The Evolution Of Virtual Reality Games | 2016 to 2020
It’s been four years since consumer headsets like the vibe, rift and PlayStation VR released and in those four years we’ve seen developers really start to get to grips with VR game development. Over the past six months, especially on pc it feels like we’ve moved on to a new generation of VR gaming. I’m going to break things down into four categories to see how far things have come:-
- Graphics
- Interaction
- Playtime
- Movement
Graphics:-
VR games are always going to be a step down in graphical fidelity over their non-VR counterparts and this is simply down to the amount of power that’s required to run them. You’ve got to render the image twice one per eye and you’ve got to run at higher refresh rates to avoid making people nauseous. This means that the majority of developers’ especially smaller indie developers choose to go with some lower poly art style and less power hungry baked in lighting. That doesn’t mean VR games have to look shit some games still look great like “I expect you to die” or “Arizona sunshine”. But watching someone play them on a flat screen isn’t going to impress anyone and make them want to jump out and buy a headset. There were some early outliers with “the climb”, a launch title with the oculus rift having some of the best visuals today.
“Batman arkham VR” was another great launch title for the PlayStation VR which has some incredible looking character models and environments. It also got one of the best endings of any video game I’ve ever played. These were the games that were funded by oculus and Sony and over the years the best looking games have generally always been exclusives. Games like” lone echo”, “Arktica.1” on the rift and games like “astro bot” and “far point” on the PlayStation VR
Another way we’ve seen some great looking games to come to virtual reality has been through ports or existing games getting a VR mode added. “Resident evil 7” and “wiper omega” collection has VR support on the PlayStation VR you’ve got “hellblade senua sacrifice” and “subnautica” which have VR support on pc. You’ve also got games like “project cars 2” which have full VR support along with many flight simulators. One of the best looking VR games I’ve seen is the “vanishing of ethan carter” on pc. This game uses photogrammetry how some of the most photo realistic environments you’re gonna find in any game if you’re playing VR on pc. You also have the benefit of mods with games like “alien isolation” and “grand theft auto 5” which are fully playable in virtual reality and look great.
There are a few examples of great looking VR games that aren’t exclusives, ports or mods “transference” published by ubisoft has some of the best lighting and visuals of any VR game. “Seeking dawn” is another example of a VR game made by smaller studio with some stunning scenery “westworld awakening” released last year and looks fantastic but when it comes to visuals we’ve seen a couple of standout games released over the last few months. “asgard’s wrath” an oculus exclusive released at the end of last year and at the time it was the best looking VR game today. Then “half-life alyx” happened and it set a new benchmark in what was capable visually with the current hardware we have right now.
Visuals are obviously subjective and some people rank them higher than others. Personally I like a game to look good, I struggle to really get into a VR game that’s got basic visuals unless the gameplay is really good like “Superhot VR” for example. With the PlayStation 5 on the horizon and hopefully Sony’s continued support for virtual reality I think when we look back in another four years’ time we will see some games that simply blow us away visually.
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