Virtual Reality War – Part 3 November 20, 2024

Welcome back to the Virtual Reality War, where we discuss the history behind one of the most recent wars in the current tech landscape, Virtual Reality. As we ended the last part, we discovered that Sony had made a big impact with the Playstation VR add-on for the PS4, and Oculus had made a huge impact with the Rift series of headsets on the PC. Video streaming sites such as YouTube were already allowing users to upload a wide range of 3D, 180, and 360 degree videos online, perfect for streaming to a VR headset. Meanwhile, tech companies such as Samsung were releasing standalone VR products such as the Gear VR, but they were not seeing major adoption outside of major Theme Park venues. As we entered 2020, the first generation of the Virtual Reality War was wrapping up.

After the release of products like the Samsung Gear VR, the public became interested in standalone VR headsets. Let’s be real, even back in the early days of VR, a virtual reality headset had traditionally been only two very small screens and stereo headset with some head position tracking equipment. It was essentially just a 3D screen, controller and headphones in one! To save space, lower cost, make upgrades easier, and cut down on heat, all graphical and computational work would be handled outside of the headset. All the headset needed to do was receive the video/audio signals, and output the head tracking and controller button inputs. In short, a LOT of space was needed for VR equipment. This kind of setup was fine for enclosed systems people were renting time to use as dedicated venues, but with home VR games offering more freedom of movement, having one or more bulky wires between your headset and your PC or PS4 could be a tripping or choking hazard! Thankfully, modern smartphones and tablets made since the late 2000s proved that powerful, low energy CPUs could be made small enough to fit in your pocket, and devices like the Samsung Gear VR proved they could certainly be small enough to fit into a VR headset. Consumer demand was brewing for a dedicated VR headset to be released that did not require tethering to a PC, smartphone or console. Let’s put a pin in that for a second, as Oculus had some plans brewing for this demand. There were a few false starts and minor product releases during this time which would not have very long shelf lives in the retail space. The first we’re going to talk about is something called the Oculus Go.

The Oculus Go was a completely standalone VR headset. It was small and light, and only included a single controller which acted almost more as a remote than as a game controller. It was designed very similar to a smartphone, with the caveat that you could not make phone calls with it. However, you could download dedicated applications to it, such as YouTube or Netflix, and stream pre-recorded content to watch in VR. At a price of $199US for a 32GB model and $249US for a 64GB model, it was cheaper than a smartphone and could do many of the same high-demand functions as a low-cost tablet. The Oculus Go turned out to be a decent Christmas novelty gift, but not much more than that. In fact, I remember my brother-in-law bought a Go for his father one Christmas morning many years ago, and actually let me try it out. I was impressed by the Jurassic World tech demo, and the fact that it had a native YouTube application capable of playing 180-and-360 degree videos, but as someone who already owned a PlayStation VR, other than the fact that I had full freedom of movement, I felt no incentive to get a Go. Support for it would not last very long, and the product is now considered obsolete.

Meanwhile, PC gamers found a lot to be happy about with the new VR equipment that was coming onto the market. The problem was a lot of them still harbored resentment for Facebook and the walled garden they had forced Oculus into adding for their Rift headsets. However, there was a company out there that most gamers could agree was worth giving money to, and that was Valve. Yes, the same company that created Half-Life and Portal ALSO offered one of the most comprehensive online game marketplaces on the web, Steam. Steam ruled the digital PC game marketplace since Half-Life 2 launched exclusively for it back in 2004. Many competitors, even some backed by major game publishers, had come and gone over the years to try to overtake its crown, but by the late 2010s, Steam was the definitive PC gaming hub, and its software could be found on nearly every gaming PC. It turned out Valve had been eying the success of the PCVR market for some time, before the late 2010s wrapped, they announced they would be shipping out a new VR product! It would be made compatible with HTC Vive hardware and include its own wireless motion controllers. It would be referred to as the Valve Index and would be compatible with all PCVR games released through Steam (provided the customer had a PC capable of running the VR game). It would cost a whopping $1499 US but would include everything a PCVR gamer would need in the box (except for the PC).

Steam would also offer PC VR games for sale on their digital marketplace. The killer app for the Valve Index would be a long-anticipated Half-Life title, Half-Life Alyx. Gamers had been clamoring for SOME kind of follow up to Half-Life since the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 ended in a horrifying cliffhanger in 2007. Half-Life Alyx was set between the events of the first and second Half-Life game, and served as a prequel to the second game, further fleshing out the fan-favorite character of Alyx Vance. It was also built from the ground up to take advantage of the VR perspective and motion control scheme, and since it required a gaming PC to play, could push the boundaries on what was possible with graphics and game performance. It was the perfect showpiece for what was NOW possible with VR.

The Valve Index hit the market and a major subset of PC gamers who refused to buy the Rift purchased it in droves. Once preorders for the Valve Index began on Steam, it immediately entered Steam’s Top 10 sales lists. I can’t imagine I’m the only person who was shocked at the irony that a digital software publishing company would release a physical product, but I very well may be. Valve had a lot to be proud of. To this day, Half-Life Alyx is considered to be one of the finest Virtual Reality games ever made. Four years later, most people still consider it the best looking VR game ever made. It also has never been ported to any other VR platform, making Steam a must-have application for new PCVR players.

Oculus answered this entry with two surprising announcements. A new Rift headset would be coming out, and a new standalone VR product, would be coming out alongside it, called the Quest. The Quest launched on the same timeframe as the next generation Rift but offered no backwards compatibility with Rift-specific Software. It could play its own standalone games that could be downloaded straight to the headset from Quest’s marketplace, and Oculus did promise that any software purchased for the Rift that was also released on the Quest could be played on both platforms if the user owned both headsets. The release of the Quest should probably be considered the major cutoff point for the second Virtual Reality War, and if that is the case, the winners of the war may just be considered another toss up. Now it was clear that the PCVR market was splintered, with Rift and Index users digging into their respective fiefdoms. Adding the Quest platform with its own standalone exclusive titles should not be considered part of the Rift’s ecosystem in the same way that the Super Nintendo could not play original Nintendo cartridges.

The Rift store would offer some impressive exclusive titles such as the previously mentioned Wilson’s Heart, and newer sci-fi cult classics like Lone Echo and Lone Echo II. Valve’s Steam would offer PCVR ports of many (formerly) Playstation VR exclusives such as Batman: Arkham VR and Psychonauts: In the Rhombus of Ruin (which I still consider one of my favorite VR games of all time). However, Valve and Oculus’s PCVR rivalry would be short lived, as Oculus was not planning on developing for the Rift hardware much longer. With the success of standalone VR products such as the Quest and Go, Oculus’s parent company could see that the path of the Quest would be the future of VR, not the Rift. One year after the release of the Quest, Oculus would answer gamers’ demands, and announced the Quest 2.

The Quest 2 should probably go down in history as the most important Virtual Reality product of the modern age. It would be compatible with all Quest games, and natively run games specifically designed for the Quest 2. Heck, unlike the Quest 1, the Quest 2 would even allow PC gamers to stream their Rift games from their PC with the use of either a Link Cable or dedicated wireless router, and some players had success streaming Steam’s VR games to it as well. Games coming to the Quest 2 would include an incredible port of the PSVR’s Iron Man VR, as well as VR-native ports of the Capcom classic Resident Evil 4. Unfortunately, the Quest 2’s quality was not perfect, its passthrough cameras were only capable of producing a 2D black and white video feed and while it did not require external sensors to track player movement, it could lose track of its controllers if they were out of the headset’s tracking field. At the time, these limitations were considered to be minor inconveniences to keep costs of the Quest 2 down, and within no time, the Quest 2 was becoming heavily adopted by young people worldwide as their gaming platform of choice!

What was Sony doing during this time? Well, they were mostly focused on the PS5, and it was doing them quite well. The PS5’s sales were completely decimating Microsoft’s newest Xbox console, and despite few exclusive titles, nearly every gamer wanted to buy a PS5. The problem was that there was no easy way to get the PS4’s VR headset working with a PS5, you would need to obtain an adapter and use the PS4’s older 3D camera if you wanted to play PSVR games on your PS5. Sony did promise a PS5 native VR headset was on its way, which they called PlayStation VR 2, but sadly, there would be NO backwards compatibility between PSVR and PSVR2 games. This was due to some hardware differences between the PS5’s new camera and the more complex PSVR2 touch controllers. It was also not ready and would not launch until Feb 2023, giving other platforms plenty of time to release new games.

A new war was upon us, but what about the previous war? Between the heavy splintering of VR users amongst the Rift, Index and PSVR users, we’re going to declare last generation’s Virtual Reality War a tie. However, this stalemate was not to last. What happened with the PSVR2 and the Oculus Quest 2? That’s a story for next time!