Has anyone here played Doom 3 in VR?
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I haven't a VR headset but even that doesn't come pre-built with a hamster wheel for me to not run into walls while in VR. Maybe when it gets cheaper and it's available in every fancy hotel room instead of a Super Nintendo. Some of my favorite dreams have been in the dark space station of the Doom 3 universe. So I'd like to one day have the most immersive Doom 3 experience possible, predicting that touching the in-game computer screens would be quite novel! Maybe they'll make it so you can smell the metal and blood too.
If anyone here has had a VR Doom 3'ing adventure, what was it like? Does it really feel that different and that much more immersive, with VR being the best way to experience the game?
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I did have one opportunity to play it, and Doom VFR as well.
It's nothing like what you expect, in ways both good and bad.
One giant misconception I found is the thinking that VR is just video games but full 3D. This is such a massive misunderstanding that I did not realize until I was playing.
In real life, you move around in a 3D space with your body, and your vision is a narrow circle in the middle of your field of view. In a typical computer game FPS, that view is filled with your monitor and you get a clear image of the whole space. You move around with tiny finger movements. Your aim point or crosshair is fixed in the middle of your view point, and that spot is truly fixed. It never changes or moves around.
In VR, your vision is tracking your head, but you can only really focus on the middle of your view, and only while it's relatively static. This is far more disorienting than you think.
Your body is rigidly stuck in the middle of a "playing area" but you can wave your hands around to aim at things. Your aim point is where your hand is oriented plus where your wrist is, and so on. You took for granted that aiming at things is a given and now it requires your whole body to orient toward something and get your hand in just the right spot, and pull the triggers without moving your hand, and so on.
Movement is absolutely a different thing in VR. Your movement is based on tiny thumb-sticks and trying to aim while moving is, while not impossible, orders of magnitude harder.
The big thing to understand is that a game that is "awesome" on a computer or console is not automatically "double awesome" in VR. They are different media entirely. It's a bit like how video games don't usually translate to movies and vice-versa. They are different things with different constraints and objectives.
It's still a cool experience. The visuals are incredible and I also got to experience some legacy Doom maps in VR.
It was best to enjoy such things with monsters turned off so you could simply enjoy the views.
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Dang so it's like sticking my eyes a little bit inside the computer screen, but playing with disorienting fast-paced tank controls?
The latest iteration of Doom 3 VR for the Quest(2) looks really good with how every gui element exists in the 3D space and isn't a static image. You can see the PDA as a pop-up hologram of sorts, your health on a wristband, and even the pistol gets an ammo counter screen tacked on to it which seems to make it the best way to play Doom 3 in VR atm. Apparently HD graphics mods can be stacked on to it too but can lower framerate but in the future hopefully the VR package can continue to improve with connecting everything for an even more immersive experience as well as being able to handle uber modded Doom 3 VR action at 120 fps. Dividing my attention between using the PDA and being wary of any sudden demon encounters should be a spooky good time!
Thank you for your response!
