Did Bethesda miss the boat?

[prinyo]

 

 

No you lost, your way off topic besides and more than adequate reasons have been given by Kimy with backing.

Its done, and now here Im reading how its like you feel a need to defend VR, well go start some other thread.

 

This threads topic was about if Bethsada missed the VR boat.

Seems like it wasn't a boat worth catching, and really that was all that mattered for this topic.

Really no more proof or opinion is needed.

 

 

On the actual topic - Kimy says there is no way Beth is interested in VR. I respond that Beth was one of the first to get on that boat with facts and link. As a result if somebody concludes "Seems like it wasn't a boat worth catching" then we obviously have different understanding about what facts and backing of the facts is. 

 

I don't care if I win or lose. I'm not an evangelical type and I simply reacted to a post. The problem with that post was that it is sitting too heavy in the discussion. First, it was heavily "upvoted". This means that many people agree with it and many people will be willing to see it as the accepted truth. Secondly, it is posted by a "green" member. There is a good reason why people pay more attention to such posts. They are usually precise and come from actual previous experience that those users have and most of us the rest do not. I really hope the "green"  users realize the power and responsibility that come with the "contributor" status. And despite all that I wouldn't have replied if the post had at least once a phrase like "I think". It doesn't. Everything was presented as facts. 

 

The tone of my reply was a mistake. I'm sorry about that and I apologize to Kimi! 

When replying I usually go in sync with the tone of the post I'm replying to. In this case I shouldn't have done it. It hurts the communication, it cripples the discussion and it works against me in trying to present facts. It was an own-goal for me and I can see how Kimi can read it as a personal attack - for which I apologize again! It was not meant as a personal attack and if it seems like that I'm sorry!

 

One thing I want to specifically address is the offtopic accusation. Everything in my posts in this thread is a point to point reply to topics that somebody else discussed before that. If there is something in my posts that is offtopic - it was not introduced by me. 

 

All I tried to do was point out that the world is not black and white only. I keep saying that VR is a first gen consumer product for early adopters. I don't want people to think VR is perfect. I want people to stay open minded until they actually try it. I'm not a fanboy, I'm just reacting against misinformation.

 

 

Speaking about what is on topic, I think nobody understood what the actual question in OP is. Some people find returning to flat 2D gaming after a VR session boring and depressing. OP assumes TES6 will be a flat game and is worried that by the time it is released nobody would care about flat games at all. The boat OP is talking about is not VR, it is the 2D on-screen gaming. 

That's why my response to that was that judging from what TH says and Beth is doing right now TES6 will in fact be a native VR product. Of course this is only  speculation. But all the signs are here.

So the actual topic of the thread is will VR kill the flat gaming in the next few years. 

[peculiaris]

 

 

I tried Space Pirate Trainer, and some other generic rock climbing game I can't remember the name of.

 

It's not that my experience was bad it's the fact that my bodies goes into panic mode when I think I'm moving but I'm just standing still.

Same kinda problem with roller coasters, so yeah I can't physically enjoy VR isn't that fun.

 

 

Space Pirate Trainer can't make you sick because it is a standing in place game. It can however be too disorienting for a first time users as it requires constantly looking around and can be too dynamic. Climbey will make you sick for sure and if you happen to have scare of heights it can totally wreck you.

I don't know details about the Oculus games because they are exclusives but I have a set of games that I use when demoing the Vive and the first few of them require almost no movement. Space Pirate Trainer expects you to have full control of your VR body. That's why I usually start people with Waltz of the wizard where you mostly use you hands to do stuff and Audioshild which is more dynamic and helps you get in sync with your "VR you".

 

Basically the movement with constant speed doesn't make you sick. It is the acceleration and deceleration that do. In a coaster simulator when it travels with a constant speed you will be fine. This is also what makes Climbey problematic for most people.

"Space pirates can't make you sick"

Let me play it and then puke in the corner of your VR room. And no I'm not afraid of heights because I regularly climb in real life. But I guess because most other people don't get sick I can't either right? Now let me never touch VR again.

[prinyo]

 

"Space pirates can't make you sick"

Let me play it and then puke in the corner of your VR room. And no I'm not afraid of heights because I regularly climb in real life. But I guess because most other people don't get sick I can't either right? Now let me never touch VR again.

 

 

Yes. Climbey makes you sick because the motion sickness doesn't come from the climbing experience itself but from the fact that your senses report different things to the brain. The fact that you regularly climb in real life makes you even more susceptible to the motion sickness from VR climbing as your brain has a good idea of what to expect from all it's sensors. Basically you have an inconsistency in what your senses report to your brain and what your brain expects them to report. For people who never climbed in their RL it will be easier to adapt to VR climbing.

 

Space pirates and the other room-scale games that limit your movement within your playspace do not cause motion sicknes because your VR bosy is in sync with your RL one. In those games when you move in VR you are really moving the same way in RL and there is no sensory mismatch.  This assumes that the PC that is used is capable to provide stable framerate and the tracking is working correctly. This is what SPT devs think about all this.

But Space pirates does provide a lot of stress and feeling of disorientation for new users. You are welcome to play it in my "VR room" as much as you want to :-)

 

 

Added: To make it clear as people tend to misread. I'm not saying you personally didn't get motion sickness from the Space Pirates. I'm saying that if it happened it was for reasons out of the game. Most probably dropped frames.

[deathparade]

Dear people whining about VR:

Everything started out expensive as balls.
Do you think when cars came out every person in the world had one?

Plus they are still trying figure out things Valve is currently working on one that can track your fingers.

It's already confirmed they have custom PCB which makes is cheaper and less bulky to produce.
These things just aren't made for free innovating in something usually means you need money... Valve is worth 3 billion or so but HTC is NOT they are actually probably going out of business soon.
Also Fallout 4 is the only full blown VR they announced with DOOM being a stand your ground type thing it's not like you will never be able to play your normal Fallout 4 without a VR set.
And for the sickness they are constantly working to improve that it has to do with the fact you SEE that you move around but your body is positive it is not... like some people have with cars and boats?
But hey i have never seen anyone protest boats and cars for that very reason.

TL;DR wait for something to mature something something rome wasn't build one day

[bjornk]

Both VR and AR will have their own applications and they will never go away, but as far as PC gaming is concerned, no matter how advanced it is, VR will never be much different than having a fancy joystick or a wheel to play certain types of games. VR games already have become a genre and will continue as a separate genre, although I really doubt if people here would want to play a TES game (or any 3rd person game with character customization) using a VR set with 1st person view only. It may be immersive in its own way, but I doubt TES fans would want to give up on character customization... well, Todd might.

[prinyo]

 although I really doubt if people here would want to play a TES game (or any 3rd person game with character customization) using a VR set with 1st person view only. It may be immersive in its own way, but I doubt TES fans would want to give up on character customization... well, Todd might.

 

Or Witcher 3 where you have a canonical protagonist. Or the Witcher and Mass Effect where the voiced protagonist and scripted cutscenes are essential part of the storytelling. Games like this are still going to be very popular and can't be made for VR. 

 

The Batman game on PSVR does something to bridge the 1st person view with the character customization. It puts you in-front of a mirror. Mirrors and reflections can be cool and immersive way to bridge the gap between 3rd and 1st person view. That said, using a mod like SexLab in a 1st person VR game will present a lot of problems.

[peculiaris]

 

 

"Space pirates can't make you sick"

Let me play it and then puke in the corner of your VR room. And no I'm not afraid of heights because I regularly climb in real life. But I guess because most other people don't get sick I can't either right? Now let me never touch VR again.

 

 

Yes. Climbey makes you sick because the motion sickness doesn't come from the climbing experience itself but from the fact that your senses report different things to the brain. The fact that you regularly climb in real life makes you even more susceptible to the motion sickness from VR climbing as your brain has a good idea of what to expect from all it's sensors. Basically you have an inconsistency in what your senses report to your brain and what your brain expects them to report. For people who never climbed in their RL it will be easier to adapt to VR climbing.

 

Space pirates and the other room-scale games that limit your movement within your playspace do not cause motion sicknes because your VR bosy is in sync with your RL one. In those games when you move in VR you are really moving the same way in RL and there is no sensory mismatch.  This assumes that the PC that is used is capable to provide stable framerate and the tracking is working correctly. This is what SPT devs think about all this.

But Space pirates does provide a lot of stress and feeling of disorientation for new users. You are welcome to play it in my "VR room" as much as you want to :-)

 

 

Added: To make it clear as people tend to misread. I'm not saying you personally didn't get motion sickness from the Space Pirates. I'm saying that if it happened it was for reasons out of the game. Most probably dropped frames.

 

 

Well Ill ask my friend to upgrade his 1070 to a titan X and maybe then I wont get sick...

 

 

 

... also his 4790k to a 6950x

 

[prinyo]

 

 

Well Ill ask my friend to upgrade his 1070 to a titan X and maybe then I wont get sick...

... also his 4790k to a 6950x

 

 

 

Or ask him about his supersampling settings. Appreciate the sarcasm but there are many reasons why there can be dropped frames.

Or maybe it is not a technical problem. Try other games with matched room-scale movement, this can help you understand why SPT makes you feel bad. Maybe after all you are a special case and VR will simply not work for you. There are people that get motion sickness from 3D movies.

 

[jordisslave]

I don't think VR is going to take over the world, but I don't think it's totally going to be a gimmick either, I think it will find a strong niche in any sort of game that has you in a cockpit or cabin of some sort - driving games, mech games, flight sims, space games.  That gets rid of the seasickness element for everybody, so everybody who enjoys those types of games will probably play them in VR.

 

The seasickness seems to be tied to the fact that the visual part of your brain is telling you you're moving with your feet (therefore engaging a whole load of balancing subsystems that aren't getting traction) while another part stubbornly resists the illusion (thereby confuzzling said subsystems causing a feeling of vertigo).  That's my abstract guess anyway.  That's unlikely to be cracked with anything you can do with a headset, it will need the proverbial brain-machine interface, so that the part of the brain that thinks it's still can be neutralized somehow.

 

So, yeah, VR will be huge for certain game genres, probably in a permanent way, but anything where you actually play an avatar that moves around on shank's pony is not going to be viable for too big a minority of players (although third-person games might be enjoyable for some).  For that, screen 3-d with glasses is the way forward for those who want it, but that's been around for a while and it's not been taken up in a big way (probably because you need powerful and extra expensive monitors, which the move to 4k is likely to make even more expensive relatively speaking).

 

So yeah, VR will be huge, but not for first-person/third-person shooters, so Bethesda needn't worry.

 

 

I agree largely but have upvoted your post for having the most appropriate profile pic for this, and likely many other, threads.

 

 

Fave XKCD joke recently "so any number you can represent on a blackboard basically rounds to zero".

 

[learnedcock]

I haven't spent any real time with VR, but I'd be excited to try it with Skyrim just to use it with sex mods, if nothing else.

[pinky6225]

I haven't spent any real time with VR, but I'd be excited to try it with Skyrim just to use it with sex mods, if nothing else.

 

It does sound interesting and for some games it might be neat but i think for a lot other games it will be a gimmick and there is also the issue of length of time you can wear the headset, ignoring things like comfort and weight etc how do i find my joint and smoke while playing with VR? When i want to drink some of my bottle of cidar while i'm VR gaming how do i find the bottle? pretty much the same question with my gaming munchies

 

The nintendo Wii sounded neat and lots of peeps found it to be neat but a lot of us didn't fancy the idea of waving are arms about for 3 hours while we play zelda/star wars so they ended up bringing out a console style game controller but the console itself is still better known for family fun/yoga than it is for gaming

 

With Skyrim itself i think the main divider on VR usefulness is whether your a first person perspective or a third person perspective gamer

 

[Mashi]

Not really.  VR was overrated in the 90's when it was supposed to be the new hot shit.  And headsets were $400-700, the same as this time.  VR still hasn't overcome the basic problems that plagued it 20 years ago.  Mainly expensive initial costs, motion sickness, vision problems after use, causing headaches/migraines, issues with farsighted and nearsighted individuals.  Round that out with in many cases requiring obscene hardware requirements and a very slow economy in most countries(especially the west) which would buy into it.  Notice how it's pretty much all dropped off the radar from gaming sites, even quite a few niche sites in the last 6-7mo?  It's the same deal with "3D TV" don't hear much about that either.

 

If anything, making it optional might give it a boost with some games for the wow factor.  But it'll likely be dead in the water except for niche products like in decades past.  And yes, porn was supposed to be the big thing with it then, along with FPS's.  It didn't last, and I don't miss it not expanding either.  It doesn't help that near the initial big thing that oculus pushed the big DRM bullshit either.  And that was a fundamental killer compared to vive just a bit down the road.

 

I very much doubt it will catch on in any form at all at this point, maybe in another 5-10 years.  But I strongly doubt before 10 years except in niche markets, especially since consoles went backwards(and develops claiming that 720 or 960@30fps was an innovation--something that was disproved in the ye olde days of the PC's when CRT monitors were hitting 240Hz) with this last generation and are just catching up to several years old PC's.  And because on PC's 4k resolutions haven't even penetrated the market, though the price on those displays are now falling through the floor.  Round that out that there's still 2 competing standards anti-stutter/hitching(freesync(AMD) and g-sync(nvidia)) though it looks like AMD won.  Toss in that displayport hasn't really caught on, there's next to no market penetration in the mainstream.  Lot of people are still using DVI port or HDMI and the two big resolutions are 1366 x 768(laptop 25%) and 1920x1080(desktop 38%)? A decade seems likely.

[prinyo]

VR still hasn't overcome the basic problems that plagued it 20 years ago.  [ ... ], vision problems after use, causing headaches/migraines, issues with farsighted and nearsighted individuals.  

 

[ ... ]

 

It's the same deal with "3D TV" don't hear much about that either.

 

 

Care to elaborate on the "vision problems after use, causing headaches/migraines, issues with farsighted and nearsighted individuals"?

It seems you are aware of problems nobody else is and if this is true I would like to know if I'm damaging my health.

 

The 3D TV misconception is popular among people who have never tried room-scale VR. The experience I have with myself and the people I have demoed the Vive to is that the difference between the flat 2D on screen experience and VR is like between looking at a picture and a movie. The feeling of presence in the virtual world you get by been able to manipulate objects is radically different from watching 3D pictures in a black box. And I am playing all my "flat" games in SBS 3D on a 3D TV. The two experiences are drastically different. 

 

My favorite moment of a demo is when I show the person a solo porn clip. The reaction is always the same : they say "ummm", they blush and they try to step back. The sense of real presence is so strong that they get confused and react instinctively trying to give the model some personal space. Unfortunately nobody is making real VR porn at the moment and the solo videos are the only one that can provoke this reaction. 

 

The problem with the 4K is that it doesn't provide adequate benefits for the financial and more importantly the performance cost. For example playing Oldrim in 4K makes the loading screen times longer and makes the game basically unplayable given how many loading screens there are. Yes, it looks better, yes you see more on the screen, but the loading screens will make you give up. And there is almost no media content. For example with Netflix that is one of the very few providers that offers it, the 4K picture quality is worse than the "normal" HD. They add a lot of "snow" to the video in order to compensate for the limited bandwidth that in a darker scene it is almost impossible to see what is going on.

[prinyo]

 

"Space pirates can't make you sick"

Let me play it and then puke in the corner of your VR room. And no I'm not afraid of heights because I regularly climb in real life. But I guess because most other people don't get sick I can't either right? Now let me never touch VR again.

 

 

 

This is a curious situation. I asked other Vive owners - people who use it constantly and demo it to people. 

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/5nsmzm/motion_sickness_questions_about_space_pirate/

So far there are 4 possible explanations been given for your feeling of motion sickness in the Space Pirates:

1. Hardware/software issues that cause performance problems

2. Loosely fitted headset that cause the monitors to move in front of your eyes. 

3. You didn't tweak the IPD and you were seeing a blurry confusing world around you.

4. The very first experience you had in VR was bad and it is influencing everything after that.

 

I guess the friend that showed you those games is a VR fan and you would do him a favor by explaining to him the bad experience you had and maybe giving him the reddit link so he can try and identify the problem that causes his demo to have the opposite effect of what he was trying to achieve.

 

[Mashi]

Care to elaborate on the "vision problems after use, causing headaches/migraines, issues with farsighted and nearsighted individuals"?

It seems you are aware of problems nobody else is and if this is true I would like to know if I'm damaging my health.

 

The 3D TV misconception is popular among people who have never tried room-scale VR. The experience I have with myself and the people I have demoed the Vive to is that the difference between the flat 2D on screen experience and VR is like between looking at a picture and a movie. The feeling of presence in the virtual world you get by been able to manipulate objects is radically different from watching 3D pictures in a black box. And I am playing all my "flat" games in SBS 3D on a 3D TV. The two experiences are drastically different. 

 

...

 

The problem with the 4K is that it doesn't provide adequate benefits for the financial and more importantly the performance cost. For example playing Oldrim in 4K makes the loading screen times longer and makes the game basically unplayable given how many loading screens there are. Yes, it looks better, yes you see more on the screen, but the loading screens will make you give up. And there is almost no media content. For example with Netflix that is one of the very few providers that offers it, the 4K picture quality is worse than the "normal" HD. They add a lot of "snow" to the video in order to compensate for the limited bandwidth that in a darker scene it is almost impossible to see what is going on.

 

 

There is no long term consensus on whether or not there's actual long-term health effects at least with people over the age of 25.  There's speculative and correlative evidence that there may be some  form of imprinting or damage in those under 25.  But that's true with most things, since the brain is still exceptionally malleable.  This is also true of "3d glasses" used in movie theaters, whether R/G, R/B, polarized lenses, or shutter based solutions.  There is evidence that damage can be caused to the spine or muscles(either pulls or strains) due to VR headset weight.  Again this is split into multiple areas including stressing related, repeated motion damage(similar to carpal tunnel syndrome), or spinal deformation because the vertebrae are smaller and more prone to microfractures leading to other issues including "buildup" of repeated breaks similar to breaking a bone over and over again or wearing out a joint.  You can read more about it in the various scholarly journals.  It's still emerging, but there is overlap into other areas. Don't bother reading on news sites or anything, they're complete garbage.  Though there have been studies and so on since the 90's. 

 

Having demo'd it myself it was an underwhelming experience, but that could just be me.  I don't "feel" that when manipulating objects in a 3rd environment, I find it endlessly tedious and very annoying.  And that's just my opinion, it's also likely because one I'm old.  Two I've had a head injury making "virtual" environments more difficult for my brain to perceive as an extension. 

 

Remember there was no benefit to CRT vs LCD/LED displays too.  There was also no actual benefit to DVI vs HDMI either.  Something you're forgetting is that 4k displays aren't just screen real estate, they're also about colour depth.  A 1080 display is limited to 16.7m colours aka 8bit depth, this is the same colour depth that we've had since the mid 1990's with 1024x768 CRT displays.  A 4k display is limited to 10-12bit depth with 8bit natively standard. Almost all olde analog photographs are somewhere between 10bit and 16bit, most digital photographs(depending on the camera quality) are between 6.5bit-16bit colour depth.  A 4k display UHD-2 roughly increases the colour count by 50%, 4k UHD-4 roughly doubles it, 4k UHD-8 effectively makes it on par with high-quality photography, and depending on the power of the videocard, decoding/encoding(s) in question at "real-life" though so far it's mainly at the spec stage. 

 

If you're seeing a lot of snow then either it's not actually encoded as such, the stream is being downgraded, or there is something else going on.  Like the image quality is being downsampled for some reason.  You can see that with the various live broadcast that claim it's 1080, but downsampled to something like 902p.

[gurugeorge]

 

I don't think VR is going to take over the world, but I don't think it's totally going to be a gimmick either, I think it will find a strong niche in any sort of game that has you in a cockpit or cabin of some sort - driving games, mech games, flight sims, space games.  That gets rid of the seasickness element for everybody, so everybody who enjoys those types of games will probably play them in VR.

 

The seasickness seems to be tied to the fact that the visual part of your brain is telling you you're moving with your feet (therefore engaging a whole load of balancing subsystems that aren't getting traction) while another part stubbornly resists the illusion (thereby confuzzling said subsystems causing a feeling of vertigo).  That's my abstract guess anyway.  That's unlikely to be cracked with anything you can do with a headset, it will need the proverbial brain-machine interface, so that the part of the brain that thinks it's still can be neutralized somehow.

 

So, yeah, VR will be huge for certain game genres, probably in a permanent way, but anything where you actually play an avatar that moves around on shank's pony is not going to be viable for too big a minority of players (although third-person games might be enjoyable for some).  For that, screen 3-d with glasses is the way forward for those who want it, but that's been around for a while and it's not been taken up in a big way (probably because you need powerful and extra expensive monitors, which the move to 4k is likely to make even more expensive relatively speaking).

 

So yeah, VR will be huge, but not for first-person/third-person shooters, so Bethesda needn't worry.

 

 

I agree largely but have upvoted your post for having the most appropriate profile pic for this, and likely many other, threads.

 

 

Fave XKCD joke recently "so any number you can represent on a blackboard basically rounds to zero".

 

 

 

It's an xkcd classic, check him out, one of the best cartoonists around.

 

 

[peculiaris]

 

 

"Space pirates can't make you sick"

Let me play it and then puke in the corner of your VR room. And no I'm not afraid of heights because I regularly climb in real life. But I guess because most other people don't get sick I can't either right? Now let me never touch VR again.

 

 

 

This is a curious situation. I asked other Vive owners - people who use it constantly and demo it to people. 

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/5nsmzm/motion_sickness_questions_about_space_pirate/

So far there are 4 possible explanations been given for your feeling of motion sickness in the Space Pirates:

1. Hardware/software issues that cause performance problems

2. Loosely fitted headset that cause the monitors to move in front of your eyes. 

3. You didn't tweak the IPD and you were seeing a blurry confusing world around you.

4. The very first experience you had in VR was bad and it is influencing everything after that.

 

I guess the friend that showed you those games is a VR fan and you would do him a favor by explaining to him the bad experience you had and maybe giving him the reddit link so he can try and identify the problem that causes his demo to have the opposite effect of what he was trying to achieve.

 

 

 

Eyey!

 

So I've tried VR with my friend again and it went a lot better this time.

I have poor eye sight with my right eye and so we wanted to test with my glasses on this time, I forgot them the first time but because they aren't really for viewing stuff close to me so I thought it didn't matter.

 

It did because this time while I couldn't really game for long I also didn't become nauseous after only a few minutes.

It's probably related to my right eye not being able to focus on the screen...

[prinyo]

 

Eyey!

 

So I've tried VR with my friend again and it went a lot better this time.

I have poor eye sight with my right eye and so we wanted to test with my glasses on this time, I forgot them the first time but because they aren't really for viewing stuff close to me so I thought it didn't matter.

 

It did because this time while I couldn't really game for long I also didn't become nauseous after only a few minutes.

It's probably related to my right eye not being able to focus on the screen...

 

 

Glad you have found what the serious problem was!

About one eye seen blurry - you need to tweak the IPD and find the "sweet spot". As I also said on Reddit , the headsets are probably the piece of tech that requires the most personalisation. Human heads come in different shapes and sizes and with different eyesight issues. Assuming the glasses you wear correct the differences between the eyes it should be easy to find your "sweet spot". If you know your IPD (I assume you had it measured) you can set it directly with the knob on the headset. Then close one eye and focus on something in front of you, adjust the headset that it is clear. Close that eye, open the other and do the same. This should help you find the best headset position for you where the both eyes see clear. It takes me several seconds to do that and I usually focus on the pixels on the screen.

And also I really think Space Pirates is too dynamic and demanding to be used as a demo. When I first played it I found it more annoying and stressful than entertaining. It took some time and different games to make me confident enough in my VR self to be able to enjoy it.

 

I'm really grateful about this discussion because it made me realize how easy it would be for a demo to have the opposite effect. It is not like showing a new TV or a PC where you just turn them on and start showing stuff. And as I keep saying - it is a 1st gen consumer product for early adopters. It is the feedback from the people that will help in making the technology better. So the voices of people like you who tried it and found serious problems are really important. I'm glad there are people who can give real feedback instead of throwing general insults like "lame", "stupid", "gimmick". 

This is what my point has been in this thread - a constructive discussion is way better than an attempt to start a fan-hater war. So thanks again! :-)

 

 

Added:

I do realize that strictly speaking this was off-topic (the actual topic of this thread is will VR make the on-screen gaming irrelevant in the next few years) so if people are annoyed too much I can delete it or if a mod deletes it I would understand. The problem is that VR is a complex and a new thing and it is hard to discuss it within the confines of a narrow topic. That's why I'm preparing to make a new thread where all practical aspects of VR will be on topic and that will allow to discuss different aspects of the technology in detail. 

[Quisling]

The $2billion Zenimax v Oculus/Facebook case starts soon. I can't help but think that may have some bearing on how much Bethesda loves VR.

[Mashi]

The $2billion Zenimax v Oculus/Facebook case starts soon. I can't help but think that may have some bearing on how much Bethesda loves VR.

 

Already started.  They're claiming 3B now in court.  Though I very much doubt that Carmack was stupid any-which-way to do any of the stuff that's being claimed, but we'll have to wait and see. 

[Quisling]

 

The $2billion Zenimax v Oculus/Facebook case starts soon. I can't help but think that may have some bearing on how much Bethesda loves VR.

 

Already started.  They're claiming 3B now in court.  Though I very much doubt that Carmack was stupid any-which-way to do any of the stuff that's being claimed, but we'll have to wait and see. 

 

 

Well...

 

While he was questioned by ZeniMax’s lawyer last week, Carmack admitted to taking thousands of documents and lines of code. “I copied files that I shouldn’t have. I think stealing is an uncharitable way to look at it since I didn’t benefit and ZeniMax didn’t lose, but I shouldn’t have done it, and I did,” Carmack said while being questioned by ZeniMax’s lawyer. In testimony, Carmack was eager to talk about the documents he took, and explained that “by the strict intellectual property definition” his copying of documents was considered stealing. Carmack argued that the emails he copied didn’t contain source code, rather just snippets of source code, but, Carmack said, there may have been source code included in the attachments of the emails.

 

His further defence appears to be that they re-wrote everything and what they had originally wouldn't work now, which... I dunno. It's not all that solid a defence (but then IANAL).

[prinyo]

More things are popping up around the lawsuit.

This is really interesting. 

And this on the same topic.

 

I guess some day there will be a movie about Oculus like "The Social Network" but it will be a soap opera :-)

 

The attitude of Valve is also interesting - giving away research without any legal strings attached because it is not directly related to Steam. And after the backstabbing happens and they realize Steam will be left out of VR for years they organised themselves quickly and released Vive. I'm thankful to the arrogance and world-domination ambitions of Facebook that let to having a strong factor for openness and innovation in the VR space. 

[arpaschad]

IN REPLY TO OP...

 

 

yeah...because everyone has a spare grand or two to have their own VR setup just to play games and do "other" stuff...

 

IMO, you won't be seeing Skyrim anytime soon in goggle form in the near future since the tech, although existing isn't that much popular or readily available like the common household entertainment appliance that is the gaming console....and PC...

 

so Beth with all their buggy games that need mods to survive would rather make games on a media that readily sells and easily marketable...

 

maybe in 4-5 years will see more goggleheads...

 

for now, it's just a novelty...

 

IMHO...

[27X]

 

A lovecraftian horror - like entity like Bethesda missing the boat, considering they dominate the market already... ppppfffft!

 

They made Skyrim SE just to get more money from people

And that's not even considering SE is as i've heard, the exact same thing as Skyrim but with better shaders and crap

Oh wait... Didn't mods do that already?

It wasnt even friendly to ENBs...

Yet fanboys and obedient consumers still ran to the shops in hype like it was black friday shop madness...

 

By the moment they release Elder Scrolls VI, the gaming world will definitely go nuts again and their pockets will be as full and profuse as ever and more.

Of course they made Skyrim SE to make money, but you seem to be making it much more nefarious than it is. Bethesda was not originally going to release the game at all as it was just a test of the updated engine on their old game, however, new generation console gamers wanted that, and so Bethesda obliged, and gave us pc gamers the game for free (not exactly the most greedy move), basically Skyim SE was targeting the PS4 and XBOX One as their audience, not pc gamers, but the upgrade was still great for us. 

 

And no mods didn't do that, yeah ENBs look great, but they also kill performance, SSE added a few features from ENBs and improved the performance of the game, so it not only looks better than Oldrim, it also plays much, much better.

 

It can't be friendly to ENBs (yet, just wait for the ENBs to upgrade to 64bit) because it is now 64bit not 32bit, and unless you expect Bethesda to go through and change the ENB binaries of a third-party themselves, it won't be friendly until the owners upgrade it.

 

 

No, no and no.

 

The fact they packaged a proof of concept with hastily rescaled and converted texture and sound assets is nefarious.

 

It doesn't play much better either, there is no quality of life upgrading to be found aside from reduced frametime speeding up script resolving and the extra memory overhead.

 

You also haven't the faintest in regards to ENB usage. The change to a 64 bit executable is meaningless. The change to hardcoded precompiled shaders and lighting means basic core feature of ENB will never work without direct injection and replacement, which Boris is incapable of doing without basically de and recompiling the engine's rendering section itself.

 

 

 

consoles

 

Console owners got boned on textures and sound quality, period.

[Shadowheart328]

 

 

A lovecraftian horror - like entity like Bethesda missing the boat, considering they dominate the market already... ppppfffft!

 

They made Skyrim SE just to get more money from people

And that's not even considering SE is as i've heard, the exact same thing as Skyrim but with better shaders and crap

Oh wait... Didn't mods do that already?

It wasnt even friendly to ENBs...

Yet fanboys and obedient consumers still ran to the shops in hype like it was black friday shop madness...

 

By the moment they release Elder Scrolls VI, the gaming world will definitely go nuts again and their pockets will be as full and profuse as ever and more.

Of course they made Skyrim SE to make money, but you seem to be making it much more nefarious than it is. Bethesda was not originally going to release the game at all as it was just a test of the updated engine on their old game, however, new generation console gamers wanted that, and so Bethesda obliged, and gave us pc gamers the game for free (not exactly the most greedy move), basically Skyim SE was targeting the PS4 and XBOX One as their audience, not pc gamers, but the upgrade was still great for us. 

 

And no mods didn't do that, yeah ENBs look great, but they also kill performance, SSE added a few features from ENBs and improved the performance of the game, so it not only looks better than Oldrim, it also plays much, much better.

 

It can't be friendly to ENBs (yet, just wait for the ENBs to upgrade to 64bit) because it is now 64bit not 32bit, and unless you expect Bethesda to go through and change the ENB binaries of a third-party themselves, it won't be friendly until the owners upgrade it.

 

 

No, no and no.

 

The fact they packaged a proof of concept with hastily rescaled and converted texture and sound assets is nefarious.

 

It doesn't play much better either, there is no quality of life upgrading top be found aside from reduced frametime speeding up script resolving and the extra memory overhead.

 

You also haven't the faintest in regards to ENB usage. The change to a 64 bit executbale is meaningless. The change to hardcoded precompiled shaders and lighting means basic core feature of ENB will never work without direct injection and replacement, which Boris is incapable of doing without basically de and recompiling the engine's rendering section itself.

 

 

 

consoles

 

Console owners got boned on textures and sound quality, period.

 

"The fact they packaged a proof of concept with hastily rescaled and converted texture and sound assets is nefarious." - I don't think so, I think you are making it sound more nefarious than it probably is. 

 

"It doesn't play much better either, there is no quality of life upgrading top be found aside from reduced frametime speeding up script resolving and the extra memory overhead." - But it does play better, almost objectively so. Skyrim Special Edition won't include new features or QOL changes because frankly it's not a new game and as such it would make no sense to put more money into that part of the project. Basically SSE is the Enhanced Edition of Skyrim, and like most Enhanced Editions of video games it really just boils down to a visual upgrade. They made Skyrim 64bit, that in and of itself is a huge upgrade.

 

To your post about ENB, I will concede to you, I do not know a thing about it, my computer can't run it at all. So I just assumed that it wasn't working due to the fact that the engine was no longer 32bit (what I assumed that the ENB was programmed to deal with). Regardless it will return if the creator (or if it is open source, the community) updates it.

 

Anyway, my posts are bringing this back off topic, so if you want to further argue I guess you can PM me.