Quoting: Grogan

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI've tried a VR thing once--it kind of worked for me. I probably didn't have depth perception, but I don't anyway so . . .

I tried one in 1996, before they were something in reach of consumers. That was back when I could still voluntarily focus my eyes, though. It was at this place in Mississauga, Ontario (near Toronto, almost grown together) called the "Sega Playdium" where they had huge screen racing games and all kinds of neat stuff. Also an Imax type ride that was pretty trippy.

I played a trap shooting game (shotgun "clay pigeons"... pull!) and it was somewhat like busting clays for real. No recoil, but the shotgun was weighty and the physics was realistic. (the visuals weren't photorealistic or anything, but the 3D was good)

P.S. The headgear was huge lol

Ha, some early versions of VR;
Atari Jaguar VR, got to the beta stage, never released, only one commercial game had VR support (Missile Command 3D), but the BigPEmu now has VR support!

Sega VR; Not sure how far along this got either, seems there were a few titles that had planned support (I want to say Zero Tolerance did?)

Arcade VR; These various systems apparently used two Amiga 3000s in the setup! Very cool! Would be awesome to get the hardware to make one of these, though the A3000s are grossly priced now.

Virtual I/O glasses; I have some of these, I still need to try them in Descent and other games that supported them on the PC.

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Quoting: GroganI'm a cross eyed bastard (the real term is a strabismus). Ah well, it does make it harder to sneak up on me (it extends my periphery lol)

Lucky! I'm just a regular bastard, I don't have any super powers.

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Quoting: dziadulewiczThis survey appears not very useful until we get some absolute numbers. Also the "other" section includes probably Linuxes and then also Chrome OS is definitely Linux but is often left out from Linux share.

"Linux has nearly half of the desktop OS Linux market. It would be twice as much if people could stop arguing about who counts and who doesn't".

https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/18/linux_desktop_debate/

ChromeOS shouldn't be in the 'Desktop Linux' share, as it doesn't run normal Desktop Applications, right? As far as I know it's about as Desktop Linux as the Samsung Dex thing.

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Quoting: BlackBloodRumThe problem with AUR is, for a new user at least; is it provides a false sense of security. Unlike the regular distribution packages there is a much lower level of validation, so it is possible for AUR to have dangerous packages. Even experienced users may only check a few PKGBUILDs, found they're safe, continue to use it however neglecting to check further.

You know what I've noticed lately? It used to require 'yay -Syua' to include the AUR built stuff, but now even the -Syu grabs things that are using the AUR PKGBUILDs. Kind of annoys me and makes it a little more effort to check things.

Granted with the chaotic-aur that Garuda uses where they pre-build a lot of AUR packages (hopefully they are actually verified), I find myself using only maybe two from AUR (FoundryVTT is one, trying to remember what the other is, but I think it's a closed source tarball you have to download and the PKGBUILD just creates .Desktop files and puts icons in the right place).

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Quoting: GroganI somewhat resent that Valve made this game VR only. I bought the Half Life games and all the expansions and was thusly invested in it and I'd have liked another game. Especially after all that hype about Half Life 3, they come out with this and make it inaccessible to anyone that doesn't have the headgear. I don't ever plan to have a VR headset, I don't think it would be good for me.

Few games are "VR only", most devs realize that it's better to have a larger audience.

Enough resentment that I don't want to reward the game with a purchase, and use a third party mod so I can play it (that might be fragile come game update time, too)

So, I salute these guys for doing it.

They said years ago that they were working on 3 titles for VR (I'm sure they actually meant 2 or 5 because they can't count to 3). But Alyx was a free game for those who bought the Index.

Curious why you say a VR headset wouldn't be good for you? I know a guy who only has one eye, so it'd be pretty useless to him, for sure.

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Quoting: anewsonI think this marks the denouement of the latest VR push... seems like it's going to stay an optional nice-to-have for supported games.

I suppose it's sort of akin to having a HOTAS setup for flight simulators. Sure, you COULD play it with a keyboard and mouse... but are you really getting the full enjoyment out of the game? Like I can't even imagine playing Elite: Dangerous with a keyboard / mouse, or for that matter a gamepad, though I've tried this on the PS4, it just doesn't feel the same.

This is one of the reasons I prefer real hardware over emulation; half the enjoyment is from using the original control scheme.

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: slaapliedjeYeah, I'm surprised there isn't a bit more news here about it, as it's just as much a Linux gaming device as Steam Deck is...

You should submit some articles! You've shown a lot of knowledge about it and about what current-Atari is up to, and in spite of the concerns I expressed earlier, I'm genuinely happy to see new management that actually cares about Atari's legacy and wants to do good things with it, so I'd love to read more about it (UK also here, so not able to get a VCS either ).

Ha, I've thought about doing it a few times. Though I think they wanted more info than I usually am willing to give for submissions, so I have not.

I've seen people in the UK get a VCS via eBay, but that seems like a silly thing to have to do, when Atari SA's headquarters are in France (I think?). They do have a building in Sunnyvale somewhere now.

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Quoting: anewsonAwesomenauts was my favourite MOBA and it still has a small but active community. Hopefully this injects some cash into the game, I'm sure the players are happy it.

Wonder if they're planning on making a whole new game.

Atari's history is pretty interesting, since they've basically gone from hardware / software developers through the 1970s up until 1996, then a software publisher basically bought the name / IP, and they've been kind of shuffled around a few times until they finally decided to make hardware again... and now that they're buying up development houses, they're becoming more of what they used to be, with having a hardware platform + software developer.

But I'm hoping they're able to get some third party support for their hardware (maybe for a VCS 2, if that ever happens). I think that was always one of the reasons of their downfall, was the only time they truly had a massive amount of third party software was in the 2600 / A8 computer days. If you look at the 5200, 7800 and Jaguar, almost all of their games were 1st party. The Atari ST had quite decent success for it's first 5 or so years of it's existence, but after the Amiga caught on, there was a huge dip in new software.

Third party support basically makes / breaks a system. Like the Switch's hardware was old when it was released, but since it's Nintendo, it's remained successful. Ha, Atari is currently in the 'cheat' mode, as they buy companies and make the third party as 1st. Though this makes sense, since they can make money selling on Steam, Switch, etc.

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Quoting: Marlockhint: because DOS was the kernel for them and they were just a shell, win 3.11 and win95 work fine over DOSBox

no need for suffering with ancient hardware and ancient OSs if you're doing it just to game

Depends on what you want to game with. Like getting FFB Joysticks working through DOSBox may be a bit more difficult. Though you can certainly use some of the other old hardware emulators for things like Glide supported games.

Besides, half the fun for me is actually getting the old hardware up and going, much like the same reason why I own an Atari 800xl, Commodore 64/128, Apple IIGS, various Amigas, Atari STs, etc. It's more about enjoying the old hardware + software than it is just about playing games :)

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Quoting: Cybolic

Quoting: hardpenguinIt is pretty hilarious that the community provided this functionality instead of the game developers. 🤭

Not really? To me, this is like a fan-edit of a film; the "director's cut" is already out there as the original Alyx VR, and I'd find it odd if the creator of a piece of media in another form would feel the need to work on a version that doesn't reflect how they feel it's meant to be experienced.

Agreed. This game is meant for selling the Index hardware. Wonder how many units this game sold the hardware for. I had my Index before the game came out, but this was really the first fully complete game that I played beginning to end.

The feeling of being able to hide behind some wall, and poking up your head to see how far you have to toss a grenade, then sitting back down to lob one over at the enemies... it's pretty hard to describe how awesome that was. The fights in it were absolutely amazing.

I think adding VR to the older Half-life games would be even more ambitious / awesome. Though as Alyx shows, there is a lot of things that would just require it to be something designed from the beginning.

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