Be Excellent To Each Other

The PlayStation VR is out now, and initial reviews on RLLMUK have been very positive.
Has anyone here got one yet? I'm tempted to go shopping at the weekend.

I'm not getting one, but I'd be interested in hearing how it is, especially with a boggo PS4.

Nah, I've been told they're not the future.

I suppose I need a PS4 soon

Do the move controllers track orientation like the Vive ones? If not, then that's a huge barrier to immersion. How many times did people in the Vive go "Hey, look, there's the controllers, right there!"?

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on Oculus Touch in early December. It sounds like a step up even from the impressive Vive controllers.

Yes, although I suspect they aren't quite as good at it. Also (this is Classic Sony) the Move controllers aren't bundled with the technohat, so software devs can't rely on them being there, so there's uncertainty around if a game should prioritise supporting Move, a pad, or both.

I've just watched the Techradar review video and it seems that a lot of games can simply use the PS4 pad for hand tracking. Which seems ok for simple games. No gangland* style sideways gun holding though.

* Not gangnam.

I believe they can. The PSVR is sold on it's own for people that already have a camera and controllers, and in a big pack that comes with the camera and two controllers for those that don't.

I mean, technically you can buy a PSVR and a camera and it'll work for some games, but it's totally your own fault if you can't play some things.

And if that isn't the case then it should be.

Reasonable write-up Eurogamer.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016- ... trangeness

Some decent comments too, including from a lot of people who already have VR of one flavour or another and suggest it's not going mainstream in its current iteration.

We've got a board games night round at a mate's next month and he'll have a PSVR as one of the things to have a go on so I'll certainly have a play with it. (He's very good at putting on 'secondary activities' for folks who get knocked out of the board game early, like can happen with Monopoly, for example.)

This also takes the number of people I know with a VR kit from one to two, so a 100% increase on previous uptake figures.

Aside - Mate, get a copy of Ticket to Ride, Colt Express, Cash and Guns , and Pandemic and take that along with a decent bottle of Port. Nobody retires early and you will have much more fun. Then thank me, later. Don't waste your life with fucking Monopoly.

Not for £350 (passim). And probably not ever for the small amount t if games in I do. Which is a shame, as I really want this to be ace. And £150.

GearVR

And yet not a single person got worried about this. Despite the enormous likelihood of getting felt up by Myp.

We all said it was Myp..

It's one thing being surrounded by friends, but I reckon being alone in your home is something else

It fucking is when you're playing Alien: Isolation, I can assure you.

*shrug* never had any problems there. It's a bit easier if anything. Because you don't have occasional myp groupings.

I imagine the study wasn't in home environments.

As opposed to the massively social experience of sitting alone in a darkened room late at night, with headphones on, playing GTA online with Grim..., Curio, APOD, and Craster.

I think VR becoming mainstream is absolutely inevitable. It might need to get a little better first but it's hardly going to get worse.

That's different, though. I can see Mrs Grim... coming through the door when I'm playing GTA5 on a TV.

But VR is rubbish.

Brief continuation of aside - It's World of Warcraft Monopoly that's not even had its box opened yet, so a very special sort of Monopoly.

TBH the actual game is kind of secondary really, it's more an extended evening of many and varied drinks and tasty food in good company.

The guy has opened the floor to suggestions of games to play though (WoW Monopoly was one of his options), so I'll pass on your suggestions above and see if any of the chaps fancy them, cheers

What kind of a loser lives with other people!?

This is exactly the point I made early on in the Oculus thread, there's a big difference between being sat in front of a normal console/PC with an audio headset on, to having a complete VR contraption strapped to your head - especially in terms of 'awareness of your surroundings and availability to people nearby'.

When Hearthly Jnr was younger I had a baby monitor set up in my line of sight when playing Saturday night games with the chaps, so even though I couldn't easily hear the monitor if it was all kicking off noise wise over the headset, I could see the lights flashing if she was disturbed. It's lots of little things like that which will count against VR for many folks IMO - especially those in family houses.

Please let me be clear about this, I'm not 'ANTI-VR BAN THIS FILTH' or anything like that, (on the contrary, it's very cool tech), simply suggesting that it's not going to be commercially successful/mainstream in its current guise, if indeed at all. (Bit like that OnLive thing.)

Tbh as long as my CV1 works forever with iRacing I sort of don't give a shit if it goes mainstream or not. It's totally transformed driving sims for me. It's like the difference between driving a car and looking at one through a window.

I think it is neat, but I am not going to be an early adopter for a piece of Sony hardware that I am unconvinced will get robust support into the future.

Remember the Vita, PS Move, EyeToy/Playstation Eye, Xperia Play, 3DTV, and all the other bits of kit Sony have sold without any real plan for long term support.

I struggle to see how aside from small scale projects, regular games converted into VR, and stuff funded by Sony (or Oculus) there is going to be any long term support for VR. Stuff like Arkham VR sounds great, but there is obviously not going to be a full Batman game made at the same scale as current console games exclusively for VR.

Whatever, hipster. You're desperately hoping it doesn't.

Yes, I'm a technology hipster with my Facebook-owned technohat and Windows PC.

Ironically mainstream is our Myp

Irony is a dead scene

This is why I cancelled my PSVR pre-order (although right now I regret it.) Hopefully support will continue, in which case I imagine I'll get one next year. Or I'll be run-over by a hype train and buy one anyway, that's possible.

At least they're not bundling it with the PS4 Pro as a mandatory requirement, eh folks?

Lewis makes a good point. Apart from consoles, I can't think of anything that Sony has done in the gaming world that has had a massive uptake and been successful.

Weren't they the first rumble pad?

N64 apparently
(although not built in, admittedly)

Dual analogue thumbsticks, surely?

Although relatedly, dual analogue sticks

Edit: fucking Myp

I'll give you the dual analogue sticks. Good point.

Microsoft popularised online console gaming so that's 1-1 I guess.

And cheevos, and wireless pads, and DLC, and HD, and surround sound, and personal playlists.

SUBS PLEASE CHECK

Not all of those are good. What about dashboard ads and stupid points-based currency systems too?

Which aren't good?

I could perhaps be persuaded about HD being bad.

The Wavebird on the Gamecube came before this and some would argue, was quite popular but it doesn't matter. When one company innovates, another imitates.

Really? How come?

DLC. Let's chop up games piecemeal and charge extra for them!

I... I just can't even...

Of all the people to think DLC was bad, I didn't think you'd be one of them.

DLC isn't inherently bad. Companies may do bad things with it, but that doesn't mean it can't be good.

It took graphics - and arguable consoles - in a direction that concentrated muscle power on the number of pixels on the screen rather than what those pixels were doing.

In most cases details are important to how things look, not resolution. After all, what looks more realistic - a super-4K PC game or a DVD?

Good point, well made.