I did end up doing the VR thing in the living room. The width of the room was no problem, but the depth was barely deep enough. Guess I need a new house.

Anyway, it was cool. I didn't get a chance to play all the different room scale games, but I played the majority. It was pretty cool. Some are just "games" that take you to 3d explorable images of places in the real world, like castles in Germany or a mountainside in Greenland or a lava tube in iceland, for instance. That's interesting because you can basically explore these places, but probably predictably this gets pretty old pretty quick.

Most of the games I have are free, so their quality and depth aren't all that. There's one called Surge () that's just a music video, but it's really cool. I enjoyed it. There's The Night Cafe () that lets your move around a scene inspired by van Gogh. Also pretty cool, but of limited entertainment value. Trials on Tatooine let you pretend to be a jedi (). It's fun, sorta, but it's so short it was immensely unsatisfying.

Of the bunch, Zombie Training Simulator () was probably the best game. It was a free add-in with the headset. I wouldn't pay money for it. But it was fun.

A played a few other games, but nothing really stood out. The games I did not play yet that are room scale are The Gallery - Episode 1: CAll of the Starseed (fucking stupid name ) and MIND Path to Thalamus (). These may be amazing, I just don't know yet.

All in all, the only game that I consider to be a real, triple A type VR game is Elite: Dangerous. Everything else is somewhere between bad to interesting, but nothing is a real, immersive, must-play game. I think that's the biggest issue with it is that people haven't yet figured out how to make games for VR. I'm hopeful that interest in VR stays strong while people figure that out. I did some googling looking for the best VR games to play and I'm not the only person to feel this way. But that's what being an early adopter is all about, right?

Hahaha, yes, that's exactly what it's about. Sitting on your technomountain, ready to go, but with nothing to actually play. It's like owning the world's first VHS player and the only thing they got on tape is the children's Bible. BUT YOU WATCHED IT ON VHS ANYWAY DAMMIT! Because you could!!

Given the development cycle of AAA games (like, 3 years?), I guess it makes sense the offer hasn't caught up yet with the new technology. In that sense it's different than, say, Bluray: the industry/movies already existed, they were just being printed on a new medium. But VR really needs games to be MADE for it to take full advantage of it.

I'm thinking FPS games would make the best VR games for total immersion, but I can also see it with more strategic games. You know, like the Minority Report gestural inferface.

One of the problems with VR is you can't have the player moving around like you would in an FPS. Moving in VR while not moving IRL causes illness, because your eyes and your inner ear disagree on reality. Games where you're stationary are the best (like driving / flying games) because it works with your other senses. Most games that allow movement either are room scale where you really walk, or they let you warp places by pointing where you want to go and then you magically appear there. So... not working for FPS at this time.

There was some stuff out there on fooling the inner ear via eletrical stimulation or something. Now if they could fake out your eyes and your balance, that would be awesome. Other alternatives are omni-directional treadmills and stuff.

Anyway, I'm hopeful it'll sort itself out. We'll see over the next few years.

Oh, that makes a lot of sense...didn't consider that.

Yeah, they really need to work on a solution for that then. Maybe a true FPS game with fighting and so on may be a bit complicated to happen any time soon, but even a relatively basic threadmill could work for the so-called "walking simulator" types of games.

Fingers crossed!

An omni-directional treadmill for virtual reality exists. Or at least it's in pre-order mode.



It's like $700, which isn't obscene, really. Thing is, can you imagine making room for this? I don't have the space.

Yeah, you basically would need a dedicated room for this. Which I guess isn't too insane in case you don't have any children, but still. People usually use spare rooms for other things already if they have them.

Maybe it's time to refurbish your orgy room Satis.

Lol, I wish I had an orgy room. I need a freaking house. Like, for real. I need to triple my income.