Third-Person Games in VR

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third-person games in vr

As promised, todays post is (hopefully) a little bit more interesting for those who are more interested in playing games than in technical details.

One of the things that really amazed me while working on vorpX was (and is) how well third-person games work on a Rift-like headset, since that is totally counterintuitive at first thought. Due to the way the ingame camera rotates around a fixed target point in third-person this shouldn’t work at all, or at least feel very strange. But somehow it does work, and pretty well as far as I’m concerned.

Although I have to say that this might be a matter of taste, so your mileage may vary. From my perspective there are just two minor caveats though: the camera shouldn’t be too far away from the character, and the character itself ideally shouldn’t be rendered directly in front of you, which is the case for many newer games. If these criteria are met, third-person games can be a lot of fun in VR.

 

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4 comments on “Third-Person Games in VR”

  1. Arni1984

    God! It was him!
    For example … When it comes to MASS EFFECT and others like games – I think the camera should be in the 1.5 – 2 meters from Shepard … In this case, the game will have to stay in the real ratio of 1 to 1 with the real world, visible from the first person. So, you’ll see the game in real proportions, and easy to manage in front character’s! This effect is achieved by an appropriate FOV in the game and in RIFT …
    For example, the angle of view by default in MASS EFFECT is about 75 degrees (do not know) And fov in HMZ T-1 only 45 degrees. So that, although the image is large, but it also falls short of the real proportions. In RIFT everything should be almost perfect! You are in VR MASS EFFECT, live in front of you Shepard, and we are proud to hide behind his back!

  2. Grant

    This is certainly something that will be interesting to try. I guess a similar situation is true of racing games (unless they have a true cockpit view). I think the things which will ruin the experience would be more like “action cam” used in games like Gears of War and Kane and Lynch where the camera jumps about. However I agree for games like Tomb Raider Underworld I could see how it mapping the headtracking to the camera would start to become intuitive.

  3. Mikearms24

    How would head tracking work in a game with 3rd person view?

    • Ralf

      It uses the normal camera controls, which works surprisingly well.

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