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[unsilentwill]

So early Virtual Reality games are now possible. The development kit is currently available for $300 dollars, comes with the SDK in C++ readily available for UDK and comes with four months free of Unity Pro (pro currently required for development in Unity). Other 3D engines such as Torque 3D are working to support it as well a some early clever hacks for Java. It was made to be open to everyone who wants to develop a game for VR. The Rift requires that games run side by side with warping shaders to account the the curve of the lenses, and a steady 60 fps.

http://www.oculusvr.com/

The Rift uses a 110 degree diagonal field of view to give the player has the feeling of presence in a digital world, allowing for a realistic feeling scale, height, distance, and stereoscopic depth without ghosting. The kit also has sensor to track the movement (but not yet position) of your head to allow the world to wrap around your vision, replicating normal sight in a digital space.

So far there have been many, many videos trying to figure out whether or not the thing works or will take off but here's one that I think applies to designers in terms of what could be done with a kit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fkrsoqmKzg&feature=youtu.be&a. If you remember I posted this one last year, showing what's possible with motion controllers such as the Razer Hydra and a head-mounted display:



As you may have noticed, it's currently on the showfloor at GDC (Booth 218 with a stupidly long line). I've been very excited about this since about this time last year and I've intended to make a thread about it when I actually got my hands on it to try it myself, but there's little doubt it actually works and many of you may get the chance to try it before my kit arrives some time in May, at GDC.

So the only indie involvement I've seen so far is FRACT OCT, and possibly The Witness. Who's already bought one, who's skeptical, who's got a crazy idea that might be perfect a different sort of 3D games?

[ThemsAllTook]

Already bought one. I'd really like to have a chance to try it while I'm here at GDC, but the line is so long that you have to stand in a second line first before you can even join the main one. Hopefully the dev kit will ship with good demos so I won't miss much/anything by not trying it out here. I don't have any specific plans for what to do with it, but I just wanted to have one for tinkering around and playing whatever happens to support it (fingers crossed for Minecraft).

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

(fingers crossed for Minecraft).

oh yessssssss

[unsilentwill]

So, this thread is in design for brainstorming. For me this VR is literally a dream come true in terms of designing games. Hardware has come around to such an amazing place that anything I can imagine that I want to play or experience is suddenly possible.

It's sort of what I've been trying to feel in games all along, feelings of presence and scale and interaction. The success of this sort of game makes me care so much less about corridors painted like space ships and 3D turn based board games, the differences between game types have gone so far beyond genre that it starts to place limit how we design games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WB_AtWhHb5s#t=2173s

So we're indies, unconstrained by any anything really, making whatever we want to see or want someone else to see. Thoughts?

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

So, this thread is in design for brainstorming. For me this VR is literally a dream come true in terms of designing games. Hardware has come around to such an amazing place that anything I can imagine that I want to play or experience is suddenly possible.

It's sort of what I've been trying to feel in games all along, feelings of presence and scale and interaction. The success of this sort of game makes me care so much less about corridors painted like space ships and 3D turn based board games, the differences between game types have gone so far beyond genre that it starts to place limit how we design games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WB_AtWhHb5s#t=2173s

So we're indies, unconstrained by any anything really, making whatever we want to see or want someone else to see. Thoughts?

c
how philosophical, indie game developers are gods of the universes that they create, we possess talents unknown to the average person to create these worlds, talents that make us special compared to the common man or woman

well going off topic, how about astrophysics simulation based games, like that planetary generation game, that would be cool in VR (or maybe to someone interested in astrophysics) A way to explore the vast unknown from your couch.

This hardware certainly is a step forward in immersion, something required of any game, simulation games would do extremely well with this platform, wouldn't you agree?

[s0]

i would make a game that deliberately abuses the quirks of the hardware (wrongly warped shaders, inconsistent framerate and whatever else) to the point where shit starts looking fucked up. partly as a critique of the whole concept of "virtual reality" and partly just because making a VR game with completely glitched up visuals would be a cool thing to do.

only problem is i don't know the first thing about 3d and i'm not in a position to just dump 300$ on a VR headset right now.

[rosholger]

something like

i believe would be pretty cool

[C.D Buckmaster]

It would be cool if a game had real-time menus that you would access by tilting your head up (or any other direction).  I'm not sure how well they would work, but it would be a neat thing to experiment with.

[Uykered]

It'd be cool to have a game without menus/UI/text.

I wish I got into 3D game making sooner so I could start making stuff for the OC quicker.

[wccrawford]

It'd be cool to have a game without menus/UI/text.

Careful, this was the idea behind Fable 3's "menus".  They are incredibly annoying because you have to walk from room to room to access different settings, and it's all just clunky.

I'm not saying it can't be done.  I'm saying someone tried and failed, and they had a lot of money.

[J-Snake]

It'd be cool to have a game without menus/UI/text.

Why dumbing down something or coming up with convoluted solutions for its own sake. Take what it needs to achieve your goal.

[Arnold]

this thing totally screams wing-suit-cliff-jump-simulation to me!

[wccrawford]

this thing totally screams wing-suit-cliff-jump-simulation to me!

I think you'd need a really big fan in the room to get the full effect.

Personally, I'm thinking it's finally time to make that roller coaster game.

[unsilentwill]

Take what it needs to achieve your goal.

Well that's the question, right? None of us so far have tried VR, which I'd describe as the logical extension of first person games. So we don't quite know what works and what doesn't. Personally I agree that menu's are often annoying when I want to explore a world.

I think this will change the simulation genre, allowing games that strive to be more "realistic" (at the detriment of fun as I've heard everyone complain about) to gain presence and scale to go with their logical game worlds. Virtual Reality in some ways should be as least like reality as possible to allow a personal visit to an impossible reality. Memory of a Broken Dimension is an amazing example of a virtual reality despite not being realistic. And yet realism would be amazing too, the see the real world consequences of personal lives. Or the consequences of "magical realism" as its known in books, or full blown hard fantasy/sci-fi.

Back to the topic of menus, check

out! The Rift matched with the Razer Hydra. If this doesn't give you at least 5 game ideas, we are very different game designers. So many gameplay opportunities based on the world and objects around you, completely intuitive without any need for menus. Though I generally hate stats of all kinds anyway.

So, I'll admitted to hanging around the forums where the Rift and other HMD protoypes were born, and here's a topic I made with recent games that I think would work well for it, including a space sim you were talking about Galaxy. The Oculus section has a subforum for Rift based games if you're looking for some input from the large community there.

I think that if anyone was sort of interested in making 3D games, this would be a pretty big motivator to learn how. Build whatever world with characters you want and step inside it, how cool would that be? And like I said the devkits are just this week hitting doorsteps despite the product being in development for a year, and there's plenty of time to learn and prototype before the consumer product goes on sale. Of course its your time and money to invest, but I'm stupidly excited.

And wing suits and roller coasters are cool, thinking a bit small though.

[J-Snake]

Thanks for the info. Oculus Rift is definitely something I want to support. It is not only the immersion for me but also the fact that it natively adds at least 2 additional dimensions of simultaneous control.It means your right thumbstick is free for something else.

However I need to keep to my 2D-schedule for the first no matter how tempting the 3D-world seems.

[sublinimal]

Ordered one a while back, pretty enthusiastic about this whole virtual reality thing. It's something I've wanted to become a thing ever since playing Wolfenstein 3D for the first time, and I want to believe Oculus Rift is finally the real deal.

My first thought was a dreamlike adventure game in the style of LSD Dream Emulator, but with more active gameplay. My devkit won't arrive until May in the earliest though, and I already have a few projects on my hands, so it's not taking much of my headspace yet.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

My first thought was a dreamlike adventure game in the style of LSD Dream Emulator, 

oh man that would be nuts :D

[gimymblert]

I thought the occulus rift might become quickly the new motion control ... but I remembered that the thing who killed motion control was closed platform and clueless "tied by money" dev.

[unsilentwill]

Also if you check out

even motion controls start to finally make sense in what they were trying to do.

is why I bought a Wii. Makes more sense when you don't see the controllers.

[gimymblert]

Yep I hope it help "open" motion control becoming a standard.

But you forgot another trend!




proto holodeck