GDC 2016: Helmets aren't the biggest challenge facing VR games

This week, GDC kicked off in San Francisco, USA. With the debut of the PS VR consumer version, the three major VR headsets were all in place, and they undoubtedly became the most eye-catching booths of the conference. However, while players' attention was still focused on the newly released hardware devices, developers' thoughts had already gone beyond the helmets.

As immersive technology is increasingly used in game development, the conference held the first Virtual Reality Game Developers Conference (VRDC) for this purpose, which became a highlight of GDC2016. During this period, Engadget reporters interviewed many senior game developers around the world about the challenges faced by VR games. From this, we can feel that the hardware platform is not the topic that developers are most concerned about. So, what are the difficulties facing VR game development at present?

Game Design

Bao Yongzhe, vice president of HTC's virtual reality new technology department, once expressed the following view: the threshold for VR games is not higher than that for ordinary games. For PC game teams, the biggest difficulty in developing VR games lies in creativity. Although it is difficult to quantitatively measure the difficulty of game development, the importance of creativity is difficult to be replaced by other factors regardless of the type of game.

Shawn Patton, senior game designer at Schell Games, said that compared to other more traditional games, the most difficult thing to grasp when designing VR games is the psychological expectations of players and the actual effects of the game. Ryan Rutherford, software engineer at Oculus, mentioned that VR is more suitable for first-person games, and how to use it for third-person game design is a challenging problem. Ryan participated in the development of Oculus' first shooting VR game "The Underground".

It can be seen that VR game development is still in an exploratory stage. What kind of game design can both attract players and show the characteristics of VR still needs to be summarized in practice.

Graphics

For a long time, a word that is inseparable from VR is "vertigo", and the frame rate of the picture is one of the reasons for this problem. At present, the standards achieved by high-end helmets can largely avoid the occurrence of vertigo from the hardware level. However, if the quality of the game content cannot keep up, the effect of the hardware will be greatly reduced. This is like if there is a lack of 4K content, a 4K TV is just a decoration.

Eric Nosinger, Chief Creative Officer of High Voltage, emphasized this issue. According to the recommendations of HTC VIVE, Oculus Rift and PSVR, the frame rate of the picture should reach 90 FPS. For ordinary games, 60FPS is already a very high frame rate. For game designers, this means that the picture to be rendered is 1.5 times the original one, which is indeed a big challenge. Similar problems also exist in the parameter of picture resolution.

The game's graphics performance will ultimately be directly reflected in the players' word of mouth, which is also an inevitable problem for high-quality VR games. By the way, the VR game "Damaged Core" designed by Eric is known as the "least dizzy" game for Oculus.

Immersive Interaction

As we all know, immersion is the most prominent feature of VR, and it is also the biggest challenge for game developers.

"When you get closer to an object in the game, its size should also increase." In traditional games, the player's perspective is usually controlled by the developer and is determined at the beginning of the game design, so the interaction problem seems much simpler. "There is no mature interaction template for VR games yet. In terms of the UI and the choice of interaction methods, any attempt is groundbreaking." Even a small detail that is inconsistent with people's common sense will remind players "Oh, this is just a game." This is not the highest level of immersion. Some developers also believe that the integration of VR and AR can bring a better immersive experience.

Of course, the specific problems faced by developers are far more than this. The hardware is gradually in place, but the challenges of VR games have just begun.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.