WINNER: HTC Vive
If
there was one piece of PC Gaming technology of the year that dominated my world, it had to be HTC’s Vive Virtual Reality kit. I became a long-time dreamer of the potential of VR after playing with the terrible arcade kits in the ‘90s; even though they sucked, they hinted at the potential of what was to come. I didn’t realise it would take another 20 years for my dreams to become a reality, but the moment I pulled down the Vive headset and was transported into another world like no game had ever done, I knew we were on the verge of something incredibly exciting.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still huge challenges facing VR. Even the mightily expensive Vive has some rather big issues. It’s bulky, you’re chained to your PC via a long tether, and the resolution is pretty average, making it easy to see pixels in a world where we’re accustomed to Retina and 4K displays. Then there’s the problem of setting aside a play area that realistically should be around 2.5m by 2.5m as an absolute minimum. There’s also the area of software; building a game for VR is so dramatically different to any other genre, that most of the current experiences feel more like experiments than fully-fledged games.
And yet… no game has ever truly encapsulated the feeling of being transported into another world like my experiences with the Vive. The Rift almost delivers as good an experience, but its lack of motion controls and room- scale gameplay definitely makes it the lesser of the two kits (though my Oculus Touch controllers are in the mail – stay tuned for my review in the near future).
Prior to Vive being released, I knew a hell of a lot of VR sceptics, which is surprising when so many of my associates are technology journalists. To see the huge grin on their face after just an hour or two with the device, and to hear their opinions do a 180 degree turn in such a short term, indicates to me that VR really does have the potential to take over gaming as we know it.
Sure, there will still be a few folks who suffer from nausea or who have eyesight issues which could prevent them from experiencing it properly, but I do believe that VR is here to stay. I highly doubt it will be in the form in which it currently exists, replacing bulky headsets with retinal projectors (which seems to be what the highly secretive Magic Leap project is working on), or using electronic stimulation to fool our brains into thinking we’re moving to overcome motion sickness, but I can’t wait to see what comes next. It’s an incredible time to be a gamer with VR now proving to be possible, and that’s just the start, with the technology having far-reaching implications that go well beyond blasting virtual soldiers. Truth be told though, I’m happy to simply use it for entertainment…
no game has ever truly encapsulated the feeling of being transported into another world like the Vive