This week's piece is a short one I'm afraid. Busy building the site, filming 'DOODLIN' our new mini feature where Jamie F and I attempted to discuss the important points of what we do, but mostly ended up doodling poop on dicks - Check it out in the Crows Nest later...
So, what am I gonna write about? My rather short lived interest in VR...
Along with a lot of you I expect, I was caught up in the CES 2016 announcements of VR units, specifically the consumer release of the Oculus Rift finally. Then I saw that price, 440GBP - hot damn that's a lot for any monitor, agree? Granted, it is a bit fancier tech-wise than the average monitor, but essentially that's all it is.
So that got me thinking, I wonder if it's really worth that money and can it be done cheaper? Bit of Google later, and I found it can be done on the cheap. There's a whole underground world for it that's been around for a couple of years already and I'm quite late to the party. Shit. Thought I was on to something...
(Now something I can't afford to go into detail on right now is a project of mine to build a copycat of the oculus from the same (or actually some better) parts for a hell of a lot less money - more on that once it's done.)
So, 17 quid later, I'd bought myself a pretty decent headset from BoboVR. It lets you put your phone in it and use that as the screen - with some freeware; Trinus Gyre you can stream your game to your phone and use the phones' gyro to track head movement. Now, i'm not saying it's perfect, far from it, and it's not comfortable to wear for extended amounts of time, but putting that to one side, it was impressive, as was GoogleCard's limited but entertaining apps.
Put it this way, for 17 quid (English pounds for those that don't know what a quid is) I wasn't disappointed. But it wasn't worth further investment. Even when I got over the motion sickness - something that didn't hit me that badly, but definitely had moments of feeling a bit clammy and heaving wouldn't have been far behind if I didn't eject from the headset.
Two things I did notice though, the industry aren't developing for it in any serious method, Star Citizen for instance, supporting TrackIR then not, then they are again, then they remove the 3D support from the CryEngine settings... It's a bit of a luxury that dev's just don't seem to want to spend time on. Then to the studios that are developing towards the Oculus - they're already reaching a stale, unoriginal take on how to use it - FPS's and Horror hallways are already a generic convention, selling more on the experience than the quality of the game - and I fear that will be VR's downfall.
Told you it was a short one. I gotta go on this point. Will recap on this once the Oculus is out I expect.
So, what am I gonna write about? My rather short lived interest in VR...
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| Living on a diet of A and Circle buttons still results in man boobs it seems... |
Along with a lot of you I expect, I was caught up in the CES 2016 announcements of VR units, specifically the consumer release of the Oculus Rift finally. Then I saw that price, 440GBP - hot damn that's a lot for any monitor, agree? Granted, it is a bit fancier tech-wise than the average monitor, but essentially that's all it is.
So that got me thinking, I wonder if it's really worth that money and can it be done cheaper? Bit of Google later, and I found it can be done on the cheap. There's a whole underground world for it that's been around for a couple of years already and I'm quite late to the party. Shit. Thought I was on to something...
(Now something I can't afford to go into detail on right now is a project of mine to build a copycat of the oculus from the same (or actually some better) parts for a hell of a lot less money - more on that once it's done.)
So, 17 quid later, I'd bought myself a pretty decent headset from BoboVR. It lets you put your phone in it and use that as the screen - with some freeware; Trinus Gyre you can stream your game to your phone and use the phones' gyro to track head movement. Now, i'm not saying it's perfect, far from it, and it's not comfortable to wear for extended amounts of time, but putting that to one side, it was impressive, as was GoogleCard's limited but entertaining apps.
Put it this way, for 17 quid (English pounds for those that don't know what a quid is) I wasn't disappointed. But it wasn't worth further investment. Even when I got over the motion sickness - something that didn't hit me that badly, but definitely had moments of feeling a bit clammy and heaving wouldn't have been far behind if I didn't eject from the headset.
 |
| Aww Yiss 3D porn |
Two things I did notice though, the industry aren't developing for it in any serious method, Star Citizen for instance, supporting TrackIR then not, then they are again, then they remove the 3D support from the CryEngine settings... It's a bit of a luxury that dev's just don't seem to want to spend time on. Then to the studios that are developing towards the Oculus - they're already reaching a stale, unoriginal take on how to use it - FPS's and Horror hallways are already a generic convention, selling more on the experience than the quality of the game - and I fear that will be VR's downfall.
Told you it was a short one. I gotta go on this point. Will recap on this once the Oculus is out I expect.
