VR/XR

With the recent releases of the Meta Quest 3 and Apples Vision Pro there has never been a better time to look into VR or AR experiences.

These are new industries with a lot to learn in regard to creating great experiences, but a lot of the fundamentals are finally understood which means we can get to the fun part of making experiences amazing!

The Fundamentals

There are some things to consider when making a VR/AR/XR experience, most of all is how to make sure that your users don't feel physcially uncomfortable when playing your experience.

Frame Rate (90FPS+)

The most important one is to make sure that your experience runs at an absolute minimum of 75 frames per second, any less and your users will feel uncomfortable, dizzy, or nauseous.

Ideally you want the average to be around 90 frames per second for a comfortable experience.

This is easier if users are using a desktop with a headset like Oculus Rift, or Vive. The Vision Pro headset also has reasonable specs to render the experience.

Standalone headsets like the Quest have more limited resources. That said, there are more Quest headsets out there, and therefore is a good standard to aim for if you want more people using your experience.

You will need to optimise your experience to the desired device to run at the required frame rate for a comfortable experience.

VR Motion Sickness

One of the biggest issues in VR is moving around the space, or XR Locomotion. Some people can move around spaces without issue, whereas many people do feel uncomfortable, nauseous, or dizzy.

This is due to the difference in what your brain thinks it is doing, and what your body thinks it is doing similar to general Motion Sickness.

There are many different ways to reduce this effect however, and most games will include most of these as options in order to give the user the most comfortable experience possible.

Teleportation

One of the earliest approaches to reduce discomfort in VR/XR experiences was to include teleportation as a key approach to moving around an experience. Most games will offer the choice between teleportation and manual movement.

Some of the best experiences are ones that are designed around not moving around at all such as Beat Saber, or stable movement like Pistol Whip. The other approach is putting the user in a virtual environment that makes sense for the movement such as a car or mech.

The other approach to this is by making the body more aligned to what is happening in the game. Stride was one of the first experiences that allowed full locomotion to the point of parkour by making the body do more similar activity that was happening in the game world such as using your arms in a running motion to run.

Snap based turning

The user can turn around quickly and comfortably by snapping the camera at 30-degree angles when turning. This amount is usually editable in the Settings.

Vignette / Limited view movement

The camera view darkens the edges of the view when the user moves and/or turns in the environment. This reduces discomfort for many users.

The Basics

Breaking Immersion

One of the key elements to VR/XR experiences is the ability to create a sense of immersion. It is much easier to create fully immersive experiences as the user is in the experience, that said it is also easier to break them out of the experience.

A simple way to think of it is a user is completely in or out of the experience, whereas in a screen-based game you have more of a spectrum to play with.

A simple example of an immersion breaking element is where you have a desk in a space where you can pick up some things, but not others. As soon as you can't pick up a pencil, but you can pick up a mug, you will break the immersion.

it is better to align expectations to what people would expect without alternatives, but sometimes it can't be helped. You could colour things that can be picked up to one colour and everything you can't is another colour. You could simply remove all things that can't be picked up but should and offer a reason for this in world.

Another example is some doors/drawers you can open but others you cannot with no difference between the two such as a lock or damage.

Enhancing Immersion

It is certainly possible to align expectations as needed, but make sure that you do so in order to create the best experiences.

Unique Experiences

We have decades of experience making video games that are fun and engaging. A lot of these approaches carry over to VR/XR as well. Some elements of screen based games translate well, whereas others do not. Finding which is which depends on the game type.

That said, both virtual reality and Augmented reality experiences offer what other devices can't do, and we are only just starting to find out what these are.

Leaning into these elements is one approach to standing out in this new market, rather than simply porting previous experiences into a new medium. Or if you are porting from previous mechanics, try to see if you can make it better using XR experiences.