Wondering whether there is a VR community here. What systems? What games?
My first and only headset is a Valve Index which I think I bought when it was released in summer 2019. Prior to this I had followed VR development since the Vive was released. Luckily I am immune to VR nausea, so I proceeded to dive straight into everything it had to offer. Would say VR is at least half of playtime.
The Index package is still fantastic. The controllers are really comfortable with great features. The lighthouse tracking is very precise, reliable, and has no blind spots when setup properly. The headset itself is comfortable with great FOV and good enough display. So far I have only found two general lackings in terms of hardware. One is controller quality control. When you get a set of controllers that work, then they work great. But in the past, and maybe still now, there’s was an unfortunate high change that you would get one with some malfunction that meant you either had worse experience, or had to go through RMA. I’ve had a particular unfortunate streak of controllers that I constantly had to send back. Luckily the valve RMA process is easy and generous. The other downside is of course the tether. I have the best cable-management system I could find, but that is still no wireless. But that might change soon as the nofio wireless adapter is soon to release.
As for games, I quickly found my preference for physics-based games where the primary gameplay emerge from the physics interactions with the game-world, in contrast to more traditional gameplay systems. Examples of this include Boneworks, Blade and Sorcery, Hotdogs Horseshoes and Handgrenades, and somewhat Half-Life: Alyx. I also frequent short-form or rythm games, such as Eleven Table Tennis, Unplugged, Beast Saber, and Drums Rock. I also wanna give a highlight to Contractors VR. While I don’t particular like the vanilla gameplay, I have found the modding community to be absolute magic. SW: Battlefront, COD Zombies, TF2, and Halo are among the popular games that have been faithfully recreated as Contractors VR mods with amazing similarity to the original games. Seriously, if you liked any of those old popular games and haven’t checked out Contractors I highly recommend you do.
I had a quest 2, got it at release and then sold it a year later for an Index. I like the Index more, feels more professional.
I usually play rhythm games both in and outside of VR, BeatSaber is my favorite game. Audica is also fantastic though its super underrated and the modded songs aren’t usually the “stereotypical rhythm game song” which I prefer to pop songs. I got the Valve Index mainly for the better latency for rhythm games and the great headphones. One thing that probably doesn’t bother most people is the small amount of latency you get from the Quest 2. It doesn’t matter if its wired or not, you will always have that, and in rhythm games this is very important to not have. You can literally find guides for the game osu! that reduce like 2 ms latency and people are doing it. I will say though that the latency in the Quest 2 is mostly unnoticeable outside of rhythm games so there’s that.
The thing about Audica in my opinion that makes it super underrated is that since its more based around clicking the triggers of the buttons with sort of “osu!” style charting, this allows for a higher skill ceiling than BeatSaber with more complex and interesting charting than BeatSaber. Reading a chart is just so much more important of a skill in Audica, while in BeatSaber you just have to be able to swing your arms fast enough if its not a tech map. Tech maps in BeatSaber are definitely more interesting charting than normal BeatSaber charts but they can’t really get as good as a normal map in Audica. If Audica was able to get a bigger ecosystem of mapping and something like Scoresaber I think tons of people would enjoy the game a lot.
I’ve also spent like 400 hours in VRChat for some reason. VRChat is enjoyable when you are just with people you know irl. Most of VRChat is kinda bad, but theres these small gems of worlds that are absolutely stunning to visit alone or with friends. These worlds are things I would have never thought to be possible, experiences I will never forget. Everything else is kinda bad except for the slightly interesting.
I’ve gotten 2 of the latest VR Humble Bundles which had many great games, though I didn’t find that much hours of enjoyment out of them. One game that stood out to me in these bundles was RUMBLE. RUMBLE is this really interesting fighting game. Unlike many other games that involve magic, where you need to just tap and press buttons, RUMBLE would force you to make these martial arts-esque poses to cast the magic. In an actual battle this would play out where the player who is worse at consistently making the pose would lose. It also actually got the sweat going. I say in past tense because the playerbase is very small, it usually tops at like 20 players online these days.
Hot Squat is an interesting free VR game that’s like an infinite runner except instead of dodging obstacles, you just have to squat.
If you like GMod, theres this pretty good VR mod in the steam workshop. If you want to try out BeatSaber, some guy made a prototype clone of BeatSaber in GMod.
Pavlov in my opinion has the best feeling guns in VR(for the multiplayer shooters I’ve played). I have Vail and Contractors, but the recoil and the gun sounds just feel way worse. I know some people don’t like the Counter Strike style recoil in Pavlov, but I feel it adds actual weight to the gun. In Vail and Contractors, you can just aim directly at other players and no amount of recoil stops your shots from going straight ahead. They just kinda feel like laser pointers. Also the sound design behind the guns in Pavlov is way better, they sound like actual guns as opposed to toys in Vail and Contractors. I will admit though that Contractors has better support and mods so I sometimes boot it up for those reasons.
I don’t really know anything else to say about my VR games lol. I love VR, the latest Meta gaming showcase today was great, though I don’t like how most of those games aren’t coming to PCVR. People complain about lazy ports to PCVR but I would rather a lazy port than no port at all. Asgard’s Wrath was pretty cool and the sequel looks super hype but I won’t be able to play it unless I buy another Meta headset. Putting aside privacy and moral reasons, I just don’t like the feeling of having multiple headsets, it just makes me feel like this giga-nerd.
My favourite contractors mod is actually PMC, which I didn’t list in the post. PMC makes the gunplay and movement far more realistic and methodical, which is more my thing. It requires you to use semi-auto at medium distances, bullet are actually physical, guns have sway, and body armor actually plays a big role.
Played a bit of pavlov before I discovered contractors mods, but it didn’t scratch the same itch.
Oh wow, I’ve never heard of that mod before, it looks very interesting. I may have to try this mod soon. Thanks for telling me about it!