Everyone is talking about Virtual Reality. But what is Virtual Reality and what can it achieve now and in the future? And most importantly: is it worth all the buzz?
Virtual Reality is as old as the gaming industry itself and already had flopped in the beginning of the 90s. But now a Luckey guy has reinvented Virtual Reality and the cards are being reshuffled.
5. History
- Idea of Virtual Reality in 30‘s
- Virtual Reality totally flopped in the 90‘s
- In the era of smartphones a Luckey guy reinvented VR and the cards are now being reshuffled
- Matrix, Holodeck, Neuromancer, Ready Player One -> everyone knows what VR is
- VR is the ultimate escapist dream
6. Head Mounted Display
&
Input
(e.g. Motion Controller)
How does VR work these days?
- Head Tracking
- Positional Tracking
- Motion Tracking
- Lenses
- Stereoskopic View via
Display
13. - Visual perception VS. vestibular system
- Causes dizziness, nausea and fatigue
- Prevent motion sickness in VR-applications:
- Latency
- Short play sessions
- Avoid unnatural movements like strafing or fast turning
- Haptic suits and haptic installations
- Use clever game design
Simulator- or motion sickness
14. - Avatar locomotion
- One of the biggest problems
- Controlling the avatar has to be reconsidered completely
- Classical Shooter controls won‘t work anymore (WASD and mouse) due to fast movements, strafing, turning and running backwards
- Body alignment and head alignment need to be controlled seperately. How to turn in VR?
- Game input
- Motion Controller
- Gamepad
- Motion Sensors (Leap Motion, Kinect, etc.)
- Treadmills (Virtualizer, Omni)
Locomotion and Input
18. - Trade-off between game complexity and the amount of peripheral hardware needed
- Mass market accessibilty with less peripheral hardware
- HMDs and hardware should be affordable and comfortable to wear
- Only hardcore gamers are going to use a lot of additional hardware
- There are still many problems like the need of wired and heavy HMDs, expensive hardware and space
needed for motion tracking systems
Ergonomics and mass market accessibility
20. - The feeling of being there, to have physical presence in a virtual environment
Presence
- Michael Abrash‘s checklist
- Technical aspects like low latency, high
resolution, high refresh rate, rock solid
tracking, wide field of view etc.
- Plausible virtual worlds and plausible
virtual avatars
- Haptic feedback
- Audio
Immersive
Virtual Reality
21. - VR-Experiences:
- Situations you can only
experience in VR
- Situations you can experience in
VR without (physical)
repercussions
Why do we need presence?
22. - Gaming
- Social Interaction
- Business
- Training
- Education
- Visualization
- Psychological Treatment
- Many more
Vast field of use
Replacement of most
aspects of the real world
Development
23. - Everyone can be an expert
- Everyone can be a pioneer
- Whole new platform
- Content is needed to prove that consumer VR works
- Indie devs can create innovative content and gameplay which AAA studios can't
- Still a small market with great visibility
Opportunities for indie devs
24. - Started as a game jam in early 2014
- Originally planned to be a Flash game
- 2D action puzzle shooter
- Idea to make „Break A Brick“ VR
- Release on Samsung Gear VR
Break A Brick and VR
25.
26. - Short play sessions
- Do not flood the user with difficult input
- Or weird movement, that can cause motion sickness
- Less motion means less motion sickness
- Expose the strenghts of VR and conceal it‘s (current) weaknesses
- ( use cute Bricks and a cat to make the game more accessible ;) )
What we did
27. Conclusion
- VR is still at its beginning
- Make games which are fun with the current hardware
- Minimize motion sickness and maximize presence
- Experiment and use different approaches for VR
- Consumer-VR needs an existence proof
- It‘s not going to flop like in the 90‘s
- VR is still partially fantasy and partially real