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"The Witness" will have VR compatibility on PC, no support for PSVR

DavidDesu

Member
Most of the best PSVR demoed games like Rigs and Driveclub are running 60 interpolated to 120. Most people seemed very happy with that so I don't think a very slow paced game like The Witness would be a problem at all. The fact it's running 60fps native 1080 is promising, so I wonder why he's ruled it out and wonder if it's something that might be reconsidered later.

I'm happy to jump into this game now and rediscover it on PSVR later anyways. I'd probably play it in VR just to live in the environments rather than directly play the puzzle element of the game. Fingers crossed we get good news eventually. High sales for The Witness seem promising we might as it seems a great candidate for a VR version and there will be no excuse in terms of financial issues in making it happen.
 

Synth

Member
Anything that works on OR should work on PSVR

Sorry, but this just sounds silly to me tbh. There's such a ridiculous gap between the Rift's "minimum spec" and a PS4. With that sort of performance difference it's easy to run games that struggle to hold 30fps on a console at higher res, at 60fps, which details massively increased on PC. The differences between the headsets (slight res bump at 50% higher framerate) is not going to account for the vast gulf in hardware capabilities. Especially not as a "minimum" spec, meaning that to run on that rig, the games on PC will probably already require much of the graphical cuts that would usually be applied to a console version in the first place. I mean, the minimum CPU is an i5 ffs. This isn't an XB1 to PS4 type performance gap here.

This doesn't even take into account that Oculus Rift will work immediately with a ton of games that won't be subject to the limitations of the Rift store (which will have to change over time anyway, considering PC hardware is an ever changing target). Something like Elite Dangerous struggles to simply run at 60fps on an XB1, and that's without the more demanding planetary landing stuff, let alone whatever else will be added to the game. The minimum requirements for VR for that game on PC requires at least a 980Ti. Far beyond what would be required to simply run the game at the target resolution and framerate of the PC VR headsets. The game wouldn't be seeing VR on a console without some Driveclub-esque retooling of the game in general. It's going to be interesting to see how games like Project Cars fair, that are already out on PS4, yet fail to consistently meet the required targets even in a single screen environment. If the first sign of weather in that game is enough to send the game's framerate hurtling down, then some very serious cuts are going to be required to make a VR mode for it feasible.

So no, it's not just experimental games/demos, Vive exclusives and OR contracted games that'll have problems. There will be a whole bunch of games that are simply designed in the same fashion that any normal release is, but on PC can add a VR mode, because the performance of the hardware doesn't require it to drastically alter the core game. I wouldn't be surprised to see VR as a standard feature in pretty much any cockpit-style PC game in the near future, whilst on console these games would have to be considered VR titles first and foremost in order to work with PSVR. There's likely to be a lot of cases similar to this one going forwards.
 

Oppo

Member
well I understand Blow's reasoning.

even if I think it's hilarious that he wanted to spend extra man years adding structural bolts to landings and moldings to doorframes, rather than adding the seemingly obvious and very complimentary VR support.

there is a larger problem that they may have encountered which is that fiddly little text elements do not resolve well in VR right now, and it is a puzzle game after all...
 

eot

Banned
well I understand Blow's reasoning.

even if I think it's hilarious that he wanted to spend extra man years adding structural bolts to landings and moldings to doorframes, rather than adding the seemingly obvious and very complimentary VR support.

there is a larger problem that they may have encountered which is that fiddly little text elements do not resolve well in VR right now, and it is a puzzle game after all...

He did add VR support. I rather him place all the bolts he wants to make his game perfect in his mind than spending his time trying to meet some arbitrary feature list.
 
Driveclub doesn't support VR. They are building a special new version called Driveclub VR.

That's interesting news, Will be interesting to see what they have to sacrifice to make it VR.

On topic I understand making it possible to be VR on the PC, but constraints on the PSVR will mean we may see more of this in the future.

I hope PSVR is a success, but with so many devices I wonder if the choice is going to do more harm than good overall.
 
Not really surprising - PSVR was always going to have a problem with titles not outright designed for VR either having trouble making the jump to it or not making the jump at all. Motion sickness issues for games involving walking movement aside, most games won't have nearly the leeway for optimization and keeping the visuals relatively intact, pretty much any game designed to use 30FPS on console will require a generation's worth of downgrades. The Witness could get away with less than that, but your average COD, for example? Nope.
 
I think this might be even worse than I expected - I'm feeling some motion sickness after playing for an hour on a screen. (I've never had motion sickness from a first person game on a screen before.)
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
It's mandatory that games on the Oculus store can run on a 970 (hitting 90fps), and that will be the case throughout the life of the first Rift headset. Granted, games will release outside of the Oculus Store which require higher specs (Elite, for example) but a 970 will handle a lot of VR games no problem.

I've been playing PC games for a long time, and the definition of "run" is pretty important there.

Like I said, if I was building a PC for VR, I would not try to cut corners. Actually I am building one and plan to get whatever the successor to the 980ti is.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Sorry, but this just sounds silly to me tbh. There's such a ridiculous gap between the Rift's "minimum spec" and a PS4. With that sort of performance difference it's easy to run games that struggle to hold 30fps on a console at higher res, at 60fps, which details massively increased on PC. The differences between the headsets (slight res bump at 50% higher framerate) is not going to account for the vast gulf in hardware capabilities. Especially not as a "minimum" spec, meaning that to run on that rig, the games on PC will probably already require much of the graphical cuts that would usually be applied to a console version in the first place. I mean, the minimum CPU is an i5 ffs. This isn't an XB1 to PS4 type performance gap here.

This doesn't even take into account that Oculus Rift will work immediately with a ton of games that won't be subject to the limitations of the Rift store (which will have to change over time anyway, considering PC hardware is an ever changing target). Something like Elite Dangerous struggles to simply run at 60fps on an XB1, and that's without the more demanding planetary landing stuff, let alone whatever else will be added to the game. The minimum requirements for VR for that game on PC requires at least a 980Ti. Far beyond what would be required to simply run the game at the target resolution and framerate of the PC VR headsets. The game wouldn't be seeing VR on a console without some Driveclub-esque retooling of the game in general. It's going to be interesting to see how games like Project Cars fair, that are already out on PS4, yet fail to consistently meet the required targets even in a single screen environment. If the first sign of weather in that game is enough to send the game's framerate hurtling down, then some very serious cuts are going to be required to make a VR mode for it feasible.

So no, it's not just experimental games/demos, Vive exclusives and OR contracted games that'll have problems. There will be a whole bunch of games that are simply designed in the same fashion that any normal release is, but on PC can add a VR mode, because the performance of the hardware doesn't require it to drastically alter the core game. I wouldn't be surprised to see VR as a standard feature in pretty much any cockpit-style PC game in the near future, whilst on console these games would have to be considered VR titles first and foremost in order to work with PSVR. There's likely to be a lot of cases similar to this one going forwards.


Why would a title have to be VR first and foremost to be considered for PSVR? If i is a cockpit game like you mention then it should be suitable. I know Sony have made noises about 'built for VR' but so have oculus - it's the usual stuff you'd expect from a platform holder trying to sell the quality of their system.

I agree you'll have games that need more power, but I was going on oculus' own recommended spec of a 970. I do not think it is unreasonable to think that most games designed to run at 90Hz at the higher resolution of the OR, could be adapted for PSVR running at lower resolution and 60fps. Likely with drops in detail of course, but PC engines support that and it should be achievable without too much effort. Certainly if I was a developer targeting VR, I'd want it on PSVR as well as OR/Vive.
 

Synth

Member
Why would a title have to be VR first and foremost to be considered for PSVR? If i is a cockpit game like you mention then it should be suitable. I know Sony have made noises about 'built for VR' but so have oculus - it's the usual stuff you'd expect from a platform holder trying to sell the quality of their system.

I agree you'll have games that need more power, but I was going on oculus' own recommended spec of a 970. I do not think it is unreasonable to think that most games designed to run at 90Hz at the higher resolution of the OR, could be adapted for PSVR running at lower resolution and 60fps. Likely with drops in detail of course, but PC engines support that and it should be achievable without too much effort. Certainly if I was a developer targeting VR, I'd want it on PSVR as well as OR/Vive.

The reason I say that VR would have to be an early consideration (in general... there will be edge cases like Driveclub, where they'll basically retool the game massively to make it work), is because games focus on looking as good as they can as a general priority, and very few studios are going to leave the required overhead to allow a game to easily transition to VR.. whereas for PC, they have little to worry about, because the simple act of catering for the consoles leave the PC with ridiculous amounts of headroom to do more after the fact. Consider that not only will the vast majority of PS4 users not have a PSVR headset, but also zero XB1 users that will also be buying the game.. it's not dissimilar to expecting widespread Kinect features to be added for 360 games once the device sold a ton. It doesn't matter, because it's still a serious minority.

How many 1080p/60fps locked retail games exist on either console right now? Of those that adhere to the "cockpit" template that VR suits best... I can think of only Forza 5 and 6... and they're on the wrong platform to begin with (and are routinely mocked for the concessions made to hit this target). There's basically nothing else that run even in the less demanding single-screen environment, to a standard that would be required for any VR game.

I'm not sure if you have a PC that matches the minimum spec Oculus requests (my PC actually matches it exactly), but there's a whole lot more of a performance gap than you may expect.. and for a minimum spec, that will already imply the graphics be set to the absolute minimum, which will typically be below what a console version is usually reduced to. And the minimum spec isn't even likely to remain in place for any notable length of time... there are games like Elite Dangerous (and probably certainly Project Cars), that'll require specs higher than this before the headsets even hit the market... within a year or two the 970 will be old hat, and the new baseline will be significantly higher... but a PS4 will remain the same throughout it's life, as will the headset. Expecting the PC market (and games developers) to simply adhere to an old outdated soft requirement for years on end is extremely unrealistic.
 

Durante

Member
Apparently (as per the PC perf thread, will try it tonight) the game already supports SteamVR to some extent with the -VR parameter!
 

Wallach

Member
Apparently (as per the PC perf thread, will try it tonight) the game already supports SteamVR to some extent with the -VR parameter!

You actually have to uninstall SteamVR to get it to work right now. It's definitely not finished support either (the positional tracking doesn't seem to track depth 1:1 or something) and the pause menu is nearly unusable. But it does work and is cooooooool (and makes me want Obduction in VR even more).
 

spectator

Member
Maybe it has something to do with the game not being 1080p on PS4.

???

I was pretty certain that it is 1080p on PS4...

After spending some time with the game, I sure hope a PSVR version becomes a reality at some point. I'd like to spend some time "living on" the island.
 

jaypah

Member
???

I was pretty certain that it is 1080p on PS4...

After spending some time with the game, I sure hope a PSVR version becomes a reality at some point. I'd like to spend some time "living on" the island.

I thought someone did a check and found out it was 900p? Which would actually be funny if some of our more "eagle eyed" members didn't notice it.
 
Some site did a pixel count and said it's 900p which I have no reason to doubt but it's hard. This game has the best IQ of anything I've ever played. I haven't seen a pixel. Everything is just...smooth. And perfect. Like you're looking through a magical window.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
I thought someone did a check and found out it was 900p? Which would actually be funny if some of our more "eagle eyed" members didn't notice it.
Who was it that said it was 900p? Curious if it was someone reliable or not. Don't have the game myself yet.
 
I thought someone did a check and found out it was 900p? Which would actually be funny if some of our more "eagle eyed" members didn't notice it.

Some site did a pixel count and said it's 900p which I have no reason to doubt but it's hard. This game has the best IQ of anything I've ever played. I haven't seen a pixel. Everything is just...smooth. And perfect. Like you're looking through a magical window.

Who was it that said it was 900p? Curious if it was someone reliable or not. Don't have the game myself yet.

This is the only source I've got.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OREh6fOaEP4

They're usually spot on though.
 
Yea, I posted that in the PC thread (which someone else originally posted in the OT, lol).

The Witness is native 1600*900, which is shocking considering how clean the IQ is.

Must be some good AA solution being used.

Yes, the engine uses high quality MSAA, which cleans everything up nicely.
 
i think that's the final nail in the coffin for me deciding to buy The Witness.

once i heard about how hard the puzzles were and how long it was i got a little worried, but now 900p and no PSVR- which i was ASSuming would be supported when it launches, just pushed me away.

if things change in the future with an enhanced edition or something like that, then sure, but for now i need to save my $40.
 

Durante

Member
Just to add to earlier discussions in the thread, using the existing VR support on PC requires dialing back settings to slightly-above-low on a 970, and even with those settings Tain's i7 2600k is insufficient CPU-wise in some situations without OC. And this is at DK2's 75Hz!

Yeah, it's preliminary support and surely not optimized, but it does show that some seriously non-trivial effort would be required to get it to run acceptably on PSVR.
 
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