Quote Originally Posted by NayusDante View Post
Sony has an HMD on the market right now, but from what I understand, it's not quite what we all expected "virtual reality" to be. HMDs still have a lot of shortcomings, but they're getting closer to that grand vision of total immersion. The significance of Sony's unit is that the resolution isn't the laughable 256x160 or so that a lot of other HMDs have had. It's actually 720p, and stereoscopic. It still doesn't fill the entire field of vision, which is the next obstacle that needs to be addressed. When we see affordable HMDs that have wraparound FOV, I think we'll begin to see games designed specifically to take advantage of them.

I don't think this is far off at all. Combine the mythical "mainstream HMD" with Kinect for head and limb tracking and you have the 1990s dream of virtual reality. When we get there, what kinds of games would most benefit from it? How would achieving that goal affect gaming? How would the control scheme for a first-person game translate, given the fact that you still can't get up and walk around or turn your head all the way around?
The most obvious ones will be anything first-person, so shooters and Skyrim-like RPGs, air combat games. You could perhaps directly translate flight simulators to them. But I think it would be great for arcade-style gaming of really any kind, even if it's not in first person. Of course a lot of games, at least as a kid, felt like they were approaching "VR" (all around screen) because I wasn't used to the size of screens used like for Star Blade.

The Sony HMZ-T1 looks pretty good and definitely the best yet. They're using OLED screens and it has decent headphones, I read. I would think playing a lot of games or watching movies would be good with that device. It can hookup to anything with HDMI.

With an improvement on Kinect-like interface you could implement so many things in a more naturalistic way so that it was like you were doing it in life. The videogamey-ness would decrease more as you lift yourself up a ledge in a naturalistic fashion, while your friends watch with amusement. It may be too comical to ever take off. You certainly can't post about it on forums without people laughing.

I think though you could have a less ridiculous interfact that used Kinect and VR-situated controls, where you'd point to areas and buttons around your field of view, which would act as different actions in the game (such as blocking), which wouldn't require really trying to act out a blocking move. But it may still look ridiculous.

Another issue is whether gamers just like to use plastic controls in their hands. They're certainly used to it, but at the same time there's limitations on how many buttons can comfortably be pressed and contained on a single pad during gameplay. Playing Gun Nac tonight on the NES I was reminded of how enjoyable just two button gaming is. I certainly dislike having to think about the controls as I play.