They were good enough for the time, just like the ones about to be released. In ten years time they will look archaic, just like the headsets of 1993.
They
weren't good enough for the time, though. VR isn't just some linear scale of bad <-> good. There are thresholds and requirements that need to be met in order to enable a comfortable, quality experience. Not meeting these doesn't just make something worse, it makes it 'not good enough'. That was always VR's problem back then.
That doesn't matter for the same reason I stated above. For the time they were breathtaking. When I got my Sinclair Spectrum when I was 8 Daley Thompson's Decathlon was mind blowing. When I walked into a shop and first saw "Mission Impossible" on the C64 complete with speech "Kill him, my robots !" I was blown away.
It does matter in VR. It's not a deal breaker, no, but producing convincing environments and inducing a level of presence is very hard to do without certain things like shadowing and a reasonable level of AA.
Things are different in VR man. You are not just looking at graphics on a screen with a physical and mental detachment from it. You are IN it. And when things dont look right, like something not having shadows where your brain expects it, it is HIGHLY noticeable and immersion-breaking.
And they have reported issues with it. Just as others have said "Wow this is fantastic" etc.
The only issues I see are people who feel motion sick or whatever. And that is very much addressed by improved latency, improved display technology(especially refresh rates) and the biggest one - game/experience design. Not all VR apps are created equal. It'd be very easy to design a game that induces sickness or unease in just about anyone, but there's also apps that dont really give anybody problems.
Yes I would want to play it for eight hours straight as I do with most games and yes it is a drawback. Having to take it off and then switch to a monitor would be a PITA.
You play most games for eight hours straight? Holy hell dude.
And really, taking a headset off during an 8 hour game marathon is a 'PITA'? I hate to imagine the stress that taking a bathroom break causes you...
Yup and that's why it will be marmite, just like the rest of the silly fads we've had over the past few years. 3D - dead. 4k - ridiculous.Physx - dead. SLI and Crossfire - dying.
A resolution is a fad? Huh?
3D failed because you had to wear stupid glasses and not every one could even see it. Trust me, it was the stupid glasses part. Most were active meaning you constantly need to charge them and so on. It was aggro, so people didn't bother with it. Most of my family have 3D sets. They didn't buy them for 3D and they've never even used it.
The point is that wearing the glasses wasn't rewarding enough. It wasn't worth doing. But VR is FAR more impressive by magnitudes. It's not the same thing.
Of course support is critical too. As I said before, if VR ever gets to the stage where absolutely every single PC game released works with it I may give it a try. Until then? it won't catch on.
That's not how VR works. It is not something that you just stick on every application. You're thinking of VR like some new 'enhancement' to games, but it's so much more than that. It's essentially an entirely new medium.
You could be right and it could catch on. Within three years we could all be wearing headsets. Unfortunately in reality that's unlikely to happen because of the caveats. Many will feel sick, many will get headaches, you can't just do it for as long as you like without suffering from something etc.
Haven't heard about the headache problem. But just watching TV or looking at a monitor also induces headaches in some people so it's not some VR-specific issue.
Oh FFS try something better than that, dude. That was the same old rubbish being said about 3D. "Until you have tried it you should shut up etc"
3D didn't have any major backlash at its outset. Wasn't til it started becoming a more frequent selling point at theaters and for TV's that people started to tire of it and push back against it. Especially when it came with extra costs that people didn't want to pay.
Either way, the general principle of not bashing something or writing it off til you try it is a pretty reasonable one. You tell a 5 year old to try some new food that seems strange to them and a lot of them will say "No, I KNOW I wont like it", which is just an aversion/fear of something new or change. That's really all you're doing here. It's an irrational and close-minded mentality. What's worse is that you obviously dont know a whole lot about the technology, yet you still obviously feel entirely confident in making all sorts of assumptions about it.
