It sounds like those aren't even necessarily next gen "VR" headsets? The article makes it sound more like an AR thing:
"HTC is not sharing any specifications at the moment, likely because nothing has been chiseled in stone just yet. However, according to The Verge, both prototypes use passthrough video rather than transparent waveguide lenses. This means you would stare at a VR-style screen with virtual elements plopped onto live video. It's more of an augmented reality or mixed reality experience."
while i absolutely think its a worry, i have to consider several things.
1) For valve to be ready for a large scale launch of alyx and the index they would have had to already received a lot of product from china before the virus shut stuff down. especially if the parts are assembled in the US.
2) Alyx being released in a month, with no announced delays at this time (and really none expected given the release date announcement), I think they have the numbers they expected to have for the release.
3) Valve putting out Alyx after so long of basically no new game development is going to call back a *lot* of people and at the same time jump start a lot of new VR units as a 'standard' kind of accessory into the field. This is a major planned event, and if they thought the virus was going to screw up the launch, i think they would have already delayed the release to make sure it goes well.
That assumes a lot of competency on Valve's part I don't think they deserve. Especially when it come to hardware availability.
?? I think your being very unfair. Not sure about your experiences with valve as a company that might have given you the impression that Valve as a company is not at the very least a 'competent' company...but they seem a bit excessive.
With Half-Life: Alyx coming March 23rd, we are working hard to meet demand for the Valve Index and want to reassure everyone that Index systems will be available for purchase prior to the game’s launch. However, the global Coronavirus health crisis has impacted our production schedules so we will have far fewer units for sale during the coming months compared to the volumes we originally planned. Our entire team is working hard right now to maximize availability. To receive a notification as soon as the Valve Index is back in stock, please visit Steam and click “Notify Me.”
In short, Valve didn't already have the Index's they planned at least on the slow boat from China. The virus has impacted Index production, no they aren't delaying Alyx because of it.
In Valve's defense, there was a just fine surplus of Indexes before the announcement. I doubt they would want to have enormous warehouses or cargo ships full to bursting just on the hope that announcing a new Half-Life game would massively increase demand to the degree that it did - they'd look pretty silly if all the naysayers saying "no one's going to buy a thousand dollar headset to play a series that's been on hiatus for over a decade" were right.
Once demand surged they probably increased orders, confident they'd have plenty of time to get the new headsets in, and then the Coronavirus happened. That's not something anyone would have reasonably predicted.
Yeah, my two younger daughters love playing Rec Room together, one on a Rift CV1 and the other on a Quest. They have an absolute blast. I have them on minor accounts with chat turned off (because duh), but they can hear each other so that's all they really need. Really fun stuff, it'd be great if there were more games like that allowing multiple users to play simultaneously on the same account.
I returned to Boneworks over the weekend. The recent patch makes a huge difference; while there may almost be too many save points, it's great to know that if you stop you don't have to replay a considerable chunk of the game. It might not always be as extreme as with the "Streets" level, but that one takes an hour or longer, depending on how much you search the various nooks and crannies.
My impression is that the performance has also improved, though I don't know if that's the game or a new Nvidia driver. What has definitely improved is the climbing: it feels much less twitchy, and me pulling myself up on a ledge now works in general, not just as an exception.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Sweet! The save system sounded super terrible to start with, and was keeping me from buying it. If there are frequent checkpoints now I may have to give it a whirl!
I'm particularly interested in modeling and animation in VR. Getting animation right in a monitor requires seeing everything from multiple angles in a way that I find kind of tedious. Grabbing things with a VR hand and positioning it with stereoscopic vision sounds way cooler!
So someone gifted me Boneworks and I tried it out on my stream last night
I could only play an hour and then I felt like I was going to throw up and die
I dunno what exactly it is about that game but oh god even just thinking about it now is making me nauseous.
Seemed cool, other than the horrible motion sickness.
Everything I've read or been told about Boneworks is that it is only for those strong in the VR kung fu, but it's a fantastic game if you can stomach it. I'm rather confident that it would turn me inside out.
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
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The_SpaniardIt's never lupinesIrvine, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
So someone gifted me Boneworks and I tried it out on my stream last night
I could only play an hour and then I felt like I was going to throw up and die
I dunno what exactly it is about that game but oh god even just thinking about it now is making me nauseous.
Seemed cool, other than the horrible motion sickness.
Everything I've read or been told about Boneworks is that it is only for those strong in the VR kung fu, but it's a fantastic game if you can stomach it. I'm rather confident that it would turn me inside out.
I played a couple hours before I decided I'd wait for some more patches and updates. I was pleasantly surprised that my VR legs were good enough that I didn't get sick even after a couple hours of monkey climbing around the main menu.
There are definitely different camps within the VR community, and one of them wants everything pushed to the maxxxxxx. From what I've seen with Boneworks coverage, it's definitely aimed at those people.
There has been a lot of development done to avoid motion sickness, as it should be! Developers are concerned with reaching as wide of an audience as possible and "I got sick playing your game" is a pretty solid reason to refund it and never want to play it again (or, even worse, "everything in VR makes me sick" and you write off the concept entirely).
But implementing that stuff takes resources, and affects the design of your game. Early on, it was very common for teleport movement to just be The Way. I was cool with it! It minimizes motion sickness and I don't have to tell people about how they might get sick in the game I'm showing them. But there were a lot of people sitting around going "My stomach is ironclad, I want to be able to seamlessly explore this environment FPS style -- teleporting breaks my immersion." And they had a point too. Over time, I got used to VR and yeah, if a game offers traditional locomotion I'm probably using it (though I have to play standing up and using my head for turning -- joystick vision control in VR for me is instantly nausea inducing).
It would be awesome if every game had every option from extreme comfort to "let me do whatever the hell I want nausea be damned". But these are still primarily indie games and it's just not cost feasible -- the game just wouldn't exist if the developer were forced to cover every base in some instances. Boneworks is the latest and most "to the maxxxx" example of this. It is 100% designed to let you do crazy stuff in VR that other games don't necessarily let you -- it is designed for the "to the maxxx" crowd, and hey if other people enjoy it then cool.
It's like designing rollercoasters. From my perspective, fuck all of you fuck your rollercoasters why do you do that to yourself why can't we just go do something else. But there are people who really love the damn things and it's not my place to take them away or ask that they be tamed for me.
Developers and designers spent years experimenting with how to make VR as accessible as possible.
Boneworks is what happens when designers go "Fuck accessibility" and try to design a VR game with zero thought given towards not making people sick.
If the devs want to stick to their guns on this, it would be helpful for them to release a demo level or something so that people can try the game out and see if it would make them sick.
The death of the demo is a tragedy, but my outlook improved slightly when I finally gave in and realized there's no reason to not to use the 2 hour steam return policy as a free demo if you're uncertain. I very rarely wind up returning the game either way, but it's no questions asked and you should use it to your advantage in situations like this.
The death of the demo is a tragedy, but my outlook improved slightly when I finally gave in and realized there's no reason to not to use the 2 hour steam return policy as a free demo if you're uncertain. I very rarely wind up returning the game either way, but it's no questions asked and you should use it to your advantage in situations like this.
I thought I read somewhere that this screws developers over, as they have to refund the entire sale amount rather than the 70% cut they get from Valve.
The death of the demo is a tragedy, but my outlook improved slightly when I finally gave in and realized there's no reason to not to use the 2 hour steam return policy as a free demo if you're uncertain. I very rarely wind up returning the game either way, but it's no questions asked and you should use it to your advantage in situations like this.
I thought I read somewhere that this screws developers over, as they have to refund the entire sale amount rather than the 70% cut they get from Valve.
Yeah I would definitely like a source on that, because that changes it! I felt a bit dirty doing it at first, and don't do it much, but if it's actually screwing over the dev then that will change my opinion!
But hey in this case you can rationalize it as them being jerks for not making a demo of their nausea inducing game, either way. If "your game makes me physically ill" isn't a good reason for a refund I'm not sure what is!
Boneworks is actually the only game I've gotten a refund for. The complete lack of any effort to prevent motion sickness combined with a bit during the tutorial that talks about the teleportation motion method as a "primitive technology" sealed it for me.
Boneworks is actually the only game I've gotten a refund for. The complete lack of any effort to prevent motion sickness combined with a bit during the tutorial that talks about the teleportation motion method as a "primitive technology" sealed it for me.
Wow, I thought the Dark Souls anti-accessibility argument was bad, but right in the tutorial?
I was curious enough to do some poking around and it does look like refunding games is totally fine -- Valve isn't just refunding them their 70% cut of the sale. There was a bit of a furor when they announced the policy in 2015 and a lot of confusion going on -- one of the false rumors that started was that Valve was keeping their cut when refunding games.
Valve initially was letting people refund games from 6+ months before (as a mea culpa for not allowing refunds at all -- "ok you can have refunds, and we'll let you refund anything you bought within the last 6 months if it meets the other criteria") and some developers were getting confused because they were getting refunds from people who bought their game when it was on sale. They were getting 70% of the proceeds because the game was on a 30% sale 5 months prior when someone bought it, and that person was refunded the sale price and obviously not the full price.
The chaos died down, the time window is now like 2 weeks, and everything seems fine. I sadly don't have an awesome comprehensive source to link because the initial reports were just random hearsay from when it was announced, and those were just incorrect. Probably the best source is that people would be freaking out if Valve's return policy was screwing over indie devs like that, particularly with the existence of Epic's store now.
The exception to this would be that you're totally a jerk if you buy games that can be beat in under 2 hours and refund them within the window after beating the game, and it can be exploited that way (though it sounds like Valve will crack down on you if you're being egregious about it).
The VR bundle on Humble Bundle is in its last few days so grab it while you can if you're still interested.
I have everything good from that Bundle except for Moss. But I was sure to get my bf to pick it up. If anyone else has an extra copy of Moss I'd be willing to trade another key for it.
I agree that for something like Boneworks, a demo would be perfect. I don't agree that the game could've been done with the kind of VR accessibility features people have in mind, at least not without changing the game into something entirely different. There is room for a game like this - though I agree that they could be less snide about it. (I read the "primitive technology" thing as a joke, but it is a snide joke.)
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Even without accessibility stuff, the climbing, moving objects around, etc. has been done better by other games that managed not to instantly make me nauseous, so.
What other VR game lets you climb not just predesigned bits of scenery like Boneworks? Not a rhetorical question: there may be such a game, but I haven’t seen one yet that combines all these systems the way Boneworks does.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Blade+Sorcery comes to mind, it's not as central a game thing as Boneworks but it's definitely there. Think a few other games have tried it too but can't recall off the top of my head.
Blade+Sorcery comes to mind, it's not as central a game thing as Boneworks but it's definitely there. Think a few other games have tried it too but can't recall off the top of my head.
Huh? I honestly didn't even know there was climbing in Blade + Sorcery. What kind of climbing are you doing? I need to branch out more!
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I think we accidentally skipped a level but it was good times. Still have the DLC, but we can gear up for Walking Dead someday which I think has coop?
"HTC is not sharing any specifications at the moment, likely because nothing has been chiseled in stone just yet. However, according to The Verge, both prototypes use passthrough video rather than transparent waveguide lenses. This means you would stare at a VR-style screen with virtual elements plopped onto live video. It's more of an augmented reality or mixed reality experience."
In Valve's defense, there was a just fine surplus of Indexes before the announcement. I doubt they would want to have enormous warehouses or cargo ships full to bursting just on the hope that announcing a new Half-Life game would massively increase demand to the degree that it did - they'd look pretty silly if all the naysayers saying "no one's going to buy a thousand dollar headset to play a series that's been on hiatus for over a decade" were right.
Once demand surged they probably increased orders, confident they'd have plenty of time to get the new headsets in, and then the Coronavirus happened. That's not something anyone would have reasonably predicted.
Man these are rather inspiring.
I kinda want to do more Tiltbrush artwork now.
Yeah, my two younger daughters love playing Rec Room together, one on a Rift CV1 and the other on a Quest. They have an absolute blast. I have them on minor accounts with chat turned off (because duh), but they can hear each other so that's all they really need. Really fun stuff, it'd be great if there were more games like that allowing multiple users to play simultaneously on the same account.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
My impression is that the performance has also improved, though I don't know if that's the game or a new Nvidia driver. What has definitely improved is the climbing: it feels much less twitchy, and me pulling myself up on a ledge now works in general, not just as an exception.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Animation revolution?
I could only play an hour and then I felt like I was going to throw up and die
I dunno what exactly it is about that game but oh god even just thinking about it now is making me nauseous.
Seemed cool, other than the horrible motion sickness.
I'm particularly interested in modeling and animation in VR. Getting animation right in a monitor requires seeing everything from multiple angles in a way that I find kind of tedious. Grabbing things with a VR hand and positioning it with stereoscopic vision sounds way cooler!
I played a couple hours before I decided I'd wait for some more patches and updates. I was pleasantly surprised that my VR legs were good enough that I didn't get sick even after a couple hours of monkey climbing around the main menu.
Boneworks is what happens when designers go "Fuck accessibility" and try to design a VR game with zero thought given towards not making people sick.
There has been a lot of development done to avoid motion sickness, as it should be! Developers are concerned with reaching as wide of an audience as possible and "I got sick playing your game" is a pretty solid reason to refund it and never want to play it again (or, even worse, "everything in VR makes me sick" and you write off the concept entirely).
But implementing that stuff takes resources, and affects the design of your game. Early on, it was very common for teleport movement to just be The Way. I was cool with it! It minimizes motion sickness and I don't have to tell people about how they might get sick in the game I'm showing them. But there were a lot of people sitting around going "My stomach is ironclad, I want to be able to seamlessly explore this environment FPS style -- teleporting breaks my immersion." And they had a point too. Over time, I got used to VR and yeah, if a game offers traditional locomotion I'm probably using it (though I have to play standing up and using my head for turning -- joystick vision control in VR for me is instantly nausea inducing).
It would be awesome if every game had every option from extreme comfort to "let me do whatever the hell I want nausea be damned". But these are still primarily indie games and it's just not cost feasible -- the game just wouldn't exist if the developer were forced to cover every base in some instances. Boneworks is the latest and most "to the maxxxx" example of this. It is 100% designed to let you do crazy stuff in VR that other games don't necessarily let you -- it is designed for the "to the maxxx" crowd, and hey if other people enjoy it then cool.
It's like designing rollercoasters. From my perspective, fuck all of you fuck your rollercoasters why do you do that to yourself why can't we just go do something else. But there are people who really love the damn things and it's not my place to take them away or ask that they be tamed for me.
If the devs want to stick to their guns on this, it would be helpful for them to release a demo level or something so that people can try the game out and see if it would make them sick.
I thought I read somewhere that this screws developers over, as they have to refund the entire sale amount rather than the 70% cut they get from Valve.
Source? Because that seems fucked up.
But hey in this case you can rationalize it as them being jerks for not making a demo of their nausea inducing game, either way. If "your game makes me physically ill" isn't a good reason for a refund I'm not sure what is!
Wow, I thought the Dark Souls anti-accessibility argument was bad, but right in the tutorial?
I guess I'll just skip straight to Alyx :-\
Valve initially was letting people refund games from 6+ months before (as a mea culpa for not allowing refunds at all -- "ok you can have refunds, and we'll let you refund anything you bought within the last 6 months if it meets the other criteria") and some developers were getting confused because they were getting refunds from people who bought their game when it was on sale. They were getting 70% of the proceeds because the game was on a 30% sale 5 months prior when someone bought it, and that person was refunded the sale price and obviously not the full price.
The chaos died down, the time window is now like 2 weeks, and everything seems fine. I sadly don't have an awesome comprehensive source to link because the initial reports were just random hearsay from when it was announced, and those were just incorrect. Probably the best source is that people would be freaking out if Valve's return policy was screwing over indie devs like that, particularly with the existence of Epic's store now.
The exception to this would be that you're totally a jerk if you buy games that can be beat in under 2 hours and refund them within the window after beating the game, and it can be exploited that way (though it sounds like Valve will crack down on you if you're being egregious about it).
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I have everything good from that Bundle except for Moss. But I was sure to get my bf to pick it up. If anyone else has an extra copy of Moss I'd be willing to trade another key for it.
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Wish I could tell even after opening it on humble if I actually redeemed it.
Yeah, i would love some kind of filter or data visualization for unused keys or for games you already own.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Huh? I honestly didn't even know there was climbing in Blade + Sorcery. What kind of climbing are you doing? I need to branch out more!
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods