Is VR dead?

[RCHeliguy]

We’ll have to agree to disagree on that. I don’t know what it’s like in the US, but in the UK (and most of Europe) many people are needing government subsidies just to feed their families. Many small businesses will probably not survive lock-down. There will be a small number of people with a lot of disposable income who may come out of this unscathed but they will be the exception, not the rule.



Whilst that may be true, there’s simply no way we’ll ever know for sure, particularly if you want to look at VR usage for sim racing.

Once again that is moot especially in the US. There is a huge gap between the haves and the have nots. The haves were buying whatever they wanted to stay amused and VR gear was apparently one of the things to get.

Whether they are sim racers is also moot. If they are buying gear creating new VR users, they increase the user base for games and help drive VR adoption, pay for innovation and drive prices down. More is better.

 

[maelstrom]

There is a huge gap between the haves and the have nots. The haves were buying whatever they wanted to stay amused and VR gear was apparently one of the things to get.

I’d bet that the “haves” are a very small group compared to the “have nots” (who probably constitute the majority of gamers), though.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Bet what you want. We have different opinions. There is no point in continuing this.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

The "haves" of today's reality.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Costco has pallets of Charmin Extra soft in 30 double roll packages kept in a center isle and an entire isle dedicated to bottled water pretty much around the country now if you have a Costco near you. ( one package per customer )

People are crazy.

The appropriate drink during these times would have to be....

 

[Terry Rock]

Clearly the demand for VR is still there...people just aren't talking about it as much publicly.
This much is evident from the sales of existing used units on the market.
As an example...a co-worker of mine within the past month, came in to work beaming.
"I just sold my Rift on eBay"
Price when the bidding was over and done....$465.
I almost fell out of my chair.
When she told me she was putting it up for sale and asked me how much I thought she'd get for it, I said approx $165- $205.
I was way off.
Sure, her kit had a third sensor but she was also the second owner.
My point is... the demand is still there.
I think guy who purchased VR early are simply waiting for the next improvements in resolution.
Those that did not are a mixed bag with some reading and waiting for those same improvements...others are simply taking the plunge once hardware becomes available.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Don't bother watching this video. WAY too much filler and you probably can't get one anyway.

This is for business use only and you can't order one. You have to document your use case and they will tell you if it will work for your application. It also won't work with all SteamVR games out of the box.

Assuming you are a business and have a use case that they think makes sense the price is USD $3200, Euro $2800

Sadly the StarVR One has been a serious tease for a couple years now and it appears they will remain just that.

 

[BrunoBæ]

I have to say that when I hear how many racing nerds that is actually investing in even the high end DD wheels - then I wouldnt be surprised if I hear some of them have actually got their hands on this VR kit.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Nerds, oink.

 

[BrightCandle]

Given what people spend on their rigs it's not ridiculous they spend this sort of money. StarVR is limiting its potential here.

 

[anton_Chez]

For an amazing VR experience, I'd probably be willing to spend multiple thousands of dollars, quite easily.

In fact, by the time the 8KX arrives and new GPU's are available, I'll have done just that. For me it's the most limiting factor right now to my sim racing. I just want better everything for VR. Image, frame rate, FOV, everything.

 

[onearmedbandit46]

Possibly the hardware/software is beyond most users and they don't want their product being panned by people running it on inadequate systems.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I haven't played Dirt Rally 2.0 in a WHILE, so imagine my surprise when I recently fired it up and accidentally left my SteamVR settings at 120 fps and it was smooooooth, with no stuttering. I have MPAA @ 8 and isotropic @ 16 too.

I drove Dirt Rally yesterday for about an hour and this morning for a while longer. Absolutely blown away. I went through every track in Greece and Finland and a few in Germany and England.

Now I'm wondering if I can drop to 90fps and max all the graphics settings out. It appears that either NVidia or Codemasters or both have made some useful efficiency changes.

I also tried out some new settings in my NLRv3 for Dirt Rally, and they felt very good.

 

[anton_Chez]

Might check this out. 1080Ti so I don't know if I'll see any gains. I've driven maybe 10 minutes of the game in total since I bought the Deluxe version on sale in June. I probably won't notice even if there was improvement!

 

[jpindustrie]

I'd say the recent push is really around that one new VR game... Valve just had the lucky (or unlucky) timing of a pandemic creating a large swath of new captive users...

Once the hoopla dies down i'd see demand coming down again

 

[RCHeliguy]

I'd say the recent push is really around that one new VR game... Valve just had the lucky (or unlucky) timing of a pandemic creating a large swath of new captive users...

Once the hoopla dies down i'd see demand coming down again

As good as Half Life Alyx is, and it is really good, a lot of this is centered around people being stuck at home.

A BUNCH of people decided now would be a good time to build a sim rig since they are stuck at home and have time. As a result Sim-Lab is sold out. So is Fanatec equipment and SimuCube equipment, etc.. etc.. Heusinkveld was starting to keep up with demand, but not right now.

I know of a pile of people who purchased VR for sim rigs too.

The key here is people who already had the money for these toys are stuck at home and have time on their hands, so they decided now would be a great time to do this.

Getting back to Half Life Alyx, I think it is a great proof of what can be done in VR for AAA games AND the draw it will have to sell more headsets.

In February they reached 1.17M VR PC users on Steam, that doesn't count some who are just on the Oculus site and a huge pile of Oculus Connect users.

It is impressive that the Valve Index has reached nearly 12% of the VR landscape so quickly.
Also the 14.87% of Other like Pimax is a pretty good number too.

Looks like 1st gen headsets like the Rift and Vive are declining which mostly speaks to replacement.

What's interesting about the graph below is how much it changed from February.

Part of this speaks to an increasing number of VR headsets just since February.

Vive + Vive Pro = 26% stayed the same.
WMR 8%-8.5% stayed about the same.

Rift dropped from 26% to 16.6%
Rift S dropped from 24% to 22%

Index increased from 7% to 12%
Unknown increased from 6% to 14.87% Pimax and ?

 

[BrunoBæ]

Could your Unknown(Other) include Quest?

 

[RCHeliguy]

Could your Unknown(Other) include Quest?

It's possible.

My first thought was that most Quests are stand alone AND Oculus blocked using Steam for quite a while.

However they have sold quite a few more Quests than the entire VR PC market. So even if a small percentage of them were cabled to PC's and using Steam it could be a good chunk of users.

 

[jpindustrie]

I totally see Alyx continuing on, with its vibrant community with mods , hacks etc, o man ...and post all this I see them retaining a % of what was built during the '1st wave' , but some will drop off as other things take up time thats natural

either way I'm mostly interested in this as it relates to me and other VR fans getting their Valve indexes in a 'reasonable' amount of time but its nice to remind myself there is light at the end of the tunnel and to just stop checking the order status too much

 

[RCHeliguy]

Unreal Engine 5 Supports VR, Promises Generational Leap For Graphics

Breaking: Epic Games just revealed a stunning Unreal Engine 5 demo for next-generation consoles, and the new toolset supports VR.

uploadvr.com

Hmmm..... This could be good. They claim UE5 can handle nearly unlimited high resolution assets and it will render that down to what you need efficiently so that you don't need to tweak your assets for performance. On top of that they have better dynamic lighting that sounds like it is either a match made in heaven for RTX processing, or takes the place of it completely.

We are going to need HD's with 10's of Terabytes for our games soon.