Valve Index now available in Canada ! Here are the prices !

[RejZoR]

2 minutes ago, TOMPPIX said:

VR didn't take off because of the price, i would have bought one otherwise.

Price wouldn't be an issue if buying one meant you could use it for everything. Since you can't (afaik), it's too expensive for what you get out of it or for what you can even use it in the end.

[TOMPPIX]

Just now, RejZoR said:

Price wouldn't be an issue if buying one meant you could use it for everything. Since you can't (afaik), it's too expensive for what you get out of it or for what you can even use it in the end.

if more people buy a vr headset then demand for games go up also.

[RejZoR]

2 minutes ago, TOMPPIX said:

if more people buy a vr headset then demand for games go up also.

But no one wants to buy a 550 bucks equipment for games that might come. People would buy it for games that are available. Sort of full circle hell.

[TOMPPIX]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

But no one wants to buy a 550 bucks equipment for games that might come. People would buy it for games that are available. Sort of full circle hell.

who said 550 bucks should be the starting price?

oneplus didn't get popular because they released a 800 buck phone from the get go, no they appealed to the majority of the market and then raised the price.

[Thaldor]

57 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

But no one wants to buy a 550 bucks equipment for games that might come. People would buy it for games that are available. Sort of full circle hell.

People buy phones with marginally better HW than the comparison for almost double the prices, people buy Samsungs flop phone for 2000$, people buy sport cars, people buy mind bogginly expensive watches (and I mean stuff which make Rolex look like kids lunch moneys), people buy a lot of expensive shit that has only marginal use or even has some use but in reality almost no one can use them like they are supposed to be used. Hell, people bought quite a long time Nvidia 3DVision-glasses which were like crap from the beginning and supporting games list was shorter than what games supported VR when DK1 and DK2 were things.

 

DK1 and DK2 mentioned, just no, no more that shit, ever, please. We once already threw up and gamed with buckets next to us for one humanity, the "immersion goggles" is a very shitty idea that I wouldn't even want my worst enemy, who killed my dog and burned my house, to ever experience again. VR games aren't something you just take a game and put support for VR in it, most of the time that results in "experiences" like Fallout 4 VR and Skyrim VR which both are even today very crap. Not to even mention to put VR into just any game, there still is quite many games (mostly on Oculus) that are seated and played with a controller and there is smiley to review them: And most of them even don't have the most nauseating effect ever put into a VR game, the head bobble, while it creates nice and very natural feeling walking on monitor, in VR it's directly vomiting experience and probably 90% of first person games have it today. And if you think that's a good idea, you are free to try it with around like 12$ (IIRC ~9$ for the app and you can get cardboards for 2-10$), get Google Cardboard and Trinus Cardboard VR and you have the stuff to "experience" VR in any game you ever wanted. [whole point is, if the game isn't actaully made for VR, it's mostly shit and vomit]

[RejZoR]

People buy expensive brand name phones, Rolexes and expensive cars because they can flash that shit around and be cool. You'll just look dumb with VR on the street...

[TechyBen]

On 11/21/2019 at 6:36 PM, Princess Luna said:

VALVe had to bring the Half-Life franchise from the dead to try stop losing money on these haha, I wanna see how this cash grab is going to play out... likely Artifact version 2.

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This is a great shame... VALVe was reference in the industry and now they don't really seem to know how to make games any more.

They know how to make games... they only really care about money though. (Artifact was a card trading game, and an attempt to ride the cash grab. See how Fortnight and Overwatch practically look like TF2, and how Valve just ran that game into the hat shop ground)

[Sauron]

On 11/23/2019 at 3:18 AM, Waffles13 said:

They said the same thing about first generation VR, and it took three years for something to come out that was objectively better across the board - and even then, the Index costs more than the Vive did at launch. 

But launch VR was awful.

[Unixsystem]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

But launch VR was awful.

No, it wasn't. 

 

There was a severe lack of games that were compelling for more than a few hours each, but the hardware was 100% fine. I still use my CV1 3-5 hours a week minimum and it still works pretty much flawlessly despite more instances than I'd like to admit of punching myself in the face. 

 

I'd really like to know what it is about it that was so awful, unless you've never actually used it and are just basing it on that Crowbcat video or similar "haha VR sucks" memes that have been floating around since even before launch. 

[Unixsystem]

7 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Price wouldn't be an issue if buying one meant you could use it for everything. Since you can't (afaik), it's too expensive for what you get out of it or for what you can even use it in the end.

Statements like this make it pretty clear that you haven't worn a headset for any length of time.

 

There are plenty of mods to make regular games playable in VR, and the experience is almost universally awful. Even ignoring the fact that traditional FPSes are absolute nausea factories in VR, and things like UI are usually either unusable or massively immersion breaking, the game design just doesn't lend itself to VR.

 

The entire point of VR is tactile interaction; as far as I'm concerned the initial Oculus launch where it was just a headset with no controllers can barely even be considered VR in the first place. A VR shooter where reload is mapped to a button, or a sword fighting game where swings don't directly follow the angle of your IRL hands are completely worthless. In a game like H3VR, some of the most intense action comes from trying to duck behind a piece of cover and hastily reload your weapon while enemies bear down on you. In Jet Island you are often using one hand to grapple to an object that is completely outside of your field of vision, then while swinging around you are using thrusters on your other hand pointing in a completely different direction to fine tune your trajectory to get a good angle to switch to your weapons and take out an enemy. Games like Beat Saber or (modded) Audioshield require you to physically move and contort at a speed and in directions that would put traditional aerobics to shame. Games like Echo Arena require you to ricochet off of teammates and bounce off of walls, spinning constant 180s in order to intercept the disk or flank enemies. 

 

Meanwhile you have VR games trying to emulate AAA like Archangel or Lone Echo, where you often spend 5-10 minutes sitting still listening to characters talk. And even in a game like Echo where the acting is good and the storyline is potentially interesting, the lack of environmental interactions in those sequences makes them horrifically boring. Half Life 2 at least had the decency to put a bunch of (at the time) technically impressive doohickeys around the "cutscene" environments to keep you occupied, and even then those sequences really don't hold up today. 

 

I realize that a certain amount of this comes down to taste, but I'm pretty sure that reviews and sales would both show that VR shines when it either throws you into a fully sandbox environment with maximum interaction (H3VR, Rev Room, Budget Cuts, etc), or a very focused arcade like experience where physical activity is at a maximum (Beat Saber, Knockout League, etc). There are things like Pavlov where it is more traditional multi-player shooter structure, but even then the tactile interaction with your weapons (and the absolutely essential ability to hug other players) elevates it far above what it other wise should be. 

 

The only real exception to the "controllers are absolutely essential to VR" argument are the hardcore plane/car sims where peripherals are already a key part of the experience. But honestly, even in those cases I think there's a case to be made that a quality monitor setup with a TrackIR is preferable since being able to actually see your HOTAS or wheel is pretty much essential. Not to mention that resolution really matters in those games to be able to clearly see objects or gauges, which is definitely not a strength in VR (it may be much more practical in the Index, although I haven't had the ability to try one out yet). Also those games are usually highly demanding graphically and and usually framerate is pretty low on the priorities list versus things like physics accuracy and graphical detail and in VR thats obviously a real problem. 

 

Tl;dr: VR is only ever great/more than a novelty when you are playing games that take full advantage of the strengths of the platform. Traditional games in VR suck. 

 

EDIT: As an ADDENDUM, I personally feel that one of the biggest problems with VR adoption is people not accepting it for what it is and instead trying to push it to be the future of all video games. Pretty much since launch I've viewed VR as a physical arcade-like experience, basically a replacement for going out and playing laser tag or paintball; you get in, have a good time, and get out. And while there certainly are tons of terrible VR games and relatively few great ones, I've never been disappointed in my purchase and still get regular enjoyment from it. Treating it like the second coming of video game Jesus is just setting everyone up to be bummed out. 

[RejZoR]

Well, doesn't this just prove my point? VR just isn't usable for anything outside of specifically coded VR games and they just cost too much. Ie, it's a fail like numerous times through history...

[Thaldor]

12 minutes ago, Waffles13 said:

No, it wasn't. 

 

There was a severe lack of games that were compelling for more than a few hours each, but the hardware was 100% fine. I still use my CV1 3-5 hours a week minimum and it still works pretty much flawlessly despite more instances than I'd like to admit of punching myself in the face. 

 

I'd really like to know what it is about it that was so awful, unless you've never actually used it and are just basing it on that Crowbcat video or similar "haha VR sucks" memes that have been floating around since even before launch. 

@Sauron probably meant DK1 (and DK2) which really was awful compared to CV1 and anything later. DK1 was basicly Google Cardboard run with 1280x800 resolution screen while DK2 was basicly PSVR with controller (or mouse+keyboard, HOTAS, steering wheel and some early development with Leap Motion which still is mainly for dev use with few tech demos and IIRC AltspaceVR is still the only "released" software in VR to really support Leap Motion).

[Unixsystem]

2 hours ago, Thaldor said:

@Sauron probably meant DK1 (and DK2) which really was awful compared to CV1 and anything later. DK1 was basicly Google Cardboard run with 1280x800 resolution screen while DK2 was basicly PSVR with controller (or mouse+keyboard, HOTAS, steering wheel and some early development with Leap Motion which still is mainly for dev use with few tech demos and IIRC AltspaceVR is still the only "released" software in VR to really support Leap Motion).

I'd assume the PS4 and Xbone dev kits were pretty shitty too. I can't really hold that against the first proper release of the real hardware. 

 

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Well, doesn't this just prove my point? VR just isn't usable for anything outside of specifically coded VR games and they just cost too much. Ie, it's a fail like numerous times through history...

Tell me, what's more important, an $800 video card that improves your framerate by ~50% in all games, or an $800 device that allows you to experience 15-20 games that are completely unlike any other game that you could ever play elsewhere? And that's only at launch, the Oculus is currently down to $400 and that's if you completely ignore the used market. 

 

If the value proposition doesn't work for you then that's fine, but then problem is that you're completely framing the platform wrong. People spend thousands of dollars on vacations in order to get a once in a lifetime experience completely unlike what they're used to. This is the exact same thing, except I get to use it over and over whenever I want. 

 

If the experience doesn't appeal to you, that's fine, and obviously you can look at sales and see that it's not for a lot of people. But that doesn't take anything away from the all of those who bought in and got every dollars worth. New VR games still come out all the time, and we're still getting regular hardware iterations. It's not a dead market, it's a niche market, just like almost every other piece of specialty game hardware. 

[Derangel]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Well, doesn't this just prove my point? VR just isn't usable for anything outside of specifically coded VR games and they just cost too much. Ie, it's a fail like numerous times through history...

Over 2 million people have bought PSVR headsets. Its sold well enough and has enough promise that Sony will be supporting VR from the get-go on the PS5. They are even going to release an updated headset sometime after launch. HTC is banking what little future it has on VR due to the sales of the original Vive. Facebook has only continued to heavily support Oculus and their devices as time goes on. Every damn super market chain in the US has a bunch of VR stuff in their electronics sections. From cheap mobile VR crap all the way up to high-end headsets.

 

Could you maybe use your face to talk instead of your backside from now on?

[Mark Kaine]

10 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

Whether you like it or not, VR sales is on steady climb. People buy this thing. 

 seems so odd to me VR is so boring and uninspired, I was hoping it to die already but you're right it's probably very successful or they wouldn't keep making these.

 

 

Spoiler

I really think of it as the industry prototyping new tech and finding  new ways to make people pay for what would otherwise "research cost" ,  basically beta testers who pay instead of getting paid 

These things are technically so under developed it's not even funny, and will never be mainstream in this form.

 

But of course, I do not say this aloud.

 

[Derangel]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

 seems so odd to me VR is so boring and uninspired, I was hoping it to die already but you're right it's probably very successful or they wouldn't keep making these.

 

 

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I really think of it as the industry prototyping new tech and finding  new ways to make people pay for what would otherwise "research cost" ,  basically beta testers who pay instead of getting paid 

These things are technically so under developed it's not even funny, and will never be mainstream in this form.

 

But of course, I do not say this aloud.

 

So you want something with huge potential across several fields to die because you find it boring? That's rather petty.

[Mark Kaine]

5 minutes ago, Derangel said:

So you want something with huge potential across several fields to die because you find it boring? That's rather petty.

No I want it to be away from publicity and be developed properly. It's indeed very boring to keep reading about this as the next big thing when the improvements are each time so ridiculously small. 

 

Do they now finally use see through cameras or is that still years away... 

?

 

 

 

[Derangel]

6 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

No I want it to be away from publicity and be developed properly. It's indeed very boring to keep reading about this as the next big thing when the improvements are each time so ridiculously small. 

 

Do they now finally use see through cameras or is that still years away... 

?

 

 

 

Its not going to get development without people supporting it.

[Thaldor]

7 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

No I want it to be away from publicity and be developed properly. It's indeed very boring to keep reading about this as the next big thing when the improvements are each time so ridiculously small. 

 

Do they now finally use see through cameras or is that still years away... 

?

Well, people loose their shit over 10-30% increase in FPS (at the best) and reflections that didn't even look that good compared to actually well done with earlier tech, how much was that? $1500 for the flagship and $700 for even the entry from which even the flagship has hard time running what was promised? And don't even get me started with CPUs, 5% increase per generation and that's the "development" for which people are peeing honey. You see the tech has a tendency to develop quite slowly even if the ads make it seem like ligthyears each year, and most of that goes away when you really look at the statistics (like those few 30% increases between GTX 1080Ti and RTX 20180Ti, most of those happened with games that already were running +120 FPS, like "hurray! Instead of running only in 140FPS we can now run this game at 160FPS or even 180FPS" like that's a great development, can I finally run Crysis now?)

 

And passthrough cameras are already here, it's called Vive Pro and if we are strict the original Vive already had the possibility for that but no one really wanted that because it only had VGA-camera in the front and it wouldn't have been that great to do anything. And BTW the passthrough cameras on Vive Pro are the poorman's choice, the real deal is not having cameras at all for passthrough image but to have transparent layer on which the digital image is projected on top of the real world.

[Paranoid Kami]

11 hours ago, RejZoR said:

It won't. People are not willing to pay 300 bucks for better graphic card that can run all the games in the world and everyone expects them to pay minimum of 550 for one game. Killer game or not, this deal WON'T work. The cost to benefits ratio is garbage and people won't go down with this deal.

Buying a Switch just for Smash Bros or Pokemon is pretty normal. I did it

 

Not everyone plays lots of different game. Sticking to just one or two that you like and playing it for years is a thing.

[amdorintel]

12 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Price wouldn't be an issue if buying one meant you could use it for everything. Since you can't (afaik), it's too expensive for what you get out of it or for what you can even use it in the end.

its a niche market

[xAcid9]

4 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

 seems so odd to me VR is so boring and uninspired, I was hoping it to die already but you're right it's probably very successful or they wouldn't keep making these.

For me as a sim racer VR is a godsend, that sense of immersion is nothing i've ever felt before.

 

4 hours ago, Derangel said:

Over 2 million people have bought PSVR headsets.

That obviously a made up statistic, no one buy VR according to this thread. 

3 hours ago, Paranoid Kami said:

Not everyone plays lots of different game. Sticking to just one or two that you like and playing it for years is a thing.

this. I have a lot of customers that upgrade their graphic card or buy a new pc just for Dota 2 or PUBG. 

[realpetertdm]

16 hours ago, RejZoR said:

It won't. People are not willing to pay 300 bucks for better graphic card that can run all the games in the world and everyone expects them to pay minimum of 550 for one game. Killer game or not, this deal WON'T work. The cost to benefits ratio is garbage and people won't go down with this deal.

$200 Windows Mixed Reality headsets exist. $100 if you buy used.

[realpetertdm]

16 hours ago, TOMPPIX said:

VR didn't take off because of the price, i would have bought one otherwise.

A baseline VR headset costs about the same as a RX 570, a budget GPU.

[realpetertdm]

12 hours ago, TechyBen said:

They know how to make games... they only really care about money though. (Artifact was a card trading game, and an attempt to ride the cash grab. See how Fortnight and Overwatch practically look like TF2, and how Valve just ran that game into the hat shop ground)

Team Fortress 2 had microtransactions at least since 2010 (Mann-conomy update, which added new cosmetics, trading and the Mann Co. Store). 

 

I don't really get what you're trying to say with TF2. Are you trying to say that Valve copied the microtransaction system from OW/Fortnite? If someone copied something it's Blizzard/Epic who did it.

 

Artifact was a collaboration between Richard Garfield (creater of MTG) and Valve, where they tried to mimic the styles of an actual tabletop card game (where you need to buy cards). Hardly a cash grab. Poor economic model? Sure. But a cash grab? Not really, considering the amount of effort that went into Artifact.