General VR Catch-All

I’m interested in finally trying VR, and with the Quest 2 as an easier entry point, I’m contemplating it. I’ve deleted all my FB accounts and know I’d have to set one up for it

My question, though, is about the 64 v 256. I’d be buying a link cable for Steam and hoping my 970 will be enough and/or upgrading (eventually). So I’m not sure I need the 256. But on the other hand, the appeal of wireless and the odds my 970 won’t be enough lean me toward the 256.

Things I want to play/do in VR (eventually):
Beat Saber
Half Life Alyx
Super Hot
Niche experiential things like Conscious Existence
Movies (maybe?)
Whatever else comes along?

So, any advice?

Also of note: I’m quite concerned about the motion sickness of VR so I will be buying from a place I could easily return if my body just can’t deal with it.

Antichulius wrote:

Also of note: I’m quite concerned about the motion sickness of VR so I will be buying from a place I could easily return if my body just can’t deal with it.

Certain games will be easier to start with than others. Games like Beat Saber and Super Hot that have you more-or-less standing in the same spot during the game generally won't cause motion sickness. Games like Half Life Alyx where you are moving around the game are the ones that will trigger motion sickness, at least until you get use to it.

Something that helped me with the motion sickness when I started playing: crystallized ginger. I kept a bowl of it nearby to snack on when I started feeling a little sick. Still had to start with shorter game sessions and work myself up, but it help reduce the nausea and help me get use to VR.

Your 970 is going to struggle with VR (I'm on a 1070 and that's barely managing, thought I'm running a Vive Pro - not sure if the Quest 2 puts less strain on the GPU cos it's lower framerate but higher res?), so unless your planned upgrade is sooner rather than later (and good luck finding a GPU in the next 6 months), my advice would be plump for the more storage.

Viz-a-viz motion sickness, there's definitely an aspect of "getting your VR legs" - you're far more likely to encounter VR sickness in the first month of cybergoggles than the tenth. If you're particularly susceptible to motion sickness, Dramamine or pot are legit solutions that might help you get through that adjustment period. But I'd caution you against deciding you can't hack it after 30 minutes, because if you're smart about it, and build up your tolerance with short bursts of play, you'll be getting on better in no time. Key thing is to stop AS SOON AS you feel your stomach disagreeing. Don't try and push through that - it will not work.

But the bigger variable is which game you're playing. Some are pukefests (Adr1ft wins my personal prize for the barfiest, swiftly followed by 6-axis Descent clones), but most aren't at all. Games that feature no movement of the POV (e.g. Beat Saber) are barely barfy at all. Flight games can be a bit of a stomach turner, too, but none of the things you've got listed there are particularly barfy.

Worth mentioning that a stable framerate is a key to avoiding VR sickness too, which may be another strike against your 970.

If you're not playing half-assed indie demos from 5 years ago, 'VR sickness' is not really a thing any more*. Improvements in performance, tracking, refresh rates, and essentially standardized comfort features enabled by default have all combined to protect new users. When you're playing modern games on modern hardware, go with confidence.

Some janky experiences are still uncomfortable. Like the crappy way the Link cable and Squadrons worked together in the first month of that game's existence you got some truly weird sh*t like seeing stuff in one eye and not the other, or your POV just being all wrong in some sessions and terrible switching between the game and desktop views.

But these dont rise to the level of the early uneasy steps we took 5 years ago. We took that pain for you

*Jonman's advice of closing your eyes and pausing your play if you do feel nauseous is great though. Its always possible, just nowhere near as prevalent.

polypusher wrote:

If you're not playing half-assed indie demos from 5 years ago, 'VR sickness' is not really a thing any more*. Improvements in performance, tracking, refresh rates, and essentially standardized comfort features enabled by default have all combined to protect new users. When you're playing modern games on modern hardware, go with confidence...

That is absolutely not the experience of (some of the) people who I've invited to try out VR as of at least the beginning of 2020 (obviously, I haven't been strapping the VR headset on new people post-pandemic). People new to VR can still get nauseous - I'll second Jonman's recommendation of starting out with more stationary games, or games that have elements that "fix" your vision (cockpits, etc), and to always stop as soon as you start to feel queasy, building up a tolerance over a series of sessions but never "pushing through it".

Evan E wrote:
polypusher wrote:

If you're not playing half-assed indie demos from 5 years ago, 'VR sickness' is not really a thing any more*. Improvements in performance, tracking, refresh rates, and essentially standardized comfort features enabled by default have all combined to protect new users. When you're playing modern games on modern hardware, go with confidence...

That is absolutely not the experience of (some of the) people who I've invited to try out VR as of at least the beginning of 2020 (obviously, I haven't been strapping the VR headset on new people post-pandemic). People new to VR can still get nauseous - I'll second Jonman's recommendation of starting out with more stationary games, or games that have elements that "fix" your vision (cockpits, etc), and to always stop as soon as you start to feel queasy, building up a tolerance over a series of sessions but never "pushing through it".

VR Sickness is not 'getting a touch nauseous'. Its being ill for half an hour or more and having such an unpleasant experience you don't want to do it ever again.

Getting a touch nauseous in certain situations will never go away. Your eyes are telling you something your vestibular system doesn't agree with and nausea is the expression of that. But the extreme effect came from horrible performance, bad visual bugs like flickering, and very poor game choices like forcing your camera to move, and implementing 'walking' movement without good control or safety nets like the vignette/tunnel 99% of games use now.

polypusher wrote:

If you're not playing half-assed indie demos from 5 years ago, 'VR sickness' is not really a thing any more*. Improvements in performance, tracking, refresh rates, and essentially standardized comfort features enabled by default have all combined to protect new users. When you're playing modern games on modern hardware, go with confidence.

There's a lot of truth to this - it's definitely gotten better as the dev community has collectively figured out how to minimize VR sickness, but it's still not entirely eliminated, not least of all because it's inescapable in some game designs. Pull a loop in a flying game while looking out the side of your airplane and you'll feel it, even with a rock solid 120fps. I challenge you to play a 6DOF game in VR without your lunch at least considering a field trip.

But like polypusher says, they're becoming the exceptions, rather than the norm they used to be.

Jonman wrote:

without your lunch at least considering a field trip.

This is my new favorite phrase.

polypusher wrote:
Jonman wrote:

without your lunch at least considering a field trip.

This is my new favorite phrase.

I gotta say, 6DOF was a real disappointment to me. I was super pumped to try those games in VR, I even bought an old-ass Sidewinder joystick so I could stick that next to my flightstick and run a HOSAS configuration. I couldn't hack it for more than 15 minutes at a time before my lunch started packing it's own lunch.

Are you talking games like Elite: Dangerous and Squadrons?

I've had some minor queasiness with a few games. I worst was when I tried Epic Rollercoasters (the free version) and even though I was sitting I felt sick for about a half hour afterwards. Red Matter and Gorn both gave me a bit of queasiness when I first experienced their modes of moving around.

Even Synth Riders for a few seconds at the start of a level would make me feel a sort of way- but once I got into playing the game I was fine. Now I'm used to it and it doesn't bother me at all.

It's mostly been a minor annoyance for me, but I've gotten used to it and now have very little issues (although, I admittingly haven't gone back to the roller coaster one since I first tried it).

I feel like Lone Echo is still the best example of getting movement right in a VR game. For whatever reason, that game just feels natural to me and doesn't even make me feel slightly uncomfortable. It also helps that it's a great game.

polypusher wrote:

Are you talking games like Elite: Dangerous and Squadrons?

For 6 degrees-of-freedom? I was specifically talking about Descent-clones. Sublevel Zero and Overload are the two I've tried.

There seems to be a big difference in the barf factor between things like Elite, Squadrons and other "flight" games, which are all about forward momentum (e.g. hands off the controls results in a level cruise), vs your 6DOF game where the hands-off state is motionless, and then you can move in any direction at any time.

The decoupling of movement and rotation in 6DOF is too much for me to handle - where conversely in a flight game, they're linked - you use rotation to achieve movement (e.g. bank the airplane to move laterally)

Phades wrote:

I feel like Lone Echo is still the best example of getting movement right in a VR game. For whatever reason, that game just feels natural to me and doesn't even make me feel slightly uncomfortable. It also helps that it's a great game.

Agreed, Lone Echo's weightless movement with gentle thrust available feels so natural. Apparently we'll finally get to hear more about the sequel soon https://www.pcgamer.com/oculus-will-...

polypusher wrote:
Evan E wrote:
polypusher wrote:

If you're not playing half-assed indie demos from 5 years ago, 'VR sickness' is not really a thing any more*. Improvements in performance, tracking, refresh rates, and essentially standardized comfort features enabled by default have all combined to protect new users. When you're playing modern games on modern hardware, go with confidence...

That is absolutely not the experience of (some of the) people who I've invited to try out VR as of at least the beginning of 2020 (obviously, I haven't been strapping the VR headset on new people post-pandemic). People new to VR can still get nauseous - I'll second Jonman's recommendation of starting out with more stationary games, or games that have elements that "fix" your vision (cockpits, etc), and to always stop as soon as you start to feel queasy, building up a tolerance over a series of sessions but never "pushing through it".

VR Sickness is not 'getting a touch nauseous'. Its being ill for half an hour or more and having such an unpleasant experience you don't want to do it ever again.

Getting a touch nauseous in certain situations will never go away. Your eyes are telling you something your vestibular system doesn't agree with and nausea is the expression of that. But the extreme effect came from horrible performance, bad visual bugs like flickering, and very poor game choices like forcing your camera to move, and implementing 'walking' movement without good control or safety nets like the vignette/tunnel 99% of games use now.

Which is why I never said "a touch nauseous" (or even "a touch nauseated", which in retrospect is I think actually correct grammar). I've always been explicit to everyone I've demonstrated VR to that if they start to feel nauseated they should just stop, so no one's actually thrown up, but I've still had people push to the point where they were pretty clearly feeling awful the rest of the night. The most recent of those games was actually The Room VR, which you'd think wouldn't cause that reaction at all, as it's a stationary game with nodal teleportation, and it runs great. I didn't have any problem with it, but I've put over a hundred hours into Skyrim VR with smooth turning and full motion; everyone reacts differently to VR, and some people are definitely not going to react well to their initial experiences.

Jonman wrote:

I was specifically talking about Descent-clones. Sublevel Zero and Overload are the two I've tried.

So I just tried both of these, and had no motion sickness (yay!) but I did get some weird flickering in the cockpit in Overload. Anyone else see that on a Quest 2?

Thank you for all the thoughts. I knew my 970 would be borderline at best and with the card market as it is, I'm stuck with it for now, so springing for the larger capacity isn't a bad idea. Mostly, I think it'll all come down to the unknown amount of extra money I'll be receiving next month. I'm glad to hear that nausea is better, but also improves with use. I'll keep that in mind once I finally strap on the headset.

So Until you Fall is on sale today on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/8...

Which looked awesome, but in reading reviews, it led me to this game called Compound:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/6...

Which is f*ckING AMAZING. Seriously, might be the best VR game I’ve played yet. I’m more of a shooty guy than a melee guy, so I’m sure while I’ll like Until You Fall, Compound is FAR more my speed. You can duck under and around shots, move fluidly through levels and the gunplay feels SO f*ckING GOOD. Even RELOADING is fun. I can’t get over how good this is.

I've been waiting for Compound to go on even a tiny 10% sale before pulling the trigger, just because I have bought so damn many other games (VR and otherwise) that I still need to play. But it has been at the top of my VR games-to-buy list for a while.

If it doesn't get any discount by the time the Steam summer sale rolls around, I'll probably just give up waiting and buy it.

If you can wait that's fair. As soon as I watched the trailer I had to have it. Try the demo in the meantime!

The developer (which is just one dude) has been keeping up with steady updates for it, nearly monthly, for a long time now. It really is bedroom developer Early Access done right. Just steadily and incrementally building new things into the game. Definitely a project I'm cheering for.

From the Oculus showcase

Oh sweet. Is there a link to other games they showed?

That seems to contain all of the trailers from it.

The only news I really care about is Lone Echo 2 finally getting a release... window. This summer.

So I finally got to spend some time with In Death: Unchained and OMG IT'S AMAZING OMG.

Veloxi wrote:

So I finally got to spend some time with In Death: Unchained and OMG IT'S AMAZING OMG.

Agree. What do you like about it?

Veloxi wrote:

So I finally got to spend some time with In Death: Unchained and OMG IT'S AMAZING OMG.

I've been singing the praises of it's PCVR predecessor for a couple years. Best V-arrrchery game out there.

chooka1 wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

So I finally got to spend some time with In Death: Unchained and OMG IT'S AMAZING OMG.

Agree. What do you like about it?

It's just so...fluid. The archery feels amazing and slinging dozens of arrows against a bunch of baddies as they approach is a thrill. It just feels so damned good the entire time.

Veloxi wrote:
chooka1 wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

So I finally got to spend some time with In Death: Unchained and OMG IT'S AMAZING OMG.

Agree. What do you like about it?

It's just so...fluid. The archery feels amazing and slinging dozens of arrows against a bunch of baddies as they approach is a thrill. It just feels so damned good the entire time.

The way that locomotion is tied into the bow as well is so clever, not to mention the teleport shard - I developed a neat trick of tossing the teleport shard in a high arc, so that I've got time to rip off an arrow or two before it lands and zaps you out of a hot spot.

And headshots from across the map ain't never been that satisfying.

I'll have to try that.