Oculus Rift Support

[LazyGunn]

I'm another slightly affronted developer/games player, and i did indeed sign up to post this, the idea of the kind of advertising behaviour originally accused being absolute anathema to the guys who make OR, it's my own opinion and i'd guess an informed one, since i own one.

There are several 'hacks' available for the Oculus to work with games without specific official support and they have shown me that first person shooters are pretty bad for this kind of retrofitting, you quickly quickly get very motion sick as in-game animation for your head, and your head typically swaying with mouse-look, makes for a very sickness-inducing experience.

Then the opposite of this is playing a sim where the actual direction your head is facing typically has no gameplay ramifications other than a broader sense of your surroundings, and because the game isnt taking away the moment of your head from you, no motion sickness, looks great, its a good fit.

And then between these extremes are games like Amnesia, Outlast, Gone Home, Penumbra and so on, and i've gone out of my way to try and find as many analogous experiences to Amnesia to see how it would feel to play with OR support. Outlast was/is a doozy, now my fave game of this year thanks to Oculus hacks, it wasnt designed for the Oculus and i had to tweak it a bunch but it's now a brilliantly paced, sometimes slow and terrifying, sometimes a freakout and run awaaaay, but it fitted very well with the Oculus behavior.

Next to no motion sickness, completely playable with an Oculus devkit, not a forgettable experience, which is why i like it so much.

And there's been raised concerns in this thread about how the player would interact with the world. I would assume based, again, on what I have learnt from Gone Home and other little experiments, but the moving stuff about makes absolutely no different whatsoever. You still have your icon that you can drag about to open things, you can interact as easily as you might before, a mouse pointer is still a mouse pointer

You could wonder why people havent been doing this stuff for Amnesia, as these 'hacks' are actually pretty good! And being developed still. It's because Amnesia uses opengl and these hacks tend to be for dx9 or below (currently). So it's a split in graphics api, im looking forwards, deeply, that maybe if Frictional don't feel the need to use this or spend any time on it, then someone could knock up an opengl supporting solution that would let you experience what this game could be like

I've already delayed progressing further in Gone Home, i'd decided as the developer was considering OR support, i should wait for it and enjoy it properly

I know many of you (or it looks like very few of you) have used an OR before, so im surprised at the amount of completely speculative opinions being made here, very few of which makes sense.

To answer a question immediately brought up above, the 'disconnect' between head and shoulders - in gameplay terms you find yourself orientating automatically a little bit a part of human nature - and if manipulating things needs to be in the range of the hand, you turn your head to face a more game-intentional view. When a game starts your oculus is zeroed, so you can somewhat tell where your body is based on how far round you're looking from things (If your body is also zeroed, it's the anchor for your head, locally).

I dont see the logic of not being able to manipulate things? Its pretty much exactly the same, you might notice something of interest in the distance more clearly but you still have to get there, and hence forth i dont see any strong argument between how Oculus would impair these 'issues'

Gone Home had me pushing, pulling, throwing things around at speed (just to make a point aha)

I'm quite avid as i like the Amnesia games and I want to play them with the OR, its quite a profoundly different way of looking into a 3D environment which ive found as above in other games and i dont really like playing games without it now. So i'm waiting for an opengl 'hack' to let me play this game and make a judgement, based on previous experiences, it would be a somewhat scary but great world to get lost in.

Some people in the thread have been talking like they have one and they havent (Some do though it seems), after saying this i can imagine the backlash, you only have to play halflife 2 with the OR to realise that this is going to go a long long way and often the arguments against it seem naive or short sighted. I've never seen anyone i know use an oculus (specifically friends using my unit) and upon leaving the train at the strain station, just stopped, spent ages just looking around, freaking out slightly at the flying eye thing

Sorry for the rant i have more to say but not in the remit of this post

Thankyou Frictional for producing some of the best, if not the best, horror experiences on any kind of screen, be it Penumbra or Ascent, and its stuff that will never leave me, i'm not being pushy, i just dont want to play MFP without an oculus rift, just a flat crappy monitor.. a monitor that is a window into another world that in itself lacks any depth?

I don't buy how there's an evangelical horde of people saying 'you dont need more immersion! The Amnesia series is making full immersion games that you watch through a window on your desk, and thats as immersive as it gets, folks! Whereas.. OR's like.. being there! - I got it with Outlast (It's terrifying in OR, so-so without), and just for fun cause people were saying moving stuff would be harder in Amnesia, i shot around Gone Home opening all the things.. i dont see a problem?

Anyways, info for any acolytes: An Oculus Rift is a headset using lenses to view a postprocessed image of the game you are playing when it's using the OR sent to each eye with each image taken in-game from two different views judged to be the distance between your two pupils. Because of this part (Imo the important part) it gives a profound sense of depth perception which is really hard to imagine should you have never tried it. Then as you rotate your head it provides headtracking information into a matrix that can then modify the game's camera transform matrix and recreate the moment. So it looks like you're inside a tangible other world.

You have to try it or there's just no point talking about it, you cant tell someone who has used one regularly what its going to be like. And everyone i've ever met who has used one, is convinced that people would have to be a little backwards to prefer a monitor.. i think i've already come to the point where if im going to be playing games on my pc it will be on an OR, or bust

And my dev work is going into research work into psychotherapy using the OR, a field it could have profound influences on

I wont be buying machine for pigs unless it's supported by the OR officially or some bright spark makes a tridef-style 'hack' to let me play opengl games in a similar way.

A mouse pointer is still a mouse pointer in the end, oculus does not do away with this, mouse pointers do what they always did, the controls i just cant see being any different?

God, rant and half, sorry!

I just really wanna play the damn thing on OR, so waiting for either some official note (Im assuming theve played halflife 2 with it, to get the immersion thang, reactions to it without playing with it could be considered as unprofessional), or for someone to cook up opengl drivers so i can use that to play the game, but not until then, and people judging the OR based on absolutely no first hand experience, shame on you!

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I'm not sure how you feel but there's no project on the Rift development showcase I've tried that I would point to and say 'that's how to do it'

You know what, since some of us would like to be able to play amnesia with an OR, i'll make it a lil sideproject to be done with Unity - a demo of being able to do physical actions in the game with oculus rift which best represents Amnesia's examples. If that's interesting to anyone (And are prepared that it may become vapourware as i have a lot on at the moment).

I havent even had a try with the OR sdk and Unity yet so what better a time

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Sorry for spam, was just watching a rerun of Dark Descent (This will keep me entertained all day), and just realised the control scheme is a lot more starightforward than i remember.

Just because your head is decoupled from your body doesnt mean the interaction spot has to change, i had a fancy idea how to do this then i thought why not align the body rotation with the head if you're using something. Thats about it, just means when not using things or you are carrying things you have some sense of being able to observe around you.

The subject of depth perception, that is what makes the OR a winner is getting much underplayed here, when i could probably make being able to gauge a distance much better