.

Big brain article

Biggest brainer article.

This response is bullshit, you said to me console meh only 100 million sold and there's 8 billion people then go on to say what 7 million VR units is not niche, but if we use the same criteria you did for consoles its more than 10x worse lol.

Also they have been making VR games for decades, that's means its not in its "early" stages LOL.

You VR shills are nutjobs, its as simple as that.

I went to Daytona Beach for spring break in 1992, and I remember passing a tent with Duke Nukem VR which was running a modified version of Duke Nukem 3D. The headsets were huge and had to be tethered above the player because they were too heavy to wear comfortably, but they had stereoscopic displays and head-tracking. I forget how player movement and shooting was handled (I didn't actually try it myself), but the fact is, the technology to make VR possible in one form or another has been around for at least 30-years. It's just that the vast majority of consumers are simply not interested in playing games that way.

the difference is that vr now works, back then it didn't work, not enough resolution and framerates, and screen technology wasn't good enough either.

consoles for the consumer have been around since the seventies, vr for home use is around since when, end 2015?

and it's considerably more expensive.

@uninspiredcup said:

Big brain article

Biggest brainer article.

It's funny that you mention this, when I first got my oculus rift cv1, it got with two free games, robo recall and dead and buried.

Dead and buried is a western lore based shooter game and you play duels over maps in 2 vs 2, you spawn somewhere in the map, and you are stuck to your position, but you can move around in your immediate area.

Now I was completely ready for this , sitting behind a rock and hiding , then popping my head out to aim,

there was a guy who headshotted me everytime, with a pistol. When I asked him how this was even humanly possible, he said he spend a lot of time on the shooting range with real guns. Of course he was an american :)

Well I didn't have any experience with that, and that makes a world of difference, the sniper rifle was easier tho.

sound like it doesn't it.

before alyx released it was going to be a shitty tech demo from a garbage tier developer, a barnacle shooter, worse than mobile games. since those predictions didn't age well we've now moved to a guy claiming "alyx was the topic of conversation for exactly one day" and therefore vr will remain niche for another decade or two as a being a "nice take." expecting alyx, in less than a month and whilst we're in the middle of a global pandemic and potentially the worst recession in generations, to create some demonstrable astronomical surge in vr hardware purchasing / usage is as misguided as those initial predictions of how alyx would turn out

Yeah normal people such as the majority of gamers want to play normal games not VR, the problem is that you CAN'T convince the VR nutjobs on here, they're pretty much at cult status and refute all facts and invent their own.

I mean imagine saying VR is in its early stages LOL.

i learned the term "pancake games" by getting on these forums, I had no idea what they were talking about "pancake" games wtf is that. Its basically the term VR gamers gave games with controller/inputs and a screen. Its a term for basically all the other games that exist that are not VR. It reminds me of when someone told me what "cis gendered" meant, Its basically a term they give to all the people who identify with the sex they were born as.

Cisgender and Pancake Games, these words do the same thing but different topics.

Yeah there's some other shit they call us normal gamers, flat earthers or something stupid like that.

Have you noticed how crazy these people are, they thought that HL would turn the tide, instead of seeing it as the fat man known as Gabe just wanted to flog his own VR device and some on here bought it hook line and sinker, and now that Alyx is over back to reality they go playing normal games again LOL.

@scirefeci: By Microsoft AR device, do you mean the HoloLens? That's too expensive.

So far, the only real AR success story is Pokemon Go on mobile. But that's still better than nothing, which is still the case for VR gaming so far.

The waning interest in VR is basically history repeating itself, as that's what happened in the '90s. VR may very well be the future, but it's certainly not the present.

@dzimm: Duke Nukem 3D came out in 1996, not 1992. So the year you're recalling must've been at least 1996.

1996 happens to be the same year I first played VR at a SegaWorld arcade. It was a mind-blowing experience back then, because I had no clue what head-tracking was. It made it feel like you just entered a virtual world. But that novelty factor eventually wore off, hence the decline of VR in the '90s (and then history repeated itself again in the 2010s).

VR headsets are too expensive for mass market appeal, it's going to be a niche device. As the tech gets cheaper, it will get better. The lessons learned from half life vr will be used later. It probably is a big moment for VR, even if the gameplay looks super shallow like most vr games once you get over the parlor trick.

It IS PC VR’s big moment.

It isn't waning though, sales of headsets skyrocketed to the point there wasn't enough, with many preorders backlogued for 8+ weeks. As mentioned above coronavirus was an unpredictable event that hasn't helped matters, many companies have just straight up delayed products.

Valve was more interested in the technology than mass sales in the first place, had they interest in just getting as big a net-market as possible, something like Counterstrike would have made far more sense as many people latched onto Hallife primarily for Counterstrike, with it constantly being the, or one of, top FPS player count for decades.

The actual most popular VR title is Pavlov, which is literally Counterstrike, Halflife will be a strong seller, and probably continue to be a strong seller due to it's positive review scores as the go-to entry title, but it's still a game that lacks longevity, at least without taking into account modding.

Yes, I just realized I got the year wrong. I did attend spring break in 1992, but that's obviously not where I saw Duke Nukem VR. It was probably at a state fair or something in 1997 or 98 because I distinctly remember it being housed in a large, white tent.

I suppose it's in its "early stages" only in the sense that game developers still can't really figure out what to do with it, or how to make more people care about it. As the OP points out, Half-Life: Alyx was supposed to be VR's big moment, and while it does appear to have been a success within the VR niche, everybody else has pretty much ignored it. And it's not because the average gamer can't afford the hardware. PC gamers regularly spend hundreds of dollars a year upgrading their systems, so they have the money to spend. They're just not spending it on VR.

"Skyrocketed" ... that's a very relative term. As I recall, the Steam survey figures for VR went from like 1.1% before Alyx was announced to 1.3% after, which is around a 75% increase, and I suppose it could be considered "skyrocketing" sales, but in terms of raw numbers, you're still talking less than 400,000 Steam users who even own a VR headset, and even fewer who actively use it. The fact that Alyx peaked at around 40,000 concurrent users shortly after release is further evidence of just how insignificant the VR market really is. People keep saying that a company is eventually going to produce a cheap headset that will be embraced by the masses, but economics doesn't work that way. Prices won't come down appreciably until demand goes up significantly, and that's simply not happening.

@dzimm said:

"Skyrocketed" ... that's a very relative term.

Which will no doubt be specified down to a narrative serving negative.

I think this is an important step for VR. Alyx is a high-profile, VR-only game which overall received really good scores.

As usual the doom and gloom for the platform is heralded by people who aren't interested in something different and are salty because they don't like the fact that experiences are being crafted for a device they don't want.

I'll be getting a Valve Index in the next few months so I'll be able to see for myself.

the term pancake games is just used because it's easily referred to when talking about vr and non vr in vr discussion. It is not a derogatory term to see games on flat screen as inferior.

That's also not the space vr is willing to occupy, and certainly not at this point in time, maybe if headset are the size of sunglasses of contact lenses and even then, it will still be used to play on a tv projected in your living room. Heck it might very well be people still prefer real tv's as well then.

either way I play a lot more on my tv than on my vr. which is still the case with the vast majority of vr users.

That doesn't mean that vr isn't a great experience for a lot of people.

I'm honestly OK with VR taking this long to catch on.

Lasting change takes time; it would be terrible for millions of people to get a headset, get a kick out of it for 15 minutes, then toss it aside like any other fad.

But as long as the trend continues upward, I am happy with the way it has been going.

No they don't, hence why the most common GPU is still the GTX1060, a midrange GPU from 4 years ago. The PC gamers upgrading every year are the ones who own VR.

AMD Rx mid range cards still max out every game at 1080p still.

NVIDIA are very anti consumers.

you don't need a valve index to experience vr, I have a oculus cv 1 and it's great and much much cheaper

@dzimm: I think we'd need to look back like a year from now to see the impact. I know multiple people who are using their stimulus checks to buy a Valve Index

Gamers should be using their stimulus checks from something else than gaming. Do they have bills to pay?

@onesiphorus: I don't interrogate them about their financial situation and secondly it's to stimulate the economy and keep it rolling.

the focus on roomscale is what holding vr back... most people don't want to move around just to play video games... I gave my oculus rift away because I hated how unsupported seated play was.. only a few games and devs take in account that some will play there game seated and gave great options to do so but most half-assed it by just adding a height adjustment. I might give vr a try again but only when I see more devs thinking about the seated vr gamer

The only two games I own that require room-scale to be played properly is Superhot and Serous Sam VR. Both of which can largely be played standing in place.

Even stuff like Creed can be played pretty much standing in one place.

I also partially played this (Alyx) on my second through laying down in bed.

Not sure what games you bought, but very few of the games I own actually do require it.

Making a game (when applicable) without basic accessibility options is just straight up stupid.

standing and seated is still a major difference. I never play seated but I thought all games supported this, after all, all you need is like snap turn or analog stick turnning, I don't think i've seen a game without any of these options.

Such a shame, I’d buy this day one if it came out for my X1X, but I’m not about to buy a VR device for this. I looked at a video and I don’t think this would be possible with a standard controller. I’ll admit though, the tech and immersion looks cool. But I have no interest in wearing a helmet to game. None.

Eh, I get use to either. Generally aren't actually physically walking, so artificial height after a few mins becomes as natural as as standing. And if sitting on the comp chair can swivel anyways.

Only issue is when laying in bed and something requires literally bending down, which can occasionally lead to having to actually get up, which for me is no biggie, but if you're in a wheel-chair or whatever, probably a biggie.

Alyx is definitely designed for room scale. Seated mode is really glitchy (I got stuck in the enviroment a few times, and lifting up those shutters is really janky). There's not even a crouch toggle keybinding in the options menu. You have to go into SteamVR control config and create a crouch toggle button. It's not unplayable in seated mode, but it's nowhere near as polished as Boneworks seated mode which is literally perfect.

In Boneworks you control your height with the right analog stick. But it's not a toggle, it's like analogue. So there's a full range of movement from crouching to standing on your tip toes. In Alyx it's either standing or crouching. You can't peek over cover from a crouched position without physically getting up from the chair, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of playing seated.