Analysis: Steam Hangs on to VR Surge Four Months After ‘Half-Life: Alyx Launch’
>Half-Life: Alyx led to a huge leap in VR usage on Steam when it launched back in March. Four months later, there’s nearly as many VR headsets on Steam as there were right after the game’s launch.
>Each month Valve collects info from Steam users to determine some baseline statistics about what kind of hardware and software is used by the platform’s population, and to see how things are changing over time, including the use of VR headsets.
>While we had expected that Half-Life: Alyx would lead to a surge in VR usage on Steam, we also figured that only a portion of that surge would remain in the long run. Surprisingly, Steam appears to have retained nearly all of the growth in VR usage brought on by Alyx four months after the launch of the game, according to Valve’s monthly Steam Survey.
I have some (((Silicon Valley))) fag friends saying 1600p per eye with a 100hz refresh rate. I wish they'd give some optional SteamVR base station support for people who want Knuckles.
The shit I've done to headcrabs in Alyx is awesome.
What are some good VR games and key sites to get them for cheap? Don't have a lot of money and need more stuff to play. Been playing VR chat mostly and a pirated copy of best saber
Adrian Turner
just pirate and support the games you REALLY like during a steam sale. Sairento is a great one. cs.rin.ru
Pavlov is a must have but you'll want a legit copy.
Evan Cooper
VR is neat, but there's going to come a time when VR enthusiasts are going to have to accept that they're never going to get that VR experience that shakes up the entire industry and causes people to flock en masse to VR headsets.
VR just doesn't have what it takes currently or in any near future, to create real experiences that aren't plagued by weird jank that turns off the common consumer. You'll be waiting decades for cost effective hardware that can actually simulate touch and allow for proper movement in a 3d world. Until then, you'll continue to live with pre-made grip points, weird floaty physics, poorly created 'real locomotion' options/teleport movement, and subpar body tracking.
Ethan Hall
>VR is neat, but there's going to come a time when VR enthusiasts are going to have to accept that they're never going to get that VR experience that shakes up the entire industry and causes people to flock en masse to VR headsets. You're right, we're just banking on some talented studios like Valve and Respawn delivering some great games semi-frequently. As long as we get those, it'll continue growing but I don't think it will ever go
Lucas Ramirez
There is just never going to be any hollywood movie ram-a-spike-into-your-brainstem VR anytime soon. This is going to be as good as it gets for a while and if you want to see more improvements in this field than support by consumers is still going to be necessary.
The next step would probably be to make full use of eye-tracking + fovated rendering.
John Lewis
Man I dropped like 600 bucks on a headset and a couple of games and I want my money back. >Constant headache after playing >Awful control scheme >Literally one good game the rest are demos at best When are we gonna get actual VR bros?
So the surge at march isn't because of HL:A but because of a change in how the survey was recorded. It was altered so that instead of looking for a currently connected headset, it checked to see if one had been used in the past month. Thats the big jump between jan and april this year.
Samuel Gray
>we're just banking on some talented studios like Valve and Respawn delivering some great games semi-frequently brilliant fucking plan.
Daniel Hall
>20% It's never going to get to 20 either, even Valve internally believes that market cap for VR is somewhere around 11% of users.
>The next step would probably be to make full use of eye-tracking + fovated rendering.
These won't be game changers, they won't attract more people to VR.
Adrian Price
lmao, then it will show more VR users than there's headsets in reality, because I can't imagine people who didn't have VR until now being happy with the state of it after a couple of months of nothing.
Michael Taylor
>>Constant headache after playing Drink more water >>Awful control scheme Either early adopter or you got a mixed reality control input >>Literally one good game the rest are demos at best sounds like you didn't give it a real chance Valve is working internally on Citadel, another VR game right this second. Likely a 2021 release.
Cooper Lee
VR is actually super cool and I only played a Quest with Pavlov Shack and Superhot. Boneworks looks dope if it played more like Garry's Mod and Pavlov VR looks fun with all its' gamemodes but nothing else really seems appealing to me. If more games followed their formulas I think VR would have a lot more traction. Pavlov in particular is cool because of the detail in guns/shooting/reloading and makes it super immersive and what I would come to expect from any FPS shooter title in VR.
Adrian Young
>mixed reality control input lol what the fuck else? You're not autistic enough to install sensors around your house, are you user?
Brody Bell
I've heard Pavlov had a bunch of hackers but I'd like to try it.
Tried pirating fnaf vr and came in multiple zip files which confused me. Is Skyrim or Fallout VR fun? I know you can mos them
Daniel Hernandez
I'm fine with it being a well supported gimmick.
Levi Ward
>You're not autistic enough to install sensors around your house You act as if this is intrusive in any way
Skyrim and Fallout 4 are okay but it's certainly not a "VR native" feeling experience. I'd recommend playing The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners, Asgard's Wrath and Stormlands before bothering with that shit (as open world games)
>I've heard Pavlov had a bunch of hackers but I'd like to try it. Hackers aren't a problem, but the game comes with numerous built-in exploits and shitty weapon balance tryhards abuse.
Jackson James
Foveated rendering will absolutely be a game changer. It'll enable graphical fidelity that is literally as good as you can imagine at a massively reduced performance cost.
Andrew Wright
sounds like an excuse for the devs to just optimize even less.
Evan Evans
VR dev here, even if I wanted to as a competent studio, we couldn't use Quixel megascans for near photo realism.
Daniel Wood
Ye of little faith.
Andrew Diaz
>Play Pavlov VR today >Big open map where you have to scavenge for weapons >Some guy spots me, adds me to his team >Eventually recruit 2 more guys for a 4 man team Even though we died a few times, we did get some nice kills and I think we all had a great time teaming with each other.
Logan Sanchez
>Foveated rendering will absolutely be a game changer
It won't be. No matter how pretty your game looks, if it controls as janky as every VR game does currently and is heavily handicapped because its a VR game, it won't draw consumers.
Visually fidelity isn't the issue, people are incredibly impressed with how good the Index looks, it doesn't change the fact that every VR game's control scheme feels like shit.
Ian Ramirez
VR games control great though. That's the whole draw. I don't think you've played VR games because the way they control is their biggest advantage. Nothing else used to control games is as flexible, intuitive, or detailed.
Jose Brown
>Nothing else used to control games is as flexible, intuitive, or detailed I play plenty of VR games, I know how they control and what the massive limitations are to the control scheme, which is why, for me, the illusion is broken.
Melee doesn't work in VR, it's either floaty and uses false physics that makes the melee feel unresponsive, or there's no weight at all and you're able to flick around 60 pounds of iron like its a feather. Not to mention that there is not a single VR game out right now that can probably track your weapon properly and avoid shitty collisions and clipping
Guns barely work, you're not able hold them freely or move them about freely in your hands because every single VR shooter uses magnetic grip points on every weapon because VR can't track your hands and a weapon model properly without collision
Picking things up barely works, once again, because of collision issues because your hands aren't actually grasping the item you're grasping in game, so lots of items are covered in magnetic grip points that make them feel unreal and unusual.
you act like VR control is flawless and limitless, but it's actually more limited than a mouse and keyboard because there's no way to simulate weight, feel, and collision.
Brandon Anderson
Quest is going to ruin VR. All the new games are going to be mobile games.
Caleb James
There's nothing wrong with the Quest. It's powerful enough for the overwhelming majority of VR games and graphically games scale really well. What doesn't scale is CPU-bound operations like AI simulation and the Quest is more than powerful enough for that too.
Camden Martin
You're comparing VR to real life, I'm comparing VR to traditional games. There is no control scheme you can fit on a mouse and keyboard or controller or anything that would let you quickly block, parry, slash, and thrust a melee weapons at any angle, at any position. VR enables that. The most detailed gun operation gameplay on traditional controls is Receiver, but that's a standard feature set on VR games because the controls enable that level of detail to be natural and intuitive where it was previously a gimmick. Picking up objects in VR allows for full manipulation in 6DOF, which has never been in any flat screen game to any satisfying degree. Something like properly dual wielding guns is now infinitely more satisfying and interesting and requires infinitely more skill and is a feature that can't be replicated on mouse and keyboard.
And that's all without even going into how your complaints are mostly completely unfounded. For example Blade & Sorcery (especially with mods) demonstrates how you can hold a weapon by any part of it, smoothly relocate your hands, and every swing has collisions that mostly make sense. Blades cut in the right directions, hilts bludgeon, angular velocity is calculated correctly with respect to mass.
