Budget Cuts en desarrollo para HTC Vive

[–]JoachimHolmerBudget Cuts developer at Neat Corp 105 puntos hace 11 horas

Just thought we'd update you all on this topic, as transparency is pretty neat! It's a bit lengthy, so I put a TLDR at the end :)
After we published the trailer, we started researching how exactly the Rift/Touch room-scale and PSVR stand-up VR works. We had simply, rather naively, assumed that we could support any high-end VR device with tracked controllers.

The bad news:
The more we found out about them, the less likely it seems that we can run the game in its current design for the Touch, and even less so in the PSVR. It's not that we don't want to support PSVR and Touch, but that the Touch, and especially PSVR, doesn't currently seem to support 360° tracking with near-occlusion free interaction, from head to toe, purely from a technical standpoint.
PSVR
PSVR has a single camera, so occlusion is a big issue, especially if you've turned around, so it's almost (read more below) out of question immediately.
Oculus
Room-scale in Oculus seems to be a low priority, which came as a bit of a surprise for us. You can technically do room-scale in the Rift, but, not practically for the end-user. Multiple cameras need extra USB ports, they would have to be bought separately, and cable up to the computer. In addition, the cameras apparently have quite a low FoV, so there might still be an issue to track objects close to the ground if you want to pick things up in the game (a quite central theme in Budget Cuts). Oculus, sensibly, recommend designing your games so that you don't need the full 360° tracking, because then you can target all three platforms with ease, and users who only have two cameras and maybe even just one for the Rift will be able to play it. Which makes a lot of sense! It's definitely the right thing to do if you want to get as many potential players as possible. But in general, it looks pretty grim if we want to port the full Budget Cuts experience.

The good news:
We had a meeting with Oculus today - they sent us a mail a few hours after the trailer went live! (As did Sony, by the way)
I talked about the concerns we have about room-scale, and that we're worried that even if we were to get a devkit, we might still not be able to target the Touch. With that said, they were super kind to send us a kit regardless, as long as we gave it a try!
So that what we'll do - Implement Rift/Touch support internally, and then attempt to adjust the design accordingly for the Rift, and maybe even PSVR too.
For example, the limitation of picking up objects from the ground might be solved by allowing you to "beam" up those objects instead. 360° tracking may be worked around by having in-game hints show what your "forward" direction is, and add buttons for portal-turning-on-the-spot in 90 degree increments, or similar.
That being said, we won't be limiting the Vive version this way. Getting the full experience on at least one platform is more important to us, than consistency between all platforms.

TLDR
360°, head-to-toe 2x2m room-scale tracking in Rift+Touch and PSVR is practically not possible.
We had a meeting with Oculus! They were super cool to send us a devkit. We'll get the game running and then see if it can be redesigned for Touch.
We will internally add support for the Rift and play the game, then try to adjust the mechanics accordingly, in order to make it work well with a more restrictive camera setup.
If Budget Cuts ends up working on Touch/PSVR, it will not really be the full experience as we have on the Vive.
We will keep the Vive version as room-scale and free as it is now, regardless of design changes we may have to do on the other two.
Hope it answered a few questions you might have!