So I just got my shiny new Oculus Rift developer headset the other day. It is difficult to keep my jaw from dropping to the floor while using it - it truly is a sea-change moment as Valve is predicting.
I got started right away on getting support working in my game, which isn't really an FPS but definitely takes place from a first-person perspective and features guns (so it kind of is an FPS I guess, but doesn't focus solely on shooting).
Early on in the development of my game (before I had even considered Rift support), I decided my game would not have crosshairs. I feel that ADS-style aiming is where FPS games are headed, and it's deprecating the need for crosshairs. Hell, DOOM didn't need crosshairs - and if you think about it, DOOM basically took place from an ADS-perspective for the whole game (which is why it didn't need crosshairs).
It also gives gun attachments new meaning. In games like Call of Duty where you have crosshairs while hipfiring, they have to intentionally nerf the usability of the gun while the user isn't aiming down the sights. This has always annoyed me to no end - that if I aim down my sights, my shots magically line up, but the moment I don't hold the gun up to my face, my shots fly wildly around like my character is drunk.
Since there's no crosshair, I don't have to deal with this. The incentive to use ADS is that, well, you can see where your shots are going. It's something that anyone can just pick up and understand. The incentive to use a Holo Sight is that you get a handy crosshair painted onto glass instead of using the weapon's iron sights, the incentive to a laser pointer is that you can see where the gun is pointing from hipfiring, etc. It ends up feeling more realistic and more understandable because we're not just throwing stats at the player - we're showing the player that for instance aiming with a sight is objectively easier than iron sights, and infinitely better than hip firing, without having to explicitly tell them.
And now comes the problem. In your standard 2D monitor mode, the FPS is lined up smack in the middle of the screen.
This is a problem in VR. Want to see the problem first hand? Grab a paper towel tube, and aim down it as if you were firing a gun. You'll immediately notice that it's line up with one eye (probably your right eye, but maybe not if you're left hand dominant), and your other eye is either squinted or closed entirely.
Now try lining up the gun with the bridge of your nose instead. That's basically what lining up the gun smack in the middle looks like in VR, and causes significant eye strain.
It turns out, what you actually want to do in an FPS is pick an eye, and align the gun with that eye. By default this is probably the right eye, but you will also want to give players the option to use their left eye.
It's worth mentioning that this doesn't matter with motion controls such as the Razor - since the user will be doing the aiming rather than letting the game align the gun.
No comments:
Post a Comment