Argument For Vr

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by rpeterbroughlowe, Dec 21, 2020.

  1. rpeterbroughlowe

    rpeterbroughlowe Active Member

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    Hello everyone,


    I think it is about time DTG started to look at VR seriously as other ‘sit down’ simulators have done with incredible results without the need for NASA level hardware. I’m going to argue the following points having spent nearly 20 years in the hobby off and on and followed its steady development to what we have today with TSW2. DTG have achieved great things, the new LGV route is a work of art. I’m also a keen Flight Simulator enthusiast and have used several VR headsets, systems and applications. I hope this does not come across as condescending or even smug. I feel it necessary that my arguments come from a little experience, although I would not claim to be an expert.

    I’m aware that DTG held a pole a few years ago to understand if people were interested in VR compared to , multiplayer, editor and new features etc. It did not do so well, coming way down the list, somewhere near the bottom. DTG flirted with a development build with the Oculus Dev headset for Train Sim Classic (TS2018 at the time I think) however this was not continued any further as far as the consumer was concerned. The poll held (lhttps://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/a-vr-survey.15030/) put the nail in the coffin for further development. This is completely understandable. Simulation is a rich environment, there is so many other elements that can yield player satisfaction and commercial success, it is not surprising VR isn’t even on the want list, never mind an official roadmap. However, I’m going to (hopefully) systematically make the argument that VR is ‘necessary’ for a simulator, namely this one.

    VR is costly and elitist, only for people who can afford a £5K system.

    I’m not arguing that everyone should want VR, I’m suggesting that DTG should develop a beta development branch for VR users. The thrust of this criticism for developing VR is that it would prejudice people that don’t have the means to access the VR functionality. A typical consumer headset cost anywhere from £300 – £800. The Oculus Quest 2 represents quite possibly the best value for money right now at £299, however you still need the beef to run the games. It certainly isn’t a cheap option, However to put this into perspective, the Oculus CV1 on launch cost approximately £600 and Vive around £900. The price has halved in 4 years whilst improving performance 2-fold and in some cases more. For those with the hardware, a headset isn’t the big investment and leap of faith it once was.


    As for the elitist argument - A 4 year old GTX 1070, i5 6th gen can run DCS World perfectly fine on a CV1 with medium high settings, with pixel setting at 1.4. The same systems runs TSW2 at around 40 +FPS, enough for VR. I recently sold this system privately for around £200.

    What passes as ‘playable’ is subjective and everyone will have their own benchmark. If you want 90FPS with a system as quoted above, you’ll be dearly disappointed.

    “VR needs 90FPS”

    Not true.

    VR would be very hard to implement and take DTG development time away from things that most players want.

    I hope Mr P does not mind me saying this, but it was recently revealed that implementing VR (in a very rough and raw form) is a case of ticking a box in the unreal engine. Clearly this wouldn’t push across the UI work that DTG have done. Given that I’m suggesting an open development beta for VR, this wouldn’t matter much. We didn’t spend money on a headset to get action points (sorry that was a bit glib but couldn’t resist!). Stick us inside the cab with nothing else, that would be a start. Remember expectations are low as we will be playing this with the express understanding that this would be a beta and far from a polished product.

    Even so, why would DTG use resources on developing even a raw dev implementation of VR into the game given the niche appeal?

    Once again, I would like to point out that I’m still not addressing the playerbase here. I’m not saying people should want VR, that’s a slightly different post, maybe for another day! I’m addressing DTG directly. People didn’t want the iphone before it was launched in 2007, I didn’t want a VR headset until I saw VR in DCS world. Necessity isn’t the mother of all wants or inventions in the context of gaming. Who would ever think we wanted a game in the 21st century where we can play as a duck or pretend to build worlds out of big green blocks?

    I think my point is that DTG can create the want. Create the feasibility through open development with basic implementation. The growth of ‘want’ would drive commercial justification. A minor example would be (in my personal case) as follows; I’m not fussed about BR blue Transpennine Route being simulated, the lack of intricate control systems (albeit being prototypical for the era) puts me off. Would I buy it if there was VR? Yes! The thought of being IN the cab of a ’45, that’s a different proposition. Sitting in my front room looking at a ’45 cab on a 2D screen, can’t say that’s the peak (ha- get it?) of immersion. All of a sudden just about every product DTG releases becomes a variable purchase for more people that would have overlooked otherwise. People look for certain things in a simulation, simulation probably being the main thing!

    VR is a gimmick,

    For some games yes, there’s plenty of novelty rubbish out there. However, just ask any of the developers of DCS world, IL2, X-plane and in 12 hours time, Microsoft Flight Simulator that VR is a gimmick. It has become an entry reason alone. These developers put VR int their titles and people bought it because of that.

    I implore DTG to take another look at VR for TSW2.


    Kind regards


    Richard
     
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  2. rodgers.jayshawn4848

    rodgers.jayshawn4848 Active Member

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    Agree
     
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  3. Factor41

    Factor41 Well-Known Member

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    I've been loving playing Ace Combat 7 for the last couple of months. I've completed the campaign a few times over in nomal mode, but there was only one reason I bought it in the first place... the awesome VR mode!
     
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  4. Rail Runner

    Rail Runner Well-Known Member

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    I personally would love to have VR support. Especially for PS4. That would be amazing because we don’t have Raildriver support, it would be a good compromise because we could potentially use the Move Controllers to manually move buttons and controls etc.
    But like you said above, it is very hard to implement and to get accurate. So I hope that if it was added, that it would work correctly.
     
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  5. FD1003

    FD1003 Well-Known Member

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    Sorry if I go on a bit of a tangent here, but I think this argument is very true for any external controller support on Consoles, even more so than VR.

    Many people that are passionate about trains that never had a PC but have a console, now, for the first time, have the possibility to access a serious Train Sim. Granted, there is an argument for "If you have RD you must have a PC" which is kind of true, this comment is aimed a bit more towards the people for example at PI Engineering, they can potentially access a mostly untapped market to sell Raildrivers, and offer stupid people like me that switched from PC to console (for reasons I won't state to avoid any PC Masterrace vs Console Peasants arguments) the option to take some dust off some of the external controllers.

    There is some serious potential to attract a decent amount of people into buying things they didn't even know existed or just went "oh that's for PC..." and it's a bit disappointing to see it left unused, If I had the skill and resources I would launch a Raildriver competitor for consoles lol
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2020
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  6. rpeterbroughlowe

    rpeterbroughlowe Active Member

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    "There is some serious potential to attract a decent amount of people into buying things they didn't even knew existed or just went "oh that's for PC..." and it's a bit disappointing to see it left unused, If I had the skill and resources I would launch a Raildriver competitor for consoles lol"

    I think you've summarized one of my main points there quite well there. It's very true, Rail Simulation is more or less a one title market at the minute. I know the guys are keen to implement HOTAS/Rail driver control as it's been lacking in TSW2 since launch. Alan Thompson Sim is offering a lot of new USB input devices, you might want to a word with him to see if there will be console support for them :)

    For a developer to Dismiss it as too much of a niche, doesn't quite address the points I've argued.

    Kind regards

    Richard
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2020
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  7. DTG Matt

    DTG Matt Executive Producer Staff Member

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    Chipping in here thought i've put thoughts in another thread as well but you raise some points so I thought i'd respond :)

    "VR is costly and elitist, only for people who can afford a £5K system."

    Agree with your comments on the whole, however VR is currently an evolving marketplace. The Rift-S PCVR solution is a nicely priced system (and was still before its recent drop in price) whereas conversely the Index is significantly more expensive and Valve have clearly seen things going a different way to Oculus. So on the Oculus side, prices improved, on the Vive etc side, things got more expensive not less.

    But the major evolution is that there is no "current" PCVR solution from Oculus - the Rift-S is now I think discontinued and Oculus are pushing the Quest 2 as the way forwards. I have no idea how well this performs as a PCVR system but I can definitely say that trying to get TSW to run on-board a Quest 2 is a bit too much of an ask :)

    I've heard of users using a Virtual Desktop app to get their Quest 2 running PCVR games but honestly, that's not plug and play, it's fiddling around.

    So right now, I'm keenly watching how the PCVR space evolves, and additionally I'm watching to see how Console VR evolves because if anything will drive mass adoption it'll be console VR - as it did with PSVR, we just need the next gen equivalent however i'm not seeing anything like that on the horizon at the moment. Leaving you with Quest 2 and Index really as the two leading systems. I've not looked into the new Reverb system, i'll be honest.

    "“VR needs 90FPS”

    Completely agree with your comments, there's no need for that now, there's sufficient trickery in the tool kits that you can have a great experience with less than that. I remember running a flight sim a few years back on an older PC and wondering how the framerate was so good - but in fact it was just reprojection and other tricks that were turning a 30fps experience in to an apparent 90fps experience. If i hadn't checked the FPS I wouldn't have been the wiser and would have just carried on enjoying my time (which I actually did, because I'm not an FPS counter :) ).

    "VR would be very hard to implement and take DTG development time away from things that most players want."

    So - as i've said on another thread, it's not that hard to implement but neither is it "ticking a box". That would not give you anything worth giving to players because it would be unplayable - you'd have no user interface at all (or worse, you'd have it cross eyed across both screens or something horrendous) and quite possibly other post-process visual artifacts. At the absolute minimum the UI would need re-thinking to fit so that at least you knew what your objectives were. As an example, in the test integration for Train Simulator 2014, shadows were rendered after the point that oculus took the data - which meant shadows were all in the wrong places, also particle effects just flat out didn't work at all, various lighting issues were present and so forth, not to mention the eye-winking game of trying to navigate a non-VR user interface. It was a great showcase that Train Sims work as a VR experience but it wasn't fun to use for long.

    There is also something important to be said for giving people a bad experience first out of the gate. Why rush something half baked just to tick the "supports VR" box which is unsatisfying and just leaves you wanting more, particularly if there is no plan to actually do that, that's just going to frustrate people more.

    So in this case, not hard to implement, but a small team that has a large amount of tasks needs to prioritise carefully.

    "Even so, why would DTG use resources on developing even a raw dev implementation of VR into the game given the niche appeal?"

    The simple answer is as above, there's just a lot of other tasks that more players want to see, if there was spare time in the schedule then absolutely I don't see why not - but I can confirm there is no spare time :)

    "VR is a gimmick"

    I certainly don't think VR is a gimmick - I feel it adds immensely to the immersion of the experience, I do think that there are just not enough people who want it and can use it sufficiently well to get a good experience out of it and actually chucking VR in "ticking a box" might do more harm than good.

    Matt.
     
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  8. rpeterbroughlowe

    rpeterbroughlowe Active Member

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    Hi Matt,

    Thank you ever so much for taking the time to give me a detailed response, it really is very appreciated.

    The point you make about giving someone a bad VR experience out of the gate is a great point and one I hadn't considered and you're right.

    I'm really happy DTG have recognised VR as an option for the future and included in the player Survey - I that was my main objective. I don't expect it to do very well this time around, but at least it's on the radar.

    Kind regards

    Richard
     
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