One of the earliest mass-produced VR game systems is Nintendo's Virtual Boy, which was considered a commercial failure for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons was that the Virtual Boy was a stationary system and didn't really allow for users to move around and feel immersed. This explains part of the reason why head mounted displays (like the Apple Vision Pro or Oculus Quest) are more popularly used than stationary systems

For anyone who has tried a VR game before, how immersive are these games without being able to simulate movement experiences such as walking and running?

I've tried a VR game once before, and it didn't really simulate movement super well in my opinion. Games that didn't have an emphasis on movement and had you in one spot still felt really immersive and at times made me forget about my real-life surroundings (which is dangerous so make sure you try out VR in a clear area). From what I've seen, games that required moving around had the person running in place, but I'm not sure if they were just doing that to feel more immersed or if there was some kind of movement controller.

I think this begs the question- how much compute do we need to make VR games seem life-like? How much detail is needed to the point where it's indistinguishable to the human eye? And perhaps conversely, is it even achieveable or will there always be subtleties / subconscious things that are impossible/near impossible to replicate?

@AnikethPrasad Personally just using the VR headset alone doesn't capture the movement aspect of immersion within a simulation. I'm very curious for that reason to one day try out a full body VR tracking rig

I know a lot of research is done for this field with respect to efficiency and compute. I think for example for your face to be turned into a 3d avatar and to update as you speak, look around, etc, you need to be very efficient with your compute.

Many VR games are fun but none capture realistic graphics like Nerf or Gaussian splatting. It would be hard to render such headsets but most of the games right now use physics and graphics that are not realistic.

The current limitations in photorealistic VR might be why a lot of popular VR games like Beat Saber feature very stylized graphics. It would be incredibly costly to render photorealistic graphics in real-time, and semi-photorealism often risks falling into the uncanny valley. Stylized graphics, on the other hand, still look appealing even when developed with limited technology. They also tend to age gracefully, since technological advancements do not lead to huge jumps in quality for stylized graphics the same way they do for photorealistic graphics.

I think the biggest limitation of current VR games is the limited range of movement. Other immersions are relatively easier to achieve compared to movement restrictions. The latest solution appears to be something called Threadmill, which allows users to run or walk in place while moving around a VR environment. In this way, users can simulate unlimited virtual space within limited physical space.

I was introduced to VR through gaming, at the time I did not really consider how VR could be used in other situations/tasks. VR just seemed to soley apply to gaming, especially since there is still room for significant improvement, such as previously mentioned VR gaming does still tend to difficulty with motion tracking. But now I have heard of projects/idea that greatly expand out of the frame of gaming, such as VR programs that can be used for job/skill training. As well as the other VR examples provided in this lecture.

@AnikethPrasad There are many videos of people especially elderly people who aren't exposed to recent technological advancements, so they fall while playing games where they are balancing on a high platform (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faNsP7ExSt0&ab_channel=ToastInteractive). So it is very immersive in the first view hours of playing VR games, but soon after, it just feels like you are gaming on just a very big screen. For me it wasn't because of the inability to walk, it was more because the resolution of the VR headset is not even close to what we see with naked eyes.

I've found that one of the biggest issues that investors have with VR Gaming is that the computational power still isn't there, and that VR isn't adding something significantly better to the experience of games and hasen't been directly integrated to a games storyline

@AlsonC definitely that makes sense; I think the computation power is starting to be there - especially on the GPU side in things like the Nvidia 4000 series. The barrier now isn't the technology but the rising cost of such technology. The entry-level GPU is so so much more expensive than an equivalent four or five years ago when these VR headsets came out that people just don't want to buy a $500-1000 VR headset on top of a $1000+ graphics card just to play a game or two (which as you said don't have VR add significantly to the experience).

My comment here is regarding how society is moving to a more digital world with the prevalence of technologies like VR, and how transitioning to this world should maintain the realities and norms of the real world to avoid fundamental changes to culture that could be harmful long term. An example of this is as VR becomes more normal, it makes sense that we may transition to a society where the primary mode of interaction is online. If this is the case, an important way to preserve human interaction may be one where we create means of interaction in VR that are like real life interaction.

VR gaming is becoming more and more common with new devices such as Playstation VR and how most games have VR versions where they can play all in VR