The VR Conundrum

FIRST LOOK: PROZE: Enlightenment



I'm enjoying this 'escape the lab' / 'walking sim' adventure so far. It is definitely an indie offering aiming for AA adventure, and falling short, but I'm enjoying their over-reach so far. The NPC companions dropping by, the many vibe touches and generous sources of audio narration, the select use of physics, the daft / plucky attempts at variety in the puzzles and interactions. And I guess the big stereotypical cold war conspiracy storyline, from what I've seen of it.

I've hit a couple of minor QoL issues and bugs along the way, which required a restart, but think I'm going to enjoy the 3 hrs or so of adventure here.


Short Story: Vestige



Didn't really rate this. Based on the genuine post-trauma thoughts of a bereaved wife, it had potential to pack an emotional punch, but instead felt as austere and thin as its presentational style. The flickering, neon post-work on the 3D capture worked fine enough as an evocation of memories, and a person feeling personally fractured, and was interesting to stand amongst. But I just didn't feel they did enough with the source material. It ended up feeling like it just exploited her grief by reworking it like this, searching for gravitas for the art itself, more than transforming or elevating it in any meaningful way.

__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Where are you now with hardware? Platform, device, ram, graphics card, etc? Not sure if it was obvious in one of my Rogue Squandron posts over in the general videogame thread, but was considering PS4 VR but decided against it. I don't have time at the moment to jump into it to justify the expense of the PC option (probably need a new GPU), but it's still tempting. Maybe I will reconsider in six months or so.

__________________
"My Dionne Warwick understanding of your dream indicates that you are ambivalent on how you want life to eventually screw you." - Joel

"Ever try to forcibly pin down a house cat? It's not easy." - Captain Steel

"I just can't get pass sticking a finger up a dog's butt." - John Dumbear

@ynwtf , you might not need as much "oomph" as you think. I'm running a refurbished business Dell computer right now that handles my Oculus Rift just fine. My specs are these:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz 3.40 GHz
24 GB RAM (it was working okay with 16 GB too)
64-bit processor
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
EVGA 500 B1, 80+ BRONZE 500W Power Supply

If you're in that neighborhood, you could probably run an Oculus Rift just fine. @Golgot would know better if the Oculus Quest needs more or less horsepower to run.

__________________
Linda's Author Website
Linda's Amazon Author page

Oh, it also probably matters if you're as picky as others about things like framerates, etc. I'm NOT picky about the subtle stuff. I just don't want hiccupping or stuttering while I'm playing, and I want to be able to feel immersed in the experience. I just added a third sensor (since the Rift works with external sensors), which I haven't tried out yet, but I was getting decent tracking even with just the two sensors that came with it.

I actually got along fine with my old i5 CPU & GTX 970 (the exact build is on the 'Game your computer' thread somewhere). I did upgrade in the end to an 1080, and then the top i7 my mobo can take, to open up the top end games I couldn’t play, and to add some visual comfort on the aliasing / snazzy effects front to all the others. But the min spec to get in and just play on PC isn’t actually that harrowing. (If you wanna play 'AAA' VR titles, like say Half Life Alyx, then you do need something more like my current rig really. Elite & Fallout 4 both ran, but we’re much more enjoyable with more oomph behind them. NMS was borderline unplayable previously due to CPU load from the planets).

The Quest 2 does have a higher resolution than my Rift CV1, which does mean more oomph required. I’d check the recommended min spec for that and go from there if you start looking seriously. (And read up on how the link tethering works to run it from your PC / whether you need anything snazzy there).

VR is a blast, and totally worth it. (But it will absolutely suck up everything your system can throw at it, and then ask for more )

REVIEW: PROZE: Enlightenment



This 3hr+ 'first chapter' of a grander adventure is clearly punching above its indie weight the whole way, but it achieves a remarkable amount for all that. For every under-animated NPC or failed experiment there was a fitting interaction that worked, or a lovingly detailed environmental touch.

There are some great open locations, seen through various lighting and gameplay lenses. Swishing torchlight around a rumpled forest at the foot of a dam, or piercing the dripping interiors of an abandoned facility, was tense and evocative, without being full-blown horror territory. The large-ish areas allowed for a certain amount of mystery to settle in the corners, and for poking around to feel somewhat rewarded. (Not so much in the sense that there are many hidden easter eggs, or that solutions are 'search all the drawers' in nature, but more in the sense that something you saw in a bush, or over a hill, might inform you of what to do in a future conundrum. Might give you the lay of the land.).


The rumpled moon-lit forest, explored by torch light

Their use of minor physics interactions, 'flip all the switches' experimentation over explanation, and the odd daft NPC interaction (I left a guy hanging for a return thumbs up for a helluva a long time...) didn't always work, but the intent was almost always welcome. And although the locational puzzles settled into some familiar 'VR russian lab' tropes (equalise the coolant pressure valves Vladimir!), I did enjoy their overall take on the genre, and the staple 'logic gate' puzzle was enjoyably solid.

Minus points accrue throughout for things like protagonist NPCs not moving their mouths, or outright bugs requiring a restart. (At one point a key NPC glided along a corridor with such a bizarre lope, his shirt clipping through his jacket in absurd counter-point to his supposed elan, that it was just all too silly. But still enjoyable for all that . And again the attempts to actually layer narrative through the locations and puzzles were still welcome).


I would have welcomed a faster walking speed for some of the larger sections, especially when back-tracking between locations. But other than that I was a pretty happy irradiated bunny hopping about the place. Tapped out at 4 hrs for me. I was fine with the minor escalation towards 'action puzzling' at the end, and with the daft cold-war fantasy-fusion story getting left hanging in mid-air. I'd happily play another 4 hrs if they ever get back to it

+++

do u guys think they will make PSVR 2 for the ps5? i have PSVR and a adapter for my PS5

Yeah they just confirmed recently that they're doing it

Introducing the next generation of VR on PlayStation

(Probably a bit scared by how well the Quest 2 is doing in the standalone market )

Still no real details though, so seems like it's a way off.

At least they've started revealing some PSVR title releases again though.

PS VR Spotlight

gosh how could i missed it D=. that is true i always wanted quest 2 but my pc is not a gaming pc :/ but when i move in a new place next yr i be having a custom pc.
thanks for the link

Hey cool, no worries.

Yeah thing with the Quest headsets is they're standalone, so they don't need a PC. (But you can hook one up to a PC if you want better graphics / more games).

I think Sony might be a bit wary of them as they're selling pretty well. Probably good for VR generally though, as it means a lot more people can get into it for cheaper than PCVR / PSVR.

how they work with standalone?
that what i need. that would be true

They've got a tiny little snapdragon GPU etc. Basically a console you put on your head

The upsides are cheaper cost overall ($300 for the starter model), no wires, easier to jump in and play. (And better screen clarity than the older gen etc)

The downsides are crapper graphics if you don't tether to a PC, and the battery runs down a lot

oh thank you then
not bad the price i hopefully get one this year when its on sale

Oh my...

Valheim Native VR Mod Beta Released!!

Think I’ll wait on motion controllers. But still cool to have a breakaway hit heading to VR

Seeing as Elite is hobbled by a '2D cinema screen' for on foot action for now, I've been experimenting with the vanity camera

(Which for whatever reason does seem to render in the headset)





It's not really any good for gameplay (as my blind firing in the second vid demonstrates ), but fudging a first person view like that means it could be ok for moon hopping

Aren't they the ones that are tethered somehow to your Facebook account? My son has a Quest and said something about it needing Facebook. Or is the Quest 2 something newer and differenter?

Yeah that’s the ball and chain they come with. Old Oculus owners aren’t getting forced into a FB account for a few years, but new sign ups have to use a FB account. (Although I’m told setting up a burner account isn’t too arduous, and FB have stopped checking closely on that now. So shouldn’t be a deal breaker as such.)

Ohhh, I see! I thought you had to be ON Facebook WHILE you were using the headset, and that just made no sense to me. So, the account is to go purchase games, etc.?

Another question: One thing I like about my Rift/tethered headset is that, if someone is using the headset, I can still see what they're doing on my computer monitor. (We walked a younger person through learning the ropes this way since we could coach them about where to look/reach for things.)

I assume you cannot do this with a freestanding headset like the Quest, right?

Yeah basically most people's concerns are about what FB does with user data. Some just don't want to be on the FB platform at all etc, that kind of stuff.

(And they're probably wise to keep an eye on FB long-term. They're clearly in VR to be at the front of 'the next social platform', and will doubtless be looking to do stuff like emotion recognition etc through posture, and expression data in future headsets. And then to use that data internally and sell it to advertisers...)

I'm not bothered at the moment, and I'm happy for them to brute force VR with their big bucks. But that's a pretty likely end goal for the FB guys.

Haven't tried a Quest style headset, but presumably yeah, if it's not tethered to a PC there'll be no 'mirror' to see what the user is seeing. (But if you want that, I'd imagine you could achieve it by plugging it into the PC).