I first tried VR a few years ago when the company I was working for at the time got a few headsets, and I wasn't really impressed. I was nauseous after 5 minutes of walking around in a space that looked like 1/16th of a wannabe Team Fortress Classic map. I didn't give it another thought and wrote it off as a shitty gimmick.

A year or so later there was another hardware revision and some much more promising demos that made me reconsider VR's potential as a proper gaming platform, but I still wasn't totally convinced because there still weren't any fully fleshed out games.

Now, the hardware has had years of testing and refining and it's at the point where games really do look great in a headset. However, since it's such a new platform, developers are going to struggle to figure out what kind of experiences are the most compelling so it'll be interesting to see what the public's reaction is as well as what the gaming press champions as the system sellers.

There is a palpable "this makes me feel like a kid again" kind of experience that happens when you're playing a fun, good looking game in VR but I think people will need to try it because there is just no way to explain or demonstrate that feeling without putting on a headset. 

VR for games I think is going to be fun, but I also feel it will go beyond "fun fun" games in use, training of various types, therapy etc...

I am even more looking forward to some far out immersive musical and visual abstract artistic uses of it.

The 360 degree videos as a base have some really really neat prospects.

Of course games can cross these boundaries.

The mind boggles... 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwE6dxM0O2PsS1pfNWlEWEoyTkk/view 

http://i.imgur.com/4Db7smo.gifv 

The speed is disorientating - once you take off the Occulus.

I adapted to it ok, playing with a hydra: http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-controllers/razer-hydra-portal-2-bundle

Played the classic Light for Q2 (Lazarus mod) and run around warp spasm with a modded Quakespasm port.

You really notice the change in speed with real world movement. I got a bit of vertigo after unplugging.

Neither really used the potential of the system that much. A better one I played was a HL2 mod, where the actions for fighting had to be done with the hands. So, reloading the magnum you had to bring your right hand up and tilt it to bang out the spent cartridges.

To look down the scope of the crossbow you had to hold your hands up to shoulder height in the correct posture.

I don't think a Quake game would translate well to the flexibility of VR.

One of the most impressive I played was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y5ADiz7Iio

That's an older version apparently - the one I played had two hands (grapples) and larger environments. Still not graphically amazing and without any real goal, but it gives you an idea of the scope of things.

Needless to say, but the immersion is incredible :) 

Not inspired myself but maybe actually trying it would change that. Certainly seems to be quite prevalent at the moment, will be interesting to see how it pans out, and how people's actually experiences pan out... 

I tried one on last week at my college. The program I got to play around in was hella buggy, not because of the Rift, but because physics objects could get stuck on your hands and they could also go through you. That was a creepy experience, having something solid pass right through you.

I could totally imagine a melee-focused game like Shadow Warrior doing well in VR, even without motion controls. I just hope that, if first person melee becomes the Next Big Thing, melee kills are actually challenging and not just QTEs. 

Looks kinda tedious. 

Just occurred to me - nobody mentioned the application of VR into assisting in level design and other content creation equally for non-VR and VR games.

Taking quake level design - could it possibly offer some advantages as an interface instead of the classic monitors ? 

Saw an Unreal Engine 4 stream a month or so ago where they did exactly this. You could use the hand motion controllers to edit assets and use the hmd to look around and under/over things etc. It looked really, really cool if slightly rough around the edges atm.

With some more development and refinements I think it could be a wonderful tool! 

The best VR game I've tried yet was a VR Jockey game with a horse peripheral.
Very similar to this -

http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/27/oculus-rift-horse-riding-simulator-hashilus/

and this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Iizz50NHg



It was actually brilliant, I've played Hawken in VR and a few FPS games. Hands down the Jockey game was the best. 

Have you seen this?

https://youtu.be/jnqFdSa5p7w?t=59s

Not leveldesign tho 

that app reminds me of sculptris
http://pixologic.com/sculptris/
you should have a play, it's pretty fun. 

But this looks cool stylistically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8twzdNMOek , cartoony style done nicely. 

I haven't played quake, but I played half-life 2 (and some vr demos) using DK1 about a year ago.

I was so impressed by the level in the beginning of hl2 when you run through rooftops from combines. I played that level many times without VR but in VR it was a completely different experience. Walkways seems so narrow in VR and I passed the whole level rubbing walls trying to stay away from the edge. Tho I'm not afraid of height IRL.

The sense of scale, the sence of presence is fantastic in VR (even in old DK1). I want to buy consumer version rift in near future. 

Did anybody solve the "rotate 360 degrees" problem yet? Any good ideas there?

I tried a rift, and it works great, esp. the headtracking, just that you can NEVER look directly behind you or turn around without completely destroying the experience by suddenly disconnecting view and head rotation (aka, you have to use mouse to turn), which makes it totally unusable for anything but the most simple on a rail games. 

I just got my Gear VR today, and from what I've tried out it's pretty great with a ton of potential. I don't think you can do the standard quake-style FPS using VR, but the possibilities for innovation are definitely there. 

Zwiff, I have played a couple of FPS games in VR and I agree. I don't think the current way or even the old way works well.

I personally think the genre that stands to gain the most from VR is myst and riven style exploration games. I think whoever gets in there first stands to make a pure fortune. 

http://uploadvr.com/facebook-oculus-privacy/ 

Being owned by facebook, this is not surprising. I think I'll pass.

It's a shame how many tech companies have decided they have a right to invade a users privacy and use whatever data they can acquire for their own monetary gain. 

Sold his soul... 

Obliviously it's kinda cherry picked footage to make it look meh, but I think it's make good point: real life experience is a really limiting UI, having to do anything manually is a pain the fucking ass and this point it just becomes glorified Wii.

I'm not saying what VR will fail or anything, it kinda just reinforces my feeling what it's better idea to wait for 2nd or 3rd gen of vr till input methods and overall technology will become more refined (just like how awkward pre wasd shooters feel comparing to modern games). 

doom 1 & 2 on oculus

until recently I was under the assumption that carmack left id to spend more time on armadillo aerospace...