❓ 🗨️ 🐚 Whether VR awaits Microsoft Kinect or is it the future of gaming

In October last year, on the set of the film “How the IT Capital of the World Works, ” Yuri Dud asked me a direct question about the future of VR. And I answered him:

“The trend is artificial intelligence. Virtual reality was very popular 3 years ago, now it has already lost ground, now it’s not very fashionable. ”

8 months have passed, and we see: perhaps there was a little hope that VR is returning with new strength and ambition. Thanks to Half-Life: Alyx and (in part!) Worldwide self-isolation, the number of users of virtual reality helmets in April increased by 1 million. People revised their views and believed in a new direction. This also applies to our studio, which is also a little anticipated by the prospects of a possible VR take-off.

Before I tell you about the brave new world of virtual reality that awaits us the day after tomorrow, let's briefly go over the history of the development of the gaming industry as a whole, consider deadlock branches, paradoxes and problems. This will help us understand that the arrival of a game dev to VR is a logical and expected stage.

The main problem of the gaming industry

Almost 60 years have passed since Spacewar , one of the first popular computer games, was introduced to the general public .

Out of several pixels moving around the screen, a giant industry has grown up, whose products are not inferior to cinema in the quality of pictures and plot, and often even surpass it. The audience is inevitably growing.

Several years ago , a study was conducted in which a fact was discovered today: thanks to the game process, the production of dopamine in the brain of a gamer is enhanced.

Beginners get it when they achieve their goals, advanced - from one anticipation of this. The subconscious mind reads many factors leading to victory, which the player does not pay attention to.

In addition, dopamine receptors are very tickled by a beautiful picture. The industry’s growth rate allows us to move to higher emissions of hormones of happiness, without forcing ourselves to get used to the current ones.

We are approaching the fact that the picture in the plane will soon become hyper-realistic, the same as outside the monitor. And there will be nowhere to improve it further - people simply will not distinguish 8K from 16K - unless they sit half a meter from the screen with a sufficient diagonal. What can I say about 16K - find the differences in this picture: The

industry will face the problem of its own growth - a lack of finance. Whoever says anything, the engine of progress is money. Games cost money that goes to pay for the work of employees and, most importantly, for further development. And if there is nothing new, then there is nothing to buy.

On the one hand, this problem is partially solved by shareware games, which are not inferior to paid ones in the quality of the picture, but draw finance unnoticed by the user with small “donations”. On the other hand, cloud gaming is developing, allowing you not to splurge on powerful PCs and thereby expanding the audience.

Unfortunately, this cannot go on for a long time. Gamers are used to constantly raising the bar for quality, and will always ask for something new.

Game trends. What is now and what will happen next

The

game industry is developing in three directions, each of which, in its own way, is addictive for gamers: 1. Casual games. The plot and graphics here are secondary matters, their main goal is to keep attention. This is ideal for replacing seeds in situations where you need to kill time.

The task of the developers of such games is to tighten the person from the first minutes and make them come back again and again. Most of the casuals are mobile. But those that are on the PC and consoles are not demanding on the system, do not force to buy a powerful car. These are Sweet Escapes, Gardenscapes, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and others.

2. Online games.These are entire universes in which a gamer lives an almost full life. The main emphasis is, of course, on social interaction - people are pleased to realize that they, together with someone, achieve common goals, albeit not in reality.

And with the development of VR, the line will be erased, and the digital world will cease to be different from our usual one, and, perhaps, it will become even better - it’s hard not to give the movie “First Player Get Ready” as an example. EVE Online, World of Tanks, Apex Legends - all representatives of this direction can not be counted.

3. Storylines. The Last of Us, Death Strandingand other masterpieces perfectly describe the essence of this trend. At the center of the gameplay is a character, and everything that unfolds around resembles a film directed by the player himself. In the first place here, as you might guess, the plot, but the graphics do not lag behind him.

The development of casuals has essentially stopped long ago. Most of them are simple but beautiful variations on the theme of match-three, platformers and more. It is enough for people to exchange crystals for fruits - and everything is ok.

The problem lies in the plot and online games. The flight of human imagination is unlimited, and new stories will never end. But when the aforementioned hyper-realism is achieved in their current state - in the planar - development will come to a standstill.

Now there are games on any subject. You can be a space explorer, deliveryman, military, pilot, cook. There is even a goat simulator. But all this is slowly bored. People want new spectacles, and for lack of them - new ways of interaction.

Xbox Kinect yesterday

The industry has been aware of this problem for a very long time, at least before us. That is why 3D TVs and Xbox Kinect appeared on the market. Both that, and another in a certain sense - the new stages of development, flirting with an exit from the 2D plane. But, as it turned out, they are dead ends.

At the time of their appearance, these technologies caused an unprecedented stir, but in a fairly short time everyone forgot about them. The rapid decline was due to the fact that technology did not have development potential.

With 3D-TV, this was almost obvious, the bulk of buyers managed to play enough of the 3D function for a couple of films. In 2017, the largest manufacturers of TVs announced that they were stopping the production of such devices due to low demand.

With Kinect, the players took several years, but even with the additional controllers, they realized that they just saw their body on the screen. Now this prefix is little used for its intended purpose - it is mainly used in art, advertising, science and medicine.

Kinect did not appeal to players for three reasons:
1. The lack of cool games. Despite the fact that Microsoft integrated the support of its controller into the most popular franchises, there are only a few games that could be played on Kinect with pleasure. In addition, developers were more interested in iOS and Android, which appeared around the same time, with a growing audience and a lot of money.
2. Bugs.Microsoft came up with a new technology, and everything new inevitably contains errors. In the case of Kinect, about 15% of the time from interacting with the platform users spent on repeating a particular team. Perhaps we could manage to cope with this if development continued.
3. Lack of free space. In the commercials, contented families rode in front of the television in huge living rooms. But in reality, before the start of the game, people had to do tetris - move sofas, clean flowers and coffee tables. At the same time, you could comfortably sit down with the joystick a meter from the TV - and play calmly.

All of this combined led to the fact that Microsoft for 8 years sold only about 30 million devices. PS4, for example, in nearly 7 years of its existence, has spread around the world in the amount of 106 million copies.

VR today

On the one hand, VR has the same problems as the Xbox Kinect: there are practically no games, a lot of bugs, and sitting on the couch in VR does not fully immerse yourself. Many people consider virtual reality helmets an expensive toy, the joy of buying which will pass after a couple of months of use.

I myself, I repeat, not so long ago believed that the peak of VR had passed.

So many thought before the release of Half-Life: Alyx.

The potential in technology was visible even before the announcement of this game, but it was believed that modern technology was not yet able to meet the high expectations of users. In addition to the mentioned disadvantages, the following can be noted:

1. Of course, the price.I will not consider mobile helmets - this is really the very toy that lasts for 10 minutes. In addition to mobile, there are 2 more types: stand-alone and helmets with a connection to a PC or console.
Autonomous are less productive than console ones, but at the same time they are called autonomous for a reason - you will need nothing more than a helmet and controllers. The popular Oculus Go costs about 20,000 rubles, and the more advanced Oculus Quest - already from 60,000.

Console (and PC) helmets today give a better picture and, accordingly, a more reliable effect of presence. Playstation VR can be purchased from 20,000 rubles, HTC Vive - from 65,000, Oculus Rift S - from 70,000. But the price should add the cost of a console or a powerful PC.

All kinds of additional equipment will also cost a pretty penny: a tactile vest - about 60,000, a kit for tracking the position of the whole body with 32 sensors - 160,000, and ultramodern tactile gloves cost 330,000 rubles.

2. Wires. Here the situation with the technological process is as follows: if you want a beautiful picture - put up with the cable from the helmet. This creates certain problems even with long cables - it is enough to turn around its axis a couple of times. Well, or fasten the cable to the ceiling.

You can buy a wireless transmitter or helmet - but then the quality will be noticeably lower: 60 fps versus 90 on the wire. And, again, the price bites: Vive Wireless Adapter for 36,000 rubles or Oculus Quest, I recall, for 60,000.

3. Discomfort.First of all, it is, of course, nausea and dizziness. The vestibular apparatus cannot figure out why the picture is moving, and you are standing still. But this is a temporary phenomenon, you just need to get used to it. Someone will need 15 minutes, another - a couple of days.

In addition to nausea, users feel stuffy. Still, a helmet is almost a hat that you wear indoors. His head sweats.

Well, in itself it is quite heavy. For example, PS VR weighs 610 grams - if it seems like a little - try walking for 20 minutes with a half-kilogram dumbbell on your head.

4. Top helmets - Samsung Odyssey Plus and Vavle Index - issue a resolution of 2880x1600.

This is higher than that of a 27 ”FHD monitor, but, believe me, it wins much in picture quality. Especially if you want to find the enemy at a distance of 50 meters.

All of these problems together currently do not allow the VR industry to fully develop. And the cost of equipment so far leaves virtual reality rather niche entertainment for non-poor people. Of course, you can visit some VR-club, but, rest assured, in an hour or two you won’t understand anything. And there it will not work to survive, to finish the game the next day.

What prevents users from putting an end to this technology, as was the case with Microsoft Kinect? Potential.

VR tomorrow

All the problems described above are the problems of today. The technology does not stand still, on VR, in the wake of Valve, other large developers began to glance. And where there is potential and money, there is development.

First, let's go over these very problems.

Few games for the platform? They also talked about iOS and Android. Relevant projects will appear as technology spreads, this is inevitable. But even now there are lots of great examples, both sharpened for VR and ported: Half-Life: Alyx, Boneworks, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, LA Noire, Doom IV, Fallout IV, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Asgard's Wrath, Grand Theft Auto V, Groundhog Day. The list, in fact, is several times larger. And the release of Alyx showed that VR has huge potential in games at a completely different level of interaction with the world - this is a new trend!

Bugs / wires / picture quality are minor technical barriers. I am sure that there will be less and less bugs, and the picture will be finalized to 16K, power would allow. Well, Wi-Fi is about to replace any Li-Fi, whose speed is 2 orders of magnitude higher. A simple example from the past: in 2007, could you imagine that the power of your top gaming computer will fit in the palm of your hand in a device for 15 thousand rubles made by Chinese corporations in 13 years?

Discomfort from heaviness, fogging of the lenses, bruises from the helmet are also temporary inconveniences, which now need to be reconciled a bit. But with the advent of cheap foot trackers, you really have to organize a separate room under VR or play on an omnidirectional treadmill! Such, by the way, already exist.

Well, the cost. Firstly, the price is still extremely high for us. The same Valve Index on Yandex.Market costs 225,000 rubles, and on Steam - only about $ 1,000. Moreover, for us and the Americans this thousand dollars is completely different money.

Secondly, do not forget that high-tech gadgets in a few years become available to everyone. Starting from cell phones, which at the dawn stood like a car, ending with all kinds of multicookers / dishwashers.

Thirdly, back to cloud gaming. Nobody canceled the opportunity to use someone else's computer with his helmet. VR through the cloud already supports GeForce NOW, Shadow and other services.

Well, now the prospects.

VR, even today, is used not only and not so much in games. In the vastness of our country, many high-quality educational projects have already been developed, ranging from children's ones, like House of Languages VR (I will tell below), ending with VR simulators for specialists from VRTechand other companies.

Virtual reality is present in medicine, psychology and art - these are all kinds of training programs, platforms for relieving stress and overcoming depression, exhibition halls.

With the development of tactile accessories, we will receive full feedback from the virtual world. Smells, wind, rain, cold - it is unlikely that you can recreate them at home, but this is technically feasible now.

VR will allow us to travel, without leaving the room, to try something that did not have the courage in real life: for example, a parachute jump. Skype Conferences and Zoomwill move to a new level, gatherings with a friend from the opposite end of the world can be organized at the moment. And if we touch on the topic of corporate training, Natasha Floksy and her Cerevrum clearly show what other prospects are in the b2b VR segment.

One of the highlights of the new VR - most recently in Korea, with the help of a virtual reality helmet, an ordinary woman was allowed to meet with her dead daughter. It sounds scary, but such sessions can help people as part of psychological assistance. This is a real and very effective future of psychology, based not only on words - and this is many times more effective!

The game industry is also waiting for big changes. When the audience of consumers of “flat” content comes to VR, there will be no restrictions. All that players do in classic games - they can do in VR, but adjusted for complete immersion. This means that they will have more pleasure, unprecedented experience.

VR in our studio

I personally plunged into VR five years ago with the House of Languages VR project at the Mobile VR Jam 2015 contest. Together with friends and colleagues from Fox3D, Cookies Games, we created a foreign language tutorial that uses all the capabilities of VR.

When there was very little VR content, and large publishers were cautious and doubting, we realized that this was our chance. House of Languages VR- A project for learning foreign languages. Training takes place through immersion in an artificially recreated language environment - a virtual location where you need to look for various things. Surrounding objects have signatures in the language being studied, and when “pressed”, audio with the correct pronunciation is played. After the student finds all the things, he is offered an interactive test in a playful way.

House of Languages is still one of the best tools for learning a foreign language in VR. We received a development grant from Oculus Facebook , and a Chinese corporation specializing in the production of VR helmets signed a contract with us to create several exclusive locations for an Asian audience - a clear example that there is money in VR training.

My other important virtual reality project is The Key VR , authored by Celine Tricart . For this 15-minute VR movie, we created the whole 3D content and animation.

Last year, The Key won the Tribeca Film Festival for the Most Atmospheric VR Project. Rumor has it that Robert De Niro shed a tear when he saw this VR movie.

Valve , risking on a still new and wild platform, set a new bar that many others would want to jump over - the question is whether they will have the opportunity and budget (nevertheless, Valve still has unlimited development costs).

This is perhaps the next stage in the development of games.

PS And maybe when the PS5 comes outand Unreal Engine 5 will forget about VR again - who knows. Let's discuss together!

Whether VR awaits Microsoft Kinect or is it the future of gaming - let's talk together