What's everyone's take on VR goggles for PC games?

I've recently seen some Game of Thrones animated maps on my iPhone whereby it's essentially an animated tour of a 3D map, but with the difference that you can move your iPhone and change what you're looking at. It was pretty accurate, pretty well done, and frankly, pretty impressive. So it got me wondering what the application for PC games could be, and if it could offer something fun. For instance, I know VR goggles are on sale, but what would it be like to play a game like Skyrim with VR goggles whereby turning your head to the left allows your character to see what's the the left (without actually changing movement direction). I remember playing IL2 Sturmovik many years back, and found that looking around me was pretty damn crucial, yet cumbersome to do with the numpad.

I've never tried one, and I'm not gonna buy one until they drop in price (and until a dominant brand emerges). Unless you have tons of disposable income, it really isn't worth the investment yet as far as I understand. From the press on them it seems like it works really well for some games, but in general they're only amazing on games that were specifically designed with a VR headset in mind. Which, at this point, is mostly smaller games whose entire focus is on the VR, not so much on being a good game. Kind of like the early 3D movies in cinemas.

There is a lot of bullshit going on in the industry with the major manufacturers and players tying up games in exclusivity deals (by offering money to help out with development etc), so if you own one VR headset you may not even be able to use it to play some games that way. So yeah...I call bullshit so far.

Let them battle it out with the help of rich early adopters. Then I'll see who wins and pick one up on the cheap.

It's betamax and VHS all over again.

I plan on buying into Valve's VR headset. They don't do the exclusivity bullshit that Oculus does. Essentially it's between Oculus and HTC Vive (Valve) right now for PC. Sony's doing a VR headset for Playstation, but it's not out yet and it's bound to be worse, since the PS hardware is crap compared to modern PCs. Razer has their open source VR headset (OSVR), but it's still basically in dev mode, so Oculus and Vive are the only real games in town right now.

As for games, yea, there's a limited variety at the moment, but my understanding is that it's game-changing (pun mildly intended). It's not for everything, but for the things it does do, it's a whole different world. I plan on getting Elite: Dangerous and a flight stick/throttle to go with my headset when I get it. It's a big investment, but I expect it to be worth it.

Long but informative article for anyone interested in VR goggles + gaming

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/0 ... ore-378651

Interesting take on the two headsets. I will still get the Vive, not the Rift, but I'm not offended by people that disagree with me.

From the article it seems pretty much a toss up for now. Both have different strong points (and weaknesses), both neither stands out. I got the feeling that the Vive had a bit of an edge with the reviewer too since it's integrated so well with Steam, but that may just be me reading into things. He definitely didn't say that.

Overall, he reached the same conclusion as I already did above - if you're not an early adopter with the cash to spare, don't get one yet. It's not really worth the price tag yet.

I love that this exists though, and that it's happening.

Yea, I agree, it's awesome. I think the uptake has been high enough that a second generation is inevitable, which is very important. If there wasn't enough interest, the whole idea would die, and that would be very sad. I plan on buying the first gen Vive and when a second generation comes out, I'll probably buy that too and move the Vive into the living room. I have enough space there to actually do the walk-around-the-room thing. Hopefully it'll take 2 years or so, so I can afford to build a gaming PC for the living room.

And if it turns out you bough the Betamax of VR goggles you can still switch to the Rift for the second generation.

Kidding, it's looking like there may not be a Betamax/VHS situation with this tech. There have already been considerable efforts at cooperation from both sides to make the tech usable for games that are not optimized for one brand and vice versa. I guess it's more like the AMD/Intel wars in that regard.

Yea, it's pretty cross-compatible, despite some of the things the Rift has done. Anyway, lots of people are jumping into the VR headset business, but I expect most will pop out one, maybe two versions and then give up. I just hope the winner of the VR wars aren't assholes (I'm looking at you Sony and Samsung).