-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
GI.biz: Sony's Morpheus gamble could change course of VR
- Thread starter Man
- Start date
gamechanger87
Member
I think that the biggest issue with VR is that its an inherently solo experience. You can't "share" a VR experience with someone else. You are just in your own bubble.
Opus Angelorum
Member
Personally I see this as a huge risk for Sony, and may only appeal to a small portion of the existing user base (cost).
I don't think VR is the next best thing, period.
I don't think VR is the next best thing, period.
krypt0nian
Banned
Which is why Morpheus has a built in passthrough.
Besides, gaming is often an inherently solo experience with many games and that's ok too.
So what? It's not like only couch multiplayer games sell these days.
I think it's a big advantage that they already have the camera and Move controllers out there. The camera was actually built for VR. I am wondering though if they'll also release an improved Move controller (in whatever way), something like MotionPlus to make the experience even better or so that they look a bit more attractive or a bit less bulky.
Either way, they can focus their R&D completely on the glasses and I hope it shows and they can improve the optics and display, so that the base level is as high as possible for a mainstream priced device.
Either way, they can focus their R&D completely on the glasses and I hope it shows and they can improve the optics and display, so that the base level is as high as possible for a mainstream priced device.
He seems to think Morpheus is closer to consumer-ready than Oculus, based on the latest Oculus update, and what we've seen of Morpheus. I don't disagree.
It's not at all solved. Their solution is "not great", as you'd put it. It's very lacking in a great many departments and for a lot of genres, and it's a *very* niche controlscheme, and it wouldn't work with the majority of the things VR in itself is good and useful at.
So... Bollocks.
BeatResetsTheWorld
Banned
Not really...people spectate all the time when others are playing games. For most people, who don't have their own personal TVs/monitors, games are played in semi-public spaces (living rooms) where anyone around can watch
Then it's just going to lead to the same problem motion controlling went through. If the Wii had launched with MotionPlus level of control people wouldn't think it was simply a gimmick. VR similarly has to have a certain "level" that it must start at, and if they launch with something below that, and people get a wrong first impression, it could screw up or set back future progress
Solid Samus
Banned
I trust that Sony desires to release solid hardware that doesn't put people off on the notion of VR entirely, but I don't trust that Sony will support the device with content that won't see it marginalized as just another hardly-supported expensive gaming peripheral. It's not as though Sony's never poured shitloads into R&D and marketing and then cut and run when they realized the shit's not selling gangbusters out the gate. and
it always gets me when people say couch mp games don't sell. like, here's the list of next gen couch co-op games that aren't Halo or CoD or sports, that have sold well...
but that's because here's the list of next gen couch co-op games that aren't Halo or CoD or sports
I echo these fears. I just remain unconvinced that in a closed ecosystem like the PS4's and with Sony's track record w/selling console peripherals Morpheus will become something that can meaningfully represent the technology.
yeah they do. gaming's biggest multiplayer franchises tend to support couch co-op, and indies with couch co-op tend to sell more than well enough to warrant it.
it always gets me when people say couch mp games don't sell. like, here's the list of next gen couch co-op games that aren't Halo or CoD or sports, that have sold well...
but that's because here's the list of next gen couch co-op games that aren't Halo or CoD or sports
TimeEffect
Member
Nobody needs incredible graphics to sell VR
Simple and cheap demos of rollercoaster parks and virtual reality tourism simulators will sell the product to Wii-like audiences.
Why would you need a separate TV or monitor if you are using Morpheus/Oculus?
Getting to market first is absolutely pointless. There is no rush. Sony has no competition. Oculus might have *some* reason to want to not take too long, but not because of Sony, but because of all the other knockoff headsets in the works(not that I really feel they are an honest threat).
And Sony can make Morpheus PC-compatible, but it will either be inferior spec'd to the Rift on Day 1, or will become so very soon after. I really don't think they will.
Anyways, rushing to market on console is a waste of time and only liable to shoot themselves in the feet in the process.
JordanN
Banned
The PS4 is just a vessel for VR. Just like how PS2 strong armed DVD's. It could be used to introduce new people to gaming or vice versa.
I would only worry about the ps eye and move. Are they definite requirements for VR? If not, just sell bundles without them.
Chill Penguin
Member
Huh? Sony has some of the best engineers in the world. Oculus is a fairly new company. If anything i'd bet on Sony to put out a comfortable, cohesive, and consumer friendly experience.
jacksepticeye
Member
I don't think Morpheus will hold a candle to something like the final Rift. Especially if it's done right. The PS4 just doesn't seem strong enough to be able to pull off seamless VR.
It might be cool as a gimmicky thing the way DK1 and DK2 of the Rift are but not that fully immersive "I feel like I'm there" type of 3D.
Would be pretty sweet if I was wrong though and we had some serious competition going on, then again they're not really competing for the same space are they?
It might be cool as a gimmicky thing the way DK1 and DK2 of the Rift are but not that fully immersive "I feel like I'm there" type of 3D.
Would be pretty sweet if I was wrong though and we had some serious competition going on, then again they're not really competing for the same space are they?
krypt0nian
Banned
Yes really. People play alone all the time too.
People spectate on Twitch now.
flyinpiranha
Member
Exactly. This is good for everybody. More platforms (closed or open) means more developers taking notice.
I have to agree. But, it's like anything ... the tech is new so people will have to get accustomed to it. It takes a while though, I still get a bit queasy in some demos.
But this comes down to hardware and software IMO. Something like Half Life 2 isn't made for it, it's cool as shit, but the movement and such wasn't created for VR. Same with even stuff like the Tuscanny demo that was created for VR, it's cool and "made for VR" but it needs fine tuning for each person, some can move left and right really quick, some can't. There's so many wild cards at play when it comes to this. It's like a themepark where each person has to find the appropriate ride for them. Not everybody can go on the Super Coaster and there will be people that love the Tea Cups.
My fiance had issues with FPS games, always made her sick, or if watching me play an MMO she would get dizzy staring at the screen as I flipped the camera around ... now she's acclimated and we're playing GW2 together.
I agree though, as it stands, it's not ready for what "I" want and what most of the VR enthusiasts want: Skyrim in VR, GTA in VR, etc ... but I think Gear VR and Morpheus (as well as Oculus) can provide experiences and smaller games that will hook the mainstream with the tech they have now.
Chill Penguin
Member
That's simply not true. VR is just the medium, you can experience anything on it. How about a virtual party with your friends? Virtual meet-up with relatives half way across the world? VR co-op gameplay? Virtual tourism with friends? Possibilities are endless for social experiences.
gamechanger87
Member
No they aren't but they have a really large audience that can incentivize developers to focus on them. It's one of the reasons why we are seeing single and multiplayer blended in many games today.
An investment in a headset that is likely to be an additional 75% of your initial investment in the console requires significant developer support. You need people to buy the headset to justify making a game for it.
I jus continue to struggle to see why any big name devs spend time here when the upside is so little. See Kinect
jacksepticeye
Member
You can certainly share aspects of it
They are incredibly good at releasing half-baked products nonetheless. Many of them great, whilst still half-baked, mind you. PS4? Great. But feature wise it's incredibly half-baked and lacklustre, ofcourse compared to it's competition, it's... A meal worthy of royals. I can't say that I know much about Sony's engineering department(s), but I do know that a great many of their gadgets and various hardware releases have been half-baked, however I really have no clue if they've got seperate departments for games, wearables, etc. But god damn, Sony's smartwatches have just been... Un-baked thus far.
I do concur, though. Comfort and decent consumer friendliness is something to be expected from Sony, but cohesion isn't always their strong suit either. But I've got about as much faith in them as I do Oculus, if not less.
Well, there is the fact that it's a new, innovative, and to some extent revolutionary platform. It's a new way of showing your creations to your fans and consumers, and even though they're big, there's still incentive for creativity and innovation, as long as the userbase is able to justify it.
If Oculus is any indication, it is entirely justifiable. But if you're only contemplating releasing on Morpheus? Then... I could easily see it being hard to justify.
Ofcourse, this is another reason I wish Sony would open up; a universal SDK that worked with both Morpheus, Rift and possibly others would give VR a much better (overall) chance at life, but instead they' seem to have gone the "closed" route, which may end up hurting the overall end-product in terms of content, developer investment, consumer interest etcetera.
krypt0nian
Banned
More people need to read this, then come back and realize how social VR can be:
because every time I see "It's not social" I kinda giggle.
Jules Coast
Member
I'm not a VR expert but from my understanding not even 1080p60 is enough for a comfortable VR experience. Those specs may even cause physical discomfort (motion sickness, headaches, etc.).
To someone who's more familiar, isn't 1440 and 90 fps considered the gold standard?
So many misconceptions about VR.
I'm glad its getting more attention, but there's quite a few concerns about it from people who aren't really paying close attention. The article in the OP is a larger example of somebody talking about VR without really knowing what's really going on.
Anyways, VR is not nearly as isolating and lonely as people think. Social aspects in VR are going to be big.
Triggerhappytel
Member
Yeah; this article seems to be largely based on guesswork; do we have any indication of when either hardware is expecting to release? I haven't been following Rift much at all, but I can't see Morpheus launching before the end of 2015.
I think Move is actually a really exciting prospect for Morpheus. With the right software it should be amazing and immersive. I just hope Sony gets a proper sword fighting adventure game on there. Imagine something like Dark Messiah of M&M, Dishonoured or Skyrim using Move and Morpheus; how amazing that would be. Obviously Star Wars would be cool too, but under EA that's never going to happen.
SerTapTap
Member
They are incredibly good at releasing half-baked products nonetheless. Many of them great, whilst still half-baked, mind you. PS4? Great. But feature wise it's incredibly half-baked and lacklustre, ofcourse compared to it's competition, it's... A meal worthy of royals. I can't say that I know much about Sony's engineering department(s), but I do know that a great many of their gadgets and various hardware releases have been half-baked, however I really have no clue if they've got seperate departments for games, wearables, etc. But god damn, Sony's smartwatches have just been... Un-baked thus far.
I do concur, though. Comfort and decent consumer friendliness is something to be expected from Sony, but cohesion isn't always their strong suit either. But I've got about as much faith in them as I do Oculus, if not less.
Hardware-wise PS4 is hardly half-baked. Software features will be added later as has been standard since last gen. Also every single console before last gen did VASTLY less, so it's pretty weird to see people bitching that a console that does more than 95% of consoles in existence is "half baked" because it lacks some features it's predecessor got years into it's lifespan that few people even use.
gamechanger87
Member
I was speaking about games. In regards to your other comments, how many of you can convince your friends to go out an spend $300 on a VR headset to just hang out?
The virtual tourism thing is BS and I don't know why FB did it. VR cannot replicate being somewhere. It just can't.
Castef
Banned
autoduelist
Member
I disagree. I think it could be the what we've been reading about for decades.
You're thinking about half the coin -- that you put on soemthing over your head and no longer can see the people around you (if there are any).
But there is the other side of the coin to consider -- you could hang out with your family or friends that live far away in a virtual hangout.
At one point, home phones were something that kept you from talking to people around you while you talked to people 'far away'. Then the 'reach out and touch someone' moment happened, and it became a warm technology where people use it to connect with others.
VR could be that.
Hopefully this is where all the sourced Vita OLED panel fabs are going...
The Wii has nothing to do with VR. The Wii Remote didn't need massive amounts of hardware power to interpret accelerometer data.
VR requires that.
Pretty sure the last thing you want in a VR headset is a Vita screen.
RadioactiveLobster
Member
Correct me if I am mistaken but I don't think Sony has ever confirmed that Project Morpheus will even be usable on a PC as a consumer product.
It's all been PS4 only.
Hell, they still haven't released official drivers for the DS4, doesn't inspire much hope.
If it's PS4 only it's an instant "no buy" for me as I don't own a PS4, don't care about PS4 and have no plans to ever purchase a PS4.
It's all been PS4 only.
Hell, they still haven't released official drivers for the DS4, doesn't inspire much hope.
If it's PS4 only it's an instant "no buy" for me as I don't own a PS4, don't care about PS4 and have no plans to ever purchase a PS4.
autoduelist
Member
I mean, he's not wrong. We're on a gaming forum and many of us don't have cutting edge PCs, content to play console or handheld games. I'm not going to buy a high end machine for gaming, and I'm not going to buy a high end machine for VR.
I do, however, have a PS4 and desire for VR. I thought move was fantastic technology. Morpheus doesn't need to be the best VR ever, and almost certainly never will be since it's attached to fixed hardware and not scalable to the highest end PC. But that's okay... because being usable on PS4 has benefits too... the most important of those being, I already own one.
krypt0nian
Banned
um ok.
gamechanger87
Member
Can VR replace sitting with your friends in the same spot? Can it replace the other three senses that are used in a social setting? If you are in a social meeting place with a person of the opposite sex that you may be interested in, are there any biologic responses to their presence?
Can looking through a helmet replace the majesty of standing on the Grand Canyon and feeling the wind in your face and the feel of the rocks?
In the end, VR is an expensive way to trick your visual and audio processes in your brain, but it will never replace the real thing.
Replicate 100%? No. Replicate close enough to be awesome as shit? Yea, VR can do that.
Yea, he certainly isn't speaking for me. I want the best consumer VR I can get without going completely poor. Maybe just a little poor.
flyinpiranha
Member
As for the "social" aspect of it. People play on their smartphones, millions play MMOs ... even take Facebook for example, it's a very solo and personal thing to use but the people you're connected to is what makes it what it is. You don't have people crowding around your smartphone while you play Angry Birds or whatnot.
The key to the Gear VR is portability. You can show people and take it anywhere. Morpheus and Oculus have mobility limitations but the software limits are increased.
It's crazier than you think. Even with the very limited versions we have in the wild now it's an experience. My mom loved flying around in Titans of Space. $300? Probably not. But 5 years ago you couldn't convince her to buy a smartphone, now it has her pictures on it, maps, email, etc ...
People who grow up with VR as a norm are going to push it. My 9 year old already talks about it at school and kids know what it is even if they haven't tried it. It's like videogames and "our" generation, it's a norm. Seeing a kid play the Wii is normal shit. 25-30 years ago they would have rotted your brain and ruined your TV and now we're advancing personal technology at an outstanding rate.
The key to the Gear VR is portability. You can show people and take it anywhere. Morpheus and Oculus have mobility limitations but the software limits are increased.
It's crazier than you think. Even with the very limited versions we have in the wild now it's an experience. My mom loved flying around in Titans of Space. $300? Probably not. But 5 years ago you couldn't convince her to buy a smartphone, now it has her pictures on it, maps, email, etc ...
People who grow up with VR as a norm are going to push it. My 9 year old already talks about it at school and kids know what it is even if they haven't tried it. It's like videogames and "our" generation, it's a norm. Seeing a kid play the Wii is normal shit. 25-30 years ago they would have rotted your brain and ruined your TV and now we're advancing personal technology at an outstanding rate.
Solid Samus
Banned
have you really given this much thought at all? I mean, last I checked that's precisely what VR exists to do. Put the user into a virtual environment. And when the environment corresponds to a real life location, okay it's not going to be the exact same but a good approximation can still work wonders. One of my favorite hypotheticals for future VR application is, imagine a high school lab fitted with enough Rifts for a classroom. Fuck a field trip, you know? Suddenly you can audio tour the Louvre with your class and teachers. An approximation, which is still so far beyond descriptions in a textbook or static pictures on the internet. Suddenly you can traverse Middle-Earth, explore Helms Deep. Explore colonial Philadelphia, witness architecture and cultural quirks on a more immediately absorbed level than through literally any other option available today. Shit. You can see Olympus fuckin Mons first person and get a far better idea of its scale (and the vastness and variety of our solar system/galaxy/universe/whatever) than simple descriptions could ever give. The idea of 'virtual tourism' is about as far from BS as something can get.
You're arguing that the experience is worthless if it doesn't replicate every single aspect of real life and that's just nonsense. I might as well stop reading textbooks to learn about anything but maths and code, ya? because reading about a location or about a physical phenomenon to understand it is just utterly worthless next to experiencing it in person, and nothing else is satisfactory, ya?
So basically, anything short of a perfect holodeck experience is totally worthless?
Man, how did photography ever take off?
Do you swear off documentaries as well?
autoduelist
Member
So? I live 3000 miles from all my family. The phone is 'good enough' for me, with occasional visits. VR would be even better.
Does the phone replace hanging out with a friend in person? Does it matter?
I get my deep sea fix from the Discovery channel. I'll never be there. Does it matter? I've never seen the Grand Canyon, but I'd go there on VR.
krypt0nian
Banned
Not that many years from now, this will be the silliest post.
shira
Member
Yeah but if the medium sucks then nobody will use it except idiots like ChatRoulette or Playstation Home.
And people will gravitate towards an industry standard. Who do you think is going to win - Sony or Samsung/Facebook/Occulus?
krypt0nian
Banned
Probably something else coming next. This isn't the end game. It's all about improvement and iteration. You shouldn't be so short sighted. The people that first made cellphones don't even matter now.
We don't judge videogames by Space War and Pong, do we?
JordanN
Banned
I had a response typed up but Badwolf summed it up for me.
Morpheus just needs to do the same.