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"The Witness" will have VR compatibility on PC, no support for PSVR
- Thread starter ArtHands
- Start date
bitbydeath
Gold Member
He did put all his money into this so certainly a factor, i was just trying to debunk the 'must build with VR in mind' rhetoric as it then followed with it not being possible for No Mans Sky even though that project is backed by Sony financially.
cheezcake
Member
"Must build with VR in mind" is absolutely important and a truthful statement.
Driveclub is not a good comparison at all. Racing games lend themselves to VR incredibly easily, you just have to add in head tracking and focus on a cockpit view. They require no dedicated gameplay design for VR.
No other games have it as easy, first person games have to have the camera, movement and animations modified specifically to provide a good VR experience.
TheSporkWithin
Member
I like that literally less than five people seem to have actually read the thing and come to the conclusion that Blow never said that it was coming to VR anywhere, and that VR support on PC is not something that "will" happen, but rather something that "might" happen as a nice feature for people who want to try it even though it wouldn't be optimized at all. What an awful article/headline. Can we please get a mod edit to the title?
bitbydeath
Gold Member
You just contradicted yourself. I'm not saying it will be easy (as I have no idea). I'm saying it is possible, and that alone is what debunks the statement.
Bitch Pudding
Member
Well, I'll wait for The Witness - DefinitiVR Edition then.
RealWitness
Gauloisess24
Banned
The PC version will support full VR experience as stated in the article. Why are you trying to downplay that? Just because there will be no PSvR version?
BarringGaffner
Member
I thought we all agreed at this point that first person walking/running is terrible in VR? Unless room space, of course.
Blow outright rules out PSVR, but says it might happen on PC. He doesn't say if it's definitely happening, but it's at least possible
The Witness started development in 2009 or something crazy like that.
timetokill
Banned
I mean, it makes sense. The ceiling is much, MUCH lower on PS4 than it is on PCs. I'm not sure why this is even an issue.
Gauloisess24
Banned
Official PC support is pretty much comfirmed at this moment. Also the article referring to PC hamers as 'elitists' makes me wonder about the credibility of it on the PC side of things.
Cthulhu_Steev
Member
Yeah, I've just scanned your post history (17 posts of shit) and it appears you have your own thing going on here with your pot-stirring.
AmaterasuOni
Banned
This here stinks like total fanboi warriorism. GG.
cheezcake
Member
The first statement is made solely about The Witness, I said that it was absolutely important and truthful in that context. The Witness is not a racing game, so I have no idea what makes you think that second statement "no other games have it as easy" applies in any way to it. There is obviously no contradiction.
You're trying to say "well Driveclub did it so it's possible therefore Blow's statement isn't truthful". That makes no sense. You have to consider the context that statement was made in. Blow and team have absolutely minuscule resources compared to Driveclub devs AND they're making a completely different time of game which is known to be harder to get right for VR.
bitbydeath
Gold Member
DriveClub is just one example, Surgeon Simulator will also be PSVR compatible and i doubt FF15 started development with PSVR in mind either.
cheezcake
Member
A three year old game which lends itself to VR very well and relatively simple tech behind it and another AAA game with enormous development resources to back it up. Again you gotta consider each game in context.
Turin Turambar
Member
Consider that a 60 fps game on consoles is usually "up to 60 fps", not "100% solid 60 fps" so the fact the normal version can run at 60 fps isn't a good indicator that VR in ps4 is possible.
PSVR is rendering once per eye at HALF the pixels it's rendering at normally on PS4.
Not saying that this means that PSVR support is easy or anything, but it not coming to PSVR has got nothing to do with the PS4's POWER. Games capable of running 1080p 60fps should technically be able to run on PSVR without cutting major assets or IQ, as it's roughly the same as just running the game regularly. Strictly from a power standpoint.
GuitarAtomik
Member
You're thinking about Blow's statement too semantically and forgetting the context here. No, not every game needs to be built from the ground up with VR in mind to support it. But Blow isn't talking about any game. He's talking about The Witness. Blow is saying that if there was ever going to be PSVR support for The Witness, it needed to have been built with it in mind from the beginning. Yes, he could technically go back and make it work, but he's not interested in it right now and possibly not ever.
So semantically you are correct but, for this particular game, it's not going to happen because it wasn't built with it in mind from the beginning thus Blow is still correct as well.
paperspace
Member
Why are you so inclined to believe he's lying? What would he gain from that?
Movalpolos
Banned
Figured as much. I'll get it on release for PS4 then on Steam when I get my headset.
bitbydeath
Gold Member
Not lying just setting an incorrect tone which other(s) misconstrued to apply to all of VR.
Fix The Scientist
Member
Weird thing to say on the brink of release. I hope this game is something special, or else the price point and tedious dev history will seriously work against it.
Cthulhu_Steev
Member
Why would this statement harm the game? It looks like a labour of love and well worth the asking price.
Because people who might have purchased it day one, might now wait to buy it until the Rift is out later on in the year, at which point the game itself might have declined in price and therefore bring in less profit?
The statement isn't the harming factor, the timing of the statement is. This is something you announce either real early, or after you release the game.
I don't buy his reasoning, unless he is trying to be polite to Sony? Lack of performance would have been a reasonable explanation. Designing around VR from the outset should be as valid for PC as it is for PS4. If he can tack it on for PC, he should be able to tack it on for PS4 too.
Only logical explanation can think of is that the performance of the game on PS4 might not be enough to move to PSVR and the design comment is a way around saying that PS4 is underpowered? Note that I mean underpowered for this specific game - so eg it could be designed as-is to run at 1080p/30 on PS4 and it'd be too much work to reduce detail etc to hit 60.
I am curious how he plans to update it for PC VR though. Adding it on afterwards makes me wary, especially for a game that seems to have lots of walking around. Hopefully he does it carefully.
Might end up double dipping now. Want it on PS4 to relax on my sofa with big TV, but also want to experience that world in VR.
Only logical explanation can think of is that the performance of the game on PS4 might not be enough to move to PSVR and the design comment is a way around saying that PS4 is underpowered? Note that I mean underpowered for this specific game - so eg it could be designed as-is to run at 1080p/30 on PS4 and it'd be too much work to reduce detail etc to hit 60.
I am curious how he plans to update it for PC VR though. Adding it on afterwards makes me wary, especially for a game that seems to have lots of walking around. Hopefully he does it carefully.
Might end up double dipping now. Want it on PS4 to relax on my sofa with big TV, but also want to experience that world in VR.
Solid Samus
Banned
You make it seem like you've read the article but nowhere in the article are the claims that PC VR 'will' happen corroborated by anything of substance.
Blow already confirmed that it is 1080p60 on PS4
pee jugs cost money, yo
Yeah, this is gonna continue to be a thing this gen. Not every Oculus/Vive/PC VR headset game is going to come to PSVR.
The game was coming out before PSVR anyways, we all knew that so day one buyers shouldn't suddenly be dissuaded.
Then I don't know what to make of his comment. Maybe he'll clarify.
The PC requirements are really low, so the engine seems very scalable. So power shouldn't be an issue in that case.
the 'design for the beginning' clearly isn't relevant to PC either because he is adding it later.
Patching PS4 games seems straightforward in comoarison to older console games. Or even selling VR mode as DLC or a standalone version.
Anything you implement control-wise on oculus rift would be applicable to PSVR (seated experience, 30 degree tracking via LEDs, standard controller), so why wouldn't you apply those to PSVR and get potentially additional return on your investment?
Uh...I think you completely misunderstand. This has nothing to do with PSVR. The poster was talking about PC VR support being announced right before the release.
Oculus Rift isn't out for months. People who want to play this in VR now have an incentive to wait to purchase.
Unless it is a paid for exclusive, Vive-exclusive (I.e. requires room tracking), or a very PC-centric game (hardcore flightsim requiring tons of button), there is no logical reason not to try and bring any VR game to PSVR. The addressable market initially will be tiny, so you want to be available to as many people as possible.
Self publishing on PS4 is pretty straightforward and coats of porting shouldn't be high. And anything designed to work with OR will work with OSVR in terms of controls etc.
That's why people seem confused. It seems like Blow doesn't really have a great line of communication with Sony for some reason, seeing as how apparently he missed some deadline to get his game on the preorder list and nobody told him there even WAS a deadline.
You can also design performance-relevant features.
Or it requires more performance / an unreasonable optimization effort to get working on PS4 in VR.
RoadHazard
Gold Member
Given this game's low minimum requirements, the PS4 could obviously run in in VR. Perhaps not while looking identical to the 2D version, but the latter is supposedly a really smooth 60fps, which should mean that not too many sacrifices would have to be made to get it running stereoscopically. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the biggest cost in going to 3D/VR is that you have to setup all the geometry twice from different angles, right? So if the geometry budget is strained as it is that would be a problem, but if it isn't (which I could believe, given this game's rather angular/polygonal look) there shouldn't be much of a cost at all. Shading costs and such don't go up, because you're still processing the exact same number of pixels. And obviously CPU requirements (which is the PS4's weak point, as we all know) don't either.
Either way, even if some sacrifices would be necessary I'm sure the PS4 could run this game in VR with it still looking very nice. They just haven't built it to do that (and also the PSVR won't even be released for some time yet), so they would have to put some time into it. Hopefully they will.
No, what they're telling developers is to start there and then work their way up, to ensure smooth performance, not that that's all the PS4 can do in VR. We've seen many PSVR games and demos that are clearly more impressive than your average PS3 title.
Either way, even if some sacrifices would be necessary I'm sure the PS4 could run this game in VR with it still looking very nice. They just haven't built it to do that (and also the PSVR won't even be released for some time yet), so they would have to put some time into it. Hopefully they will.
No, what they're telling developers is to start there and then work their way up, to ensure smooth performance, not that that's all the PS4 can do in VR. We've seen many PSVR games and demos that are clearly more impressive than your average PS3 title.
TheSporkWithin
Member
The article outright states that it will happen, but the actual quotes say something different, that it might happen. It definitely doesn't sound like it's something the studio is actually working on, but rather that it'll probably happen (perhaps at the hands of modders). There's a world of difference and the headline is painting it in a very different light than anything that Blow actually said.
Actually, the CPU impact depends greatly on the details of your implementation. If it does support instanced stereo rendering it should be rather small, if it doesn't it can be very significant. Instanced stereo could be hard to retrofit on a custom engine for an indie dev. (Of course, this is all speculation)
Sure. But the minimum spec on PC is a HD4000 GPU. I think the engine could survive scaling down on PS4.
Maybe it has been coded in a less flexible way on PS4 so it would be a lot more work to update. Shouldn't be, but it is possible.
Might be just that the way the game is structured would require it to be re-think to reach the necessary optimisation for PSVR. While for PC there upper limit for the required resources is much higher, so less optimisation is required, so maybe it can be done without too many corners to cut.
If we're speculating, it's easy to construct scenarios where VR support on PS4 would require some significant re-engineering. Like if the minimum PC CPU requirements referred to 30 FPS, and the engine did not scale well to multiple CPU threads. For this particular game it does seem hard to imagine a scenario where it would not be possible to port it at all, but not so difficult to imagine one in which the effort required is non-trivial.
texhnolyze
Banned
Yes, the title is quite misleading.
Will is 100% happening, while might is not really.