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  • Author Author: Fred27
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VR - great or gimmick?

I was recently involved in a project that involved a little bit of VR. Mainly looking at a few headsets to see which might be suitable for another company to build some VR stuff for us. Last week I got to have a quick go of Half Life Alyx on a Valve Index. It was very impressive! Considering I'm not really a gamer, it really grabbed my attention. Now I find myself sort of tempted to get one. If I do then it'll definitely be a Vale Index despite the lead time. It was better than the really high end Varjo one that cost 10x the price.

 

Unfortunately, I'll be leaving the company soon so won't be able to try it out any further for myself. A question for those of you who might have bought a VR headset. Do you still find it useful / interesting or is it the sort of thing where the gimmick soon wears off?

  • in reply to cstanton

    I've not got much to compare it to, but it seems pretty good. The only other headset I tried was a demo of a stupidly expensive Varjo one at work. It was no better than the Valve and it was 10x the price.

     

    The SteamVR components you can add to Unity or Unreal work well to get VR up and running. It can be a little confusing deciding exactly how you're going to tackle a VR project - Unity or Unreal? OpenXR or SteamVR? I'm just getting my head round the possibilities so it doesn't really matter. I won't be trying to sell a game or anything.

     

    The video above was the result of just adding a few SteamVR components to the Unity Lego microgame in place of the existing 3rd person camera.

  • in reply to Fred27

    How're you finding Valve's index offering?

  • Whilst getting to grips with Unity and VR, it seems that I managed to create some strange dystopian world inhabited by 15ft Lego mini figures. image

     

     

    I, for one, welcome our giant plastic overlords.

  • I think I did well resisting as long as I could. Anyway, we've just started another 4 week Covid lockdown in the UK so I won't be leaving the house much. image

    image

  • i used to be a rep for 360Fly and have been doing VR for over 7 yrs.  i use it on my drone for aerial views as well as cars on the racetrack for all around "seamless" no stitching views    VR is also way cool to help overcome fears, such as heights and the like

     

    AR is fun but its augmented so things are going to be "not correct"   VR and gaming    off the chain!!!

     

    biggest challenge with VR and being accepted is its takes horsepower to make them correct    inexpensive gadgets wont cut it due to processing power needed     especially 4K

  • in reply to cstanton

    Wow - that is the most practical AR example I've seen. I had a demo of a very expensive Varjo headset where as car appeared in the room - first as a wireframe, then internal components, then a body shell. It was visually impressive but nowhere near as obviously useful as the PCB annotation. Strangely it doesn't seem to be for a headset but Android / iOS though.

  • in reply to baldengineer

    > I wish I had access Rez on the PS4 when I tried its VR headset ...

     

    It's really good... image

     

    > Personally, I am far more interested in augmented reality. I think the opportunity to overlay useful information over the real world is far more interesting than generating something entirely virtual.

     

    I have to agree, for example:

     

     

    https://www.inspectar.com/debuggar

  • I've played with modern VR headsets. None of them really captured my interest. A couple of years ago at CES, it was popular for manufacturers to offer "virtual tours" of their manufacturing facility. I did find that usage interesting, but not enough I would buy one.

     

    Personally, I am far more interested in augmented reality. I think the opportunity to overlay useful information over the real world is far more interesting than generating something entirely virtual.

     

    P.S. All that said, I wish I had access Rez on the PS4 when I tried its VR headset ...

  • in reply to cstanton

    Also, cost of PC hardware maybe. I get the feeling (maybe it's speculation) VR still requires quite high-end PCs, which the young kids (who could be keen to learn to develop games and demo apps) can't afford, and many adults might just have the one work laptop, which won't have decent GPU capability : ( I actually don't have any recent desktop that could accept a good GPU. I have a small PC (Intel NUC), which is not geared up for this.

    It seems a fun thing to experiment with though, and it's nicely become almost plug-and-play for people to develop apps, using (say) Unity and motion capture devices etc, so it's nice to see that development for it is maturing.

  • in reply to dougw

    I'd say the main hurdle is hardware and accessible hardware. You don't see many people producing accessories for VR at present as you do other platforms. Part of this is down to the chips used in the 'base station' reliant VR implementations. Though there are some good open sources efforts going on.