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[LordBucket]

I see no way VR is going to make any foothold in 1) most strategy games, both real time and turn based, 2) small time-wasters (usually Flash based) and 3) basically any other game which doesn't have a 1st person view or doesn't use it as default (that includes most MMORPGs).

Via interface changes. Sure, you couldn't simply port WoW to VR and have it work very well. Boss fights are designed assuming you have a full view of the map. Being stuck in first person view and not able to zoom in and out, etc would make it terribly difficult to play. How would you activate abilities? How immersion breaking would it be to see cooldowns expiring? It would be awkward sitting and waiting, watching the auto attack happen without you doing anything. The "slash the air near the target" visuals would seem very odd in a realistic first person view. There are all sorts of problems. The game, both interface and major assumptions about gameplay itself, would all need to change.

But that same thing happened with mice. Mice changed interfaces and assumptions made about gameplay. We don't use a mouse to push letters. Look at games in the elder scrolls series. The mouse button isn't simply a key. You can slash in a direction to control the angle and type of attack. That's something a keyboard is incapable of doing. Changes of this sort will be needed to make VR games, yes. But that doesn't mean the games can't be made.

most strategy games, both real time and turn based

Simple. Use something more like a touchscreen interface. Imagine having an adjustable top view of the battlefield. You have no body, only hands. You can reach out and slide your hands to slide the map, and you can put out both hands and  bring your hands together or apart to zoom in and out. By touching units you can select them, and by sliding your fingers after touching  unit you can make it move and set waypoints for it. By speaking you can set control groups. And remember you have two hands. So, touch a group with your left hand and slide to a point to set that group to move while simultaneously with your right index finger you selectively draw a circle around specific units in a nearby pile, and then slide that group to the same point, then say "set group 1." Now, at any point you can say "group 1" at target a point with your finger to set them in motion.

While you're at it, there are all sorts of interesting things you could do with the interface. For example, you could set the game inside a command post with you as the commander in charge, complete with a row of screens and several officers under your command. You, the commander, are observing the faraway battle from your post and issuing orders remotely. You can set the various displays to first [person camera views from your soldiers on the field as well as aeriel views via orbital satellites. Or you could try something totally different. Imagine, for example, the previous "no body" interface described above, except that instead of taking place over a flat map, the battle takes place inside a sphere. No need for a radar map. You can very easily both see and target anywhere on the entire battlefield.

Strategy games can very easily be accommodated by VR.

Mouse is useful because it gives you precision of a hand movement with minimal exhaustion - because your hand is constantly resting. Keyboard, on the other hand, gives you universality of words. VR is basically a Power Glove - something which looks extremely cool to use, but it's actually pretty crappy in long-term use.

At one time, many people thought mice were ridiculous.

[Sergarr]

Mouse is useful because it gives you precision of a hand movement with minimal exhaustion - because your hand is constantly resting. Keyboard, on the other hand, gives you universality of words. VR is basically a Power Glove - something which looks extremely cool to use, but it's actually pretty crappy in long-term use.

Isn't this a good thing?  You move around a lot and get exercise?

Personally I think it would be neat to see a first person shooter game where the challenge isn't lining up a crosshair against an obligingly stationary target but running from cover to cover in a battlefield full of explosions.

It's a "good" thing in moderation. Also, people usually play games to relax from the tiring work day. They don't want to get tired from rest.

I see no way VR is going to make any foothold in 1) most strategy games, both real time and turn based, 2) small time-wasters (usually Flash based) and 3) basically any other game which doesn't have a 1st person view or doesn't use it as default (that includes most MMORPGs).

Via interface changes. Sure, you couldn't simply port WoW to VR and have it work very well. Boss fights are designed assuming you have a full view of the map. Being stuck in first person view and not able to zoom in and out, etc would make it terribly difficult to play. How would you activate abilities? How immersion breaking would it be to see cooldowns expiring? It would be awkward sitting and waiting, watching the auto attack happen without you doing anything. The "slash the air near the target" visuals would seem very odd in a realistic first person view. There are all sorts of problems. The game, both interface and major assumptions about gameplay itself, would all need to change.

But that same thing happened with mice. Mice changed interfaces and assumptions made about gameplay. We don't use a mouse to push letters. Look at games in the elder scrolls series. The mouse button isn't simply a key. You can slash in a direction to control the angle and type of attack. That's something a keyboard is incapable of doing. Changes of this sort will be needed to make VR games, yes. But that doesn't mean the games can't be made.

Mouse give the precision to input ability, because it's an input device. VR (as in Oculus Rift and others of that kind) is actually a display device. It's a replacement for monitor, not the mouse.

Also I don't know which Elder Scrolls games you've been playing but... you don't actually control the direction of the attack in Elder Scroll games with a mouse. Yeah.

most strategy games, both real time and turn based

Simple. Use something more like a touchscreen interface. Imagine having an adjustable top view of the battlefield. You have no body, only hands. You can reach out and slide your hands to slide the map, and you can put out both hands and  bring your hands together or apart to zoom in and out. By touching units you can select them, and by sliding your fingers after touching  unit you can make it move and set waypoints for it. By speaking you can set control groups. And remember you have two hands. So, touch a group with your left hand and slide to a point to set that group to move while simultaneously with your right index finger you selectively draw a circle around specific units in a nearby pile, and then slide that group to the same point, then say "set group 1." Now, at any point you can say "group 1" at target a point with your finger to set them in motion.

And what's the point in using VR then? It's not giving you extra.

While you're at it, there are all sorts of interesting things you could do with the interface. For example, you could set the game inside a command post with you as the commander in charge, complete with a row of screens and several officers under your command. You, the commander, are observing the faraway battle from your post and issuing orders remotely. You can set the various displays to first [person camera views from your soldiers on the field as well as aeriel views via orbital satellites. Or you could try something totally different. Imagine, for example, the previous "no body" interface described above, except that instead of taking place over a flat map, the battle takes place inside a sphere. No need for a radar map. You can very easily both see and target anywhere on the entire battlefield.

Strategy games can very easily be accommodated by VR.

There are already games like that (like Operation Flashpoint and ARMA) and they don't need VR to work.

At one time, many people thought mice were ridiculous.

At one time, many people thought Power Gloves were ridiculous.

I think that VR has a place as a fancy replacement for monitor in a few games with first person views, but it's not replacing the actual input devices, for several reasons I've already described.

[Frumple]

Isn't this a good thing?  You move around a lot and get exercise?

... it would be good for, say, some sort of program designed to facilitate exercise. Less so for playing the game itself -- the more the body gets in the way of playing, the worse things are from a design standpoint, in general, and the less equal the general playing field. We see stuff like that already, with fairly limited exertions on the player's part -- people who just don't have the hand-eye coordination and reflexes and whatnot to play on the level needed to enjoy a game. Making that worse is not making things better.

To an extent, it's not necessarily making things worse, either -- there would naturally be a market for enhanced reality sort of things where it takes an athlete and/or notable physical exertion to maintain par -- but it's not a good thing. It is/will be a design decision with very notable pros and cons, and something that by its very nature would be excluding a significant portion of the potential market and limiting the extent a great deal of the rest can experience the game. And represent a fairly notable increase in logistics and safety issues.

===

I will say in V/A-R's favor, as LB notes fairly well, that a 360 degree UI can provide for some amazing improvements in how people play and experience a game, even without it being in first-person on whatev'. Just having that much more screen space for, well, everything, would be pretty huge for a lot of genres. Represent a considerable design challenge, perhaps, but the potential is fairly incredible.

[Sergarr]

I will say in V/A-R's favor, as LB notes fairly well, that a 360 degree UI can provide for some amazing improvements in how people play and experience a game, even without it being in first-person on whatev'. Just having that much more screen space for, well, everything, would be pretty huge for a lot of genres. Represent a considerable design challenge, perhaps, but the potential is fairly incredible.

What potential? Modern games already put most of the normal people's field of view on the flat screen, and you can turn in-game by moving your mouse, which is much better ergonomically than moving your head.

Or do you just want a first-person shooter control scheme being applied to UI?

I'll say that a combination of a mouse and a touchscreen can replace everything that you think VR can do in terms on input and do it in a much more ergonomic manner.

[Arx]

I wouldn't mind an RTS with menus accessible just by turning your head slightly, say. Although that wouldn't lend itself to competitive play very well...

[Sergarr]

I wouldn't mind an RTS with menus accessible just by turning your head slightly, say. Although that wouldn't lend itself to competitive play very well...

That also wouldn't let itself towards casual play. You'd have to sit perfectly still to avoid triggering any menus - and that's no good. Else you might accidentally open something while in the process of doing something else - and that's going to be frustrating!

Body motion based controls sucks. There's a reason why all good vehicle control schemes utilize only hands and feet - because they're the most controllable parts of our body.

[Frumple]

What potential? Modern games already put most of the normal people's field of view on the flat screen, and you can turn in-game by moving your mouse, which is much better ergonomically than moving your head.

... maybe if you've got some kind of freakishly huge monitor. Most screens I've seen take up maybe a third to a half of a person's field of view -- and that's just the immediate frontal stuff, nevermind peripheral. And while turning your head may be less ergonomic than a mouse gesture (though it's well worth noting that if you're making mouse gestures, you're probably not interacting with the game -- with a head turn, you can do both), the latter is also significantly more so than just moving your eyeballs. And it's very much common for there to be fairly significant issues with screen space and getting all the information you want or need on a, say, a 1280x800, 18-20" screen.

What I want is having the equivalent to a five or six monitor -- or more -- setup at the proverbial (or literal, if the primary control method is your hands instead of an interface device) fingertips, and that's something that is considerably more viable with some sort of VR system than actually having a buggerhump load of monitors cluttering up a room, due to simple space constraints. That would open up a fairly considerable amount of design options when it comes to information presentation that just aren't possible with the limited screen real estate available to modern machines -- flat-screen ones in general, really.

[Eric Blank]

I can't help but think, now, that a VR headset, or even AR, would be an interesting way to play something like D&D. You'd probably have to butcher many of the gameplay aspects and use pre-designed game models that fit in the room you're playing in, so you couldn't, say, fight full-size dragons in the DM's 100-square-foot 8-foot-ceiling basement, but damn that would be neat. Something like the Kinect controller for representing magic wands/weapons, eh?

Or, you know, a game of casual melee fighting. Use wands like the Kinect controllers for a sword/shield or such, and whack at each other (without actually hitting each other) If you could get the software to interpret the movements of the combatants, it could then figure out whether or not a shot connected and whether or not it would do you in. I played with the original wii a while back, and although the controllers can get the hand motions, it has no idea what the rest of the body is actually doing, say your posture or where you're putting your feet; you move with the little thumbnob, just like any other console, so it's not ideal for the sort of game I'd like to play. Ideally, how you move and behave translates directly into game terms in all aspects, because the game already tracks all of your motion from head to toe, and the position and momentum of your virtual weapon in relation to your opponent, who is actually standing and facing you in the same way.

Still wouldn't be anywhere near as fun as actually beating each other with sticks, but at least it wouldn't result in as many lawsuits/hospital visits/angry parents kicking your friends out.

[Baffler]

Isn't this a good thing?  You move around a lot and get exercise?

... it would be good for, say, some sort of program designed to facilitate exercise. Less so for playing the game itself -- the more the body gets in the way of playing, the worse things are from a design standpoint, in general, and the less equal the general playing field. We see stuff like that already, with fairly limited exertions on the player's part -- people who just don't have the hand-eye coordination and reflexes and whatnot to play on the level needed to enjoy a game. Making that worse is not making things better.

To an extent, it's not necessarily making things worse, either -- there would naturally be a market for enhanced reality sort of things where it takes an athlete and/or notable physical exertion to maintain par -- but it's not a good thing. It is/will be a design decision with very notable pros and cons, and something that by its very nature would be excluding a significant portion of the potential market and limiting the extent a great deal of the rest can experience the game. And represent a fairly notable increase in logistics and safety issues.

===

I will say in V/A-R's favor, as LB notes fairly well, that a 360 degree UI can provide for some amazing improvements in how people play and experience a game, even without it being in first-person on whatev'. Just having that much more screen space for, well, everything, would be pretty huge for a lot of genres. Represent a considerable design challenge, perhaps, but the potential is fairly incredible.

Why not? Lots of people play airsoft (or laser tag if you prefer,) for example, in big arenas or outdoor places. There's plenty of precedent for it, and I think a lot of those people would be pretty excited to have "working" smoke grenades, tracer rounds, etc, and that's something AR can deliver. Being able to use dummy rifles that appear functional with AR would also lower the barrier of entry that buying a $200 airsoft gun presents.

[Putnam]

Mouse give the precision to input ability, because it's an input device. VR (as in Oculus Rift and others of that kind) is actually a display device. It's a replacement for monitor, not the mouse.

Also I don't know which Elder Scrolls games you've been playing but... you don't actually control the direction of the attack in Elder Scroll games with a mouse. Yeah.

You do in Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind, which is most of the games.

[Sergarr]

Mouse give the precision to input ability, because it's an input device. VR (as in Oculus Rift and others of that kind) is actually a display device. It's a replacement for monitor, not the mouse.

Also I don't know which Elder Scrolls games you've been playing but... you don't actually control the direction of the attack in Elder Scroll games with a mouse. Yeah.

You do in Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind, which is most of the games.

In Arena and Daggerfall there are like whole eight different directions of attack. Easily implemented by a keyboard. In fact, that's what they did in Morrowind.

In Morrowind you control your attack direction with keyboard - with your movement. If you move forward-backward - you get a thrust. If moving sideways - a slash. If standing still or diagonals - hacking. At no point does the movement of a mouse come into play here. Seriously, go check it. I'm sure I'm right about this.

[alexandertnt]

+1. I see no way VR is going to make any foothold in 1) most strategy games, both real time and turn based, 2) small time-wasters (usually Flash based) and 3) basically any other game which doesn't have a 1st person view or doesn't use it as default (that includes most MMORPGs).

I agree. Many of the games I have played recently have been 2d platformers or similar games, which don't even use the mouse. These games benefit from the tactile feedback and ease of use of the keyboard. Not only than, but I do most of my day-to-day computer interaction almost exclusively with the keyboard (its faster to use keyboard shortcuts than it is to click on things).

They are games. How much a VR set is going to benefit you depends on why you play games.

Do you play games to be immersed visually in another world? Than VR is potentially right up your alley. (I say visually because you don't need first person views or real time realistic physics to be immersed in a world. See, for example, books).

Do you play games for the game mechanics and the interaction between them? Then VR *might* allow for some new game mechanics, but is probably not going to change anything too much IMO.

Incidentally, I have used an AR set with virtual 3d buttons. Your arm becomes very sore from being held up constantly.

[LordBucket]

I don't know which Elder Scrolls games you've been playing but... you don't actually control the direction of the attack in Elder Scroll games with a mouse.

Arena and Daggerfall both worked this way. If you move the mouse left to right when you click you swing left to right. Yes, as you later note, it was possible to remap those attacks to the keyboard. That doesn't change the fact that these games worked that way, nor does it change the fact that having complete control over your weapon because you're holding it in your virtual hands and what you do with it is what it does, would be a valid, good and effective interface design. And once people become accustomed to being able to completely manipulate objects in VR, it might be difficult to get back to "press X to perform Y."

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/hands-on-valvehtc-vive-opens-up-the-virtual-reality-experience/

"I could simply reach out and use my controllers as real hands in any direction, easily opening drawers or pulling cranks or even juggling pieces of virtual bread back and forth (more easily than similar sword juggling in a Morpheus demo, I'd hasten to point out). I could reach up and run my fingers through a school of virtual fish or play volleyball with virtual balloons or draw 3D figures in mid-air with a virtual lightpen, all without really thinking about the artificiality of it all. Being able to reach out and touch the virtual world in this way is nothing short of gleeful."

There are already games like that (like Operation Flashpoint and ARMA) and they don't need VR to work.

That's a silly argument. There are already bicycles, and they work perfectly well. You don't need a car to get around. Clearly cars will never replace bicycles, right?

Mouse give the precision to input ability, because it's an input device. VR (as in Oculus Rift and others of that kind) is actually a display device. It's a replacement for monitor, not the mouse.

VR has a place as a fancy replacement for monitor in a few games with first person views, but it's not replacing the actual input devices, for several reasons I've already described.

You might want to re-read the  opening post. There's a lot of stuff you obviously missed. Like this for example. And the entire part about wall mounted cameras and controllers.

Incidentally, I have used an AR set with virtual 3d buttons. Your arm becomes very sore from being held up constantly.

That's a good example of a design choice I think developers might need to evolve beyond. Buttons and menus work well on a 2d screen with a mouse, but I'm not convinced they make sense in VR.

I wouldn't mind an RTS with menus accessible just by turning your head slightly

That also wouldn't let itself towards casual play. You'd have to sit perfectly still to avoid triggering any menus - and that's no good. Else you might accidentally open something while in the process of doing something else - and that's going to be frustrating!

I'm pretty sure that's not what Arx intends. You appear to be thinking about how a single monitor works, not how VR works. You wouldn't "turn your head" and then POOF! what's in front of you disappears and is replaced. Imagine if you had a bunch of monitors in a 360 degree circle around you, each with different information on them. Would there be any risk of you accidentally turning your head too far and then suddenly losing the information from the screen you wanted to look at? No, of course not. Put the menu in a stationary place and when you look in that spot, it's there. There would be no accidentally opening anything.

Though I think it would be better to have that sort of a menu interface available via eye tracking rather than headtracking. Turn in any direction you want and you see the VR around you, but regardless which direction you're facing, look up with your eyes only, and the menu is there.

I hate having to pick through your posts to quote what I'm looking for

Control-f?

[Sergarr]

I don't know which Elder Scrolls games you've been playing but... you don't actually control the direction of the attack in Elder Scroll games with a mouse.

Arena and Daggerfall both worked this way. If you move the mouse left to right when you click you swing left to right. Yes, as you later note, it was possible to remap those attacks to the keyboard. That doesn't change the fact that these games worked that way, nor does it change the fact that having complete control over your weapon because you're holding it in your virtual hands and what you do with it is what it does, would be a valid, good and effective interface design. And once people become accustomed to being able to completely manipulate objects in VR, it might be difficult to get back to "press X to perform Y."

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/hands-on-valvehtc-vive-opens-up-the-virtual-reality-experience/

Unless it has any actual in-game effects, it's basically a fancy visual effect. And if it does have some, then you run into a problem with having you directly interact with objects in-game - no physical feedback. That means that whatever you're holding either has supreme priority in movement (and that's not really usable for games where you're supposed to parry shit) or your hands position IRL and in-game can be different (and that's going to be really disorienting).

"I could simply reach out and use my controllers as real hands in any direction, easily opening drawers or pulling cranks or even juggling pieces of virtual bread back and forth (more easily than similar sword juggling in a Morpheus demo, I'd hasten to point out). I could reach up and run my fingers through a school of virtual fish or play volleyball with virtual balloons or draw 3D figures in mid-air with a virtual lightpen, all without really thinking about the artificiality of it all. Being able to reach out and touch the virtual world in this way is nothing short of gleeful."

There are already games like that (like Operation Flashpoint and ARMA) and they don't need VR to work.

That's a silly argument. There are already bicycles, and they work perfectly well. You don't need a car to get around. Clearly cars will never replace bicycles, right?

Cars work better than bicycles in every way (except the maintenance and fuel costs). VR doesn't work better than mouse + keyboard combo, except for sight-viewing (and virtual tabletop games). For these, VR is perfect. For anything else, it's pluses are outweighed by the minuses - like getting tired from moving your neck and arms in the air. Why do you keep ignoring that point? It's kind of a big deal, you know. It's the reason why mouse has outcompeted the light pointer.

[Putnam]

I think he means the selective deletion, which is, in fact, slightly tedious. I mostly go about it by addressing points by name.

Unless it has any actual in-game effects, it's basically a fancy visual effect. And if it does have some, then you run into a problem with having you directly interact with objects in-game - no physical feedback. That means that whatever you're holding either has supreme priority in movement (and that's not really usable for games where you're supposed to parry shit) or your hands position IRL and in-game can be different (and that's going to be really disorienting).

It has in-game effects, and the complete lack of physical feedback in Morrowind is the first thing you'll hear people complain about it (there's no visual difference between hitting and missing, and the only real indication is a thwack versus shwoom sound effect).

Cars work better than bicycles in every way (except the maintenance and fuel costs). VR doesn't work better than mouse + keyboard combo, except for sight-viewing (and virtual tabletop games). For these, VR is perfect. For anything else, it's pluses are outweighed by the minuses - like getting tired from moving your neck and arms in the air. Why do you keep ignoring that point? It's kind of a big deal, you know. It's the reason why mouse has outcompeted the light pointer.

You may notice that many--indeed, most--individuals who are really into those games has a TrackIR setup for headtracking. This is not a coincidence. Using alt to move your head around is fairly clunky, and IR headtracking takes a bit of getting used to due to the display not really moving with your head. VR solves both those problems.