I've been working on a VR game for some time now.

I've come to the realization that stuff that works in first player FPS's don't work as well in VR - mainly because the way locomotion works, where you teleport around instead of walking/running usually.

Also, VR, especially the HTC Vive (and I guess Oculus Touch) with 2 hand controllers, gives a lot of new opportunities for new 'stuff to do' in a VR title that would be fun in VR, but not so much using a controller. Just picking things up and throwing them around is fun - aiming at two enemies simultanously with a different weapon in each hand also.

Do you guys have other ideas? What would you like to see in a VR game that would not be feasible in a FPS? What have you always dreamt about doing in an FPS that is now possible in VR?

My ideas:

- Smashing objects together (heads, cymbals etc)

- Aiming and shooting a bow

- Real sword/shield fights

What are your ideas?

Another point that VR offers more so than others is data modelling and control over views.

For the first time we have a practical way for users to hold, control, and position complex detailed forms in three dimensional space, while being able to quickly look around a larger volume and track far more content in a more reliable manner.

You can do things like, pick something up, hold it from one point, 'grab' it at another and rotate. Playing with shape and volume is going to be an option unlike interfaces before this.

As a designer you're also not limited to only two points of control from the user's hands, but rather you could even quickly swap between anchors within the 3d space. Picture interacting with a deformable dough like substance. The most obvious interaction is to "pick it up" with either controller/hand, and interact with it between those two points. But what if you add a 'hook' in 3D space? Or more than one? What if your 'hand' controllers can quickly pick up and move the 'hooks' and easily control whether they hold or let go of the 'dough'?

I feel that the important thing to always remember when thinking of VR is to consider what it is we can do to present and interact with information and models in ways that were simply too cumbersome with previous designs.

I've come to the realization that stuff that works in first player FPS's don't work as well in VR - mainly because the way locomotion works, where you teleport around instead of walking/running usually.

e.g. the Oculus Tuscany demo where you would use the left-thumb stick to walk around made everyone feel sick, so obviously it's a bad idea...

...but...

I've been playing a heap of Onward, which supports Vive's room-scale free movement to walk small distances, but mostly relies on traditional locomotion mechanic of a left-thumb stick, and is perfectly fine! It felt weird for about the first 30 seconds of playing the game (like you were going to stumble/fall), but after that, it feels fine.

I'm now convinced that traditional "thumb stick movement" is actually fine for VR, as long as you're using a modern headset (not a DK2), and the movement speed is quite slow (Onward is a tactical FPS so is fine -- but something like TF2 would still be a terrible idea).