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Seeking PSVR hands on impressions

Tumle

Member
The headset does have tracking on the back IIRC but the Move controllers are at the mercy of the camera.

If anything is blocking the view between those you will lose tracking.

That's why you couldn't play a game like Hover Junkers on the PSVR.

Not until it has a Lighthouse equivalent (And better controllers because the Move tracking is highly inferior to the Vice Wands).
The only downside to move vs vives lighthouse setup, is that you can obscure the view of the move from the camera and lose tracking, plus the brightness in the room your playing in (read direct sunlight) can also make you lose tracking.. Other than that both have almost the same tracking fedelity..
Even on my vive I sometimes lose tracking and my controller starts floating away from me.. It doesn't s happen very often.. But it can happen :)
 
I'm also interested in more E3 VR impressions. I finally got the chance to try the Best Buy Oculus Rift demo last week, and was blown away by the diversity of game types that VR can accommodate. Farpoint really got me excited for PSVR, and although RIGS and Farpoint are definitely day one purchases for me, I'm really curious why there aren't more experiences that really take advantage of where the VR tech is right now. Everything doesn't have to be a AAA fps game or ultra realistic experience. I'm more jazzed for the Star Trek VR and Ubi's eagle flight game than I am half of the games announced.

If non room-scale VR is limited mostly to seated experiences, why not go all in and double-down on the simulation? PSVR has both audio and visual interactive capabilities. Why not create something where you control a mech in a strategy style game where you're in cockpit view and you teleport to coordinates but you control the mech in VR sim style?

Or imagine a tabletop RPG in vr where you gather with your group in crazy themed environments as you chat around a campfire and roll dice, but when it's time to fight the monsters, you use the PSmove?



1. Lucky's tale in Oculus seems to have blown everyone's mind. Why haven't any of the launch window games tried the 3D platformer route?

2. In the Rift Demo, I was most impressed by two experiences: a.) an interaction with an alien who studies you as you examine it. b.) and this little city that you view from God angle, interactive from any perspective...
 

Palocca

Member
um, about batman. sir.... about batman vr. sir..... come on you can't mention Batman VR and not touch on it again. D:

Oh sorry. I kinda wanted to keep my impression on the PSVR headset itself and how it performs. For you, I'll dive into the Batman Arkham demo.

I think there were two demos brought to E3, but I was only allowed to play the first one, where you "become the Batman". First off, you're using two Move controllers as your right and left hand.

You fade in to the sight of a grand piano in front of you, with a voice speaking out of sight. If you turn your head, you'll find out it's Alfred. After he speaks to you, he hands off a key to the grand piano (I think? it's either that or you look in a box) in front of you. You grab the key using your controller and insert it into the key lock. Once you open it, you're supposed to play the "secret combination" to open the entrance to the Batcave.

(side note: I had a pretty funny interaction with the dev here. I thought there was some sort of note that lists the secret combination of keys I was supposed to find, but the dev kept yelling "You're the Batman! You already know!". And after about two minutes of looking stupid, I then realized I could just jam any key on the piano to open the entrance)

It was then that the floor beneath you changes shape into a futuristic type elevator, and proceeds to envelop you. Once it's all dark, you are then given a button in front of you to push, which reveals the famous suit for you to wear. First, you reach out and grab the suit to put on (you don't put on your individual shoes or anything, just a simple grab and pull). Then the machine opens a compartment for your hands to lock on the gloves. Then, finally, you grab your cowl and fit it on your head. Afterwards, you're given a test session for some of your gadgets. You shoot the grapple hook (sits at your right hip) at an anchor, you're given a scanner (sits on your left hip) to identify and detect, and a batarang (sits on the front of your belt) to throw at targets. I had the most fun at this part because of how easy it is to play like a western shooter and draw and throw things at will.

Once you finish your training course, you're then taken further down the elevator until you get the breathtaking sight of the Batcave, full with flowing waterfalls, bats flying around, and small canyons out in the distance. It conveyed a great sense of scale and I literally felt chills when I saw cold steam coming out of the vents while the elevator took me down. Looking over downwards shows you how far the drop really is and I don't mind saying that I experienced a very brief moment of anxiety. It was incredibly immersive. After reaching your destination, the Batcomputer is brought forth and you are given the button to start. It is when you push that button where everything fades to black and ultimately ends.

All in all, it was a very fun, but brief experience. I can't wait to try out the actual detective mode.
 

bryanee

Member
That's one stick.

ps-vr-aim-controller-0614163.jpg
 

Palocca

Member
If farpoint allows for full range of movement/isn't on rails, how do you control the movement? Is it a teleportation thing like a lot of Vive games or is there a thumbstick on the Move controller that I forgot about?

Edit: whoops, you answered that for someone else. Still a little confused though. How do you go about turning around say, if you walk too far forward? I assume the camera won't see the controller through you. Is this where the "world reloading" stuff comes into play?

So you move using the left stick, which is located at the rifle grip, where your left hand is naturally placed. If you wanted to go backwards, you would look behind you and push forward on the left stick.

I attempted this while only rotating my head back, and it resulted in me being VERY nauseous and disoriented. It really helped once I moved my entire body to face the direction I wanted to move. To be fair though, I don't think I ever positioned myself completely with my back facing the camera (I probably went about 150 degrees or so), so I honestly wouldn't know what would happen in that situation.
 

888

Member
As a vive owner. Looking at the specs I can tell you the image is going to be pretty poor on the psvr. The Vive and Rift is the lowest resolution I would wan .

Pretty much everything shown for PSVR will be like tech demos for a while. Batman etc.

The other thing is going to be motion sickness for sitting games. I believe that was mentioned earlier in the thread. I did some sitting games with my vive and I never usually get motion sickness or dizzy but I do with sitting experiences.
 

wuth

Member
RIGS VR

Not amazing graphically, but Rigs has potential. Super irritating wait though. Ended up having to get an appointment at E3 to play and came 20 minutes early. They had us wait 10 minutes to get in line then informed us that they were an hour behind schedule. "Fine. I really want to try this."

Another hour passes. They say that we can go ahead. I'm pretty peeved at this point from giving up another appointment to play, but fine. When we finally got in, they tried their best to brief us but there was just too much to process in 5 minutes. They sit us down, we get the mechs, and I put the headset on.

The Headset
I found it to be very comfortable and easy to adjust. For the record, I do not wear contacts or glasses and had a fine time finding the proper focus. I also love all the little blue lights, but who cares about style. This thing is comparable to the other headsets I tried that day, so no complaints from me as far as build or wearability.

The Game
OOOOOOh boy. This was a hot mess and I left fucking fuming. I had spent all that time in line and was told the demo was only 5 minutes. No where near enough time with the game to give proper impressions, but I'll try.

Your mech is controlled via the controller in a traditional sense, but weapons are locked to your head. If you want to aim at something you have to look at it and try to keep it in the center of your view. This worked very well for the most part, but its aided by the game's super generous auto-aim setting. I was shooting and dodging around fairly easy in the first few moments of the game, but things when south fast once verticality came into play.

You cannot look up and down with the controller, you can only use the right stick to turn left and right. This became super debilitating for me as constantly cranking my neck around was not how I was expecting to play. I was hoping for a system where I could use my headset for fine aiming while still playing a standard shooter. Apparently, however, this option exists.

Regardless, the first half of the 5 minute game was complete chaos with both teams pretty close in score. AFTER half-time, however... Our team was completely stomped. Here's the important part of the story: My buddy was becoming super ill playing the game. He started having trouble fighting and dropped back. Apparently the motion sickness was very rough. The other guy we were playing with was also having some issues, as I saw none of him our entire playthrough.

So i proceeded to spend 80% of the last game completely lost or dead. The final buzzer rang at 8 to 4- we lost badly. The last half was a complete wash and I was pissed to see the game so short and no chance of playing again. They asked what I thought and I said I was super dissapointed we waited so long for a 5 minute demo that had half of my team fumbling for a paper bag to throw up in while I was repeatedly blasted. They shoo'd us off so the next group could go in, but I was very vocal about my irritation in the demo.

Some other notes:
- These games are not all particularly pretty. Even watching RE on the monitors was not particularly appealing. Rigs was definitely not a looker, either, but it made up for it with lots of immersive elements. The ejection system alone is very fun, as is seeing the mechs lined up before battle.

- With more play time this game might appeal to me, but it's a very mixed bag. I was not a fan of the auto-locking weapons or the control scheme I was given. I constantly found myself dashing forward during battle (melee attack) while accidentally pressing buttons. I hope matches are longer and the time to kill is lengthened. This is all a demo, though, so I have faith that there's more to love here.

- I'm still super salty about the lines at this E3. This was particularly egregious considering that I had to schedule an appointment just to try it for 5 minutes only to wait an hour and a half anyway. Resident Evil and Zelda were completely locked down within 10 minutes of the doors opening. Ridiculous, especially for those of us who work in the industry and its peripherals.

- Motion sickness is going to be a big deal. Look, if you get motion sickness I'd stay away or try it and see how you feel. Lots of people simply cannot deal with the disconnect created by the illusion of movement, especially in games like Rigs. There are games where you simply stand still, and fixed perspective 3rd person games, but the meat is still in the immersive FPS stuff.
 
For the people who played it though, is Farpoint actually a good game by itself, or would it be world's worst shooter without the VR? Does it have a somewhat interesting premise and story?

Edit I found a gameplay video that's a bit longer, it actually does seem like it could be a full game :) But I'm also wondering how FP deals with the "walking around" problem of VR, which seems to be a big issue generally. No motion sickness?

It's a very good game. That's a tough question to answer. VR is a new space for shooters.

For me it's like trying to compare a mobile/handheld version of a shooter (ie cod on console vs cod on mobile or handheld) Its a completely different experience.

Also most devs are trying to find the sweet spot for length of a highly interactive VR game.

As for the story, It was an e3 demo so not much of the story was clear. The environments and enemies were fun to interact with. The Gameplay and most importantly gunplay is freaking solid.

The motion sickness issue will vary from user to user. I had no issues with motion sickness. Just the initial coping with the virtual space.
 

Abdiel

Member
RIGS VR

Not amazing graphically, but Rigs has potential. Super irritating wait though. Ended up having to get an appointment at E3 to play and came 20 minutes early. They had us wait 10 minutes to get in line then informed us that they were an hour behind schedule. "Fine. I really want to try this."

Another hour passes. They say that we can go ahead. I'm pretty peeved at this point from giving up another appointment to play, but fine. When we finally got in, they tried their best to brief us but there was just too much to process in 5 minutes. They sit us down, we get the mechs, and I put the headset on.

The Headset
I found it to be very comfortable and easy to adjust. For the record, I do not wear contacts or glasses and had a fine time finding the proper focus. I also love all the little blue lights, but who cares about style. This thing is comparable to the other headsets I tried that day, so no complaints from me as far as build or wearability.

The Game
OOOOOOh boy. This was a hot mess and I left fucking fuming. I had spent all that time in line and was told the demo was only 5 minutes. No where near enough time with the game to give proper impressions, but I'll try.

Your mech is controlled via the controller in a traditional sense, but weapons are locked to your head. If you want to aim at something you have to look at it and try to keep it in the center of your view. This worked very well for the most part, but its aided by the game's super generous auto-aim setting. I was shooting and dodging around fairly easy in the first few moments of the game, but things when south fast once verticality came into play.

You cannot look up and down with the controller, you can only use the right stick to turn left and right. This became super debilitating for me as constantly cranking my neck around was not how I was expecting to play. I was hoping for a system where I could use my headset for fine aiming while still playing a standard shooter. Apparently, however, this option exists.

Regardless, the first half of the 5 minute game was complete chaos with both teams pretty close in score. AFTER half-time, however... Our team was completely stomped. Here's the important part of the story: My buddy was becoming super ill playing the game. He started having trouble fighting and dropped back. Apparently the motion sickness was very rough. The other guy we were playing with was also having some issues, as I saw none of him our entire playthrough.

So i proceeded to spend 80% of the last game completely lost or dead. The final buzzer rang at 8 to 4- we lost badly. The last half was a complete wash and I was pissed to see the game so short and no chance of playing again. They asked what I thought and I said I was super dissapointed we waited so long for a 5 minute demo that had half of my team fumbling for a paper bag to throw up in while I was repeatedly blasted. They shoo'd us off so the next group could go in, but I was very vocal about my irritation in the demo.

Some other notes:
- These games are not all particularly pretty. Even watching RE on the monitors was not particularly appealing. Rigs was definitely not a looker, either, but it made up for it with lots of immersive elements. The ejection system alone is very fun, as is seeing the mechs lined up before battle.

- With more play time this game might appeal to me, but it's a very mixed bag. I was not a fan of the auto-locking weapons or the control scheme I was given. I constantly found myself dashing forward during battle (melee attack) while accidentally pressing buttons. I hope matches are longer and the time to kill is lengthened. This is all a demo, though, so I have faith that there's more to love here.

- I'm still super salty about the lines at this E3. This was particularly egregious considering that I had to schedule an appointment just to try it for 5 minutes only to wait an hour and a half anyway. Resident Evil and Zelda were completely locked down within 10 minutes of the doors opening. Ridiculous, especially for those of us who work in the industry and its peripherals.

- Motion sickness is going to be a big deal. Look, if you get motion sickness I'd stay away or try it and see how you feel. Lots of people simply cannot deal with the disconnect created by the illusion of movement, especially in games like Rigs. There are games where you simply stand still, and fixed perspective 3rd person games, but the meat is still in the immersive FPS stuff.

Your experience with RIGS is a total opposite for mine. Like, 100% complete reversal.

I played RIGS at PSX. It was orderly, they had everly organized, and were never behind schedule.

I played my session without any issue. The explanation of the controls was done by a video briefing after we were split into two teams, and we had a full round, roughly a ten minute match afterwards.

No one in my full match experienced any motion sickness. It was a flawless experience in that regard. Headset was extremely comfortable, stable and no issues.

Playing the game itself was amazing. One of my experiences (This and EVE Valkyrie) that convinced me to preorder the PSVR. Controls were extremely simple. All movement was done on the controller, and aiming was with the headset. Firing left and right guns was left and right triggers on the controller (L2/R2). Super straightforward control scheme, and it handled very well.

I ended up being MVP for my team, with 6 total kills, 5 goals, and most points achieved by the end, only 2 deaths. Fantastic experience.

Visuals... It's not immaculate, but that was never an issue, it was so immersive that I wasn't ever paying attention to any 'grain'. I only noticed that in the few moments before anything started, when I was staring hard at minor details and nothing was happening. It was a great presentation, smooth action and frame rate. No screen door feeling/effect.
 

valeu

Member
in the farpoint ign video the developer guesses that the game will be 4 hours. how much do we think a game like this will cost? US$30?
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Jeff Cannata had good in-depth impressions of playing PSVR on this E3 in the last episode of DLC podcast. He has both Vive and Rift at home, so he was able to compare PSVR with them easily.

He was VERY surpised at the PS4 performance/visuals, screen quality and the lack of screendoor effect on PSVR.
Seconded.
 

JustenP88

I earned 100 Gamerscore™ for collecting 300 widgets and thereby created Trump's America
1. Lucky's tale in Oculus seems to have blown everyone's mind. Why haven't any of the launch window games tried the 3D platformer route?

I was really thinking that there was a decent chance that this would be how they brought Crash back. My good God damn, that would have been perfect.
 

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
The headset does have tracking on the back IIRC but the Move controllers are at the mercy of the camera.

If anything is blocking the view between those you will lose tracking.

That's why you couldn't play a game like Hover Junkers on the PSVR.

Not until it has a Lighthouse equivalent (And better controllers because the Move tracking is highly inferior to the Vice Wands).

I believe Sony have stated PSVR is not for you to go wandering around like Vive. I think they even said a lot of experiences are for standing still or sitting down, not wandering about. Though I could see turning all the way around being a pain, I don't think a lot of games will have too big an issue with it, especially ones that don't need move controllers.

in the farpoint ign video the developer guesses that the game will be 4 hours. how much do we think a game like this will cost? US$30?

I believe they said most games will be $20 to $40 with exceptions made for specific games.

As a vive owner. Looking at the specs I can tell you the image is going to be pretty poor on the psvr. The Vive and Rift is the lowest resolution I would wan .

Pretty much everything shown for PSVR will be like tech demos for a while. Batman etc.

The other thing is going to be motion sickness for sitting games. I believe that was mentioned earlier in the thread. I did some sitting games with my vive and I never usually get motion sickness or dizzy but I do with sitting experiences.

Have you read anything in this thread or anything at all about PSVR? This is complete hogwash.
 

wuth

Member
Your experience with RIGS is a total opposite for mine. Like, 100% complete reversal.

I played RIGS at PSX. It was orderly, they had everly organized, and were never behind schedule.

I played my session without any issue. The explanation of the controls was done by a video briefing after we were split into two teams, and we had a full round, roughly a ten minute match afterwards.

No one in my full match experienced any motion sickness. It was a flawless experience in that regard. Headset was extremely comfortable, stable and no issues.

Playing the game itself was amazing. One of my experiences (This and EVE Valkyrie) that convinced me to preorder the PSVR. Controls were extremely simple. All movement was done on the controller, and aiming was with the headset. Firing left and right guns was left and right triggers on the controller (L2/R2). Super straightforward control scheme, and it handled very well.

I ended up being MVP for my team, with 6 total kills, 5 goals, and most points achieved by the end, only 2 deaths. Fantastic experience.

Visuals... It's not immaculate, but that was never an issue, it was so immersive that I wasn't ever paying attention to any 'grain'. I only noticed that in the few moments before anything started, when I was staring hard at minor details and nothing was happening. It was a great presentation, smooth action and frame rate. No screen door feeling/effect.

It seems most people don't have the motion sickness problem, but my buddy had to sit down for a bit after playing. I talked to the guys on the other team as well, and they seemed perfectly fine aside from one complaining about a headache.

The demo was far too short to get a quality read on the game, but the arena we played in was mostly wide open with a few tunnels on the edges. All in all it was a very poor demo and it seemed the insane wait times were to blame. E3 is just too small a venue for the amount of people they're currently letting in, and Sony was super ill prepared.

Congrats on doing so well at the game, but you definitely had the advantage of longer play times. Most people we talked to at the demo booth were particularly underwhelmed after barely getting a handle on the game before being shoo'd off.

One important note on PS VR, though- I've played quite a bit of both oculus and vive and found the PS VR, currently, is offering a pretty good selection of actual game titles (edit: compared to the other two systems' never ending supply of shovel-ware). However the vast majority of the games that we'll be seeing in the coming months will be nothing more than tech demos. VR is coming, but the content isn't quite there yet so if you're on the fence about spending that kind of cash for a headset make sure you're prepared to play shooting galleries and puzzle games through 2017.
 
So are PSVRs in GameStops starting today? Maybe we could get some of those impressions here too.

Yes, but not all Gamestops. There are PSVRs available at select stores only, probably stores that have higher than average sales in each of the regions selected.
 
D

Deleted member 10571

Unconfirmed Member
https://youtu.be/XDx3RcpuiT4

Some moments of the EZA podcast about Resident Evil impressions. Comments like"Playstation VR looks bad!", and "It's like 480p" were made.

This is specifically commenting on RE7 though, and overall they still love PSVR (there's a bunch about it earlier in the video), but yeeeah, I guess technically there's still a lot of progress to be made..
 

Reallink

Member
https://youtu.be/XDx3RcpuiT4

Some moments of the EZA podcast about Resident Evil impressions. Comments like"Playstation VR looks bad!", and "It's like 480p" were made.

This is specifically commenting on RE7 though, and overall they still love PSVR (there's a bunch about it earlier in the video), but yeeeah, I guess technically there's still a lot of progress to be made..

Sounds like it's probably running at 1080p (or possibly sub-1080p). You really have to super sample VR to get decent IQ. Rift and Vive have the same problem at native resolution or lower, blurry as fuck. Meanwhile super sampling to 140%+ native res is almost like a new generation of HMD by comparison.
 
Also it probably varies game to game, since it seemed like when they got upto Batman VR and Jones got used to the resolution it was no longer an issue and he tried to convey how it went away for him. I don't quite think they'd feel that way if it were too low. Rocksteady probably did a rather good job maximizing their visuals and resolution, plus they are only a few months from launch unlike RE7.

You cannot look up and down with the controller, you can only use the right stick to turn left and right. This became super debilitating for me as constantly cranking my neck around was not how I was expecting to play. I was hoping for a system where I could use my headset for fine aiming while still playing a standard shooter. Apparently, however, this option exists.

Not entirely sure but I think (though I've never used VR yet until the PSVR actually comes out) it's been said that in general this is one of the last things you'd want to be able to do in VR. I could imagine you would get sick quickly if you start looking down without actually moving your head down.
 
https://youtu.be/XDx3RcpuiT4

Some moments of the EZA podcast about Resident Evil impressions. Comments like"Playstation VR looks bad!", and "It's like 480p" were made.

This is specifically commenting on RE7 though, and overall they still love PSVR (there's a bunch about it earlier in the video), but yeeeah, I guess technically there's still a lot of progress to be made..

Weird. Jeff Cannata's impressions vs. his Rift and HTC were great. He was really surprised how good it looks. I supposed it could just be RE7
 

ckohler

Member
I got to try PSVR a few hours ago with my friend. We drove over 2 hours to the closest Best Buy to demo it.

I was super impressed!

My friend demoed Ocean's Decent and I did Battlezone. The motion tracking on both the headset and the controller (you can see it in the game) was perfect. 1:1 tracking and it was silky smooth.

I did not notice a screen door effect although my friend said he did at the loading screen only. My only complaint was that a few distant objects did look slightly lower resolution sometimes (kinda jaggy?) but the closer an object was to my face the more defined it was. Objects that were very close were crystal clear.

The overall sense of presence was fantastic and I gasped several times. In particular, the cockpit of the tank and examining the floating, glowing Dualshock 4 controller in front of me as I held it up was probably the highlight of the demo. When I looked down at the seat and the controls beside me, it totaly felt like I should have just been able to grab them even though I couldn't. I just loved leaning in and looking at all the details... the screens and buttons directly in front of me looked like they were really there.

Outside the cockpit, when the sun's god-rays came in, it kinda gave me the feelling of going outside. The game has a very good lighting engine. The tank itself controlled well but it was basically just 3D battlezone in a Tron-Like setting so it wasn't really all that deep except for the very end when this huge swarm of little drones flew in and started circling around. That looked really impressive and was fun to shoot at with the machine guns.

I think what I learned the most about the experience is that I'm sold on PSVR and VR in general and I now have a greater appreciation for "VR experiences" and not just "VR Games". I'm looking forward to more things that simply take you places and let you explore the environment. Games are fun but now I know they aren't as necessary for me to enjoy VR. I'd simply love an experience that just let me look at virtual stuff close up. You know those collectable figurine galleries games have? Imagine that in VR with the ability to actually have the figure standing full size right in front of you. That would be awesome!

Overall, I'm glad I preordered. If you have any questions feel free to ask while this is still fresh in my mind.

BTW, I've not tried Oculus or Vive so I can't compare to those headsets but I had briefly worn the GearVR and that felt considerably janky by comparison to this.
 

BokehKing

Banned
I also was able to try it out at a Best Buy near me. My wife tried it out as well and played Into The Deep (the shark demo). You can see my/her reaction and following thoughts here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO-1tIzq2K8
Bro that was awesome, your wife's reaction let's me know this will be the perfect thing for me to force on guests whilst never actually using it myself. I can already think of at least 30 people off hand I'm going to make experience this.
 

DrewM1788

Member
Bro that was awesome, your wife's reaction let's me know this will be the perfect thing for me to force on guests whilst never actually using it myself. I can already think of at least 30 people off hand I'm going to make experience this.

Yeah her reaction was priceless haha. I just wish I could've gotten her to the shark part...then it would have been on another level. Maybe next time.
 
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