Why SOTA should support Virtual Reality

1. In the book Ready Player One the main designer of the VR universe OASIS is based primarily off of Richard Garriot (https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/ready-player-one.57868/). Steven Spielberg will release a film next year based on this book. This is a great PR opportunity for SOTA.
2. Min-Liang Tan is the CEO of Razer Inc. and a huge Ultima Fan. He gave I assume 10000 USD to SOTA. He is one of the main characters in SOTA. He also is one of the founding members of the Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) platform and a huge proponent of VR. I think he would be ecstatic to see SOTA support VR and especially OSVR. I am still quite annoyed that Oculus dropped Linux support. Oculus is increasingly becoming more entwined with Microsoft and becoming much like the evil corporate powers in Ready Player One. It would be awesome if SOTA supported OSVR and I am sure many open source fans would be interested in this and could help.
3. Because Origin System's motto was "we create worlds" and VR is the future of virtual worlds.

 

Someone is going to create a first person only VR world someday soon and whoever does is going to make a fortune.

I too loved the book ready player one, and would love the software side of VR to catch up to the hardware.

 

A great feature!

It is hard to understand why Port is not moving forward on this area, SotA is based on Unity3D, a engine that support VR almost out of the box... look at this video:

Create a Virtual Reality Game in Seven Minutes (Google Cardboard)

7 minutes! Awesome.

On the other hand, from the sales point of view, VR is still not a hit and Port has not (yet) a lot of cash. Maybe this is why they are holding down on VR.

 

This same prediction has been made at least 5 times over the last 20 years each time VR has become the New Hot Thing (tm).

I will continue to breath normally.

 

This time will be different though because we now have full featured working off the shelf VR systems available at a store near you!

That makes this time much different. Plus as each generation gets better and cheaper it only increases the chance of this happening.

 

Richard is a big fan of VR and wanted VR to be a stretch goal.

Sadly, VR is best suited for first person games that don't require a lot of UI or HUD. I'm excited for VR and want to get a Vive someday, but I'm not sure SotA is a good game for VR.

 

The amount of backing from giant corporations is insane right now. The money being tossed at developers to make games is nothing to play down. VR is here to stay, its commercial , affordable and there is a huge open market right now for it. By the end of next year we will have VR on all platforms , and very affordable. “pre-paid Steam revenue” from Gabe Newell is just one of the companies backing developers who want to make games for VR. Google is developing its own app for VR other than cardboard. Microsoft is going mixed reality with software apps. These are just a few companies.

SoTA is already in Unity 5 and can be played via VorpX in VR with minor adjustments to make the experience better. No Mans Sky can also be played in VR. Neither are officially supported right now. But with the current software already able to support it, developers only have to pull the trigger. Not all games require room scale (HTC Vive) support. Sota works just fine as a sitting experience with mouse and keyboard.

 

Yes the stretch goal was reached on the kickstarter.

VR is best suited for whatever you want it to be suited for. Chronos on Rift is not first person and works very well for what it was intended to. Ive put maybe 5 hours in first person grinding on SoTA in VR. The experience is fine. Could it be much better? Yes.. but the hud works just fine.

 

We did not hit $2.5 during the Kickstarter itself. Portalarium has clarified that we did not unlock the $2.25 or $2.5 million goals.

 

the first full vr mmo will be more like World of Warcraft rather than something "we" are searching for here, because it needs to be commercially successful and appeal to a certain demographic.

Once everyone has a VR helmet at home, we might see something like this here entering the vr realm. just look at the pokemon hype...

 

Well considering they raised almost 10 mil I don't see any reason why VR wouldn't be a thing. Anyways, besides that kickstarter stretch goal, the fact remains. VR is pretty much already done for SoTA just needs a bit of love.

 

I'm not really a believer. It's easy to see how decades ago Gen X imagined being compleatly immersed in one thing. But today's world is different. People massively multitask and want to do 10 things at once.

AR and mulit screen is the future. I want to have my tablet as a map / journal while adventuring, use my phone for min-games, etc.

 

Walking simulators do not make for good VR.

Fallout VR was demoed and they replaced walking with teleportation, which is a major change to a game that is inherently a walking simulator.

Your brain will force you to spew chunks if you are sitting in your sofa and it sees but not feels you walking.

Porting to VR only to replace mouselook with headlook and add a stereo camera is bad VR game design.

Very disappointing that walking simulation is not a solved problem because of human physiology, but the VR companies are telling devs to design for VR without walking.

Just look at the successful VR titles, like Job Simulator, which has you stand in one place.

The other issue with VR is it requires very high frame rates in stereo, you have to dumb down the games to PS1 quality graphics. Say goodbye to all the Unity5 eye candy. Even if it would run at those frame rates on high end cards, cheaty effects like 2D tree billboards (the boundary of every scene in SOTA, and any distant tree) as well as the flat rotating grass are revealed as the 2D tricks they are when seen in stereo vision. The sky dome looks like a bowl with flat planets pasted on.

So you can add a VR display to SOTA, but that does not make it a competitive VR game.

 

I think RG has more than enough money to pay for the VR development himself. He does not need to ask the public to pay for this. He was awarded 28 million USD related to Tabula Rasa. I don't know what the net take home was but anyway.
http://www.statesman.com/news/technology/appeals-court-upholds-garriotts-28-million-verdict/nRgdx/

80 million USD went into the development of the Witcher 3 and the Witcher 3 is everything that the single player offline SOTA should be but isn't. Port needs to hire a lot more developers to achieve RG's objectives.

 

Technoloust is a first person walking/shooter game which actually works pretty without a big motion sickness problem like other first person VR games.

 

He received a bunch of money in a lawsuit (minus the big cut lawyers got) and used that money to go to space, which was over $20 million. RG put tons of money into the initial development and overhead of Portalarium. If he could afford to fund this 100% on his own I believe he would.

It is rude to discuss the finances of other people but I believe he has Britannia Manor listed for sale and stopped construction of the new Brittania Manor because be didn't have cash to finish it.

He does not have unlimited wealth.

 

If this is true then I take back what I said. It would be nice to know how much private funding has gone into SOTA. I don't mean from who but just how much.

 

There is a few games out there in VR that do not use teleport for moving. Onward is a good example of this along with HoverJunkers. It may take some a bit to get used to VR, but some it's not so bad. Everyone talking about money going into VR development. If it takes a million to customize a hud or tweak the current VR available i'd be questioning what the hell is going on. Plenty of indie VR developers doing it with nothing more than a dream.

 

I think there is a Zillow listing for his Britannia Manor in Austin where it is up for sale in Austin. I believe Richard's actual real residence is in New York these days. The man isn't destitute. He travels back and forth between New York and Austin for work and to see his family. But I don't believe he has piles of riches laying around to do whatever he wants. Once a person initially hits rich status, people assume you will be rich forever while retaining the ability to just spend on everything.

In reality you generally have the MC Hammer types who get millions overnight, spend like mad and end up bankrupt just as quickly, or the Warren Buffet types who live very simply and sit on their wealth forever.

Richard is the rare cross-breed who was never an insane billionaire, he managed to spend millions on fun things and life-long dreams, but didn't go bankrupt overnight as well.

When Portalarium first founded, they were trying to make money on a Facebook game. I don't believe it ever took off or made money, but the whole time, he was also posting about wanting to make The Ultimate RPG, a spiritual successor to his past work. He paid for the initial start-up of Portalarium and initial work on SotA out of pocket before the Kickstarter launched. That is why there is also this old concept art from Denis Loubet floating around, and the initial tech demo we saw in the Kickstarter.

It isn't like Richard is swimming through Scrooge McDuck's mountain of gold while trying to bleed us dry. Portalarium literally doesn't hire new employees to work on the game until it appears they have the money to hire them.

 

I do not think RG finances are relevant to a discussion of VR, where changing code for mono->stereo cameras and mouse->headlook for an official VR port is likely to consume less dev time than keeping the more important decoration store stocked.

But this interview is relevant to this topic.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2401-richard-garriott-on-vr-were-still-a-generation-early