I play VR pretty regularly. The meta quest 3 is objectively a very good piece of tech, regardless of how much Zuckerberg sucks. It’s also a lot more open of a platform than many people realize. You can sideload apps easily and there are at least 3 ways to use it for PCVR without having any meta software on your PC at all. They’ve never come down on Beat Saber modding despite it being very clearly against the TOS of the platform. Ports of classic games have been dropping like crazy because AI is allowing non-programmers to build VR mods for existing games. I kid you not, I’ve learned of more VR mods for classic games in the past 2 weeks than in the past 2 years. It’s really popping off. Some ports still require a PC to play the game and other ports run natively on the headset, such as half life 2 and portal 1.
Lately, I’ve been hooked on playing Ocarina of Time in VR. Also, the Simpsons Hit and Run just got a pretty impressive VR port. I’ve got like 5 other mods in mind for games I want to check out next.
The native quest games are mostly fine with some standout bangers like Resident Evil 4 and Batman Arkham Shadow. My favorite multiplayer games are probably mini golf or table tennis. I think anyone who’s played table tennis in real life would be pretty impressed with how well we can simulate it in VR. If you’re good at table tennis, you can pick up VR table tennis and your skill immediately translates.
I guess Zuck’s focus has mostly shifted to the perv glasses now because the company doesn’t talk much about VR much anymore. The metaverse (or at least Zuck’s version of it) was pretty clearly a failure, so I assume that’s why they don’t like talking about VR anymore. It’s definitely a quiet time for the medium, but with the way mods of classic games are coming down the pipeline now, I’m pretty excited for what’s next.
Meta is still working on their next headset and it will likely be one of the lightest and most comfortable yet. The compute is getting moved to a separate puck which you won’t have to wear on your head. I’m hopeful that now the metaverse phase is basically dead, the medium will become more focused on games.
It’s not perfect, but as a huge fan of the game, it’s definitely close enough for me. I’ve played all the way through it like 3 times already and I just discovered how fun it is to play randomizer mode so I can keep playing again and again and it still feels fresh.
I have a higher tolerance for VR jank, but I’d say it’s like 90% of the way to being a proper VR port. I’ll list the most broken things:
you don’t get to draw your bow with 2 hands how you would want to in VR, you aim with one hand like it’s a pistol. Same for the slingshot. There’s no cross hair, so you just have to feel it out. With the bow at least, the arrow points directly toward where it will hit, so aiming isn’t too hard
For me at least, I can’t get the game to register c button inputs to play the ocarina. It has half life alyx style item equipping which works very well, but when I equip the ocarina, I can’t play it. Originally, my workaround was to just toggle to my virtual desktop view and play using the virtual keyboard. Eventually I “fixed” this by downloading an app called OpenVR2Key which maps my right stick to the c buttons. This mostly works, but if you’ve ever played on an emulator, you’ll know that using an analog stick for the c buttons is not ideal. It usually takes a few tries to play the song right, but to me it’s still better
there are certain ledges in the game that link refuses to climb by walking into them in VR. You have to either backflip up, find a way to jump off something so he’ll grab it, or just toggle to desktop view, quickly switch out of VR mode, use the virtual keyboard to walk forward and climb, and then toggle back to VR. It’s a headache, but it only takes a few seconds and the only two spots I’ve found where this is required are Death Mountain where you have to bomb the rocks to reach the top, and the room in the ice cavern with the spinning blade
the megaton hammer doesn’t always work right. Sometimes it won’t break the thing you’re hitting and you have to do the same “switch out of VR” trick
the dark link fight is super broken because there are 2 Links and the game gets confused. Dark Link’s movement makes you move too. It’s still beatable in VR, but you’re fighting the mechanics more than the enemy
areas that were originally rendered from a fixed camera angle with a 2D image for the environment such as the market will just appear as primitive geometry and everything is green. This is fixed easily by installing the right texture pack though
All that said, everything bad I described takes less than 1% of the time you’ll spend playing, and for me it’s a dream come true to finally be in Hyrule experiencing everything I remember so fondly through my own eyes. The first time I stood under the Deku Tree, I just stood there for a few moments taking it all in and appreciating the true scale of it. Every time I’m crossing Hyrule field and hearing the incredible music, I always find myself thinking “I can’t believe I’m playing this right now.” I didn’t realize until typing this out just now, but it’s probably already one of my favorite VR games just because it was already one of my favorite games.
I play VR pretty regularly. The meta quest 3 is objectively a very good piece of tech, regardless of how much Zuckerberg sucks. It’s also a lot more open of a platform than many people realize. You can sideload apps easily and there are at least 3 ways to use it for PCVR without having any meta software on your PC at all. They’ve never come down on Beat Saber modding despite it being very clearly against the TOS of the platform. Ports of classic games have been dropping like crazy because AI is allowing non-programmers to build VR mods for existing games. I kid you not, I’ve learned of more VR mods for classic games in the past 2 weeks than in the past 2 years. It’s really popping off. Some ports still require a PC to play the game and other ports run natively on the headset, such as half life 2 and portal 1.
Lately, I’ve been hooked on playing Ocarina of Time in VR. Also, the Simpsons Hit and Run just got a pretty impressive VR port. I’ve got like 5 other mods in mind for games I want to check out next.
The native quest games are mostly fine with some standout bangers like Resident Evil 4 and Batman Arkham Shadow. My favorite multiplayer games are probably mini golf or table tennis. I think anyone who’s played table tennis in real life would be pretty impressed with how well we can simulate it in VR. If you’re good at table tennis, you can pick up VR table tennis and your skill immediately translates.
I guess Zuck’s focus has mostly shifted to the perv glasses now because the company doesn’t talk much about VR much anymore. The metaverse (or at least Zuck’s version of it) was pretty clearly a failure, so I assume that’s why they don’t like talking about VR anymore. It’s definitely a quiet time for the medium, but with the way mods of classic games are coming down the pipeline now, I’m pretty excited for what’s next.
Meta is still working on their next headset and it will likely be one of the lightest and most comfortable yet. The compute is getting moved to a separate puck which you won’t have to wear on your head. I’m hopeful that now the metaverse phase is basically dead, the medium will become more focused on games.
VR Ocarina of Time! That’s wild. So it works decently well? How are the controls?
It’s not perfect, but as a huge fan of the game, it’s definitely close enough for me. I’ve played all the way through it like 3 times already and I just discovered how fun it is to play randomizer mode so I can keep playing again and again and it still feels fresh.
I have a higher tolerance for VR jank, but I’d say it’s like 90% of the way to being a proper VR port. I’ll list the most broken things:
All that said, everything bad I described takes less than 1% of the time you’ll spend playing, and for me it’s a dream come true to finally be in Hyrule experiencing everything I remember so fondly through my own eyes. The first time I stood under the Deku Tree, I just stood there for a few moments taking it all in and appreciating the true scale of it. Every time I’m crossing Hyrule field and hearing the incredible music, I always find myself thinking “I can’t believe I’m playing this right now.” I didn’t realize until typing this out just now, but it’s probably already one of my favorite VR games just because it was already one of my favorite games.