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Imagine: VR is a runaway hit in 2016. Valve designs a $1000 premium VR console.
- Thread starter Dr. Kaos
- Start date
Sanctuary
Member
Name a single person who actually said this.
Crayon
Member
You're joking, but you just made me think about it for a second. It would be possible I suppose, but foolhardy. They'll just have to sell them at comparably higher prices than consoles.
Perhaps, it doesnt really fit with Valve's current strategy I would think, they don't seem to use their money to push steam directly in the short term, how much of it is tied up in R&D for the OS, controller and vive I dont know but they haven't really leveraged it in the way traditional platforms do with shiny exclusives that the mainstream seems so fond of, they always seem to be playing the longer game.
Assuming a $300 headset+controller and $700 for the box. This should leave us with $500 for the CPU+GPU+RAM combo.
By 12/18, this should get you something equivalent to a high end i7 and something around 4 times the horsepower of a 980ti thanks to hbm2 +shrink @ 32gb.
Crayon
Member
There's no precedent of them eating tons of cash for a short term advantage like that and there is not evidence that they are interested in fast burn strategies in anything they do. valve is the opposite of that to a fault.
It's wise and that is evident in their success. Why run down this hill to fuck one of those cows when I could walk down and fuck them all?
Logically, you do mass manufacturing to drastically cut costs & potentially take a loss to make VR huge.
You don't think Sony & MS pay the same price some guy building a PC buying a single CPU from a 3rd party seller pays?
Solid Samus
Banned
VR isn't going to take off overnight and a $1000 console in 2016 isn't going to be viable. Give it a few years and you might see something like that at a vastly reduced price
it'd bomb worse than Ouya
Are you kidding me? There's at least one in almost every other VR thread, man
Trust me, nobody's gonna quote your gross misinterpretation of what VR is, and the desires of its proponents, except in this thread right here.
What are you two even talking about? Are you saying you'll quit gaming if some company comes out with some super expensive and misguided VR console? That would be much more than just an overreaction.
Solid Samus
Banned
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AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
No thanks. I'm not that obsessed that I would ever need to plop down a $1000 for such a system.
I have a life which heavily makes that a no money wise when i can use that on other travels.
I have a life which heavily makes that a no money wise when i can use that on other travels.
serversurfer
Member
SoÂ…Â $1500 including the headset to hit the recommended spec, just as Iribe said? Are you disagreeing with me? =/
Completely off topic but while I have your attentionÂ…Â I posted this around the time of your most recent ban. Did you happen to notice it, and if so, did you have a chance to try it out? lol
So, December 2018? I thought you were talking about something coming out late in 2016. Then yeah, in 30ish months your $1000 budget will be far more reasonable.
Auto-Reply
Member
I'd go into full Kutaragi mode and make that thing fully 4d compatible!
Of course I will be fired in the end, but I will go out leaving an impression (mostly on the internet via memes)
Of course I will be fired in the end, but I will go out leaving an impression (mostly on the internet via memes)
flaxknuckles
Member
Why not? If someone is upgrading their VR headset why would they not think they'd need to upgrade their Steam machine?
Beerman462
Member
They already said a 970 is recommended. It costs just over $300. A GPU of that power will cost less when the Occults releases. How is $1k even close to a requirement for the GPU?
I've tried many of the lateral rotation solutions, it's one of the single biggest problems facing VR and it's one everyone is trying to solve. As such, proposed solutions get thrown around all the time. The big one everyone is talking about right now is ratcheting - being able to grab the environment and pull yourself around with your hands. I've been talking about that one for a long while now. These half-solutions are better than using a stick, but they're not quite right. They don't feel very natural at all, they really break a lot of the illusion.
The single best solution I've seen has been simply using a swivel chair and spinning around. A lot of people question how someone can do this without being tangled by wires, and my solution thus far has been to route the wires to come down from above me, using a boom mic stand. Most people probably will not do this. This is really where you can see the benefit that a wireless or self-contained solution would bring. Even though Gear VR is so limited in what it can do, the ability to let people freely spin makes for some great VR experiences.
"Blinking" is another solution gaining steam, and I bet it'll ultimately be the solution most games use. Blinking is when you select a spot and orientation in front of you, and the game fades out and in to the next position. You don't actually walk. Naturally, this would dramatically dictate the way your game works, and it would probably work best with room-scale tracking (so you could at least walk around a little) but it is the one that least breaks the illusion that you are in this other reality.
I really see the first wave of commercial VR games foregoing locomotion all together. I think things like Sony's heist is what the first wave will be like - self contained action set pieces that transition from one to another.
magnumpy
Member
Elite: Dangerous? not sure what you consider locomotion, but outer space dogfighting seems to be an obvious place to start. also racing sims. basically anything were you've got a cockpit around you.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
It's weird seeing this sentiment on an enthusiast gaming forum. How is this never not meant to be taken as condescending? Damn, just let people enjoy their respective hobbies without tryna have them feel ostracized for it :/
You don't actually physically walk around your cockpit in either of those games. Locomotion meaning, like, walking around the city in GTA.
BackBackPunch
Member
I had an idea and I wondered if it had been tried yet...
What if your lateral rotation was controlled by your left right head movement, but only when pressing a controller button. For example, you are moving forward, and looking left or right allows you to look left or right while you're walking forward in a straight line. Now, if you continue moving forward and press and hold X, looking to the left or right will now be translated to a left or right turn, until you release X at which point you continue in that direction and regain the ability to look left or right.
dgrdsv
Member
You really don't. Valve isn't "building a console", they provide software layer to hardware companies who want to build PCs for Steam gaming. And Valve isn't "building an HMD", they provide software support for HTC's hardware in Steam.
Bundling something which they don't build isn't up to them. Launching something which will effectively limit their reach as a distribution platform is completely against their business model. What Valve do right now is trying to expand that, not limit to some "premium VR console" bullshit platform which won't sell nearly as well to make any sense for Valve to be involved in it.
Fear of change.
Crayon
Member
Valve won't do it until they actually get their own in house steam machine out. Still, hardware partners can release steam machine/steam vr bundles and it doesn't limit anything. It's a likely consequence of having consoles (small, cheap, controller driven, game focused, and in the console aisle at retail) branded with steam, as well as headsets branded with steam. They go together.
The decision doesn't need to be up to valve as it's an open platform and anyone can do it.
serversurfer
Member
So, you've tried my solution? What sucked about it?
Oh, really? I talk about ratcheting all the time, but nobody ever even responds to me. =/
I tried to find some of your posts on the subject, but I couldn't find any at all. Can you point me at a few? I'd be interested to read your thoughts on the subject. <3 All I could really find was this post where you quoted me mentioning it to Sean as a good solution, but you mostly just talked about how cool AR is gonna be. lol
Yeah, anything that requires the user to physically turn around very much is probably not gonna gain much traction until we have wireless headsets, whether sitting or standing.
Yeah, Marks is a big proponent of teleportation. He brings it up whenever locomotion is discussed. lol It seems like a nice solution, but my main concern would be targeting. Although, thinking about it now, if your wand worked like a variable sword, you could probably indicate your target pretty precisely, especially with some practice. Apart from something like that though, it seems like you'd be kinda restricted to teleporting between predetermined destinations.
Having tried none of these myself, I still think ratcheting sounds pretty good. It seems very analogous to walking, and with some decent scaling, shouldn't be too tiring.
Could be. Apparently, Sony will be showing a lot of Morpheus-exclusive content tomorrow, so I'm actually eager to see what devs are doing with the DS4.
That will not be "premium".
In december 2018. Oh goodness, I wasn't clear in the OP. Going to fix that now.Vr is a runaway hit in 2016 and Valve releases in december 2018, 2 years later. That's what I meant...
old manatee
Banned
I would sell my car and live in the console instead.
serversurfer
Member
Ohhhhhhh! That makes a lot more sense! lol
Then sure, that's totally possible. I doubt Valve will do it themselves though; they're not a hardware company. More likely, they'll just keep trying to persuade real hardware companies to make this stuff, just like they're doing with the Vive and the current batch of Steam Machines.
Kinda off-topic, but have Oculus even told us who'll be building and selling the Rift yet? Are we just assuming it'll be Samsung? Could they have multiple manufacturers on board, and if so, will they all be releasing more or less the same device, or will it be more of a "minimum spec" thing?
dgrdsv
Member
IHVs can do whatever they want, hence the "I" in IHV. But Valve has nothing to do with this. All they want is to broaden their distribution network as wide as possible. Launching any kind of 1st party gaming platform is the exact opposite of what Valve aims for. It will never happen.