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 do, but not as often as I’d like. Valve Index, like you, though I’ve had no trouble with the controllers. Lately I’m getting through either Moss or Doom VFR depending on what I feel like at the time, but my VR backlog continues to grow.

    Top tier that I’ve played:

    • Half-Life: Alyx (Valve gamedev is the GOAT as usual)
    • Ancient Dungeon VR - a dungeon crawler with a Minecraft aesthetic and knife-throwing mechanics that are so good every single game should copy it. I actually have more than twice the hours in this as I do HL:A, but then, I haven’t gotten into HL:A’s community maps and modes yet.
    • Gorn (the game that taught me throwing a fast enough punch will hurt just from the fluid pressure in your hand)
    • Until You Fall (pretty graphics, responsive melee combat, roguelite mechanics, what’s not to love?)
    • Skyrim VR - modded of course, but even then, it’s still Skyrim, with all the good, bad, and ugly
    • Doom VFR - very playable for me with the community guide for better controls. Having gotten used to free movement, I can’t go back to teleporting. And hey, it’s Doom! Only played one session so far, not sure how far I am in it.
    • Vanishing Realms - The climbing mechanics, combat, and lore are all a lot of fun for me. It looks gorgeous while still running well. Only downside is it’s very short.

    Mid tier:

    • Moss - very cute, but it doesn’t really take advantage of VR as much as I feel like it should. Based on marketing, I actually thought most of the gameplay would be controlling the little blue spirit thing to guide the main character who acts independently, but you’re actually controlling the main character directly. It feels weird considering the characters directly address the player’s existence. Haven’t finished it yet.
    • Superfly - it has potential, but the controls, enemy AI, and even some of the abilities are still in a pretty rough state. Something to keep an eye on.
    • The Last Clockwinder - Nice storytelling and puzzle style, but some of the challenges seem to be more about how precisely you can lob an object rather than how well you can think outside the box. Haven’t finished this one yet. Graphics are very noticeably Quest-tier.
    • Beat Saber - I like music, but not being able to use my own, the rough state of mods, and the massive stack of DLC I’d need to buy if I want official variety were big sticking points I couldn’t look past. I’m apparently also just not into rhythm games.
    • Pistol Whip - I found this more fun than Beat Saber, but in the end it’s still a rhythm game, so my interest faded quickly.
    • PowerBeatsVR - A great option for getting in some exercise, but unfortunately I’m allergic to that.
    • Jet Island - Extremely fun movement mechanics, but the world is very big and very empty, and the progression is very unstructured. I basically just bumble around hoping I stumble on the way to reach the next target, then bumble around some more until I can destroy it.
    • Neverout - It seems like an okay puzzle game, but I’m not that into puzzle games.

    Didn’t like:

    • Boneworks - performs poorly on my hardware, and in general feels like they forgot to give it actual gameplay beyond letting the player dick around in sterile, mostly empty environments. It’s not my style.
    • Into The Radius - Not optimized quite well enough for my hardware, and I didn’t like the level of realism with weapon handling. I fumble things enough IRL, it’s not fun to do it in a game when a monster’s bearing down on you. Maybe with haptic VR gloves, but not with controllers.
    • Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency - Literally unplayable. I don’t know what the problem was, but even on minimum graphical settings, I got terrible reprojection on the first mission, and the controls were very much not to my preference.
    • The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners - Ran decently well, but fun was taken out back and murdered by a crack team of bugs and developer choices. Any gun I tried to use would weeble-wobble all over the place regardless of how steady my actual hand was, so it was basically impossible to shoot things from a distance, which becomes mandatory when you have to deal with raiders who shoot back and zombies that have a toxic cloud around them. Kitchen knives have horrendous durability and will shatter into a thousand pieces after stabbing three zombies, but any random blunt object you pick up can smash zombie heads in with three hits and has infinite durability - oh, but you might as well not bother because every blunt impact has about a 0.5% chance to crash the game, a bug that had gone unfixed for more than a year when I played it. Also, as mentioned before, melee becomes all but irrelevant later in the game, which I never reached due to all the crashing. A cheat mode exists, but it disables story progression, again because fun police.
    • No Man’s Sky - Lousy VR experience with the menus stuck to your hands and stuff. I heard that’s been overhauled in the time since I tried it, but I haven’t tried the new system yet, maybe ever.
    • Subnautica - First-person VR, but still using a mouse and keyboard. No thank you, I played it flat enough times already.
    • Slinger VR - Feels like they had a good idea and then immediately ran out of ideas.
  • Love my Index. I’m really waiting for Valve to put out whatever their next headset is. Hoping that it has eye tracking with foveated rendering. I honestly don’t mind it being tethered to my PC.

    If you haven’t tried out Vertigo 2 yet, definitely look into it. It’s a fantastic VR shooter with an alright story that came out a few months ago. Just all around a really good game.

    • Yes the fact that many people are blocked from access by their very biology is a real shame, and a big barrier that VR might never cross.

      Have read that most can overcome it with short sessions until the discomfort disappears, but that is still a big ask and might not work on all.

      Then there’s us who just doesn’t experience it. I can put myself right into what should be the most vomit inducing display and not feel a thing. Wonder what makes my brain ignore inconsistencies between visual input and inner ear.

  • I first got into VR a few months ago with the valve index and it’s been great so far. Favorite games include Hubris and Jet Island. I’m currently playing Budget Cuts 2 which is also great. Some other games which are also super good but I haven’t finished yet include The Last Clockwinder, Space Pirate Trainer, Wanderer, Redout: Enhanced Edition (VR Supported), Kayak VR: Mirage, Garden of the Sea, Audio Trip, GRIP: Combat Racing, Aircar (Free on steam), oh and don’t forget Virt-A-Mate :D

  • i bought a cheap used PS VR sometime last year, but i ended up selling it a few weeks ago - i just didn’t have enough space in my small apt to play comfortably.

    PS VR2 seems pretty amazing specs wise, i’m just hoping they get the games to go with it (or open it up to PC users), otherwise it’ll be another PS Vita…

  • Haven’t messed with VR in almost a year. I am excited for the future of the technology and would love a reason to get back into it, but honestly lately there just hasn’t been any major single player releases to get me excited. especially sense I switched to Linux and last I checked VR on Linux still needs a lot of work (though I admit it’s been a bit sense I looked into it)

    My favorite VR games are Lone echo 1/2 (though I still want to go back to 2 with an actually good PC and see how much of an improvement it makes) and Half Life Alyx

  • I have played a little bit of VR but since I have an Oculus Rift (not a Rift S, a Rift) and I switched from Windows to Linux, I can’t play any of my games. I’d love to sell my Rift to get a Quest, but I don’t think I’ll get much for it anyway, let alone be able to sell it in the first place. That is unless I want to write a Linux-based driver for the thing.

  • Used to play VR a bit more when I was living somewhere with higher ceilings and more room near my PC to leave as a dedicated VR space. I mainly played rhythm games like beat saber and racing sims. I have a rift s and I find it comfortable enough to wear but having to hook everything up and clear out space whenever I have the urge to play in VR leaves me playing less now. Plus all of the lights in my office now are dimmed LEDs and it seems to mess with the inside out tracking?

  • I spec out high end laptops for my main rig for portability and power draw reasons, so have’t dug into the tech too much since the requirements were pretty rough for GPU for awhile. My requirements are somewhat strict on the power & portability side since I do spend a lot of time in a motorhome mostly on solar.

    From what you’re saying it’s matured a fair bit though, so I’ll have to take another peak!

  • I’ve still got my OG rift, I bought it right when VRchat was booming. Honestly I had such a blast on there meeting new people and goofing around, but nowadays the community is a little more insulated and it’s harder to make friends. It was really probably some of the most fun I’ve ever had online though.

    Every now and then I’ll pop on some Beat Saber to check out new custom tracks.

    Of course Half Life Alyx was incredible, especially as a big Half-Life enjoyer.

  • 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.