Virtual Reality Gaming Has Challenges to Overcome

VR is the most immersive gaming medium we have; No other technology even comes close to the level of immersion that VR delivers.

Because of this, for decades now, gamers have expected the technology to revolutionize gaming. Many tech experts have predicted a ‘gaming utopia’ that virtual reality would usher in —a world where you plug the device in, turn on your favorite game, and completely immerse yourself in a virtual world for hours.

Sadly, the utopia has not yet come to fruition. Most gamers do not play VR games or even have VR headsets. At least, not yet.

If so, how far do we have to go before the optimistic predictions of VR supporters from the past become true? Is there an end on the horizon? Or will VR fade away after a couple of years like it did a few decades prior?

In the early days, VR devices were insanely bulky, making the experience uncomfortable.  It was impossible to fit the devices to your face for more than a few minutes. 

Then in the early 2010s, Oculus (now owned by Meta) released its Rift prototype. This new VR device was superior to every one of its predecessors in all aspects and thus ignited a revolution in VR device manufacturing. Soon, companies like HTC, Google, Valve, Samsung, and Sony joined with their own line of new-gen VR devices. 

Eventually, the revolution and innovation culminated in virtual reality headsets regaining popularity in the general audience’s minds. From an abandoned tech, it evolved into a moderately successful consumer product that appeals to a niche audience. 

Fast forward to today, and you have powerful VR devices like the Meta Quest 2, Valve Index, HTC Vive, and PSVR2. Even the games such as Half-Life Alyx, Gran Turismo 7, Blade and Sorcery, Lone Echo, etc., are great gaming experiences that can stand shoulder to shoulder with top games of other platforms.

And because of all these advancements, virtual reality adoption has shot up in the last decade. As of 2022, the virtual reality gaming industry is valued at $28.42 billion, an insanely huge figure for a tech that is considered ‘niche'.

But before you christen VR as the ‘future of gaming’ after reading all this, let’s take a look at the criticism towards it. 

Because before it can become a widespread gaming product, virtual reality gaming has to overcome a few significant challenges —all centered around one thing: immersion.

Now, you might ask, “Isn’t VR already the most immersive medium out there?” 

Yes, virtual reality is the most immersive medium we have. As I mentioned before, no other tech comes close to the level of immersion it provides. However, that is also precisely what makes immersion an even bigger challenge.

Confused? Then, let me illustrate this with an example. 

Take 3D games. Back in the 90s, 3D games had blocky visuals as the gaming devices at the time only had enough power to render low-poly assets. But over time, the devices improved; and so did the quality of the 3D visuals.

Simultaneously another thing happened-the expectations of players also began to change. Players started to notice more flaws in the visuals than they used to before. The same players who praised the blocky visuals of the 90s now had a lower tolerance for imperfections and higher expectations of realism.

Similarly, virtual reality users have higher expectations for immersion and are less forgiving of issues. 

Even more importantly, VR has to compete not with other virtual experiences but with real-world experiences; because the biggest draw of virtual reality is that it is an alternate reality, that it transports us completely into another world by engaging our different senses. 

Naturally, you would expect it to engage us just as our real-world experiences do —a challenge other platforms don’t have to grapple with. 

If not, why would you choose this platform for gaming in the first place?

Now, let’s take a closer look at the immersion challenges of VR and how manufacturers and developers are tackling them:

Though massive improvements over their predecessors, the current generation of VR headsets are still bulky devices. These are awkward on your face and uncomfortable to use for long durations. In fact, VR would rank the lowest in terms of ease of use if compared to consoles, desktops, and mobiles.

So, before they can compete with other gaming platforms, VR headsets have to undergo significant design changes and tech improvements that would drastically reduce their sizes.

Companies have realized this and are researching methods to alter their current designs for better ease of use. 

For instance, in 2020, Meta previewed a smaller VR headset. The device featured smaller optics and was significantly compact compared to today’s commercial headsets. Likewise, other manufacturers like Bigscreen and Dlodlo have also previewed their own smaller VR headsets. All of them are lighter devices wearable for long durations. 

With even more companies focusing their efforts on reducing device sizes and thus making them viable for long-term usage, you are bound to see more user-friendly VR headsets in the near future. 

Even classic controllers, like the DualSense or Xbox Controller, aren’t user-friendly in VR. This is because of the way games are played in VR, where you are completely in another world and can’t glance at the controller time and time again. Hence, virtual reality headsets come with their own special controllers. 

However, most of the early controllers were criticized for their poor ergonomics, build quality and tracking. But the manufacturers have learned from these mishaps and the controllers have improved since then.

One of the best examples of a great VR controller is the Valve Knuckles. Knuckles is a state-of-the-art controller with 87 sensors that track your hand movements. The sensors enable the controller to accurately track movements and replicate them in games.

But even with controllers like the Knuckles, gaming with VR is still a hassle for many. For them, the controllers take away a lot from the immersive experience. These players have been calling for a better solution for quite a while now.

A proposed solution to the controller dilemma of this group is already in the works: VR Gloves. These are special gloves that track your hand movements and gestures and then replicate them accurately in the game. 

Companies, including Meta, are now working on VR gloves. However, these are still under testing and not yet consumer friendly.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim is one of the greatest games ever. Released in 2011, the game spans three console generations and is still popular. So when Bethesda announced a VR port for Skyrim back in 2017, gamers were excited. Finally, they would be able to experience the massive open world of Skyrim in the glory of VR.

But upon the game’s release, this excitement turned to disappointment. Because the game turned out to be an unplayable mess. It couldn’t hold a handle on the gaming experience on other platforms and was panned by critics and players alike.

Many reasons have been cited for the game’s mediocrity. The most interesting among them was that Skyrim’s gaming experience was not designed with the virtual reality experience in mind. 

Because as mentioned before, virtual reality is closer to our real-life experiences than other forms of gaming. As a result, it requires you to consider some additional aspects that you normally wouldn’t for other games.

One of them is interactivity. In our real world, as you go about your day, you interact with humans, objects, items, etc., in a myriad of ways; you touch them, throw them, eat them, and so on. All these interactions add up together to make us feel more immersed in our surroundings. 

So, to deliver an immersive virtual reality experience, you have to replicate (or at least attempt to) a similar level of interactivity in your game. For instance, your players must be able to pick up objects on the table, open random doors, kick items on the floor, etc. Though all these are all elements found in a lot of non-VR games as well, they are not usually key elements. But in VR, their tie-in to the gameplay is vital.

The second factor is UI. In non-VR games, the UI is a persistent presence in the form of HUDs, buttons, and other navigational options. However, in VR, persistent UIs interfere with immersion, leading you to feel disengaged from the experience. 

But at the same time, you cannot eliminate the UI completely, as it is a vital design element for the gaming experience. 

So, you have design methods to balance immersion with functionality. You have to make the UI available when required and be a non-distracting presence when it is not.

The most effective method to overcome such VR-specific problems is to design the game with VR in mind from the start. You cannot design your game as per standards in other platforms and then consider the virtual reality experience as an afterthought. If you do that, you would end up creating a disappointing game.

The good news for VR game players is that there are now a lot of gaming companies specializing in virtual reality. These developers think of VR first, finding ways to leverage the unique possibilities and selling points of the medium.

Because of this, the games have begun to improve. Take a look at some of the VR games in recent times, like Half-Life: Alyx and Horizon VR, both great playing experiences that are testaments to VR-first game design thinking.

For fewer breaks in immersion, VR visuals have to be smoother. 

However, the popular VR headsets of the recent past had struggles with flickering and display quality, thus leading to less-than-stellar visuals. But companies are now making numerous improvements to fix these.

First are OLED screens, which offer superior visual quality through better contrast and deeper blacks. 

Second, are higher refresh rates which reduce flickering, smoothen visuals, and eliminate breaks in immersion.

Third is Foveated Rendering, a rendering technique that focuses the render area according to the direction of your eyes. For instance, if you are looking at an object placed in a landscape, the object and a small area around it would be rendered in higher quality than the rest of the landscape (this is similar to how human vision works).

Finally, there is facial expression tracking, where the headsets use infrared light and computer vision algorithms to track your gaze. Based on minute changes in your gaze, the game would also make precise adjustments in the visuals (this would work excellently alongside foveated rendering).

When playing virtual reality games, your movement is confined to a small space - move too less, and the game is less immersive; move too much, you risk hitting a wall. 

To counter this issue of space, companies are now developing special treadmills for use during VR gaming. The treadmill frees you to move in all directions while at the same time ensuring you stay within the treadmill’s space. Thus, you don’t have to worry about injuries or knocking down objects.

Movement-related issues also affect VR in the form of motion sickness. Because in VR, as your eyes and your physical body are in two different spaces, you are receiving two disparate sets of input that are incongruent with each other. This incongruence leads you to experience motion sickness.

There are, however, methods you can use to limit motion sickness. Better in-game locomotion is one, as it prevents you from moving around too much. Improved refresh rates and, in turn, smoother visuals are another. 

If you go out into the real world and pay close attention to your surroundings, you will realize that you receive a lot of feedback in different forms. The car you see passing in front of you, the sound of music coming from shops, the feeling of warmth as you hold a cup of coffee, and the smell of burning plastic. All these are feedback to your brain, signaling about the state of the environment around you.

Each of these sensations, sight, sound, touch, and smell, all contribute to the feeling that you inhabit a certain physical space. 

So naturally, for maximum immersion, VR game developers have to incorporate multiple types of feedback such as these in their games. 

Unfortunately, in the current stage, the feedback is limited to visual and auditory forms. And these exist in games from all platforms and are hence really not a key selling point. 

However, developers are exploring better solutions to remedy this drought of feedback. 

The biggest tool in their arsenal is Haptic Feedback. Haptic feedback is the feedback you receive from the game through sensations such as pressure, vibration, heat, etc. Though this type of feedback exists in console and PC games, VR has the opportunity to leverage this further as the effect of haptic in VR would be much more effective towards immersion than in other platforms.

Haptic feedback is primarily delivered through the controllers. For example, if you are gaming using the PSVR and you are climbing a cliff in the game, the PSVR Controller’s excellent haptic feedback system will signal you with different sensations. These sensations are pre-programmed by the developers and are appropriate to the events that occur to you in real time in the game.

There are also newer controller types that use the haptic system. 

One of them is the VR gloves I mentioned before, which are wearable gloves with numerous sensors and mechanisms that replicate the complex sensations you feel when you interact with an object in the real world. For instance, if you touch a football in a VR game while wearing the glove, you will feel the exact sensation of touching a football in the real world.

Finally, there are full-body suits which are suits that have haptic feedback mechanisms all over them. While wearing such suits and playing a game, if your character is hit on a certain part of your body, you will feel similar sensations on the corresponding part of the suit.

It is evident that virtual reality, both in terms of hardware and software, has made giant strides in the past decade. But it has a long way to go before it can become a viable consumer gaming product. It has to overcome the challenges listed in this article and many more before it fulfills its potential.

However, innovation in the field is rampant, and the results are promising. Both manufacturers and game developers are coming up with ingenious ways to improve the gaming experience. 

But whether the day we can all strap on a VR headset and play for hours on end is going to come soon or not, only time will tell.