Over the past two years, I’ve looked for every scrap of news regarding the VR landscape and how it’s poised to redefine how people interact with games, computing, and society. It took decades of work, but it finally seems to have a chance at becoming mainstream. The technical challenges may have been solved, but the more nuanced and artistic trials of developing for these new experiences have become increasingly apparent. The most notable of these emerging issues is player death.
Last year, I had the privilege of trying an Occulus Rift DKI tech demo at the hacker space off South Allen St. While many of the normal complaints of the kit (low refresh rate, poor resolution, frame stuttering, etc) were apparent, I still felt incredibly immersed in the world. The demo gave a tour through the solar system from the surface of Earth, through the planets, past the sun, to the most massive stars, ultimately falling into the black hole Signus A*. The sense of awe as you moved through the space was impossible to explain, but I want to focus on the black hole. Falling into a celestial body of scale had everyone who tried the demo ripping the headset off and falling out of their chairs. I’m not an animated or easily spooked gamer, so the sensation was incredibly unnerving. We laughed it off, but it was my first bizarre VR experience.
Fast forward and my favorite game developer ran into the same problem. CCP develops and publishes EVE Online, DUST 514, and the upcoming projects Legion and Valkyrie. These games all exist and interact with the same lore, players, and universe across one unifying server. EVE is a massive free-form space MMO focused on player interactions where you command ships that can range from a hundred meters to a few kilometers in length. DUST 514 and Legion are infantry games akin to Battlefield in pace and scope. However, Valkyrie is of particular interest.
Valkyrie tasks the player with flying small strike spacecraft too small for the scale of the ships in EVE Online. It was the first confirmed VR game for the Occulus Rift, and has been serving as the test bench for much of how developers learn to build for VR. In earlier builds, the player’s spacecraft could be violently destroyed sucking the individual out through the cockpit, exploding, or otherwise ending a poor maneuver spinning endlessly into space. While it was realistic, it was intolerable for beta testers. The inner sensation of death actually compromised the enjoyment of the experience. CCP has since gone through several revisions, but it’s a unique problem I would have not considered seriously had I not experienced its effects myself.
I’m interested to know what effects you think VR will also have to overcome from a presentation or sensation perspective. Please comment if you had any similar experiences.
This article was inspired in part by a developer’s blog post for Valkyrie, and a Polygon interview posted here.
A preview of the current VR experience in EVE: Valkyrie can be found below.
As a fledgling VR dev, I must give Oculus credit for what they have done so far to combat the unnerving experiences you explained above. The performance / quality leap from the DK1 to the DK2 was powerful; experiences that once caused near instant nausea due to refresh and stuttering problems were improved greatly by the newer tech. Current experiences (when used on a beefy computer) are limited only by a player’s propensity for motion sickness.
Ultimately though, it does not surprise me that sucking the player into space would cause discomfort. That sort of thing attempts to be combated by Oculus’ own Best Practices Guide, where they outline the things you should and should not do to a player. It is fairly extensive and brings up a lot of points that most designers would overlook, such as how to comfortably present the player with a HUD in VR.
As for my personal experience, I barely get sick using the DK2 anymore. Having used the DK2 a great deal, I found that it was akin to riding a bike. Doing certain actions in VR caused great discomfort at first, but after I became used to them, the actions became tolerable.
Sadly, this also applies to the thrilling sensations that VR provides; you can only plummet in VR so many times until your brain decides that it definitely isn’t real. Similarly, I would expect to see the rational limitations on how game designers use VR become more lax as players demand more thrilling content.