What's next in gaming, particularly shooters?

[carve]

So, the Wii and Kinect have been out for a while and point some potential new directions for things to go. What's next in gaming? Here's what I'd like to see.

Virtual Reality. There was a lot of buzz in the early 90's, but now that the tech is cheap, where'd it go? I think for <$200, they could come out with a helmet with a fast head-tracker and 3D that extends to the edges of your vision. How many times have you been playing a game and try to crane your neck to look around a corner. It'd be so natural for 1st person POV games. Also, it wouldn't make a lot of noise or tie up the TV.

You'd need some kind of controller, too. The regular pad would work, but I think pointing an actual rifle in a FPS would be much faster and more intuitive than moving the stick. The hard part would be integrating a stick on the rifle to control movement, and how to sync up head movements vs. where your avatar's body is actually pointing. I think a good solution for controlling motion would be to integrate it into the fore-grip. The grip would basically be a stick sticking out from under the barrel that you grab with your whole hand. Push forward and backward to move forward and backward...side-to-side to strafe. Pointing could be a stick that falls under your thumb, or could be based on accelerometers in the gun. The problem is, if you want to point to something off to your left, you'd move the gun left a bit and the image would start moving, and wouldn't stop until you pointed forward again. You could stand and actually move your whole body around 360 degrees...but I think we'd wind up with people blindly walking around their rooms crashing into stuff and falling down stairs. You'd need some kind of play-pen.

Other than the typical better graphics/bigger maps, where would you like to see things go?

[NYCGP]

I agree that it would be nice to be more involved in games since the ability to put a player in a virtual reality is much easier than it once was. However, the only problem I find when speaking on this topic is movement. Aiming and looking is all fine and well... but walking, running and strafing would all be very difficult without a pair of sticks.

Your ideas aren't bad it would just remove a person from the Virtual Reality you are trying to create. Why put a helmet and a gun on someone and then tell them they have to move around using a stick... doesn't make sense.

[3lusive]

If they can mass produce these or variants of these, then you've got your wish:

The only downside is that they have a virtually unlimited budget and we do not

[carve]

Originally Posted by NYCGP

I agree that it would be nice to be more involved in games since the ability to put a player in a virtual reality is much easier than it once was. However, the only problem I find when speaking on this topic is movement. Aiming and looking is all fine and well... but walking, running and strafing would all be very difficult without a pair of sticks.

Your ideas aren't bad it would just remove a person from the Virtual Reality you are trying to create. Why put a helmet and a gun on someone and then tell them they have to move around using a stick... doesn't make sense.

Practicality. If you had an area the size of your game map to actually move around in, it would be called paintball. You have to find a way to make this work standing, or even sitting, in one place- otherwise you couldn't play it in your house and it wouldn't sell.

I just thought of a way to control movement without having to stand and turn your body around. It's the same foregrip stick I came up with before, but now the foregrip also twists. Just twist left or right to point you virtual body that direction. It could either twist 20* or so and stop, and if you hold it at full twist you just keep spinning, or it could be a dial cut into increments. You twist to whatever increment you want, and within that increment you control where you go by looking. That wouldn't be as smooth though. But, that's not really too big of a deal. You can always look and point your gun a whole 180* or more in any direction without actually facing that way. What would be really cool would being able to poke your head into a room and look both ways really quick, or even shoving your gun around the wall and firing blind.

If you could be satisfied sitting rather than standing, pointing could be controlled with some rudder pedals from a flight sim.

[carve]

Wow- that was pretty damn cool, especially the treadmill. It looks like the treadmill was laggy though...it'd keep going for a second after they stopped walking. Also, I think a helmet would be superior to the screen. You could have an even wider field of view, including the up and down directions (you couldn't look up in this sim) and best of all...3D!!!! Also, those LED's wouldn't be necessary, and you wouldn't have them washing out the screen.

So, with my idea, it'd be even MORE visually immersive, but you'd lose actual walking and the getting shot. It'd probably be 80-85% as good for under $350-$450 in accessories (gun, helmet, maybe a kinect).

Maybe a good idea to keep someone from walking too far while still being able to turn their whole body would be to calibrate with kinnect. You walk around the field of play, defining your boundries. If you leave those, the game pauses or you get one of those "leaving field of battle" timeouts.