A VR Developer's Thoughts On The Current Mess Of APIs & Hardware

[Tomin]

I tried a VR game on Oculus on the other day, I was really impressed. It was a very cool experience to shoot and rip those robots apart with your own hands.

[DMJC]

VR is the ultimate display technology for Submarine, Racing, Flight, and Space games. For most other titles it's an overly complex graphics upgrade.

[microcode]

Use OpenHMD, and eventually the hardware vendors will be forced to interoperate with it. Currently all the major hardware on the market works with it, it seems; so quit your complaining and get back to building your application!

If you write your application against CUDA, don't be upset when it turns out it only works on NVIDIA.

[coder]

VR is the ultimate display technology for Submarine, Racing, Flight, and Space games. For most other titles it's an overly complex graphics upgrade.

What about RTS games? You know, the military have been the principle funding source for holographic displays. A lot of times, they use holographic projections and even holographic printed maps to plan missions. VR should be great for that.

You also forget the whole range of design and modeling applications, as well as medical and scientific visualization.

[mike44]

I could image having lots of fun with my Samsung Odyssey with Doom3BFG, Alien Isolation and alike. I've ordered it for X-Plane but need to wait there for Vulkan.

[dimko]

My thoughts on VR is that it gets far more attention than it deserves.

I have seen what VR can do and I am impressed.

[starshipeleven]

What about RTS games? You know, the military have been the principle funding source for holographic displays. A lot of times, they use holographic projections and even holographic printed maps to plan missions. VR should be great for that.

You also forget the whole range of design and modeling applications, as well as medical and scientific visualization.

Still confusing VR with AR. "holograms" are created by AR displays like Hololens.

Applications of VR in military is for example to give a tank driver so much better view of what is going on outside of the tank.

[coder]

Still confusing VR with AR. "holograms" are created by AR displays like Hololens.

No confusion here. It seems I made a logical leap that you didn't follow.

See, if the military values holographic maps and displays for mission planning, then you'd expect the same to benefit RTS games. In lieu of that, you could strap on a VR HMD and see the map stretch out before you, like a virtual tabletop game.

In fact, because it's not merely AR, you could do be even better. You could teleport down and look at points of interest or enemy lines from ground-level. You could design fortresses and then sit atop their towers and walk among their parapets.

Applications of VR in military is for example to give a tank driver so much better view of what is going on outside of the tank.

Yes. I'm sure that's the only thing they ever used it for. Not for flying drones or working with GIS data or viewing battlefield simulations or viewing architectural and CAD visualizations of new structures and weapons. No, not if you say they don't.

Edit: here are some links:

https://www.popsci.com/technology/ar...itary-planners

Apparently, light-field displays aren't much kinder to video cameras than CRTs of decades past. I think theirs are using OLEDs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blb0TUBoZwA

This one seems to be only 2D, but similar idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_W4iDLMRoo

[starshipeleven]

See, if the military values holographic maps and displays for mission planning, then you'd expect the same to benefit RTS games.

Well, I think you are missing a very important point here. The reason they are looking into holographic-ish technology is that they the need to show an image to work together and coordinate with others. A VR view by itself does not increase your performance just because of the fact that now you see things with better depth.

In a planning room you have more than one person, so you need a way to show the same stuff to all without having each person look at his screen as it would be inefficient, using a single large screen is decent and what has been done since the dawn of times (before screens it was maps or drawings) but a with a hologram you can show different views to different people so you can have Capt. Jon look at the back door while Col. Jim is looking at the windows of the second floor on the opposite side of the compound, and you can parallelize the planning.

So, a holographic or 3D view for a tactical situation is significantly better than a 2D screen ONLY because it provides more points of view, which is useful ONLY if you have more than one person looking at it, as a single person can only look at the hologram from a single point of view and thus for a single person there isn't much difference between that and a 2D screen showing a 3D cad image or whatever.

With a game eh, you know, you're most likely alone, and if you aren't the other "commanders" aren't there but anywhere else over a network so they would need their own screen/visor anyway.

EDIT: also, very important: if you use a hologram-like 3D screen but all men in the room are sitting on the same side and seeing it from the same angle you're a moron wasting valuable resources because then it would not be much different than showing the 3D rendering on a far more normal 2D screen. The whole point of a hologram is showing more point of views AT ONCE, if you don't need that capability then you will do fine with a screen. Like for example for briefings to operatives. They don't plan shit, you show them the plan and guide the show.

In lieu of that, you could strap on a VR HMD and see the map stretch out before you, like a virtual tabletop game.

I'm not sure about what you mean by this, in most RTS games I played you can do that fine with a 2D screen too, as the camera is at an angle and the game is either isometric or actually 3D.

Also, again in most RTS games I've played the traditional 2D minimap shows the whole gaming area, does not waste space and is perfectly sufficient for its purpose unless you have a crappy low-res screen. You can have it rendered in 3D too if you want, but that would only occupy more space for no real reason, as long as the game map is 2D or has very minor 3D elements like placing infantry in buildings or on some elevated positions there is no need for a third dimension in the map.

When the game is actually using a full 3D map (like say Homeworld series where you are controlling a space fleet) having a 3D minimap on the side is going to suck because the map can't be big enough to be useful, you would see a blob of dots and things, or it would show too little info to be useful (example, the gravdar in X2 and X3:Reunion/Terran Conflict).

But this is a solved issue. In Homeworld series, you can switch the whole game view to "tactical view" which is your "3D map" and it would show symbols of the ship types (so you can tell at a glance what is what at any distance covered by your fleet's sensors, while the 3D models are not rendered at all so you can see all ships at any distance without killing the PC) and the bearings for the movements and stuff instead of actual graphics. This won't be different with VR, you can't have a 3D map sitting on the side and expecting it to be big enough to be anywhere near useful.
See here an example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzW0Tabp9ts&t=2m47s (if you keep watching you also see the Tactical View rotating) It's pretty cool imho, the game's AI and campaign maps are 2D as fuck (some slight elevation changes here and there) so unless you go in multiplayer and use maps designed with 3D fights in mind you don't really need it, which is kind of a shame.

Having that in VR would be mostly the same as taking this user interface that is currently rendered on a 2D screen, and controlling its movement with the VR headset's sensors instead than with mouse and keyboard.

Would be nice for many things and would actually free so much the player to actually control the units or do more interesting tasks than moving the damn camera, but it does not introduce terribly game changing things for an RTS, at least imho.

And again, the main point here is that I'm the sole and only commander in the game, I don't have staff, assistants, consultants and other officers around me helping me with deciding the course of action. So I don't need a technology to show the same thing I see also to others in the same room.

In fact, because it's not merely AR, you could do be even better. You could teleport down and look at points of interest or enemy lines from ground-level. You could design fortresses and then sit atop their towers and walk among their parapets.

This matters in some types of RTS only, the ones that focus on a smaller scale of fighting. Like Dawn of War 2 or its closer cousin Company of Heroes something, where you control a handful of units and the point of the game is micromanaging them well.

For larger scale RTS games (spiritual successors of Total Annihilation, or even the more meh Age of Empires/Starcraft, where you usually command many units and you have buildings and resources and stuff) you don't want this level of micromanagement as it's not the focus of the game.

Yes. I'm sure that's the only thing they ever used it for. Not for flying drones or working with GIS data or viewing battlefield simulations or viewing architectural and CAD visualizations of new structures and weapons. No, not if you say they don't.

Did I say they didn't? No I just cited an example where VR actually makes sense, there can be others alright.

Also I don't think holographic displays are VR or AR, they are just a different type of screen.

To be VR or AR it needs to be some kind of gear you put on and use to enhance or fully replace the reality around you.

VR is suited for driving a vehicle or drone, or training your operatives for the next mission by creating a virtual environment matching the maps of the place they will be in the real mission, for them to try and try and try again (this is so fucking ridiculously useful, having your men know the "map" by practice/instinct does make a ton of difference).

AR is more for real-time information to operators or whatever where it shows information in real time about the world around them, what the image analysis of their camera feeds has identified as targets or potential dangers and whatnot, it can be used for static holograms like Hololens does so it can be used for planning too, but that's much less AR as I said, it's more of a static screen.

[coder]

Well, I think you are missing a very important point here. The reason they are looking into holographic-ish technology is that they the need to show an image to work together and coordinate with others. A VR view by itself does not increase your performance just because of the fact that now you see things with better depth.

The links I added make it clear that I was talking about a holographic table. In this case, the only value-add over a 2D table display is the ability to show topographical features and buildings, in order to see the effect on mobility and visibility.

Yes. I'm sure that's the only thing they ever used it for. Not for flying drones or working with GIS data or viewing battlefield simulations or viewing architectural and CAD visualizations of new structures and weapons. No, not if you say they don't.

To be VR or AR it needs to be some kind of gear you put on and use to enhance or fully replace the reality around you.

You had already changed the subject to military use of VR. So, my above quote was clearly referring to that.