Oculus Rift completely lives up to the hype

[Krejlooc]

Just WOOOOOOOW. I refrained from spewing my breathless praise for the device when I first got it, expecting the after glow to fade. but, weeks later, it still hasn't. In fact, as I've begun actual development with the unit, my fervor for the thing is actually increasing. Yes, I tried VR back in the early 90's at malls. I actually owned a VFX1 and played quake and descent on the thing. The rift is different, the rift actually works. It's unlike any other VR device I've ever used, in that is actually delivers on the promise of immersion. It's a combination of a bunch of small things that winds up feeling so much greater than the sum of their parts - the way the lenses bend the image around your head in particular makes you really feel like you're there.

I won't bore with a breakdown of the demos I've tried. If you're interested in this stuff, you've either already read about them, or can google "oculus rift" and pull up any of the hundreds of impressions people have posted online. Rather, I wanted to share the single biggest "wow" moment I've experienced thus far, the moment that, more than anything else, proved to me that this is a fundamentally different type of immersion.

The experience, naturally, comes from Half Life 2 VR. Of all the games and demos and apps available right now, none of them come close to touching Half Life 2 VR. It's no stretch of the imagination to call Half Life 2 VR the best consumer VR application ever available. It is very obviously a learning experiment for valve, definitely more of a mod than a full, stand alone application. But, even in its current state, it's the best VR has to offer. Valve has gone through the 3 games and made small tweaks left and right, figuring out what does and doesn't work in VR, to deliver a full game experience. An example would be the intro to the game - having the G-man right in your eyes is physically painful. Valve apparently realized this, and rotated the camera so he's behind you. It's a quick and dirty fix - you can still turn around in your chair and look behind you and see him right up close and hurt your eyes. But the point is that it's not supposed to be elegant - HL2 itself isn't designed for VR, the point is that valve has identified a problem with VR and come up with a quick solution so that, in their future games designed specifically for VR, they can avoid that pitfall.

It's all exciting stuff. What makes their game so beyond anything else currently available is just how many things HL2 tries to do at once, and how well it does them all. Like I said before, it's a whole is greater than the sum of the parts situation. HL2, for example, has tremendous scale - everything is scaled pretty accurately. Scale suddenly matters - it's very unrealistic to feel like you're waist high and everyone else is 11' tall. HL2 mas natural-sized halls, doors, buildings, and people. The moment you meet Alyx Vance is truly remarkable, as the scale makes the experience mindblowing. She looks so real - not in visuals, but in terms of animation and scale and just everything. When you're laying on the floor and she stands over you to pick you up, she looks right. She doesn't look towering, she looks about 5' 5" tall, kneeling over you. The twitch of her eyes is pretty incredible, the way you suddenly notice how she looks you in the eye fleetingly, how you can see her glance away during moments of the conversation, breaking eye contact, in a show of submission. These are all details I never noticed before in my numerous playthroughs of the game, and suddenly, in VR, they're all I can see.

But where it's truly mindblowing is the gameplay. Half Life 2 VR can work with a pair of Razer Hydras to decouple camera and gun pointer. That is, I can look one direction, while my gun is pointing off screen (and hence, my crosshair is also offscreen) and fire in that direction without looking. It may not sound impressive, but when it works together, it's a very powerful feeling.

The first moment where it all came together and just blew me away came very early on in the game, during my first combat with the combine. I was running forward, with my gun facing forward, when I got shot by someone offscreen. First of all, getting shot in VR, for reasons I can't explain or understand, gives me enough visual feedback to know precisely from where I was hit. I've always had a problem in FPS games where it's hard for me to gauge precisely what direction and orientation blind fire is coming from. I'm guessing it's a combination of the way my head moved in VR, the red glow on the edge of the screen, and perhaps some other visual cues I can't finger, but when I got shot, I knew instantly from where I was being attacked: I was being flanked by a combine on a roof to my left. Instinctively, I turned my head in that direction and spotted the enemy. When I turned my head, my gun kept facing forward, meaning my crosshair, by this point, had left my viewing area and was facing off screen perpendicular to my gaze.

After spotting the enemy, I pulled the gun across my body to his direction and fired without stopping. BAM. Hit him right in the head, and down he went. It was so smooth, it required no thought. It was only in retrospection that I realized just how amazing what I had done was. I was having my hand tracked in 3D, 360 degrees around my body. Without thinking, I was able to navigate a crosshair off screen into the window of space I was looking at, approximate location and direction, and fire off a shot. All instinctively. There was no fumbling around, no trying to figure out "where" my view was relative to the crosshair. There was no moment where I had to translate what I wanted to do into some arbitrary motions, no "move this thumbstick left then up" moments. None of that. My eyes took in where the guy was, and told my hand where to point. All done independently of each other. And, the most important thing, t worked. The entire campaign thus far has been filled with moments like that, where you're doing incredible shit with ease just because, finally, the motions are natural.

Believe the hype. Oculus rift is amazing, even in this clearly prototype form.

[Pulsar_t]

Thanks for the first-hand impressions. I hope it picks up among PC gamers. Will the API support all future games or does it need to be coded on a per-game basis?

[J T]

I believe. I have yet to play it, but everything I've read about the Oculus Rift has me fully excited for the future.

[lisalover1]

I want a Rift, but I'm waiting for the announced HD version to be released.

[fastbilly1]

Good to hear. I am still not sold on it, but am getting closer. Playing Mechwarrior with the Steel Battalion sticks and an Oculus Rift would be awesome.

[avrame]

Good to hear. I am still not sold on it, but am getting closer. Playing Mechwarrior with the Steel Battalion sticks and an Oculus Rift would be awesome.

Have you heard of Hawken by chance? They announced they will be getting Oculus Rift support at launch, and if you haven't heard of the game, you might cream yourself at the idea of playing it with the Rift

http://www.gamesradar.com/hawken-get-oc ... rt-launch/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMxdgOAw_yA

[fastbilly1]

Good to hear. I am still not sold on it, but am getting closer. Playing Mechwarrior with the Steel Battalion sticks and an Oculus Rift would be awesome.

Have you heard of Hawken by chance? They announced they will be getting Oculus Rift support at launch, and if you haven't heard of the game, you might cream yourself at the idea of playing it with the Rift

http://www.gamesradar.com/hawken-get-oc ... rt-launch/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMxdgOAw_yA

I am very familiar with Hawken, but it is more of a FPS/TPS than a sim.

[Menegrothx]

http://visualnovelaer.fuwanovel.org/201 ... for-reals/
NSFW, but nothing too graphic

3d-so-long.jpg (62.78 KiB) Viewed 1252 times

[jinx]

Buying one to:
Get drunk/nauseated in Minecraft.

[Sasha_Blue]

http://visualnovelaer.fuwanovel.org/201 ... for-reals/
NSFW, but nothing too graphic

3d-so-long.jpg

lol, I heard they wanted to use it for porn too. I would like to get one, it would be great to play Doom on it.