I am 42 years old, play Videogames since C64 and VR is the only way for me to play Games now... Playing Modded Skyrim, Euro Truck sim, or No man's sky it's so different to flat gameing. The immersion, the scale, the feeling you really in this worlds and interacting with your hands instead pressing Buttons is awesome! Or simply playing table Tennis against people around the World is so cool...
38 been playing since using cassette tapes in the BBC microcomputer but got a Q3 instead of PS5 because with some exceptions flat games feel so tired to me. Same formulas, remakes, sequels, remasters, live service money machines just so lifeless now. VR feels fresh again like the early days of 3D
I'm 60 and started gaming in '82. Got bored of 2D gaming about 15 years ago. I got tired of viewing incredible worlds through a small window, where there is no sense of scale or immersion. VR got me back into gaming. Being 'inside' incredible worlds is way beyond 2D gaming in ways 2D gamers can never understand until they try it. Still waiting on SAO's version of full dive gaming. Probably won't be alive for that though.
I have these other guys beat. 62 years old and have been playing VR since 2012. I love it. It is my passion. Dev kit 1, Dev Kit 2, oculus rift, valve index, quest 2 now quest 3 and PSVR2 as you can see I am crazy for it and have played EVERYTHING. I think we need to school the guy who made this video.
Isolating Experience: You can cast the Quest to a Chromecast device. This is wonderful for sharing the experience. My kids helped me throughout my full play of Moss. They love watching my play Mini Golf. And, there's a multiplayer game called Acron: Attack of the Squirrels (NOTE the first word. It is Acron, NOT Acorn). One player is in VR as a tree, defending it's nuts (hur-hur), and everyone else plays on iPads, controlling the Squirrels! Absolute hilarity! Plus, you only need to pay for the VR client! The mobile side is FREE! And, while it's most fun playing in the same room, there's no reason you can't be the tree in your house and friends across the world can jump into your game from their homes!
You can potentially cast to any TV or monitor, not only Chromecast devices, right? When I play VR games from steam and my friends are around, they just look at my TV to share my experience. The thing is, that all this is just not user friendly yet, and it allways requires some configuration from the user and not everyone knows how to cast to a TV or how to install mods (A must for games like Beat saver!).
Davigo is another great game that only the person in VR needs to purchase. VR player is a head and giant hands trying to smash and throw stuff at the other players and everyone else is playing a fast paced 3rd person shooter trying to take you out with rockets, jet packs and a hammer
I love VR. Bought a Quest 3 a few months back and it was my first VR experience. I absolutely love it. First game I played was Red Matter 2 and I was blown away by how immersive it was. The games are fantastic, but as time passed I learned to appreciate the other parts of VR. Like sitting on a virtual cinema and watching a movie on a huge screen. But even replaying games I played on a flatscreen in VR like Subnautica allows you to really appreciate the scale of the game. Size and scale isn't something you fully comprehend in gaming until you play VR. And there is something a little bit more daunting about hearing the echoes of some undersea monster bellowing from the depths below in VR.
I feel ya. I have a quest 3 as well. Red Matter 2 was amazing! Huberis and Asgards Wrath are really good as well. I just finished Assassin's Creed Nexus and that was a banger as well. I'm currently playing a game called Fracked which is a great adrenaline rush and I'd strongly recommend. I only play VR now due to the incredible experience I get that I just can't get from flat screen gaming anymore.
tbh, I love vr because it literally scratches that itch when I was a little kid playing a game where everything was fascinating, once u get used to being in the headset. U get used to game boundaries and it actually feels as if ur playing a game within it. I just love it man, makes gaming 10x more fun especially with friends.
Agreed, once you have played long enough to just play games and not constantly looking at the limitations of a headset, you really get to enjoy VR much better. Helps once you've got your VR legs which takes some patience too.
U have no VR friends. 😢 seriously. I am raving on about VR and everyone who used it is like „dude this is awesome!“ but nobody pulled the trigger up till now even though they are fascinated by the opportunities
Not just that, VR gaming made me explore a game world carefully because everything is right in front of you. Playing HL2 and RE2 in VR is a different experience compared to flat screen. I got to appreciate the random clutters around the game map.
I recommend getting a Quest 3 with a big comfy third party headstrap. The display is great, the mixed reality brings an extra element to some games and wireless capability is awesome 👍
The bomb defusal game "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes" is pretty good for playing together with one in VR and others physically present. Puzzles games might also satisfy that desire to include family, when you cast it to a screen. Cyan, the makers of Myst, have heavily embraced VR. Myst was treated like a co-op game back in '93, their games are still good for this. (Myst VR, Riven VR, Obduction, Firmament)
It's too bad there weren't more games like Astros Playroom (I think that's what it was called) where it was 4 people on controllers VS the one in VR. Those mini games really proved the concept. Besides keep talking and no one explodes, I can't think of many other couch co-op VR games. Only the Astro Bot game in VR worlds
Ohhh i have so much to say! 1. My partner was huge into vr before we started dating and soon after he "upgraded his headset" (bought me a headset essentially) and i LOVE playing together - we used to play the rec room quest games - there is nothing more team building than literally slaying evil beings together. But of course unless it is a pasison spending close to -if not over- $1000 to play games is totally unsustainable. 2. You need space for vr - most people i know that might be suitable for vr live in small apartments. There's one game that was so fun but we've only ever played once - it's like hide and seek and you shoot the other person when you find them... but we have only played that once because you need a literal tennis court size to play (we went to a hotel that had a tennis court and accessed it at like 8 at night, running around with headsets on, shooting each other - it was such a ball!) 3. This one is bad. I strictly do not play with strangers because the first time i did i had voice on (i am a woman) and was immediately "groped" by another player while he said some hugely inappropriate things. Vr is visceral, that's sort of the point. And that was a really negative experience to me because i was so new to vr. I had to take the headset off and didnt tell my partner why at first. I know it's all jokes but man i do not want that, it felt so yuck. And because of that i miss out on some really cool games. Majority of the vr community are swell, i am sure, but there are also immature creeps - i avoid them in real life, i avoid them on vr. 4. Idk if this has any grounds in neuroscience but my partner could play VR for hours and never got the motion sickness, etc. But we went on a boat once and he was immediately keeled over vomiting. I wondered if the vr assimilation had something to do with it because they are sort of opposite experiences, y'know? So does vr acclimation = worse seasickness? 5. we havent played recently but this video reminded me of how fun it is - might charge up the ol headsets tonight! Thank you, Wheezy
Hey, I've got a pretty similar story haha I upgraded to a quest 3, but basically just gave it to my gf. She didn't like any single player games so far, but she likes playing stuff together. I'm curious if you could share what that "hide and seek" game is? We're in a small apartment, but we already found a big space where we can play sometimes haha
#4... interestingly, I've found that VR helps CURE motion sickness. I used to get sick riding in cars, but when I play VR for a while, it's like I develop an immunity to motion sickness for a while. I too haven't played VR much lately, so the motion sickness is coming back. I also need to charge up the headset.
I play VR games a lot and stream them. I usually play as female avatars even though i'm a man. I've had people come up to me assuming i'm female and have said some really terrible things to me as well. I have found a great community of VR players through games we've played and the discord servers they have made. Most of them are women with very specific rules for playing with them as they stream games as well. We all help each other police our community as best we can and really have a great time playing together.
My favorite part in NMS is simply next to my favorite ship or my base and marveling at it in full natural scale... people playing on TV have absolutely no idea of the scales involved in games
I just wish Co-op was actually cooperative rather than you both having to do all of the same stuff together. Also, for someone who does get motion sickness, forgetting what button to land my spaceship and swerving all over the place crashing into stuff really sucked and I thought I was going to throw up. A visual button on the dashboard to autopilot land would have been nice.
VR is the best thing that has happened to technology since I was born. I would rather give up using my smartphone than my VR headset. And I thought like that even before I started doing videos about it :).
My husband and I LOVE playing Synth Riders in VR and it's been our favourite way to exercise for years. Highly recommend! Plus we can cast it to our TV with Chromecast and watch eachother play. Blade & Sorcery is also so fun to watch others play but our favourite to play as a family is Takelings - one person in VR and 3 on controllers wreaking havoc on eachother. So happy to hear you talk about something we love so much!! 🥰
Been a gamer for 55 years, started on a teletype machine hooked to an audio coupler, connected to the main frame at Locheed. Used it to play computer games online in 1972. Just got into VR finally, 6 months ago. I've shared many of the same observations you've described here. One thing I think you missed (and it may just be a matter of my experience being with Quest 3 instead of Q2) were the introductory app that came with the quest that give you the basics of not just MR, but the hand tracking features. One of the things that (from what I've seen) Quest does better than they other headsets is their hand tracking. While I don't use it for gaming, the ability to directly interact with menus without the controller/light beam is a direct response to one of your early points about the cumbersome interface. I think that game development has stalled out a little, while the new deep pockets player drops some R&D on addressing most the issues you raise at the end of the video. The advances made recently in combating motions discomfort have been substantial. Not just things like vignetting to reduce the effect, but designing games from the beginning to be a more comfortable experience. The downside is that during the new game development lag, the focus has shifted to porting flat screen games to VR. That has been hit and miss, but thanks to PCVR and the PC modding community, we not have incredible experiences like Fallout 4 and Skyrim in full VR, with updated graphics. Great run down! it's always helpful to hear observations made from other viewpoints. Good Gaming! 🤘🧙♂🤘 Rich the Ancient Metal Beast
motion sickness is something you get used to - way easier as a youngster tbh, which is why you don't see they complaining as much and also why they're by far the largest audiences for Quest gaming. we all grew used to motion sickness in games before - I know I did with Wolfenstein in the 90s. Btw, that and Doom are in full VR on Quest thanks to QuestZDoom, as well as fun Doom mods for Zelda and Castlevania NES. but those are 90 games. Like Myst, Riven and 7th Guest, all in VR too. if you need something closer to your 70s era, take a look at Colossal Cave, ported from text adventure to VR by Roberta Williams and husband a year or so ago. Also, VRNoid gets Arkanoid and the og Atari Breakout in good shape as air hockey...
I adore Walkabout Mini Golf! I have every course they've released! The most recent one was Wallace and Gromit licensed. The course takes you all around their house, with lots of hilarious Easter eggs!! Also love Moss, Demeo and Iron Man VR.
Quest 3 is an amazing headset and makes ALL motion sickness go away (I used to get it after about an hour in VR) and the visuals are insanely good. Highly recommend.
i got a psvr during quarantine 2020 and i played it all day, my life CHANGED, astrobot was my first vr game and the cave song (1:11) became one of my core memories in life and i still listen to it almost every day cause its on my playlist
Your VR headache, at least when using the quest 2 comes from the face mount pressure of the default headstrap, if you want a better experience without the headaches, get a halo head strap for it, it's a life saver. The default head strap is god aweful
@@markshellardabsolutely not. It's a disgusting and janky MMO which is also discontinued. Moss is closer to Zelda. As is Journey of the Gods. Asgard's Wrath 2 is closer to BotW in VR, but it's actually more God of War/Skyrim
Best game in vr is catan vr. Its just so nice to sit down and play a board game with people. Most of the time they’re cool people and its just so awesome to meet cool random people and over time those people become friends. Yeah you nailed it. Its awesome i love it but it sucks and there are some huge hurdles to overcome.
Beat Saber was a life saver during covid times! Especially when used with some hacked songs. It seems so designed for Flow experience. I always feel alive, fresh and ready afterwards. Training + Music + Flow. Also it uses nearly light sabers. what is really cool to cut things in half.
VR is absolutely incredible! There's so much more than people know about. Skyrim modded in VR and Half life Alyx are mindblowing. Also, for standalone you have Assassin's Creed Nexus which is incredibly good. Also for people to try I find that casual games are awesome, for example Blade and sorcery or propagation VR You can just cast VR anywhere, as I do with my friends.
One of my favorite VR game is Broken Edge (Fencing duel simulator) by Trebuchet You can be a Musketeer, Samurai, Viking fighting against a Knight, Pirate, Barbarian, etc.
I like how VR is good at helping you focus on the present. As someone who is constantly planning for the future, VR is relaxing for me becuase it forces me to focus on the present for a few hours or however long I'm playing it. And while it's arguable that video games can make you focus on the present, in general, VR immerses you ij the present. Also, I don't blame you for not wanting to socialize much in VR. I used to do that, but I eventually got tired of coming across strangers who were jerks or just generally mean. Now i just use some of the social programs for drinking or dancing in a different environment alone, and it is better than going somewhere irl to do that. Lastly, you mentioned how wonky menus are. They might still be that way on the quest 2, but on newer headsets they can detect where your fingers are and let you use your fingers to "touch" the menu in VR, which can be cool, but im already used to the laser pointer menus lol
I love vr because it is an easy portable monitor which we can watch all sorts of thing in a screen as big as a movie screen. Also we can watch 3d movies or play 3ds game emulated in 3d and this kind of 3d is something really different and exciting. Also if I use quest3 or vision pro I can watch videos comfortably while doing a dish wash.
I have done VR games for a job so I'm biased but I fell in love with VR already in 2017. HL Alyx blew my mind, before that I was mostly playing social games in VR. One of my weird habits is watching movies while laying down completely flat, can't do that with my actual monitor.
@@thatguitarguy99 well I said games but at my last job we did very gamified simulations for companies and now I'm a freelancer doing similar work. Also I'm from Finland, the only companies I know are from here and I wouldn't recommend them unless one lives here.
On a serious note, we really could be using VR as a teaching tool. You could have a virtual lab essentially, it'd probably be a lot more interesting and detailed than any of the current online labs that exist. Currently, it'd be kind of expensive for schools to do anything like this, but I can see this being a staple part of the school experience in the future.
Never thought I would see VR content on this channel! I have the PSVR and recently upgraded to the Quest 3. There really are some amazing experiences that can be had in VR now. Moss and AstroBot are both fantastic though :). The Quest 3 exclusive Asgard's Wrath 2 is a big one. Later this year we will be getting Hitman 3, Behemoth, Metro, Alien and Batman Arkham Shadow, all in VR. It is picking up steam, more mainstream properties are getting invested, and the more people that jump in the better it will be for everyone. I find working out to be one of the things I like the most. It is gamified fitness. No more boring treadmill, I can be in an awesome space-y cyberpunk-y world hitting balls to the beat.
I love VR, but I mostly play one game (A Township Tale), not really about the gameplay, but more about building a community. Because of my work I usually get home in the evenings and VR gives me a way to socialise without going out. As you said, there needs to be more games, but it's going to take a while for it to take off. Asgard's Wrath II was the first nearly-AAA title for standalone, hopefully other studios will follow suit. PCVR has a lot to offer, but you need a headset plus a PC and router powerful enough to run it smoothly.
PCVR is an absolute game changer for VR (pun not intended). I feel that immersive story based games fit VR a lot better than arcade games. Half Life: Alyx is probably the best experience you can get out of VR, with VR mods for Alien Isolation and Portal tie in for a close second. Currently in love with SkyrimVR.
If you have a gaming PC, it opens up a larger selection of games. Can do wired (Link Cable) or wireless (higher latency if no line of contact to router). I recommend Half Life Alyx (with teleporting if desired), Chair in a Room (scary escape room), and the Half Life 2 VR mod.
Almost 6 years VR gamer here. The biggest reason is the immersion of VR. If you play for example Cyberpunk 2077 behind 24 inch screen, you cannot guess well how big the world is. It's harder to imagine it with screen. Once you get VR mod for same game, you have jawdropping moments when looking around. It will sometimes blow your mind. And you're feeling you are inside the world more, way more than desktop gaming. When i played old Half-Life 2 game again with VR mod, i am happy to give headpats to some people. Also going around in VR is much more action, you can burn more energy with it. I can clearly see differences between VR and desktop games. VR makes it even more fun. You say games where you can stay and control it are better. I don't agree, moving around is better in my view. I know yourself is not moving much around, but it's part of immersion. Now talk about your cons. 1. Expensive. Yeah, i understand that. Lucky if you look carefully around, you can get one for 200. And i did it indeed to find cheap headset, because Vive system with lighthouse is expensive almost 6 years ago. Now i am at Quest 3 and still playing every day. 2. Not good games. Half-Life Alyx is high-quality game with great graphics. But this is also done with big budget. Problem with VR games compared to desktop games is much less gamers group. There are millions desktop gamers, but not many VR gamers. This is why many studios cannot invest a lot in VR games. Many VR games looks simple and low graphic. Lucky VRChat has also beautiful worlds to enjoy again VR. So it's not a loss, it needs time to make everything better. This is also why headsets must not too expensive or the VR gamers group will stay small. 3. Sickness/hurt. There i want tell about it. Wearing Q2 and Q3 without 3rd party solutions is not great. If you don't search for solutions, you will only dislike VR headset more. With good 3rd party solutions, you can make it much more comfy so pain will almost gone. I played for long time and i have not experienced a lot pain when wearing headsets for HOURS. Yes, this is very important to look around. Don't stop here. Also good pc is important, good wifi setup, etc. With poor setup, you have faster motion sickness because pc is weak or wifi is unstable. But good pc is not cheap. VR experience is not cheap, that is right. But if you look carefully around and make good decisions, you will thankful for it and enjoy VR more. ALSO! You will have some sickness and pain for first time. This is normal, your mind is not "trained" for it. It will go away after months or faster in weeks. Depends on how sensitive you are. It takes time, don't give up. Make sure your headset is good set and comfy. I have experienced it first time, and i can tell it. Now i have (almost) no problem at all with VR. 4. Interface, well hard to tell about it. Everyone make own interface for VR. It's hard to tell about it, lucky most cases i find the way go around in VR navigation. Standard interface is not easy and might need improvement in future. At least SteamVR is one big interface and that is good. 5. And of course make good VR place is important. 6. Isolation. Well, if you followed Corona time, you noticed VR is exploded there as alternative to reach people. So it's not always isolation, dude. VRChat is one of most known places where you can talk with others. And once you find friends there, it will getting better. There are nice groups to hang out, even many of your friends have no VR headset. I live also alone, i build friendships in VRChat and finally meet a lot people IRL on convention. Isolation is not really issue for me. If you have family with childrens, i can guess it, but you can share view with others, or buy extra headsets, or let them play with you at normal PC. That is possible. VR can used as therapy to overcome isolation too. There are people who are afraid to go out. They can learn to overcome their anxious in VRChat for example. You only need go somewhere. Don't stay there in some games where you can only play solo. Plenty multiplayer games are there to make it less alone. I hope there are better games out in future and need also some good headsets with right price. GPUs will get better and faster, pcs will faster so VR is less problem next months.
I was introduced to VR by my siblings. My brother builds apps for medical companies and he wanted to show me what he works on. We also played Mini golf with our oldest sibling across the country and it was great to all be playing together again after years of living too far away. So I finally got one for our family. The battery only lasts about an hour maybe two. This is a con for sharing it and taking turns but a pro because it does make my eyes tire a lot faster. I can only imagine what it is doing to my kids if they have unlimited time :P Another down side is that I tried the new horizons games and some of the free open apps and there are just a bunch of teens cussing up a storm. I am not comfortable letting my younger kids play in those. It would be like showing up at the playground and seeing a bunch of older kids smoking there. I would go somewhere else. I don't want them influencing my kids that way. I don't let them watch gamers that swear on UA-cam either. So I pretty much just play VR golf with my siblings and Beat Saber. Sometimes I play beat saber with my oldest brother and his son and sometimes we play table tennis. I wish the table tennis would let others come it and watch and take turns too. Another downside is the micro transactions. Golf and Beat Saber made sure we would keep spending money by adding new content and making us pay to access it. It gets expensive but on the positive side I just don't buy it and tell my siblings that now they know what to get me for my birthday 😂
Man I love VR and could talk about it for hours. Me and my girlfriend loved playing No Man's Sky in VR. The VR mode comes free with the base game, so well worth trying out. Oh right, and I just spend 3000+ Euros on upgrading my PC so I could play modded Skyrim VR.
YES!!!! I remember that!!! I had no idea what was going on!!! Forgot it was the Trocadero - forgot the Trocadero was even a thing! Man, London was the bomb back then. But then I was also younger and perhaps didn't know any better!!
Highly recommend Supernatural VR for the Meta Quest 2 and 3! Specifically the boxing part of it! It's a really fun and nice cardio workout that I've become obsessed with since I got my quest 3. Also thanks for shouting out the GOAT astro bot rescue mission!
My fav VR game is Blade and Sorcery, not only is the base game great with sword fighting plus magic in an arena or dungeon but the modding community is amazing. The outer rim Star Wars mod is incredible the mod adds lightsabres, blasters, custom enemies, maps, armour etc. Another amazing VR game that really shows how incredible the tech can be is Half Life: Alyx I loved the level design, and just how immersive the world was to interact with.
I wrote my bachelor degree on VR Social games and its effect on people with social anxiety and autism issues! :) People reported getting more comfortable in social interaction, and that it made it more comfortable and active in talking with people in real life (Not just in VR). For some people, it also made them more physically active. Compared to sitting down and playing videogames, vs moving around/standing to interact with online friends / dancing events etc. For myself as well (which is why I wrote the bachelor thesis on it), it has had a massive positive social impact. I used to be alone, not talking with anyone in real life. Now I actively seek out the weird af people I like to hang out with, Is fun times, weeee. Made a presentation on the thesis I wrote too, can be found searching for "Explaining FURRY VR to NON-FURRIES" uwu anyways I've watched your stuff for a while, you're super motivational and I love your videos AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Best quest games august 2024 (with release years): - asgards wrath 2 (2023) - Resident Evil 4 VR (2021) - Assassins Creed Nexus (2023) - Breachers (2023) - Beat Saber (2017) - Max Mustard (2023) New batman arkham Shadow game and Metro Awakening later this year might also take a spot And if you add pcvr (which quest can also do) - Half Life Alyx (2020) - Star Wars Squadrons (2020) - Lone Echo (2017) and Lone Echo 2 (2022) - Skyrim/Enderal Vr with mods (2018) Seems fine to me Also buy a new headstrap and it will stop hurting lol
I've been into VR since 2017, so 7 years. I started with the Vive and Vive Pro, both of which went to 74mm IPD, which suited me with an IPD of 75mm. I have a Pimax 8KX and a PSVR2 these days, and a very good gaming PC. I never got into stand alone headsets, mostly because Quest didn't cater for large IPD's. I also don't want to support a company that is going down the path of exclusive games, and I have a powerful gaming PC. I got into VR because I like the ability to do extreme things, and where else can you shoot and fight with swords, with out getting hurt. It is immersive, car racing, flight and spaceship games are immense fun. I'm older now, 61, I can't do motocross, racing and rock climbing, like I did in my teen's to 40's. I still ride motorcycles and sidecars, and I go bush walking, just not as reckless as I was in the past, and VR helps with getting the adrenalin rush.
I was getting bored of flat gaming. Got a PSVR2, and my gaming life changed. I also recently buiilt a PC and now love VR in PS5 and PC. Such an amazing experience.
Just got the ps5 VR2 when the big 200$ off sale happened a few weeks ago and I am loving it! A fun game I use to play on ps4 vr that you have was "The Playroom Vr" great for family's to all play together up to 5 people!
I absolutely died at "getting eaten by a baby." I don't know why, but I did not expect there to be zero effort put into the animation of the baby. The square empty mouth just "nomming" on the camera/perspective was top notch comedy.
Also, get a PC, then you have access to ALL the VR games on PC and can stream them to your quest. Some of the best VR games of all time like Half Life Alyx.
my favorite vr game is GRAB and i have been playing it for 2 years and you never get bored because there are hundreds of thousands of levels made the community
Maybe the first step for VR should be similar to the original video games: arcades. No-one was able to buy a full arcade game machine to have at home, but you could go to the arcade, pay a few bucks and play it there, with your friends. A VR arcade would be similar, all the gear is there, with space to play in, and games that take advantage of the space and you can play with your friends etc. Pay ten bucks to play, instead of hundreds for the device. When the technology advances and becomes cheaper and smaller, bring it to homes. Also, with enough space, you can make VR games where you actually walk. The level design just has to be such that you never walk so far in one direction that you hit a wall, but instead you always slightly turn and stay in the play area.
I'm glad you made this, but hot dang, bro. You gotta get on that Meta Quest 3. Way better resolution and lenses. Don't ever get rid of the PSVR1 though. Astro Bot: Rescue Mission is precious and still unsupported on PSVR2.
YOU NEED TO TRY Bonelab because YES! And also Into The Radius which has a like 99% chance of giving you PTSD and otger traumas but it is just SOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOD
I recommend a Quest 3! You get access to metas large library of games, plus you can plug into a Pc and play all the Steam VR games. There are also tons of great games that have been ported to VR such as Minecraft and the old Half Life games. One thing that cannot be explained is how awesome it feels to be in VR. The depth and scale of everything is absolutely incredible.
So cool to see you like VR! I got into it because I do alot of sim racing and once I tried it in VR I was hooked! (all 2d racing games are dead to me) That led me to try things like beat saber , fully modded Skyrim in VR and many many more. I do agree with many of your points. A few things to add.... because it takes a large amount of computer power to run a VR game (you are essentially running it twice at high resolution) alot of games are very simple and don't look very appealing on Quest/Pico (especially on a 2d screen) There's alot of amazing VR games on PC that would blow you away. (not to mention like the Cyberpunk , RDR2 etc mods for VR) I know , on top of an expensive VR headset you also need a pretty powerful PC and before you know it you've spent $2500+. But if you are already in PC gaming its so very worth it. Also to make others part of your experience you can cast your gameplay to any TV or PC so others can see what your doing and can be part of the fun. Especially if you are sharing a headset. Lastly I highly recommend a good aftermarket strap for comfort.
Switchback is so fun on PSVR2 on the PS5! You are on a horror rollercoaster armed with two pistols. If you enjoyed light-gun games i.e. House of the Dead, Time Crisis, etc., then you will enjoy Switchback.
"Hi VR-Sauce, this is Wheezy!" Suspicious music starts in the background 🎶 🎵 "Did you know that VR is awesome? But also, did you know that VR sucks? Here is why..."
Hit the nail on the head. VR will be better in 30-40 years. *Maybe* We're on the path and "good" VR is young, expensive, complex, etc. Get a counter-weight (Velcro a battery bank, or something close to the weight of the headset, onto the back of the strap). Then you can can loosen the strap a little, and you probably won't get those pressure headaches. Also, it helps to have a strap that has a rear cradle, and a forehead plate (3D printed, or buying an aftermarket "strap").
My friend Liza makes a game called Cookie Gardening and it is literally the only reason I care about VR. It's a game where carrots eat cookies and you feed them. They go meep. That's it.
VR motion sickness goes away with time. Your brain needs to adapt. For some people, the motion sickness goes away after a few hours of playing. For unfortunate others, it can take months for the symptoms to completely stop. Also, you wont understand the true potential of VR until you genuinely make friends and have a wonderful time hanging out with someone who is physically on the otherside of the globe. VR can give the sensation that you are next to someone, in the same place, experiencing the same things. And things such as full body tracking, face tracking, and eye tracking can enhance the user's ability to emotionally express themselves. Those features add to the ability to form genuine connections and experiences with people who arent actually next to you. But I'll agree, the technology still has a long ways to go until it becomes mainstream. Still, I see the amazing potential.
Boneworks VR is one of the best VR games I’ve ever played. I had to play it through my pc because there isn’t a standalone quest version but it’s absolutely amazing!
I went to a VR games place once (video on my channel), with several of my friends. I had so much fun, I got my own PSVR2 weeks later. As you said, the time. it takes to set things up, space required, and physicality to games are definitely the main detractors from playing every night or as long as I would play a flat screen game. All that said, VR gaming is much more fun and exciting imo, and can't wait for it to progress.
Blade & Sorcery, Boneworks (and bonelab), modded SkyrimVR, Half Life Alyx, Walking Dead Saints and Sinners, Into the Radius, and modded contractors are all games that I think shouldn't have been excluded from your list of games. You mention that you always introduce people to VR with Space Pirate Trainer. The problem with showing people that game is that it is so simple that people are going to think that it is the same complexity as all of the heavy hitters in VR. There is this stigma with VR where people that aren't interested in it just think that all VR games are tech demos. While VR games haven't been getting very many quality AAA games, there are still plenty of games that are polished and sizeable in length. You mentioned that you don't think there are enough games, and will I agree with that to an extent, there are dozens of games that I think you should have included in your list good VR games. I don't think that the amount of VR games is an issue. I do, however, believe that the lack of coverage of the really great VR games is shooting the platform in the foot. Batman Arkham Shadow, Behemoth, Alien Rogue Incursion, and Metro Awakening are making 2024 shape out to be a good year for VR games.
VR has a pretty big upside that is evolving. I’m using it for educational apps - language learning, science, social studies - really across all learning (I’m obviously biased if you see my user name 😂). The key is to be intentional with what you are doing with the tool.
VR has been my number one hobby since psvr1 launched 7-8 years ago. I bought a $3000 PC and valve index just for VR, nowadays I'm just rocking the Quest 3, but I absolutely love it. I love not just sitting on my ass to game but actually getting up and being fully engaged in the game/app
The one thing VR is truly missing is Light Gun Games! Where are time crisis, house of the dead, virtua cop and the rest! This is the perfect medium to revive those franchises!
blows my mind at how naturally funny you are. I'm convinced it's a form of super intelligence in it's own category. My brother is gifted with it as well. Might also be an Irish thing.
Quest 3 is awseome, because of the MUCH better lenses. Playing sitting down doesn't feel like work at all! All current VR games have a seated mode! Playing ports of flat games in VR is awesome, such as Resident Evil 4, 7, 8, 4R, Half-Life 1 and 2, Prey (2006), Doom 3, Far Cry 1 or Jedi Knight 2+3 and there are so many more! Isolating is true, if you don't have a 2nd headset. But with a 2nd headset you can play multiplayer games together, even my non gamer girlfriend loves playing Walkabout Minigolf with me.
I love VR. There's a LOT of good stuff you can do with it. Biggest, most obvious use cases? Racing games/sims as you avoid that walking and not really moving aspect. (though you do develop sea legs for such things if you play regularly enough but do not force yourself or it'll be a bad time. It just happens.) It's visceral, you feel like you're there, it can be actually a good workout (Heck there are workout apps that make it easy to get some great moving in without having to leave your house), and hence avoids the couch potato issue regular games have. Even the most low key game still demands you move which is a plus for me. My main issues are, when it get's hot it's not at all comfortable, the fact there are some steps to get in and out of the experience. Especially PCVR but even with a quest you have to make sure you have space to play and few distractions. With the mixed reality game aspect of the quest 3 a lot of the isolating experience issue is gone but not every game is like that and that's how it should be. Aand as much as I put this as a plus it is also a minus, it can be tiring. My nephews both love playing VR and my niece uses it as much as she can. It has the potential to go big but like meta probably realized, it'll be more focused on the social aspect rather than gaming if we want it to go main stream. You can watch movies with family from across the nation, have a conversation about it and throw popcorn at each other. You can talk to strangers without too much care (though as some have said it's the wild west with that so guard yourself and especially your children). In theory this would be SOOO much better than zoom in a work environment as you can actually interact but funnily enough one of the main deterrents to people's willingness to use it, studies say, is that people (both men and women but especially women) don't like something that might mess up their hair or make them look silly from the outside looking in. It's not socially acceptable yet. Kinda like adults playing video games in the 80s and 90s. Heck I understand, as I'm supposed to look professional at my job and if I had to put one of those things on I'd look like I had a bad hair day after. So yeah, smaller lighter options that don't strain your eyes... oh yeah, if you wear glasses you'll need whole new lenses on the things if you want a comfortable fit so there's an extra cost there. It's come a LONG way since 2016 but I think it still has a ways to go to really go outside the gaming/ niche professional uses. As is, we're almost there but we need that model T version that everyone finds a good use for not just gamers and tech enthusiasts. Definitely not failed but we'll see where it goes.
There is a game for the Quest 2 called "Tea For God", which seems like it might be your kind of game if you don't like using the joystick to move. You need a playspace around 6 feet wide and long, as you walk around completely in the real world, and the game uses non-euclidean geometry to change the world around you, letting you walk forever. Also, Bigscreen VR lets you watch movies (including 3D movies) in a ton of environments! And there are public lobbies that you can let anyone join, or just your friends.
Best thing about VR is that it's immersive. Worst part of VR is that it immersive. It's great when you have time to concentrate on being somewhere else but most of the times we're doing more than one thing at once. Who watches TV these days without talking to your family/housemates or checking your phone, making a coffee or a sandwich , take a pee halfway through, etc. Lives are chaotic and VR insists on concentrating on one single thing. However, I sold my VR set mostly because it was too much of a faff cleaning the room and to get it set up. By the time I set it up, the time I had to play on it was tiny cos I had other stuff to do.
Fun fact: Nintendo did already do VR, and Zelda VR does already exist. It was on the Labo platform, and both BotW and also Super Mario Odyssey are compatible (and two other lesser known games apparently after looking it up). They sucked, hard, but it was a cool little novel experience playing Breath in VR for the few minutes I could take it.
Your headaches could be related to you using the standard head strap (Quest 2). It has to carry all the weight on your face, which means you have to tighten it a lot. With a better strap the weight is distributed over a much larger part of your head reducing the strain significantly. A better facial interface can help too but the strap is the most important.
I liked a VR arcade where we played some archery tower defence game together - the game used a built in microphone in the Vive and it kinda felt like people were just there with you
I would highly recommend upgrading to Quest 3! It is so much lighter, screens are more crisp so way less eye strain and the MR games really are a glimpse of the future. Think if you got a Quest 3, it would solve some of your negative points. None FPS shooter games you should try: Max Mustard (Bascially astro bot on Quest) Puzzling Place Track Craft Witchblood Infinite Inside Lego Bricktales Demeo Stand out AAA games: Walking Dead Saints & Sinners Assassins Creed Nexus Sniper Elite VR Red Matter 2 A Fisherman's Tale 7th Guest Asgard's Wrath 2 Batman (coming Oct) Behemoth (coming Nov) A while ago I would struggle to recommend even a hand full of games worth getting a Quest 3 for. Now there are a solid 20-30 very good titles on there, with plenty of other good little time consumers.
My fvaorite use of VR, the only one I've actually styck with since I realized I don't enjoy moving around while gaming, is *watching movies* Home cinem without a projector. 3D without glasses. Or you know, with some pretty heavy glasses but without the annoying effect of every other frame being sent to each eye; it's all just frames for both eyes all the time and no brightness problems. Absolutely the best way hands down to watch 3D movies. Only problem really is that almost *noone* seems to have figured this out and so I gitta use a bunch of weird software workarounds in order to stream my 3D Blurays to my headset (or rip them, which is also suboptimal). But when it's all set up - fantastic! Also helps with focus; in VR it's kind of hard to look at your phone while watching the movie.
(If anyone's interested, this is my setup right now: DVDFab PassKey to decrypt blurays so I can watch them on my computer by using an external bluray drive, PotPlayer to turn the Bluray 3D stream into SBS-format with left eye image on the left side and right eye image on the right side, Virtual Desktop Streamer to stream the SBS video to the headset and, on the headset, to split the SBS stream back into one stream per eye in a cinema setting. Told you it was a bunch of weird workarounds.)
The original Meta/Oculus headstraps are too uncomfortable for extended use. I recomend the Kiwi headstreaps since they do the job and are cheap. I just put a battery in my pocket, bumbag, camelback bag.
Been playing since 2019.. the best game I've found that really gets me putting the headset on again and again is a Looter extraction game called Ghost of tabor.. so addictive.
I literally was just about to start posting / make a blog about my 4-ish year experience in VR! Great video! My thoughts: I think it's a wonderful medium, but deeply deeply misunderstood. The main creators of VR also don't help because they seem to not have a good understanding of their best current use cases -- namely that VR isn't ready nor do most people want to "live" in virtual worlds in their headsets and that most are too heavy and cumbersome to actually be useful for productivity. Quick note Re: motion sickness: Most VR-heads often get over motion sickness within a few weeks of using VR. I personally can fall off cliffs, run around in an entirely open world, and run at very high speeds (in-game) and do all of that without blinking an eye. I am also not prone IRL to motion sickness though, so this is probably a me-thing partially, but I do not think it is entirely. HOWEVER -- I can tell you that it isn't so much that you get sick necessarily from the movement but rather inconsistent frame rates over longer periods of time. IRL Your vision never deviates framerates. The framerate of reality is constant at all times for everyone. And in flat games, fluctuating between 30-60fps is fine for most people because you aren't actually immersed in that environment. But in VR -- the framerate is absolutely crucial to nail. This is really, really hard constraint on VR game development that is HUGELY different from most triple-A titles in flatland. In my experience, if I have a VR title that I can consistently run above about 80 frames, then I rarely feel sick even after playing for a few hours. I do get very sick and much faster if I am struggling to maintain framerate in more demanding titles. Other than the ones you pointed out: -- VR has too many hurdles to get into, especially the higher end experience. I'd reckon you need a fair amount of PC and tech savvy in general to get the top of the line experiences not to mention really expensive graphics cards. The best experiences are gated behind 1500 dollar 4090s and mods that take money and time to setup. -- VR is an active medium. For adults, the idea of plopping on a headset after work or a tiring day sounds exhausting likely, and I think this is an issue of our work/culture/value set as we don't really make enough time to embrace our inner child and go out and play. Tons of kids intuitively get VR and love it. Adults, in my experience, are far less enthusiastic -- even ones who love games! We need to work on making VR comfy and work on games that don't require tons of effort or setup but are still great and relaxing. -- Bigger games companies NEED to port their older and beloved titles to VR. Most of this work wouldn't be difficult if given access to the source code and really great ports (Like Resident Evil 4) have already seen massive success. I think TONS of adoption would come if you offered someone a chance to experience (insert favorite beloved video game) in VR for the first time. I know I would The list goes on. I will eventually be writing my manifesto and plan on working in the industry soon so hopefully I'll get to work on some of these issues! Thanks for coming to my ted talk lmao.
Beat saber is some of the most fun I’ve ever had, period. Also, Half Life Alyx is worth it to experience *at any price.* I’m not sure I’d say that about basically anything else. It’s simply that transcendent.
A lot of good VR experiences at the moment are other games that either have a VR mode or a mod. There are a lot of simulator games that are incredible with VR. Also Pistol Whip, that game slaps, and it's a great to get your body moving. Also, the headache is almost certainly down to eyestrain, and the way to fix it is to calibrate your eyes correctly, individually. You do this by setting the individual eye settings and checking the difference in position between the VR and IRL controller images for each eye. Once you can match them up 1 to 1 then you know the system is giving your eyes the right information. I used to get terrible VR headaches if I spent too long doing it, but they completely stopped happening once I did this. Once there's good eye tracking this should become automatic and the issue should stop happening. Also for the isolation, I find VR games are really compelling and people just naturally want to watch, if you can put the VR view up on the computer screen - if you're using a PC for it - it's a cool communal experience. I guess also the VR mods for other games is generally a PC thing too.
I'm gonna echo others and say definitely replace the head strap on the Quest 2. The default strap is almost certainly contributing to the headaches mentioned at 8:06 onward, and in a couple rare cases has even caused neck stress fractures because it's so bad. There's the halo style that moves the weight off your face to your forehead, and the elite strap style (Kiwi makes a much better priced version than the official one) where it distributes the weight into pads on the top and back and face more evenly, either is fine and most have a preference for one or the other. I also recommend one with a battery in the back to fix the weight distribution so it's not so front heavy, or you can add weight on the rear with coin rolls or similar
11:38 The whole point of VR is the first person experience, it can't be the other way. Almost every game has comfort options like teleport movement, vignetting, etc., so what's the problem? Yes it sucks in terms of immersion, but if you can't bear it, the options are there. The best way to cure motion sickness is to train your vestibular apparatus. It might be long and painfull process, but if you want to enjoy VR to its fullest, there's no other way. Also like some other comments said, you should consider trying PCVR, if you haven't. THE best VR experiences are there.
Because VR is where Walkabout mini golf is. (Mic drop). Spent thousands of hours in it, and thousands more to come. Love it more today than the first time I ever played
I am 42 years old, play Videogames since C64 and VR is the only way for me to play Games now...
Playing Modded Skyrim, Euro Truck sim, or No man's sky it's so different to flat gameing.
The immersion, the scale, the feeling you really in this worlds and interacting with your hands instead pressing Buttons is awesome!
Or simply playing table Tennis against people around the World is so cool...
38 been playing since using cassette tapes in the BBC microcomputer but got a Q3 instead of PS5 because with some exceptions flat games feel so tired to me.
Same formulas, remakes, sequels, remasters, live service money machines just so lifeless now.
VR feels fresh again like the early days of 3D
you're an old timer. Try VRNoid and thank me later. Yes, it's Arkanoid in VR as air hockey. Plays awesome...
I'm 60 and started gaming in '82. Got bored of 2D gaming about 15 years ago. I got tired of viewing incredible worlds through a small window, where there is no sense of scale or immersion. VR got me back into gaming. Being 'inside' incredible worlds is way beyond 2D gaming in ways 2D gamers can never understand until they try it. Still waiting on SAO's version of full dive gaming. Probably won't be alive for that though.
I have these other guys beat. 62 years old and have been playing VR since 2012. I love it. It is my passion. Dev kit 1, Dev Kit 2, oculus rift, valve index, quest 2 now quest 3 and PSVR2 as you can see I am crazy for it and have played EVERYTHING. I think we need to school the guy who made this video.
when those are the games given as example its no surprise you cant play normal games. Id get more from watching golf or baseball at that point.
Isolating Experience: You can cast the Quest to a Chromecast device. This is wonderful for sharing the experience. My kids helped me throughout my full play of Moss. They love watching my play Mini Golf. And, there's a multiplayer game called Acron: Attack of the Squirrels (NOTE the first word. It is Acron, NOT Acorn). One player is in VR as a tree, defending it's nuts (hur-hur), and everyone else plays on iPads, controlling the Squirrels! Absolute hilarity! Plus, you only need to pay for the VR client! The mobile side is FREE! And, while it's most fun playing in the same room, there's no reason you can't be the tree in your house and friends across the world can jump into your game from their homes!
You can potentially cast to any TV or monitor, not only Chromecast devices, right? When I play VR games from steam and my friends are around, they just look at my TV to share my experience. The thing is, that all this is just not user friendly yet, and it allways requires some configuration from the user and not everyone knows how to cast to a TV or how to install mods (A must for games like Beat saver!).
i heard rumors that Meta was removing that feature. Not sure they have any basis, but I'm pretty sure quest models before 3 won't lose it.
@@Jetraychamp55 They removed it briefly in an update a few months ago and the users went nuclear, so they restored it very quickly.
Davigo is another great game that only the person in VR needs to purchase. VR player is a head and giant hands trying to smash and throw stuff at the other players and everyone else is playing a fast paced 3rd person shooter trying to take you out with rockets, jet packs and a hammer
@@Jetraychamp55 I would definitely NOT buy a VR device that doesn´t have that feature, specially if it had it and they suddenly removed it!
I love VR. Bought a Quest 3 a few months back and it was my first VR experience. I absolutely love it. First game I played was Red Matter 2 and I was blown away by how immersive it was. The games are fantastic, but as time passed I learned to appreciate the other parts of VR. Like sitting on a virtual cinema and watching a movie on a huge screen.
But even replaying games I played on a flatscreen in VR like Subnautica allows you to really appreciate the scale of the game. Size and scale isn't something you fully comprehend in gaming until you play VR. And there is something a little bit more daunting about hearing the echoes of some undersea monster bellowing from the depths below in VR.
I feel ya. I have a quest 3 as well. Red Matter 2 was amazing! Huberis and Asgards Wrath are really good as well. I just finished Assassin's Creed Nexus and that was a banger as well. I'm currently playing a game called Fracked which is a great adrenaline rush and I'd strongly recommend. I only play VR now due to the incredible experience I get that I just can't get from flat screen gaming anymore.
tbh, I love vr because it literally scratches that itch when I was a little kid playing a game where everything was fascinating, once u get used to being in the headset. U get used to game boundaries and it actually feels as if ur playing a game within it. I just love it man, makes gaming 10x more fun especially with friends.
Agreed, once you have played long enough to just play games and not constantly looking at the limitations of a headset, you really get to enjoy VR much better.
Helps once you've got your VR legs which takes some patience too.
U have no VR friends. 😢 seriously. I am raving on about VR and everyone who used it is like „dude this is awesome!“ but nobody pulled the trigger up till now even though they are fascinated by the opportunities
Not just that, VR gaming made me explore a game world carefully because everything is right in front of you. Playing HL2 and RE2 in VR is a different experience compared to flat screen. I got to appreciate the random clutters around the game map.
You NEED to play Half Life Alyx
The best game in VR!!
And you're right, I need to play right now!
He included some footage of it in the video so I believe he played it?
Ist es eine gute Idee VR und DMT zu kombinieren?
He has no pc
If you get pc vr top three games in my opinion half life alyx, no man’s sky and modded Skyrim vr it’s gotta be modded cause vanilla Skyrim vr is lame
I recommend getting a Quest 3 with a big comfy third party headstrap. The display is great, the mixed reality brings an extra element to some games and wireless capability is awesome 👍
The bomb defusal game "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes" is pretty good for playing together with one in VR and others physically present. Puzzles games might also satisfy that desire to include family, when you cast it to a screen. Cyan, the makers of Myst, have heavily embraced VR. Myst was treated like a co-op game back in '93, their games are still good for this. (Myst VR, Riven VR, Obduction, Firmament)
It's too bad there weren't more games like Astros Playroom (I think that's what it was called) where it was 4 people on controllers VS the one in VR. Those mini games really proved the concept. Besides keep talking and no one explodes, I can't think of many other couch co-op VR games. Only the Astro Bot game in VR worlds
Ohhh i have so much to say!
1. My partner was huge into vr before we started dating and soon after he "upgraded his headset" (bought me a headset essentially) and i LOVE playing together - we used to play the rec room quest games - there is nothing more team building than literally slaying evil beings together. But of course unless it is a pasison spending close to -if not over- $1000 to play games is totally unsustainable.
2. You need space for vr - most people i know that might be suitable for vr live in small apartments. There's one game that was so fun but we've only ever played once - it's like hide and seek and you shoot the other person when you find them... but we have only played that once because you need a literal tennis court size to play (we went to a hotel that had a tennis court and accessed it at like 8 at night, running around with headsets on, shooting each other - it was such a ball!)
3. This one is bad. I strictly do not play with strangers because the first time i did i had voice on (i am a woman) and was immediately "groped" by another player while he said some hugely inappropriate things. Vr is visceral, that's sort of the point. And that was a really negative experience to me because i was so new to vr. I had to take the headset off and didnt tell my partner why at first. I know it's all jokes but man i do not want that, it felt so yuck. And because of that i miss out on some really cool games. Majority of the vr community are swell, i am sure, but there are also immature creeps - i avoid them in real life, i avoid them on vr.
4. Idk if this has any grounds in neuroscience but my partner could play VR for hours and never got the motion sickness, etc. But we went on a boat once and he was immediately keeled over vomiting. I wondered if the vr assimilation had something to do with it because they are sort of opposite experiences, y'know? So does vr acclimation = worse seasickness?
5. we havent played recently but this video reminded me of how fun it is - might charge up the ol headsets tonight! Thank you, Wheezy
4 seems like a pretty big leap, to draw any general conclusions (or suspicions) from a single case
Number 3. WTF is wrong with people? I'm sorry you experienced that.
Hey, I've got a pretty similar story haha
I upgraded to a quest 3, but basically just gave it to my gf. She didn't like any single player games so far, but she likes playing stuff together.
I'm curious if you could share what that "hide and seek" game is?
We're in a small apartment, but we already found a big space where we can play sometimes haha
#4... interestingly, I've found that VR helps CURE motion sickness. I used to get sick riding in cars, but when I play VR for a while, it's like I develop an immunity to motion sickness for a while. I too haven't played VR much lately, so the motion sickness is coming back. I also need to charge up the headset.
I play VR games a lot and stream them. I usually play as female avatars even though i'm a man. I've had people come up to me assuming i'm female and have said some really terrible things to me as well. I have found a great community of VR players through games we've played and the discord servers they have made. Most of them are women with very specific rules for playing with them as they stream games as well. We all help each other police our community as best we can and really have a great time playing together.
My favorite is No Man’s Sky in VR - the visuals and feeling you are in space and other plants is amazing….
My favorite part in NMS is simply next to my favorite ship or my base and marveling at it in full natural scale... people playing on TV have absolutely no idea of the scales involved in games
Wait NMS has VR?!?!?
I just wish Co-op was actually cooperative rather than you both having to do all of the same stuff together. Also, for someone who does get motion sickness, forgetting what button to land my spaceship and swerving all over the place crashing into stuff really sucked and I thought I was going to throw up. A visual button on the dashboard to autopilot land would have been nice.
I do wish it was an actual competently made VR game though. It's so janky in VR and the performance is pretty terrible.
@@iambear.6526 Free VR support.
VR is the best thing that has happened to technology since I was born. I would rather give up using my smartphone than my VR headset. And I thought like that even before I started doing videos about it :).
My husband and I LOVE playing Synth Riders in VR and it's been our favourite way to exercise for years. Highly recommend! Plus we can cast it to our TV with Chromecast and watch eachother play. Blade & Sorcery is also so fun to watch others play but our favourite to play as a family is Takelings - one person in VR and 3 on controllers wreaking havoc on eachother. So happy to hear you talk about something we love so much!! 🥰
Been a gamer for 55 years, started on a teletype machine hooked to an audio coupler, connected to the main frame at Locheed. Used it to play computer games online in 1972.
Just got into VR finally, 6 months ago. I've shared many of the same observations you've described here. One thing I think you missed (and it may just be a matter of my experience being with Quest 3 instead of Q2) were the introductory app that came with the quest that give you the basics of not just MR, but the hand tracking features. One of the things that (from what I've seen) Quest does better than they other headsets is their hand tracking. While I don't use it for gaming, the ability to directly interact with menus without the controller/light beam is a direct response to one of your early points about the cumbersome interface.
I think that game development has stalled out a little, while the new deep pockets player drops some R&D on addressing most the issues you raise at the end of the video. The advances made recently in combating motions discomfort have been substantial. Not just things like vignetting to reduce the effect, but designing games from the beginning to be a more comfortable experience.
The downside is that during the new game development lag, the focus has shifted to porting flat screen games to VR. That has been hit and miss, but thanks to PCVR and the PC modding community, we not have incredible experiences like Fallout 4 and Skyrim in full VR, with updated graphics.
Great run down! it's always helpful to hear observations made from other viewpoints.
Good Gaming!
🤘🧙♂🤘
Rich the Ancient Metal Beast
motion sickness is something you get used to - way easier as a youngster tbh, which is why you don't see they complaining as much and also why they're by far the largest audiences for Quest gaming.
we all grew used to motion sickness in games before - I know I did with Wolfenstein in the 90s. Btw, that and Doom are in full VR on Quest thanks to QuestZDoom, as well as fun Doom mods for Zelda and Castlevania NES.
but those are 90 games. Like Myst, Riven and 7th Guest, all in VR too.
if you need something closer to your 70s era, take a look at Colossal Cave, ported from text adventure to VR by Roberta Williams and husband a year or so ago. Also, VRNoid gets Arkanoid and the og Atari Breakout in good shape as air hockey...
I adore Walkabout Mini Golf! I have every course they've released! The most recent one was Wallace and Gromit licensed. The course takes you all around their house, with lots of hilarious Easter eggs!! Also love Moss, Demeo and Iron Man VR.
Walkabout mini golf is bae. I play it with a friend and we just have a great time.
Quest 3 is an amazing headset and makes ALL motion sickness go away (I used to get it after about an hour in VR) and the visuals are insanely good. Highly recommend.
I'll second that!
i got a psvr during quarantine 2020 and i played it all day, my life CHANGED, astrobot was my first vr game and the cave song (1:11) became one of my core memories in life and i still listen to it almost every day cause its on my playlist
Thank you for bringing some eyes to Astro Bot Rescue Mission. Goated VR game!
Your VR headache, at least when using the quest 2 comes from the face mount pressure of the default headstrap, if you want a better experience without the headaches, get a halo head strap for it, it's a life saver. The default head strap is god aweful
Zelda VR would absolutely be awesome.
One of them is a world in VRchat. I think it's Windwaker, but I could be wrong. VRchat is free and has a thriving community. Play VRchat. Bye.
Zenith MMO was pretty close honestly.
@@markshellardabsolutely not. It's a disgusting and janky MMO which is also discontinued. Moss is closer to Zelda. As is Journey of the Gods. Asgard's Wrath 2 is closer to BotW in VR, but it's actually more God of War/Skyrim
Yea, can't wait for it in 2987 when Nintendo decides to jump into VR (Nintendo is always late to the party with any form of technology)
Asgards wrath 2 is very similar to zelda Twilight Princess. Same semi open world design, similar dungeons, similar items.
Best game in vr is catan vr. Its just so nice to sit down and play a board game with people. Most of the time they’re cool people and its just so awesome to meet cool random people and over time those people become friends.
Yeah you nailed it. Its awesome i love it but it sucks and there are some huge hurdles to overcome.
Beat Saber was a life saver during covid times! Especially when used with some hacked songs. It seems so designed for Flow experience. I always feel alive, fresh and ready afterwards. Training + Music + Flow. Also it uses nearly light sabers. what is really cool to cut things in half.
Synth Riders was my lockdown game. Google Earth VR was a huge one too.
Beat. Saber. Honestly the only game I ever play.
"hacked" adding song files is not techically hacking....
@@iambear.6526 I know yes. Side loading it is :) but feels subjective like hacking because it's not intended :D
VR is absolutely incredible! There's so much more than people know about. Skyrim modded in VR and Half life Alyx are mindblowing.
Also, for standalone you have Assassin's Creed Nexus which is incredibly good.
Also for people to try I find that casual games are awesome, for example Blade and sorcery or propagation VR
You can just cast VR anywhere, as I do with my friends.
One of my favorite VR game is Broken Edge (Fencing duel simulator) by Trebuchet
You can be a Musketeer, Samurai, Viking fighting against a Knight, Pirate, Barbarian, etc.
I like how VR is good at helping you focus on the present. As someone who is constantly planning for the future, VR is relaxing for me becuase it forces me to focus on the present for a few hours or however long I'm playing it. And while it's arguable that video games can make you focus on the present, in general, VR immerses you ij the present.
Also, I don't blame you for not wanting to socialize much in VR. I used to do that, but I eventually got tired of coming across strangers who were jerks or just generally mean. Now i just use some of the social programs for drinking or dancing in a different environment alone, and it is better than going somewhere irl to do that.
Lastly, you mentioned how wonky menus are. They might still be that way on the quest 2, but on newer headsets they can detect where your fingers are and let you use your fingers to "touch" the menu in VR, which can be cool, but im already used to the laser pointer menus lol
I love vr because it is an easy portable monitor which we can watch all sorts of thing in a screen as big as a movie screen. Also we can watch 3d movies or play 3ds game emulated in 3d and this kind of 3d is something really different and exciting. Also if I use quest3 or vision pro I can watch videos comfortably while doing a dish wash.
I have done VR games for a job so I'm biased but I fell in love with VR already in 2017. HL Alyx blew my mind, before that I was mostly playing social games in VR. One of my weird habits is watching movies while laying down completely flat, can't do that with my actual monitor.
What VR games did you work on? I'm working with a VR simulations company but looking for something more fun
@@thatguitarguy99 well I said games but at my last job we did very gamified simulations for companies and now I'm a freelancer doing similar work. Also I'm from Finland, the only companies I know are from here and I wouldn't recommend them unless one lives here.
On a serious note, we really could be using VR as a teaching tool. You could have a virtual lab essentially, it'd probably be a lot more interesting and detailed than any of the current online labs that exist. Currently, it'd be kind of expensive for schools to do anything like this, but I can see this being a staple part of the school experience in the future.
Never thought I would see VR content on this channel! I have the PSVR and recently upgraded to the Quest 3. There really are some amazing experiences that can be had in VR now. Moss and AstroBot are both fantastic though :). The Quest 3 exclusive Asgard's Wrath 2 is a big one. Later this year we will be getting Hitman 3, Behemoth, Metro, Alien and Batman Arkham Shadow, all in VR. It is picking up steam, more mainstream properties are getting invested, and the more people that jump in the better it will be for everyone. I find working out to be one of the things I like the most. It is gamified fitness. No more boring treadmill, I can be in an awesome space-y cyberpunk-y world hitting balls to the beat.
Asgard's Wrath is Quest exclusive, not only for Quest 3 ;)
@@shilittletsure Ah, you're right. I'm used to just typing Quest 3. Fingers must have gotten away from me.
I've been wondering if I should get Asgard's Wrath 2 for a while now. This comment might be what pushes me over the edge.
@@wheezywaiter It's pricey for a VR game, but very much worth it in my opinion. I'd be really interested to hear what you think of it. Happy gaming!
Played it for like a half hour last night and... I LOVE IT! I love throwing the axe and pulling it back. I did that probably too much.
"Now I know what that's like..." is the best way to respond to anything everyday always. New life motto.
I love VR, but I mostly play one game (A Township Tale), not really about the gameplay, but more about building a community.
Because of my work I usually get home in the evenings and VR gives me a way to socialise without going out.
As you said, there needs to be more games, but it's going to take a while for it to take off. Asgard's Wrath II was the first nearly-AAA title for standalone, hopefully other studios will follow suit.
PCVR has a lot to offer, but you need a headset plus a PC and router powerful enough to run it smoothly.
PCVR is an absolute game changer for VR (pun not intended). I feel that immersive story based games fit VR a lot better than arcade games. Half Life: Alyx is probably the best experience you can get out of VR, with VR mods for Alien Isolation and Portal tie in for a close second. Currently in love with SkyrimVR.
If you have a gaming PC, it opens up a larger selection of games. Can do wired (Link Cable) or wireless (higher latency if no line of contact to router). I recommend Half Life Alyx (with teleporting if desired), Chair in a Room (scary escape room), and the Half Life 2 VR mod.
Also get a new headstrap with a battery. Definitely worth for the comfort and extended battery life is a bonus.
The room VR is a great conversion from the flat screen games they make
Also No Man's Sky in VR is just something else. And Gorn is a lot of fun in short bursts.
Quest 3 + Asgard’s Wrath II = Closest thing to Zelda you can get right now… and it’s good!
Only been waiting for VR for over numerous decades; awesomeness is a understatement. Disappearing into PSVR2 in 2024 is so Fun.
Almost 6 years VR gamer here.
The biggest reason is the immersion of VR.
If you play for example Cyberpunk 2077 behind 24 inch screen, you cannot guess well how big the world is. It's harder to imagine it with screen. Once you get VR mod for same game, you have jawdropping moments when looking around. It will sometimes blow your mind. And you're feeling you are inside the world more, way more than desktop gaming.
When i played old Half-Life 2 game again with VR mod, i am happy to give headpats to some people. Also going around in VR is much more action, you can burn more energy with it.
I can clearly see differences between VR and desktop games. VR makes it even more fun.
You say games where you can stay and control it are better. I don't agree, moving around is better in my view. I know yourself is not moving much around, but it's part of immersion.
Now talk about your cons.
1. Expensive. Yeah, i understand that. Lucky if you look carefully around, you can get one for 200. And i did it indeed to find cheap headset, because Vive system with lighthouse is expensive almost 6 years ago. Now i am at Quest 3 and still playing every day.
2. Not good games. Half-Life Alyx is high-quality game with great graphics. But this is also done with big budget. Problem with VR games compared to desktop games is much less gamers group. There are millions desktop gamers, but not many VR gamers. This is why many studios cannot invest a lot in VR games. Many VR games looks simple and low graphic.
Lucky VRChat has also beautiful worlds to enjoy again VR. So it's not a loss, it needs time to make everything better. This is also why headsets must not too expensive or the VR gamers group will stay small.
3. Sickness/hurt. There i want tell about it. Wearing Q2 and Q3 without 3rd party solutions is not great. If you don't search for solutions, you will only dislike VR headset more.
With good 3rd party solutions, you can make it much more comfy so pain will almost gone. I played for long time and i have not experienced a lot pain when wearing headsets for HOURS. Yes, this is very important to look around. Don't stop here.
Also good pc is important, good wifi setup, etc. With poor setup, you have faster motion sickness because pc is weak or wifi is unstable. But good pc is not cheap. VR experience is not cheap, that is right. But if you look carefully around and make good decisions, you will thankful for it and enjoy VR more.
ALSO! You will have some sickness and pain for first time. This is normal, your mind is not "trained" for it. It will go away after months or faster in weeks. Depends on how sensitive you are. It takes time, don't give up. Make sure your headset is good set and comfy. I have experienced it first time, and i can tell it. Now i have (almost) no problem at all with VR.
4. Interface, well hard to tell about it. Everyone make own interface for VR. It's hard to tell about it, lucky most cases i find the way go around in VR navigation. Standard interface is not easy and might need improvement in future. At least SteamVR is one big interface and that is good.
5. And of course make good VR place is important.
6. Isolation. Well, if you followed Corona time, you noticed VR is exploded there as alternative to reach people. So it's not always isolation, dude. VRChat is one of most known places where you can talk with others. And once you find friends there, it will getting better. There are nice groups to hang out, even many of your friends have no VR headset.
I live also alone, i build friendships in VRChat and finally meet a lot people IRL on convention. Isolation is not really issue for me.
If you have family with childrens, i can guess it, but you can share view with others, or buy extra headsets, or let them play with you at normal PC. That is possible.
VR can used as therapy to overcome isolation too. There are people who are afraid to go out. They can learn to overcome their anxious in VRChat for example. You only need go somewhere. Don't stay there in some games where you can only play solo. Plenty multiplayer games are there to make it less alone.
I hope there are better games out in future and need also some good headsets with right price. GPUs will get better and faster, pcs will faster so VR is less problem next months.
I was introduced to VR by my siblings. My brother builds apps for medical companies and he wanted to show me what he works on. We also played Mini golf with our oldest sibling across the country and it was great to all be playing together again after years of living too far away.
So I finally got one for our family. The battery only lasts about an hour maybe two. This is a con for sharing it and taking turns but a pro because it does make my eyes tire a lot faster. I can only imagine what it is doing to my kids if they have unlimited time :P
Another down side is that I tried the new horizons games and some of the free open apps and there are just a bunch of teens cussing up a storm. I am not comfortable letting my younger kids play in those. It would be like showing up at the playground and seeing a bunch of older kids smoking there. I would go somewhere else. I don't want them influencing my kids that way. I don't let them watch gamers that swear on UA-cam either.
So I pretty much just play VR golf with my siblings and Beat Saber. Sometimes I play beat saber with my oldest brother and his son and sometimes we play table tennis. I wish the table tennis would let others come it and watch and take turns too.
Another downside is the micro transactions. Golf and Beat Saber made sure we would keep spending money by adding new content and making us pay to access it. It gets expensive but on the positive side I just don't buy it and tell my siblings that now they know what to get me for my birthday 😂
I'm addicted to vrchat and it slowly takes over my whole life
furry detected
Man I love VR and could talk about it for hours. Me and my girlfriend loved playing No Man's Sky in VR. The VR mode comes free with the base game, so well worth trying out.
Oh right, and I just spend 3000+ Euros on upgrading my PC so I could play modded Skyrim VR.
never expected to see a VR video from WheezyWaiter... nice
First tried VR in 1993 in the Trocadero Arcade centre in London. It was a mech warrior type game… amazing for the time. The headset was enormous.
YES!!!! I remember that!!! I had no idea what was going on!!! Forgot it was the Trocadero - forgot the Trocadero was even a thing!
Man, London was the bomb back then. But then I was also younger and perhaps didn't know any better!!
Me too. Just line drawing to show the space. But awesome.
Highly recommend Supernatural VR for the Meta Quest 2 and 3! Specifically the boxing part of it! It's a really fun and nice cardio workout that I've become obsessed with since I got my quest 3. Also thanks for shouting out the GOAT astro bot rescue mission!
My fav VR game is Blade and Sorcery, not only is the base game great with sword fighting plus magic in an arena or dungeon but the modding community is amazing. The outer rim Star Wars mod is incredible the mod adds lightsabres, blasters, custom enemies, maps, armour etc. Another amazing VR game that really shows how incredible the tech can be is Half Life: Alyx I loved the level design, and just how immersive the world was to interact with.
I wrote my bachelor degree on VR Social games and its effect on people with social anxiety and autism issues! :)
People reported getting more comfortable in social interaction, and that it made it more comfortable and active in talking with people in real life (Not just in VR). For some people, it also made them more physically active. Compared to sitting down and playing videogames, vs moving around/standing to interact with online friends / dancing events etc.
For myself as well (which is why I wrote the bachelor thesis on it), it has had a massive positive social impact. I used to be alone, not talking with anyone in real life. Now I actively seek out the weird af people I like to hang out with, Is fun times, weeee.
Made a presentation on the thesis I wrote too, can be found searching for "Explaining FURRY VR to NON-FURRIES" uwu
anyways I've watched your stuff for a while, you're super motivational and I love your videos AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Neat!
Best quest games august 2024 (with release years):
- asgards wrath 2 (2023)
- Resident Evil 4 VR (2021)
- Assassins Creed Nexus (2023)
- Breachers (2023)
- Beat Saber (2017)
- Max Mustard (2023)
New batman arkham Shadow game and Metro Awakening later this year might also take a spot
And if you add pcvr (which quest can also do)
- Half Life Alyx (2020)
- Star Wars Squadrons (2020)
- Lone Echo (2017) and Lone Echo 2 (2022)
- Skyrim/Enderal Vr with mods (2018)
Seems fine to me
Also buy a new headstrap and it will stop hurting lol
I've been into VR since 2017, so 7 years. I started with the Vive and Vive Pro, both of which went to 74mm IPD, which suited me with an IPD of 75mm. I have a Pimax 8KX and a PSVR2 these days, and a very good gaming PC. I never got into stand alone headsets, mostly because Quest didn't cater for large IPD's. I also don't want to support a company that is going down the path of exclusive games, and I have a powerful gaming PC.
I got into VR because I like the ability to do extreme things, and where else can you shoot and fight with swords, with out getting hurt. It is immersive, car racing, flight and spaceship games are immense fun.
I'm older now, 61, I can't do motocross, racing and rock climbing, like I did in my teen's to 40's. I still ride motorcycles and sidecars, and I go bush walking, just not as reckless as I was in the past, and VR helps with getting the adrenalin rush.
I’m not a regular user of VR, but I watch all of your fun videos! 😊❤
I was getting bored of flat gaming. Got a PSVR2, and my gaming life changed. I also recently buiilt a PC and now love VR in PS5 and PC. Such an amazing experience.
Just got the ps5 VR2 when the big 200$ off sale happened a few weeks ago and I am loving it! A fun game I use to play on ps4 vr that you have was "The Playroom Vr" great for family's to all play together up to 5 people!
Try out the Quest 3 if you can! It has a so much bigger library of games than PSVR and is just all around better.
I absolutely died at "getting eaten by a baby." I don't know why, but I did not expect there to be zero effort put into the animation of the baby. The square empty mouth just "nomming" on the camera/perspective was top notch comedy.
Also, get a PC, then you have access to ALL the VR games on PC and can stream them to your quest. Some of the best VR games of all time like Half Life Alyx.
my favorite vr game is GRAB and i have been playing it for 2 years and you never get bored because there are hundreds of thousands of levels made the community
Maybe the first step for VR should be similar to the original video games: arcades. No-one was able to buy a full arcade game machine to have at home, but you could go to the arcade, pay a few bucks and play it there, with your friends. A VR arcade would be similar, all the gear is there, with space to play in, and games that take advantage of the space and you can play with your friends etc. Pay ten bucks to play, instead of hundreds for the device. When the technology advances and becomes cheaper and smaller, bring it to homes.
Also, with enough space, you can make VR games where you actually walk. The level design just has to be such that you never walk so far in one direction that you hit a wall, but instead you always slightly turn and stay in the play area.
I'm glad you made this, but hot dang, bro. You gotta get on that Meta Quest 3. Way better resolution and lenses.
Don't ever get rid of the PSVR1 though. Astro Bot: Rescue Mission is precious and still unsupported on PSVR2.
YOU NEED TO TRY Bonelab because YES! And also Into The Radius which has a like 99% chance of giving you PTSD and otger traumas but it is just SOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOD
I recommend a Quest 3! You get access to metas large library of games, plus you can plug into a Pc and play all the Steam VR games. There are also tons of great games that have been ported to VR such as Minecraft and the old Half Life games.
One thing that cannot be explained is how awesome it feels to be in VR. The depth and scale of everything is absolutely incredible.
Because it’s awesome and so much more immersive than regular gaming and you sometimes actually feel like you’re in the game it’s so amazing ! 😊
You know there's a Moss 2 right?
So cool to see you like VR! I got into it because I do alot of sim racing and once I tried it in VR I was hooked! (all 2d racing games are dead to me) That led me to try things like beat saber , fully modded Skyrim in VR and many many more. I do agree with many of your points. A few things to add.... because it takes a large amount of computer power to run a VR game (you are essentially running it twice at high resolution) alot of games are very simple and don't look very appealing on Quest/Pico (especially on a 2d screen) There's alot of amazing VR games on PC that would blow you away. (not to mention like the Cyberpunk , RDR2 etc mods for VR) I know , on top of an expensive VR headset you also need a pretty powerful PC and before you know it you've spent $2500+. But if you are already in PC gaming its so very worth it. Also to make others part of your experience you can cast your gameplay to any TV or PC so others can see what your doing and can be part of the fun. Especially if you are sharing a headset. Lastly I highly recommend a good aftermarket strap for comfort.
You should try Demeo if you haven’t yet!
Also Acron is a great casual vr experience for introducing new friends to VR while also being in the same space as them.
Moss 1-2 and Red Matter 2 are my favorite games so far.
Switchback is so fun on PSVR2 on the PS5! You are on a horror rollercoaster armed with two pistols. If you enjoyed light-gun games i.e. House of the Dead, Time Crisis, etc., then you will enjoy Switchback.
"Hi VR-Sauce, this is Wheezy!"
Suspicious music starts in the background 🎶 🎵
"Did you know that VR is awesome? But also, did you know that VR sucks? Here is why..."
Fantastic. Love your humor. Subscribed
bonelab, vrchat and contractors is why i love vr. with vr shoes dropping supposedly next year ill be buying them so i can get immersed.
Hit the nail on the head. VR will be better in 30-40 years. *Maybe*
We're on the path and "good" VR is young, expensive, complex, etc.
Get a counter-weight (Velcro a battery bank, or something close to the weight of the headset, onto the back of the strap). Then you can can loosen the strap a little, and you probably won't get those pressure headaches. Also, it helps to have a strap that has a rear cradle, and a forehead plate (3D printed, or buying an aftermarket "strap").
My friend Liza makes a game called Cookie Gardening and it is literally the only reason I care about VR. It's a game where carrots eat cookies and you feed them. They go meep. That's it.
I don't see your vids on my feed often and 1h into releasing this vid it was on my feed. that's how much I like vr :D
VR motion sickness goes away with time. Your brain needs to adapt. For some people, the motion sickness goes away after a few hours of playing. For unfortunate others, it can take months for the symptoms to completely stop. Also, you wont understand the true potential of VR until you genuinely make friends and have a wonderful time hanging out with someone who is physically on the otherside of the globe. VR can give the sensation that you are next to someone, in the same place, experiencing the same things. And things such as full body tracking, face tracking, and eye tracking can enhance the user's ability to emotionally express themselves. Those features add to the ability to form genuine connections and experiences with people who arent actually next to you. But I'll agree, the technology still has a long ways to go until it becomes mainstream. Still, I see the amazing potential.
Took me 2 weeks
@@JanBoer-hy9so took me 2 hours lol
@@SirMikeys Dang what
Boneworks VR is one of the best VR games I’ve ever played. I had to play it through my pc because there isn’t a standalone quest version but it’s absolutely amazing!
I went to a VR games place once (video on my channel), with several of my friends. I had so much fun, I got my own PSVR2 weeks later. As you said, the time. it takes to set things up, space required, and physicality to games are definitely the main detractors from playing every night or as long as I would play a flat screen game.
All that said, VR gaming is much more fun and exciting imo, and can't wait for it to progress.
Blade & Sorcery, Boneworks (and bonelab), modded SkyrimVR, Half Life Alyx, Walking Dead Saints and Sinners, Into the Radius, and modded contractors are all games that I think shouldn't have been excluded from your list of games. You mention that you always introduce people to VR with Space Pirate Trainer. The problem with showing people that game is that it is so simple that people are going to think that it is the same complexity as all of the heavy hitters in VR.
There is this stigma with VR where people that aren't interested in it just think that all VR games are tech demos. While VR games haven't been getting very many quality AAA games, there are still plenty of games that are polished and sizeable in length. You mentioned that you don't think there are enough games, and will I agree with that to an extent, there are dozens of games that I think you should have included in your list good VR games. I don't think that the amount of VR games is an issue. I do, however, believe that the lack of coverage of the really great VR games is shooting the platform in the foot. Batman Arkham Shadow, Behemoth, Alien Rogue Incursion, and Metro Awakening are making 2024 shape out to be a good year for VR games.
I hear a certain Earthbending game called Rumble solves all these problems...
VR has a pretty big upside that is evolving. I’m using it for educational apps - language learning, science, social studies - really across all learning (I’m obviously biased if you see my user name 😂). The key is to be intentional with what you are doing with the tool.
VR has been my number one hobby since psvr1 launched 7-8 years ago. I bought a $3000 PC and valve index just for VR, nowadays I'm just rocking the Quest 3, but I absolutely love it. I love not just sitting on my ass to game but actually getting up and being fully engaged in the game/app
Ragnarok is a fun VR game where you play drums on a Viking ship to Celtic rock music
The one thing VR is truly missing is Light Gun Games! Where are time crisis, house of the dead, virtua cop and the rest! This is the perfect medium to revive those franchises!
The beam dream ad was fun. I liked all the camera angles and the weirdness :D
Still missing the workout videos.
blows my mind at how naturally funny you are. I'm convinced it's a form of super intelligence in it's own category. My brother is gifted with it as well. Might also be an Irish thing.
Quest 3 is awseome, because of the MUCH better lenses. Playing sitting down doesn't feel like work at all! All current VR games have a seated mode! Playing ports of flat games in VR is awesome, such as Resident Evil 4, 7, 8, 4R, Half-Life 1 and 2, Prey (2006), Doom 3, Far Cry 1 or Jedi Knight 2+3 and there are so many more! Isolating is true, if you don't have a 2nd headset. But with a 2nd headset you can play multiplayer games together, even my non gamer girlfriend loves playing Walkabout Minigolf with me.
I love VR. There's a LOT of good stuff you can do with it. Biggest, most obvious use cases? Racing games/sims as you avoid that walking and not really moving aspect. (though you do develop sea legs for such things if you play regularly enough but do not force yourself or it'll be a bad time. It just happens.) It's visceral, you feel like you're there, it can be actually a good workout (Heck there are workout apps that make it easy to get some great moving in without having to leave your house), and hence avoids the couch potato issue regular games have. Even the most low key game still demands you move which is a plus for me. My main issues are, when it get's hot it's not at all comfortable, the fact there are some steps to get in and out of the experience. Especially PCVR but even with a quest you have to make sure you have space to play and few distractions. With the mixed reality game aspect of the quest 3 a lot of the isolating experience issue is gone but not every game is like that and that's how it should be. Aand as much as I put this as a plus it is also a minus, it can be tiring. My nephews both love playing VR and my niece uses it as much as she can. It has the potential to go big but like meta probably realized, it'll be more focused on the social aspect rather than gaming if we want it to go main stream.
You can watch movies with family from across the nation, have a conversation about it and throw popcorn at each other. You can talk to strangers without too much care (though as some have said it's the wild west with that so guard yourself and especially your children). In theory this would be SOOO much better than zoom in a work environment as you can actually interact but funnily enough one of the main deterrents to people's willingness to use it, studies say, is that people (both men and women but especially women) don't like something that might mess up their hair or make them look silly from the outside looking in. It's not socially acceptable yet. Kinda like adults playing video games in the 80s and 90s. Heck I understand, as I'm supposed to look professional at my job and if I had to put one of those things on I'd look like I had a bad hair day after. So yeah, smaller lighter options that don't strain your eyes... oh yeah, if you wear glasses you'll need whole new lenses on the things if you want a comfortable fit so there's an extra cost there. It's come a LONG way since 2016 but I think it still has a ways to go to really go outside the gaming/ niche professional uses. As is, we're almost there but we need that model T version that everyone finds a good use for not just gamers and tech enthusiasts. Definitely not failed but we'll see where it goes.
There is a game for the Quest 2 called "Tea For God", which seems like it might be your kind of game if you don't like using the joystick to move. You need a playspace around 6 feet wide and long, as you walk around completely in the real world, and the game uses non-euclidean geometry to change the world around you, letting you walk forever.
Also, Bigscreen VR lets you watch movies (including 3D movies) in a ton of environments! And there are public lobbies that you can let anyone join, or just your friends.
Best thing about VR is that it's immersive. Worst part of VR is that it immersive.
It's great when you have time to concentrate on being somewhere else but most of the times we're doing more than one thing at once. Who watches TV these days without talking to your family/housemates or checking your phone, making a coffee or a sandwich , take a pee halfway through, etc. Lives are chaotic and VR insists on concentrating on one single thing. However, I sold my VR set mostly because it was too much of a faff cleaning the room and to get it set up. By the time I set it up, the time I had to play on it was tiny cos I had other stuff to do.
Fun fact: Nintendo did already do VR, and Zelda VR does already exist. It was on the Labo platform, and both BotW and also Super Mario Odyssey are compatible (and two other lesser known games apparently after looking it up). They sucked, hard, but it was a cool little novel experience playing Breath in VR for the few minutes I could take it.
Watching 3D movies on a headset with a wide FOV and clear lenses like the Quest 3 is a great time and I absolutely recommend it.
Your headaches could be related to you using the standard head strap (Quest 2). It has to carry all the weight on your face, which means you have to tighten it a lot. With a better strap the weight is distributed over a much larger part of your head reducing the strain significantly. A better facial interface can help too but the strap is the most important.
I liked a VR arcade where we played some archery tower defence game together - the game used a built in microphone in the Vive and it kinda felt like people were just there with you
Asgard Wrath 2 is an amazing VR game.
10:50 smaller lighter cheaper headgear? Isn't that a daft punk song lyric
I would highly recommend upgrading to Quest 3! It is so much lighter, screens are more crisp so way less eye strain and the MR games really are a glimpse of the future.
Think if you got a Quest 3, it would solve some of your negative points.
None FPS shooter games you should try:
Max Mustard (Bascially astro bot on Quest)
Puzzling Place
Track Craft
Witchblood
Infinite Inside
Lego Bricktales
Demeo
Stand out AAA games:
Walking Dead Saints & Sinners
Assassins Creed Nexus
Sniper Elite VR
Red Matter 2
A Fisherman's Tale
7th Guest
Asgard's Wrath 2
Batman (coming Oct)
Behemoth (coming Nov)
A while ago I would struggle to recommend even a hand full of games worth getting a Quest 3 for. Now there are a solid 20-30 very good titles on there, with plenty of other good little time consumers.
My fvaorite use of VR, the only one I've actually styck with since I realized I don't enjoy moving around while gaming, is *watching movies* Home cinem without a projector. 3D without glasses. Or you know, with some pretty heavy glasses but without the annoying effect of every other frame being sent to each eye; it's all just frames for both eyes all the time and no brightness problems. Absolutely the best way hands down to watch 3D movies. Only problem really is that almost *noone* seems to have figured this out and so I gitta use a bunch of weird software workarounds in order to stream my 3D Blurays to my headset (or rip them, which is also suboptimal). But when it's all set up - fantastic!
Also helps with focus; in VR it's kind of hard to look at your phone while watching the movie.
(If anyone's interested, this is my setup right now: DVDFab PassKey to decrypt blurays so I can watch them on my computer by using an external bluray drive, PotPlayer to turn the Bluray 3D stream into SBS-format with left eye image on the left side and right eye image on the right side, Virtual Desktop Streamer to stream the SBS video to the headset and, on the headset, to split the SBS stream back into one stream per eye in a cinema setting. Told you it was a bunch of weird workarounds.)
The original Meta/Oculus headstraps are too uncomfortable for extended use. I recomend the Kiwi headstreaps since they do the job and are cheap. I just put a battery in my pocket, bumbag, camelback bag.
loved this video! i actually laughed out loud
I love Moss, but I’m completely in love with PowerWasher Simulator.
Been playing since 2019.. the best game I've found that really gets me putting the headset on again and again is a Looter extraction game called Ghost of tabor.. so addictive.
I literally was just about to start posting / make a blog about my 4-ish year experience in VR!
Great video! My thoughts:
I think it's a wonderful medium, but deeply deeply misunderstood.
The main creators of VR also don't help because they seem to not have a good understanding of their best current use cases -- namely that VR isn't ready nor do most people want to "live" in virtual worlds in their headsets and that most are too heavy and cumbersome to actually be useful for productivity.
Quick note Re: motion sickness:
Most VR-heads often get over motion sickness within a few weeks of using VR.
I personally can fall off cliffs, run around in an entirely open world, and run at very high speeds (in-game) and do all of that without blinking an eye.
I am also not prone IRL to motion sickness though, so this is probably a me-thing partially, but I do not think it is entirely.
HOWEVER -- I can tell you that it isn't so much that you get sick necessarily from the movement but rather inconsistent frame rates over longer periods of time.
IRL Your vision never deviates framerates. The framerate of reality is constant at all times for everyone.
And in flat games, fluctuating between 30-60fps is fine for most people because you aren't actually immersed in that environment.
But in VR -- the framerate is absolutely crucial to nail. This is really, really hard constraint on VR game development that is HUGELY different from most triple-A titles in flatland.
In my experience, if I have a VR title that I can consistently run above about 80 frames, then I rarely feel sick even after playing for a few hours.
I do get very sick and much faster if I am struggling to maintain framerate in more demanding titles.
Other than the ones you pointed out:
-- VR has too many hurdles to get into, especially the higher end experience. I'd reckon you need a fair amount of PC and tech savvy in general to get the top of the line experiences not to mention really expensive graphics cards. The best experiences are gated behind 1500 dollar 4090s and mods that take money and time to setup.
-- VR is an active medium. For adults, the idea of plopping on a headset after work or a tiring day sounds exhausting likely, and I think this is an issue of our work/culture/value set as we don't really make enough time to embrace our inner child and go out and play. Tons of kids intuitively get VR and love it. Adults, in my experience, are far less enthusiastic -- even ones who love games! We need to work on making VR comfy and work on games that don't require tons of effort or setup but are still great and relaxing.
-- Bigger games companies NEED to port their older and beloved titles to VR. Most of this work wouldn't be difficult if given access to the source code and really great ports (Like Resident Evil 4) have already seen massive success. I think TONS of adoption would come if you offered someone a chance to experience (insert favorite beloved video game) in VR for the first time. I know I would
The list goes on. I will eventually be writing my manifesto and plan on working in the industry soon so hopefully I'll get to work on some of these issues!
Thanks for coming to my ted talk lmao.
Beat saber is some of the most fun I’ve ever had, period. Also, Half Life Alyx is worth it to experience *at any price.* I’m not sure I’d say that about basically anything else. It’s simply that transcendent.
A lot of good VR experiences at the moment are other games that either have a VR mode or a mod. There are a lot of simulator games that are incredible with VR. Also Pistol Whip, that game slaps, and it's a great to get your body moving.
Also, the headache is almost certainly down to eyestrain, and the way to fix it is to calibrate your eyes correctly, individually. You do this by setting the individual eye settings and checking the difference in position between the VR and IRL controller images for each eye. Once you can match them up 1 to 1 then you know the system is giving your eyes the right information. I used to get terrible VR headaches if I spent too long doing it, but they completely stopped happening once I did this. Once there's good eye tracking this should become automatic and the issue should stop happening.
Also for the isolation, I find VR games are really compelling and people just naturally want to watch, if you can put the VR view up on the computer screen - if you're using a PC for it - it's a cool communal experience. I guess also the VR mods for other games is generally a PC thing too.
I'm gonna echo others and say definitely replace the head strap on the Quest 2. The default strap is almost certainly contributing to the headaches mentioned at 8:06 onward, and in a couple rare cases has even caused neck stress fractures because it's so bad.
There's the halo style that moves the weight off your face to your forehead, and the elite strap style (Kiwi makes a much better priced version than the official one) where it distributes the weight into pads on the top and back and face more evenly, either is fine and most have a preference for one or the other. I also recommend one with a battery in the back to fix the weight distribution so it's not so front heavy, or you can add weight on the rear with coin rolls or similar
11:38 The whole point of VR is the first person experience, it can't be the other way. Almost every game has comfort options like teleport movement, vignetting, etc., so what's the problem? Yes it sucks in terms of immersion, but if you can't bear it, the options are there. The best way to cure motion sickness is to train your vestibular apparatus. It might be long and painfull process, but if you want to enjoy VR to its fullest, there's no other way.
Also like some other comments said, you should consider trying PCVR, if you haven't. THE best VR experiences are there.
I think you're right Craig! And EAGLE PUNCH!!!
Because VR is where Walkabout mini golf is. (Mic drop). Spent thousands of hours in it, and thousands more to come. Love it more today than the first time I ever played