Tuesday, January 7, 2020

More VR Babbling

Finally got the Half-Life VR Mod working and I gotta say, all the new games are absolutely amazing, but there is something extremely special playing an older game like this in VR and entering into the game world... something magical almost about looking around and looking at the characters, walking the hallways, shooting face-grabbers....even if the graphics are far from photorealistic. It's a blast, and I feel more engaged in the game than I ever have before.

I would be ecstatic if they could figure some way to put old adventure games like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, or the classic Sierra games into VR somehow (may be hard though since they were 2D though) or Day of the Tentacle, hell I am getting nostalgic thinking of the possibilities! Would still really love them to figure out GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas and be able to transport inside of those games as well... soooo many good options, I think I either need to pray that developers start working these angles or else I need to figure out how to program... something I probably should've done ages ago.

Really loving all that VR is doing lately, with the Quest it is starting to change the desire for VR all around, and just as I predicted, popularity is growing and growing... I believe that device was definitely the catalyst for VR to break-through... once Half Life: Alyx releases it will jump another plateau and I imagine next year they will probably release a new Quest with enhanced visuals...wait wait wait...

PREDICTION TIME:

Figured I should separate 'predictions' a bit so I can look back at these in the future and see if I was right... or not, so here we go.

I predict Half Life: Alyx will uptick the fascination, popularity and adoption of VR for many people and keep the momentum going strong.

I predict that next year, 2021, Oculus will release a new Quest which will feature enhanced visuals, a bigger FOV, Faster processing, better battery and be a bit more lightweight (maybe) but that will start pushing VR through the roof.

Other companies are definitely going to be following suit, the wireless nature of the Quest is the way of the future... sure there will always be the PCVR headsets because you can't argue that the best experiences & most demanding graphic games that push the VR boundaries will still be on PC's... but the fact the Quest is an all-in-one, wireless and still very powerful device that works well makes it a game-changer.

I constantly choose my Quest over my Rift-S just because of the wireless factor alone. The fact I can easily just throw on the headset, jump into a game and can move and spin around without worrying about getting wrapped in the cord, is huge, even if I can't get every game I want or have to deal with slightly 'lesser' graphics.  It doesn't matter.

Oh, anyway (almost forgot about predictions)... so as VR gains more and more fans, I predict more and more studios will start leaning toward VR game development, and we're talking the BIG studios. It won't be long before we actually are getting GTA 6 or Call of Duty, or Madden in VR versions.

OK done with predictions... but also forgot to mention that the next iteration of Pixel Ripped was released today: Pixel Ripped 1995. This game once again has the player battling for screen-time avoiding parents and teachers, but instead of just playing a gameboy-like system, we are jumping to the 16 and 32 bit eras. The first game was amazing, although too short, but the concept of it is brillaint and I can't wait to give it a go... might have to get it tonight!

**UPDATE 1/8/2020**
I was lied to! I read some article that Pixel Ripped 1995 was supposed to be out, but when I went to check it says 'releases Spring 2020' so I guess I'll have to wait for this one a bit longer... shame! shame! shame!

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