3 major PC graphics engines now free, plus VR for Christmas

[J T]

It was recently unveiled that Epic's Unreal Engine 4 will be free.
Valve also announced that the Source 2 Engine will be free.
And now Unity 5 will also be a free engine.

Damn! Things are looking good for content developers, which in turn looks good for us gamers (though there is also going to be a deluge of crap games now that these programs are readily available).

On top of that, Valve have announced that they have teamed up with HTC to make the new (re)Vive headset. This is their competition against Facebook's Oculus Rift and Samsung's Gear VR. The dream of the 90s is alive!

I think this pretty much means that PCs are going to dominate the gaming market in the coming years.

[noiseredux]

I still have no interest in VR gaming, but the free (like free free) graphics engine stuff has been great and exciting news. Give the developers the tools and let them create = more chance for great games.

[J T]

Some of the newer VR gives an uncanny degree of immersion and telepresence now that they have better control over lag, higher fidelity wide screens, and enhanced head tracking. These things are also reducing the nausea factor.

Even if VR doesn't deliver on its grandiose larger visions, at a minimum it reduces your distraction while playing. It's kind of like the difference from playing in windowed mode vs. full screen, except that VR is like full screen for all of your peripheral vision. It's also amazing that when you pair it with noise cancelling headphones, it really tricks you into feeling like you are in another world. This level of telepresence is so powerful that VR was used at the hospital I worked in last year to help burn victims tolerate the routinely painful debriding required as part of their rehabilitation. The research suggests that VR is as powerful (if not more powerful) analgesic than morphine. You can read more about it here:

http://depts.washington.edu/hplab/resea ... l-reality/

[TEKTORO]

Crazy, crazy shit. I know a few Devs and Modders who are more than ecstatic. This model is literally a game changer, and in the grand scale of things this is an act of love and passion for the community not your typical greedy corporation bullshit ruining the industry. This will revitalize the the industry standards and put the fun back into the hobby. Fuck the money it comes and goes let's keep alive future of true gaming by doing this.

Gamers are a vast bunch, who are passionate, supportive, super smart and a necessary part of a company's growth. We have been alienated with business models such as EA and UBi and this kinda stops that in its tracks if you have gamers making games for gamers.

[Anapan]

Cool news! Maybe I'm short-sighted, but I'm pretty excited about someone using one of those engines and incorporating it into PS1 emulation so I can play Jumping Flash! and Ghost in the Shell with an Oculus Rift using hacked patch codes for the games to allow camera control with it's accelerometers. Having a WIP PS1 plugin set up, even with software rendering resolution would sell it for me.

I see the whole "scene" being like the support for those open handhelds (GP2X/Dingoo). The innovative as well as the ports and development platforms take a certain mass-market affordable change before they really take off. This does sound like hump is starting to be crested, tho to be honest this type of thing at this point still looks and sounds to me like a gimmick rather than a marketable platform for development.
Not that it is a gimmick - just it doesn't have enough mass-market consumers to even consider the hardware worth a purchase.

[isiolia]

I think this pretty much means that PCs are going to dominate the gaming market in the coming years.

Sony has a headset too, and those engines are multi-platform. I don't doubt we'll see a lot of experiments on PC though. MS (and others) have augmented reality stuff in the works too, which might make for some interesting projects (even if I always just immediately jump to Dennō Coil )

Personally, I'm thrilled at the prospect of working VR. It's cool to see so much effort going towards it.