I think it's time to take away the conversation from "Space Herpes" to something more VR progressive related. As stated by others, geez it's not like everyone uses hand sanitizer every time they handle money or a doorknob
So I recently bought a flight sim game that is early access called "VTOL VR", a fighter/bomber flight sim. VTOL is the second flying game that uses motion controllers to its full potential (the other being Ultrawings, an ultralight casual flying game), where you can interact with everything in the cockpit. With VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing), the dev has taken a more sim approach and therefore there’s a lot more buttons and switches to interact with compared to Ultrawings. Of course, there’s a lot more buttons and levers to interact with in a fighter plane compared to an ultralight
. VTOL goes further down the sim angle as even the act of taking off requires a more robust “checklist” approach to getting the plane off the tarmac and even for flying it (never mind landing!!!). On their approach I can only congratulate the dev of VTOL for providing an extremely polished interface. Flipping all the buttons, switches and levers and understanding why some steps must be done in specific order leads to an incredibly rewarding and super immersive experience. In fact, for a game that definitely feels “early access” (limited amount of missions to choose from), the dev chose to concentrate primarily on the interface and the core gameplay which is primarily you and the cockpit. For me anyway, it’s quite the homerun. Even non-motion controller portion of the cockpit are superbly well done, whether it’s the very 3D HUD for navigational tracking to the look of everything, the cockpit is IMHO the pinnacle of VR thus far. The author has really put a lot of thought into it as even the seat and both main virtual controls (thrust and flight stick) positions are adjustable. This is important as some missions can be long and you don’t want to suffer from arm fatigue so the ability to move the virtual controls can then allow you to have them simulate your chair’s arm rest, which should make it easier to fly. Is it perfect? Nope. Outside the excellent cockpit interaction, the look of VTOL is extremely basic, I’d even say it’s a “bland” graphic engine. The game engine is smooth (super important in VR to limit sickness, which I felt none) but it could use a bit of color and more detail around the tree-less mountain and the very basic buildings. There is little animation in this game, giving a very anti-septic feel to the virtual world… outside the cockpit.
In saying that, I get where the focus was put: Interacting with all the controls. Flying the plane itself is very fun but it’s also fairly difficult, partially because of the sim aspect and also because sometimes I had to fight with the controls. My initial thoughts on the controls was “man they need to be improved”, but now I’m thinking I was holding the right Vive controller wrong and since that’s the controller that simulates the flight stick, it causes issues. So how was I holding it wrong? As you press various switches, the Vive control is held more of less horizontal as you reach out for everything. When you “grab” onto the flight stick, your virtual hand locks in. However I couldn’t seem to move “up” with consistency. A couple of nights ago, I decided to place the controller first vertically so that the trigger is placed more or less in the same position as the virtual stick before locking “in” the stick. Lo and behold I seemed to have better range of motion and that instantly translated to an improved experience. Playing it some more last night (after an update came out) and it seemed to be even better. Nothing will ever replace a good HOTAS setup but damn, this virtual joystick set up actually works really good!
Anyway, along with the various cockpit autopilot features (found on real fighter planes of course *cough cough*) it’s certainly playable and is immense fun. You know the game is doing something right where in the middle of the day you start thinking about it, how you think you can improve certain areas of your flying, etc and how you can't wait to get back in! I believe I read that VTOL is currently a one-man dev team. If this is true, then congrats to the dev, it’s quite an achievement to get this much of the core gameplay so very much right! Hopefully continued support can lead to improvements in the core gameplay and some tweaks to beautify the graphic look of the game… and at the very least add a lot more missions to expand on the content. Doing so will surely lead to a mature product that will lead the way for other dev teams to consider adding full motion controller to their own games (I’m looking at you Elite Dangerous and ETS2!), … at least for the cockpit switches, etc.
As for the other flying game that has full motion controller support, Ultrawings is a lot of fun. Being a more casual game, it's closer to Pilot Wings 64 then a true flight sim and with that in mind, it works really well and is fun to play. Less cockpit interaction but still with some good motion controller gameplay (aside from flying you can shoot balloons eheh), it works very well. Word of warning, not sure if it's because I'm super sampling too much but the steam version seems to cause me slight motion dizziness. Before the horde calls out "that's what's wrong with VR", a reminder that this is a flying game and I was swaying back and forth pretty badly. I don't recall having this issue when I played the Oculus Home version (which uses the Oculus SDK while I was playing Ultrawings on the Vive last night which uses the SteamVR OpenSDK?)
Anyway fun times
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Topic: I have now tried Virtual Reality and it is amazing (Read 233445 times)
