Doom + Fallout 4 Virtual Reality support incoming (and some complications)

[Humbug]

With the first gen of PC gaming consumer VR headsets the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift both selling extremely well despite high price points it is not surprising that more AAA publishers want to get in on the action. Adding VR support to your renderer is not too difficult in terms of complexity and manhours required. However the challenge is to utilize VR in a way which adds something of value to the gameplay experience, rather than just a more immersive POV. Doom runs on idtech6 and Fallout 4 the Creation engine.

 

Announcment video below. The fact that it's only coming in 2017 is a good sign that they are really going the distance and tweaking the gameplay experience to lend itself to VR.

 

Many of you may have noticed that he also makes it a point to mention to only mention the HTC Vive platform, and he pointedly says that they support "the very best platforms".

 

At first glance this is a bit odd because both the Vive and Rift have been successful. And most big devs (Project Cars, Eve Valkyrie, War Thunder, Elite Dangerous etc) are moving in a direction to support both headsets with cross-platform play which is what gamers want. It is also known in the industry that Valve as a policy does not sign exclusivity agreements or provide incentives for such. The Oculus Rift may not be a fully fledged product yet but with the upcoming release of the Oculus touch it should be able to do what the Vive does. The SteamVR SDK already supports the Rift. So as a business decision this does not seem to make sense for Bethesda to only target one half of the VR market.

 

The only likely reason Bethesda are doing this is the animosity between them and Facebook / Oculus. There is currently a lawsuit ongoing between the two companies. Bethesda claims that John Carmack did R&D for virtual reality while he was still an employee of id software, which is true, but they want to claim some ownership of that work.

Quote

"The proprietary technology and know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee, and used by Oculus, are owned by ZeniMax," the company's statement continues. "Well before the Facebook transaction was announced, Mr. Luckey acknowledged in writing ZeniMax's legal ownership of this intellectual property. It was further agreed that Mr. Luckey would not disclose this technology to third persons without approval. Oculus has used and exploited ZeniMax's technology and intellectual property without authorization, compensation or credit to ZeniMax. ZeniMax and Oculus previously attempted to reach an agreement whereby ZeniMax would be compensated for its intellectual property through equity ownership in Oculus but were unable to reach a satisfactory resolution. ZeniMax believes it is necessary to address these matters now and will take the necessary action to protect its interests."

"It was only through the concerted efforts of Mr. Carmack, using technology developed over many years at, and owned by, ZeniMax, that Mr. Luckey was able to transform his garage-based pipe dream into a working reality," the Journal reported, based on an April 18 letter from ZeniMax to Oculus' lawyers and Facebook's general counsel, Colin Stretch.

 

http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/1/5671670/carmack-oculus-zenimax

The current bad blood between the two companies mean that it's too awkward for them to work together on a project. Bethesda cannot call up Oculus and ask for a prototype of Oculus touch to test. We will have to hope that the legal issues are settled soon. If not we need not fret too much, we can rely on the mod community to get this working with the Rift.

 

The lawsuit is a bit ironic because in the early days there was a lot of R&D sharing between Valve and Oculus and they used to collaborate widely. Now they are competitors but both are smart enough to not sue each other.

 

[You_are_a_cunt]

Dammit. Now I have to get a VR headset and a new PC.

[Sakkura]

12 minutes ago, Humbug said:

With the first gen of PC gaming consumer VR headsets the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift both selling extremely well despite high price points it is not surprising that more AAA publishers want to get in on the action. Adding VR support to your renderer is not too difficult in terms of complexity and manhours required. However the challenge is to utilize VR in a way which adds something of value to the gameplay experience, rather than just a more immersive POV. Doom runs on idtech6 and Fallout 4 the Creation engine.

-snip-

The only likely reason Bethesda are doing this is the animosity between them and Facebook / Oculus. There is currently a lawsuit ongoing between the two companies. Bethesda claims that John Carmack did R&D for virtual reality while he was still an employee of id software, which is true, but they want to claim some ownership of that work.

As for adding basic VR support, that's not too hard. But the problem of motion sickness from artificial motion (ie. movement using an analog stick or WSAD) remains, and would be hard to solve without significant modifications to the games. I guess they're just going to throw it out there for the people who don't get sick from artificial motion in VR?

 

As for the "exclusivity" it might also have to do with requiring motion controllers. Oculus doesn't have those available yet, but they'll be out before these VR versions are complete. Maybe Bethesda is just not mentioning the Rift to spite Oculus, or maybe because they won't be testing/adapting anything to the Oculus hardware (which should be trivial for third parties to fix, if SteamVR itself isn't enough to make it work seamlessly). But they haven't specifically said anything about not being compatible with the Rift, so it's all up in the air. Just like that lawsuit, unfortunately (sucks it's taking this long).

[gammatsunami]

sweeeeeeeeeeet

[Maslofski]

jumping off a building in power armor will never be the same then lol

[suicidalfranco]

DOOM too fast of a game for VR

[RagnarokDel]

Hot damn I might just need to buy a Vive (soon™)

[werto165]

This is the full game apparently. From the descriptions of the game from upload VR it sounds like they're using teleportation locomotion, how the hell will the game work? Jump towards an enemy and then teleport away. Just don't see how it would work. Stealth would be so easy too. Hoping it's a steam VR game not a HTC vive exclusive game. 

 

https://uploadvr.com/fallout-4-htc-vive-hands-on-preview/

[werto165]

1 hour ago, suicidalfranco said:

DOOM too fast of a game for VR

It's not a full doom game is it? Thought it was more of a demo thing, only fo4 being a full remastered VR release. 

He says "take a virtual tour of hell" , doesn't sound like it's the whole game. 

[AHaskin14]

Skyrim remastered had better have support!

[Doobeedoo]

Doom VR multiplayer :D? Come at me!

[Misanthrope]

So Fallout 4 with VR, of course you do realize what that means don't you?

Spoiler

Fallout 4 Porn mods...IN VR!

 

[SteveGrabowski0]

How are they going to run Fallout 4 at a locked 90 fps on an i5-4590? That game is so cpu bound.