Valve fans remain loyal: Valve Index still beats Quest 3 on SteamVR

I think there's enough desire, but the threshold is still too high. I have an Index, that I love, and I haven't used the thing in almost 2 years now because it's such a drag to set it up. Also, pretty much all games are standing up and most of the time when I want to play I want to sit down (racing/rally sims ftw) and I know I'm not alone. And taking the headset on and off can be a drag. You need to be able to quickly and effortlessly jump in and out, both physically and digitally. But things are moving in the right direction when it comes to all those things.

But then there's still also the catch 22 of content. AAA games is what could sell the platform, but very few devs want to spend an absolute shitload of money on something with such great uncertainty, financially. And the uncertainty has only gotten bigger the past couple of years.

Alyx is just a spin-off, no? I think a HL3 would've likely had a different impact. But even then, VR was and still is extremely expensive. Both for the devices themselves as well as the needed hardware to run it (at least without eye tracking, which afaik is not a thing in SteamVR yet?).

Alyx and Boneworks etc show that it is by far the best engine for VR fps.

Boneworks uses Unity.

I'm not convinced that the engine is going to solve that problem. Janky programmers will make janky games no matter the engine. And how many VR Games have been made on Source? 1? Not exactly a good set of examples for them to work from there.

I don't know. Could it be a licencing issue? Cost? Or just that they would have to learn a new engine just for a VR game that isn't as versatile as Unity? I don't know.

As a programmer (though not in the games industry) I can inform you that the vast majority of sw companies operate by the "the fastest solution is the best solution" principle. If they have developers who already know Unity it's a pretty big expense to have everybody learn a new game engine, and the management would need to be convinced that using Source is going to lead to a corresponding increase in sold copies of their games.

That’s one of the whole issues with VR adoption. Valve didn’t release a VR engine! I wish they released a VR engine and Alyx was only a simple tech demo. They inverted what was needed and adoption of VR has suffered.

VR seems a bit weird right now. There's been a lot of tech development of things like the lenses but I think only small scaled production headsets with accordingly high prices use all the new stuff. And the Deckard will likely be something very enthusiast level / expensive too.

Also, do we know by now if the lacking features of the PSVR 2 adapter come down to the device itself or Steam VR simply not supporting them yet? I doubt we'll see a lot of sales with the lack of those features on the PC.