Points you want to keep in mind when creating content to enjoy with VR headset

VR headset Game you can play with Oculus Rift "I Expect You To DieJessie Shell, who developed the tips for creating VR gamesGamasutraIt is open to the public.

Gamasutra: Jesse Schell's Blog - Making Great VR: Six Lessons Learned From I Expect You To Die
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/


At the stage of June 2015, evaluation of the game industry's VR game is not fixed. As a typical opinion of game developers, "Nintendo's virtual boy showed that VR is not good!" Or "VR is only a temporary trend like Kinect and 3DTV ","3D sicknessIt is impossible to solve. "

However, Jesse expects that VR related devices will be released like mountains after 2016. Also, VR devices are not something to replace existing game platforms, but as new standards in the current game industry, they will develop gaming experiences along with PCs, stationary game machines, smartphone games, etc. I think that it will become.

So, Jesse has released "The Tips for Enabling the Best VR Experience" cultivated from the experiences that have been developing VR games for more than 20 years.

◆ 3D sickness can be overcome
First Person Shooter GameA phenomenon similar to motion sickness that occurs when playing FPS (FPS) or using a drive simulator in a driving school,3D sickness"is. This also occurs when wearing a VR headset, the intensity of the symptoms varies from person to person, but in order to suppress this, the four points to be kept by the "contents making side" are cited.

· Increase frame rate
Jesse recommends that you set the frame rate to at least 60 fps and target it to 90 fps or higher. Although this feels like an unreasonable order also to the development side and the device side which plays the game, when playing the VR game of 60 fps or less, the brain recognizes that "something strange happens" and 3D It seems to cause sickness.

Some people refute this idea that the human brain can not recognize images above 24 fps. However, if you actually see a ball floating in the air under a streetlight that flashes 50 to 60 times per second during the night, the street light seems to be constantly lit but the shadow of the ball flashes It seems that you can see clearly that there is.

The way that the brain perceives exercise is very complicated like this, "Recommend more than 60 fps for VR," said Jessie.


· Invalidate movement of third party view camera
In shooting games, racing games, etc., we may place a third party view camera, but moving the camera in these viewpoints seems to lead to 3D sickness. Also, if there are many parts such as virtual eyes, ears and head, the image seen by the VR headset diverges from the actual image seen by his own eyes, and it seems to lead to 3D sickness. However, for example, it is important to take a good balance between creativity and 3D sickness, because "moving virtual hands within the VR game" will be an incredible experience.

· If you have to move the camera, do not accelerate
Although it seems that there is almost no difference in experience as "sitting image" seen with the VR headset and "image running on the expressway at the speed of 80 km / h (constant speed)", the brain is extremely sensitive to acceleration and deceleration It reacts sensitively, it seems to cause 3D sickness.

Jesse is also a person who created "Aladdin's Magic Carpet VR Adventure" in the attraction in Disney Quest, but he seems to adjust the movement to be as constant as possible when creating this image. Although it was necessary to accelerate in several places, it was still an attraction with little 3D sickness by minimizing the acceleration deceleration as much as possible.

The attraction is only about 5 minutes of the picture, but in the case of the game there is a necessity to see the picture longer. So Jesse says he reduced the accelerating movement during this period as much as possible so that players can be absorbed in the game in the beginning 20 to 30 minutes of "I Expect You To Die".

· Keep level
It is obvious that some complicated movements cause 3D sickness, but some of them include "the camera rotates side by side". So, Jesse says that the lateral rotation type operation that conforms to this should not be incorporated in the VR game as much as possible.

· Bonus
We also know that the method of placing "virtual nose" on the screen in order to avoid 3D sickness also has certain effects

"Virtual nose" turns into 3D sickness - GIGAZINE


◆ Design for individual VR headsets
Early movies were photographed in real production with no cut on the stage, imitating theater, and there were no camera movements such as ups and breads at all. Likewise, in the early Internet movies, it was raging to deliver programs of 30 to 60 minutes imitating TV programs. In this way, even when new devices and media are introduced, it is a thing to get rid of managing existing ones at the beginning. However, as the number of users gradually increases and the unique usage increases, the true value of new things will be demonstrated.

Whether VR can overcome such a trend or whether it will be forgotten like a virtual boy in the past, it is only the god knows that by organizing the points that VR is good at and what we are not good at, By helping the development of VR, Jesse says.

Mr. Jesse is particularly interested in VR's "Sense of immersion as if he / she existed in the game world"We are evaluating, and we should cut down what hinders this and should produce high quality content.

◆ "Immersion feeling" is more important than game play
Jesse says that there are four techniques required to add "immersive feeling" to such a VR game.

· Have "wide" use range of items
In conventional adventure games, the driver is an item to turn the screw, the knife is an item to cut things, it was nothing else. However, in the VR game where you can get into the game, the user will think more closer to reality. For example, the scene that needs to open the panel of the car with "I Expect You To Die", the production side seems to think that the user can open the panel using the driver put in the car, but in reality many It seems that the panel could be opened with the knife that the user had unexpectedly placed.


However, it seems that it was very troublesome to adjust the panel to be able to open the panel using the knife in the game, and instead of rewriting the code of the game, he told the narrator in the game, "I did something creative But to remove the screw it's not a knife, "he decided to speak, Jessie. As a result, while evaluating the player's challenge, we did not have to broaden the width of each item.

If you clear up the possible actions in reality with just "not possible", the immersive feeling will be impaired and it will lead you back to the user that "It was a game so to speak." So, Jesse recommends that you design a game where various objects interfere with each other as much as possible, as in reality.

· Realistic sound
If you have a coin on the data that was elaborately made like a real coin in a VR game and if you did not hear it when you dropped it, it would hurt your immersion It leads to that. Conversely, as soon as the coin touches the ground, it will lead to enjoying the game without pulling back the user to the reality if the sound "Chillin" sounds, so Jesse Mr.

Consideration of inherent acceptability
"Intrinsic receptivity" refers to the positional sensation and change of the body. In the case of regular games, there is no relevance between game play and unique receptivity, but in the case of VR games it becomes a very important element for immersing in games.

If you play a sports game such as football on a VR device while sitting on a chair, the player's body perceives the VR game as a fake image and hinders immersion. Therefore, "I Expect You To Die" seems to produce an immersive feeling by intentionally creating a state where a character sits on a chair (riding in a car or sitting at a desk).

Also, as the quickest way to obtain the feeling of immersion by bringing the way of the real body closer to the way of the character in the game, "a virtual body in which characters in the game (characters operated by the player) can be seen "And to operate this in the game" is cited.


• Interface restrictions
Since the VR game is a game to the last, some limitations are placed on the interface as compared with reality. However, if you can use a gun in the game, for example, by clicking the mouse, you will not be pulled back to reality every time you shoot a gun, and the brain will easily accept the difference between in-game and real actions is.

So, Jesse is able to reproduce the "winding action of winding screw" in a game in the real world "movement drawing a circle with a mouse", so that the feeling of immersion can be produced from the similarity of movement It seems he thought that it was not. However, it was very troublesome to draw the circle, which hindered players' immersion.

On the contrary, it seems that it was not realistic, but it did not get in the way of the player's immersion, as long as the screw had been removed so long as it had a driver during the game.