Wondering whether there is a VR community here. What systems? What games?
My first and only headset is a Valve Index which I think I bought when it was released in summer 2019. Prior to this I had followed VR development since the Vive was released. Luckily I am immune to VR nausea, so I proceeded to dive straight into everything it had to offer. Would say VR is at least half of playtime.
The Index package is still fantastic. The controllers are really comfortable with great features. The lighthouse tracking is very precise, reliable, and has no blind spots when setup properly. The headset itself is comfortable with great FOV and good enough display. So far I have only found two general lackings in terms of hardware. One is controller quality control. When you get a set of controllers that work, then they work great. But in the past, and maybe still now, there’s was an unfortunate high change that you would get one with some malfunction that meant you either had worse experience, or had to go through RMA. I’ve had a particular unfortunate streak of controllers that I constantly had to send back. Luckily the valve RMA process is easy and generous. The other downside is of course the tether. I have the best cable-management system I could find, but that is still no wireless. But that might change soon as the nofio wireless adapter is soon to release.
As for games, I quickly found my preference for physics-based games where the primary gameplay emerge from the physics interactions with the game-world, in contrast to more traditional gameplay systems. Examples of this include Boneworks, Blade and Sorcery, Hotdogs Horseshoes and Handgrenades, and somewhat Half-Life: Alyx. I also frequent short-form or rythm games, such as Eleven Table Tennis, Unplugged, Beast Saber, and Drums Rock. I also wanna give a highlight to Contractors VR. While I don’t particular like the vanilla gameplay, I have found the modding community to be absolute magic. SW: Battlefront, COD Zombies, TF2, and Halo are among the popular games that have been faithfully recreated as Contractors VR mods with amazing similarity to the original games. Seriously, if you liked any of those old popular games and haven’t checked out Contractors I highly recommend you do.
I do, but not as often as I’d like. Valve Index, like you, though I’ve had no trouble with the controllers. Lately I’m getting through either Moss or Doom VFR depending on what I feel like at the time, but my VR backlog continues to grow.
Top tier that I’ve played:
- Half-Life: Alyx (Valve gamedev is the GOAT as usual)
- Ancient Dungeon VR - a dungeon crawler with a Minecraft aesthetic and knife-throwing mechanics that are so good every single game should copy it. I actually have more than twice the hours in this as I do HL:A, but then, I haven’t gotten into HL:A’s community maps and modes yet.
- Gorn (the game that taught me throwing a fast enough punch will hurt just from the fluid pressure in your hand)
- Until You Fall (pretty graphics, responsive melee combat, roguelite mechanics, what’s not to love?)
- Skyrim VR - modded of course, but even then, it’s still Skyrim, with all the good, bad, and ugly
- Doom VFR - very playable for me with the community guide for better controls. Having gotten used to free movement, I can’t go back to teleporting. And hey, it’s Doom! Only played one session so far, not sure how far I am in it.
- Vanishing Realms - The climbing mechanics, combat, and lore are all a lot of fun for me. It looks gorgeous while still running well. Only downside is it’s very short.
Mid tier:
- Moss - very cute, but it doesn’t really take advantage of VR as much as I feel like it should. Based on marketing, I actually thought most of the gameplay would be controlling the little blue spirit thing to guide the main character who acts independently, but you’re actually controlling the main character directly. It feels weird considering the characters directly address the player’s existence. Haven’t finished it yet.
- Superfly - it has potential, but the controls, enemy AI, and even some of the abilities are still in a pretty rough state. Something to keep an eye on.
- The Last Clockwinder - Nice storytelling and puzzle style, but some of the challenges seem to be more about how precisely you can lob an object rather than how well you can think outside the box. Haven’t finished this one yet. Graphics are very noticeably Quest-tier.
- Beat Saber - I like music, but not being able to use my own, the rough state of mods, and the massive stack of DLC I’d need to buy if I want official variety were big sticking points I couldn’t look past. I’m apparently also just not into rhythm games.
- Pistol Whip - I found this more fun than Beat Saber, but in the end it’s still a rhythm game, so my interest faded quickly.
- PowerBeatsVR - A great option for getting in some exercise, but unfortunately I’m allergic to that.
- Jet Island - Extremely fun movement mechanics, but the world is very big and very empty, and the progression is very unstructured. I basically just bumble around hoping I stumble on the way to reach the next target, then bumble around some more until I can destroy it.
- Neverout - It seems like an okay puzzle game, but I’m not that into puzzle games.
Didn’t like:
- Boneworks - performs poorly on my hardware, and in general feels like they forgot to give it actual gameplay beyond letting the player dick around in sterile, mostly empty environments. It’s not my style.
- Into The Radius - Not optimized quite well enough for my hardware, and I didn’t like the level of realism with weapon handling. I fumble things enough IRL, it’s not fun to do it in a game when a monster’s bearing down on you. Maybe with haptic VR gloves, but not with controllers.
- Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency - Literally unplayable. I don’t know what the problem was, but even on minimum graphical settings, I got terrible reprojection on the first mission, and the controls were very much not to my preference.
- The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners - Ran decently well, but fun was taken out back and murdered by a crack team of bugs and developer choices. Any gun I tried to use would weeble-wobble all over the place regardless of how steady my actual hand was, so it was basically impossible to shoot things from a distance, which becomes mandatory when you have to deal with raiders who shoot back and zombies that have a toxic cloud around them. Kitchen knives have horrendous durability and will shatter into a thousand pieces after stabbing three zombies, but any random blunt object you pick up can smash zombie heads in with three hits and has infinite durability - oh, but you might as well not bother because every blunt impact has about a 0.5% chance to crash the game, a bug that had gone unfixed for more than a year when I played it. Also, as mentioned before, melee becomes all but irrelevant later in the game, which I never reached due to all the crashing. A cheat mode exists, but it disables story progression, again because fun police.
- No Man’s Sky - Lousy VR experience with the menus stuck to your hands and stuff. I heard that’s been overhauled in the time since I tried it, but I haven’t tried the new system yet, maybe ever.
- Subnautica - First-person VR, but still using a mouse and keyboard. No thank you, I played it flat enough times already.
- Slinger VR - Feels like they had a good idea and then immediately ran out of ideas.
Subnautica VR now has support for motion controllers, I don’t remember if it’s a mod or official.
The No Man’s Sky overhaul was just for the PS5 I think, bringing the controls on that platform more in line with others. The menus stuck to hands is still a thing, and it’s still way too cumbersome IMO.
Budget Cuts 2
Did you enjoy Budget Cuts 1? I thought it was a cute game, even if the controls/graphics were a bit dated.
I played and enjoyed both. But I don’t think either 1 or 2 were as groundbreaking as the demo for 1. The demo was amazing, but then they took a year or two to get the full game out and by then it wasn’t really that interesting compared to other games that had come out in the meantime.
Budget Cuts 2 was basically more of what 1 was like. It was quite a while ago now that I played it, but it wasn’t groundbreaking as I recall.
I only have the second game due to a bundle; I never bought the first one.
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Love my Index. I’m really waiting for Valve to put out whatever their next headset is. Hoping that it has eye tracking with foveated rendering. I honestly don’t mind it being tethered to my PC.
If you haven’t tried out Vertigo 2 yet, definitely look into it. It’s a fantastic VR shooter with an alright story that came out a few months ago. Just all around a really good game.
I had a Quest 2, but honestly I was not using it so I sold it. For me, it gave me headache, and I tried a Valve Index and it did the same. For now, this technology is not for me
Yes the fact that many people are blocked from access by their very biology is a real shame, and a big barrier that VR might never cross.
Have read that most can overcome it with short sessions until the discomfort disappears, but that is still a big ask and might not work on all.
Then there’s us who just doesn’t experience it. I can put myself right into what should be the most vomit inducing display and not feel a thing. Wonder what makes my brain ignore inconsistencies between visual input and inner ear.
I tried the short sessions, and like you said, it didn’t work on me. Anyway, I had fun with two or three games, so it doesn’t bother me much, except the fact that I lost some money haha
I first got into VR a few months ago with the valve index and it’s been great so far. Favorite games include Hubris and Jet Island. I’m currently playing Budget Cuts 2 which is also great. Some other games which are also super good but I haven’t finished yet include The Last Clockwinder, Space Pirate Trainer, Wanderer, Redout: Enhanced Edition (VR Supported), Kayak VR: Mirage, Garden of the Sea, Audio Trip, GRIP: Combat Racing, Aircar (Free on steam), oh and don’t forget Virt-A-Mate :D
I have played a little bit of VR but since I have an Oculus Rift (not a Rift S, a Rift) and I switched from Windows to Linux, I can’t play any of my games. I’d love to sell my Rift to get a Quest, but I don’t think I’ll get much for it anyway, let alone be able to sell it in the first place. That is unless I want to write a Linux-based driver for the thing.
Used to play VR a bit more when I was living somewhere with higher ceilings and more room near my PC to leave as a dedicated VR space. I mainly played rhythm games like beat saber and racing sims. I have a rift s and I find it comfortable enough to wear but having to hook everything up and clear out space whenever I have the urge to play in VR leaves me playing less now. Plus all of the lights in my office now are dimmed LEDs and it seems to mess with the inside out tracking?
i bought a cheap used PS VR sometime last year, but i ended up selling it a few weeks ago - i just didn’t have enough space in my small apt to play comfortably.
PS VR2 seems pretty amazing specs wise, i’m just hoping they get the games to go with it (or open it up to PC users), otherwise it’ll be another PS Vita…
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@asexualchangeling @runekn yeah I feel like VR around 2019 into early 2020 was the best it would ever be in terms of exciting new releases and games to look forward to. Now it really feels like Meta is completely allergic to advertising the Quest as a games platform and selling games alongside it the way Sony or Nintendo would. Makes it so much harder to get excited about it.
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I spec out high end laptops for my main rig for portability and power draw reasons, so have’t dug into the tech too much since the requirements were pretty rough for GPU for awhile. My requirements are somewhat strict on the power & portability side since I do spend a lot of time in a motorhome mostly on solar.
From what you’re saying it’s matured a fair bit though, so I’ll have to take another peak!
Used to when I had the space and setup (had a Samsung Odyssey+), sadly didn’t get to finish HL:Alyx.
I’m surprised that Ctrl+F “Superhot” → 0 matches, that one was amazing to complete
Don’t have a VR headset so no. May change someday though
I’ve still got my OG rift, I bought it right when VRchat was booming. Honestly I had such a blast on there meeting new people and goofing around, but nowadays the community is a little more insulated and it’s harder to make friends. It was really probably some of the most fun I’ve ever had online though.
Every now and then I’ll pop on some Beat Saber to check out new custom tracks.
Of course Half Life Alyx was incredible, especially as a big Half-Life enjoyer.
I have an Index too. played most of the big name ones like you mentioned but I find most of my time is spent chilling in vrchat or bigscreen.
Yeah, I’m a big fan of the technology. First got started on the OG Vive in early 2017 and upgraded to a Reverb G2 with Index controllers in 2021
Bought an ocolus cv1 a while back just for beatsaber. Works great and still in use.
