Valve's SteamVR: Solves Big Problems, Raises Bigger Questions 124
An anonymous reader writes: When Valve debuted its SteamVR headset recently, it came as somewhat of a surprise — it certainly hasn't gotten the same level of hype as the Oculus Rift. But people who got to try out the new headset almost universally impressed with the quality of the hardware and software. Eurogamer has an article about the device expressing both astonishment at how far the technology has come in three short years, as well as skepticism that we'll find anything revolutionary to do with it. Quoting: "R demands a paradigm shift in the thinking of game designers and artists about how they build virtual space and how players should interact with it. We're only at the very beginning of this journey now. ... but this process will likely take years, and at the end of it the games won't resemble those we're currently used to. In short, they won't be Half-Life 3."
The author thinks simulation games — driving, piloting, and space combat — will be the core of the first wave, and other genres will probably have to wait for the lessons learned making sims good. He adds, "...the practical challenges are great, too — not least in persuading players to clear enough space in their homes to use this device properly, and the potential for social stigma to attach to the goofy-looking headsets and the players' withdrawal into entirely private experiences. I still think that these present major obstacles to the widespread adoption of VR, which even more practical and commercially realistic offerings like Morpheus will struggle against."
The author thinks simulation games — driving, piloting, and space combat — will be the core of the first wave, and other genres will probably have to wait for the lessons learned making sims good. He adds, "...the practical challenges are great, too — not least in persuading players to clear enough space in their homes to use this device properly, and the potential for social stigma to attach to the goofy-looking headsets and the players' withdrawal into entirely private experiences. I still think that these present major obstacles to the widespread adoption of VR, which even more practical and commercially realistic offerings like Morpheus will struggle against."
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Just wait for VR Porn, then you won't need that PC.
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Put up or shut up. Here was my stab at it a couple years ago when I got the DK1.
https://github.com/ubernaut/OculusRift-HelloWorld-Panda3d
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Allow me to warn you that this is bad. and broken. It depended on oculus overlay which no longer works.
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There is more unix nature in one line of shell script than in 10,000 lines of c.
Re:For real (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not at all surprised at how advanced Valve's VR offering is. They were actually working on VR long before the Oculus Rift started. For some reason Valve canned the project and let go of all their staff including Jeri Ellsworth. Many of these people were then snapped up by Oculus. Because Valve didn't sell their project to Oculus, Valve would have retained all their previous VR work to use when they restarted the project.
One reason why the Oculus Rift could be shittier than the Valve one is that Valve holds the IP to do something better and is not selling it to facebook.
If I am not mistaken, Valve did the ports for Left4dead, Portal 2 and HL2 to the Rift. Valve is definitely not a newcomer to the VR game.
I hope it is Valves VR that takes off. Valve only cares about gaming and doing it well. If facebook wins you can bet they will augment targeted ads into the VR.
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I'm not at all surprised at how advanced Valve's VR offering is. They were actually working on VR long before the Oculus Rift started. For some reason Valve canned the project and let go of all their staff including Jeri Ellsworth.
They canned the AR team. They didn't can the VR team.
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They were actually working on VR long before the Oculus Rift started.
No, Valve was not working on VR long before the Oculus Rift started.
The first protoype of the Oculus Rift was shown in November 2010 (PR1), Valve didn't work on VR until the Virtual Insanity panel at QuakeCon in 2012, as Michael Abrash explained on his blog. They built their first HMD prototype in April 2013, the month after the DK1 was released.
Previously Valve was working on wearable devices and AR. The castAR project was not about VR either and still isn't, until they're able to show the VR clip they've
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Unlike dvd's etc, i dont mind steam style DRM, because it comes with the benefit of 'everything being cheap enough for me not to care'.
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Cool, except for every single game I bought on steam, is still in my library.My library consists of over 200 games since 2004. I can still download and install half life 2 which I bought in 2004. If it would have been a cd it would most likely been lost long by now, or scratched to shit so unreadable.
I also get additional benefits -- such as cloud based saves. Easy mod manager -- steam workshop, etc. Sure these are things that could be done without drm, or even without the steam client, but it just makes it
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And that's cool, but the GP's point that your ability to do that is entirely dependent upon Valve's continued goodwill - and that you therefore don't really "own" those games - is valid.
Mind you, I like Steam, and have quite a few games on it myself. And like you, I get them all at a deep discount. But I view them as what they are - indefinite-term rentals.
(new AC here, if it wasn't obvious)
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Ok fair enough, but at the price I got most of these games, even if in a decade they shut down, I still got an extreme value out of my money. Would it suck sure, but I am fine thinking of them as a long lease. I mean there have been very few games I have ever played after a few years of having them anyways.
And with a company worth billions, you think they really going to shut down shop? Goodwill? They making a killing.
Neck muscle builder (Score:1, Funny)
Will VR addicts be called meat heads because of the neck muscles they'll build up?
Navigation (Score:1)
I'd use it to work on my horrible spatial navigation skills and figure out exactly why I consistently think I'm going the right way when I'm going either 90 or 180 degrees away from it.
Re:Navigation (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you changed hemispheres semi-recently?
I had the same issue when I relocated from Australia to the UK, I had gone from have a good sense of direction to always being about 180 deg out. It wasn't till my old man said it is because the sun is on the wrong side that it clicked. In the southern hemisphere the sun is always to the North, in the Northern it is to the south. Sub-consciously I must have been drawing on that.
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It turned out not to be the sun, but how I mentally stored a turn. Because the roads are the opposite way, I must mentally store a left turn as coming immediately off the road, and a right turn as crossing t
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Nope, I've always lived in North America. However, I have moved a lot, and it might be that I'm subconsciously relating which way I'm going to where I think the water is. It's west on the west coast, north when in Ottawa and south when in Toronto. Hard to say. It would be so much easier if my brain could just use the sun. :)
R? (Score:5, Funny)
Quoting: "R demands a paradigm shift in the thinking
Yup, I bet it does if you're used to something like Python or Matlab for your data munging.
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The V was probably lost during copy-pasting.
Re:R? (Score:5, Funny)
eally ?
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No, it was lost due to bad ratings.
Re:R? (Score:5, Funny)
I have an abusive relationship with R. I want to love it, but it keeps hurting me.
Porn (Score:1)
We all know that's what we want to use it for.
VR Demands Specialized Input Devices (Score:4, Insightful)
I think people are too focused on the VR headset and not considering the problem of peripherals enough. When you put on a VR headset, you essentially demand a HOTAS [wikipedia.org] type control system, so your hands never have to wander around searching for where to go, as you're not essentially blind to the world.
I've been thinking a lot about what sort of controller would be optimal for a shooter or other first-person game in which you wanted to be able to look, aim, and move independently. You'd essentially need a movement control for your off hand, and an aiming device for your main hand. It could be a concept similar to the Wii remote with it's attached single-hand joystick - only I'd prefer an aiming device with a proper pistol grip and trigger, and they'd both need to be independent and wireless so you're not getting cables caught on anything. A standard two handed gamepad is just not going to cut it, I think. If this can be cracked, then we'll certainly *may* see shooters and first-person adventure games. If it ends up feeling clumsy, then probably not. It's really hard to say until someone tries it out.
Hell, even if the technology is really only broadly used for flight sims and other "in the cockpit" sort of games, it's still a win. I used to play quite a few flight sims ages ago, and the limited field of view was incredibly frustrating. The prospect of being able to look over my shoulder to track potential targets sounds incredible. Granted, not everyone is going to have a HOTAS system, but for those of us who do, it's going to be awesome.
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Keyboard and mouse will work just fine, thank you.
You're looking for solutions to non-existent problems.
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unless you have some kind of physical impairment or wear a neck brace or something.
Wait I'm trying to think back to my D&D days to remember if trolls have necks.
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You aren't aware that keyboards have these little nubby bits on certain keys expressly so you can recalibrate your fingers over the correct keys without looking?
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1) My muscle memory knows where on the keyboard W,A,S,D are.
2) If you noticed then there are a physical marker on the F key and the J key on your keyboard. So that you can locate them and then knows where the rest of the keys are without looking at them.
So if you use a keyboard daily then you do not need to look at it to find and hit the right keys.
But yes if you start moving around in the room then you need some better controller then mouse and keyboard.
But most times people will play games sitting down. A
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Test the Vive, then come back and move that 3-4 decades up towards when the Vive comes out.
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I don't think so. I think you would be surprised at how well you type with your eyes closed. You can find a keyboard easily on your desk and all you have to do is locate the bumps on the F & J keys (assuming Qwerty).
Mouse only fits in the hand 1 way.
Re:VR Demands Specialized Input Devices (Score:5, Informative)
Valve already had a pair of position-detecting wands for your hands (similar to the playstation Move system). The bigger problem is movement. Movement by pressing a button detaches your apparent movement from your physical movement, which is going to be incredibly disorienting. The treadmill-style system someone else has been working on will probably work as a solution, but it's likely to be very expensive.
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The bigger problem is movement. Movement by pressing a button detaches your apparent movement from your physical movement, which is going to be incredibly disorienting.
I think movement by button while sitting at your desk won't be disorienting at all, but movement dependent on walking/jumping on a device that provides feedback entirely unlike the environment being simulated will definitely take a lot of getting used to for each implementation.
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Bouncy castle controller environment?
I'm in =P
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Any in-game (visual) acceleration, that is not experienced physically, can cause nausea and disorientation.
This is why e.g. EVE:Valkyrie is looking to have players constantly fly forward, with limited speed-controls (e.g. no coming to a full stop, or making extremely sharp turns).
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It can, but I don't think that actually affects the majority of the population. And you can probably already pick out the people that'll have the most trouble with it as they already avoid FPS style games because it gives them motion sickness.
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The treadmill-style system someone else has been working on will probably work as a solution, but it's likely to be very expensive.
Not merely expensive, but also extremely tiring. My guess is this will mostly remain a niche, for exercise and therapy. I don't really see the point of playing games if it requires me to engage in strenuous activity, avoiding which is exactly why I play games instead of sports.
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The Omni [kickstarter.com] is what you were thinking about I believe. I'm not a backer (I don't Kickstart hardware; too risky) but assuming it comes out and works well, I'll be buying one. They are targeting a ~$400 price point, which is doable.
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We've had wiimote/nunchuck style controllers for VR going back to the bulky arcade VR systems of the mid-90s, accessories are really not the problem. The true killer here is the lag between input and render. For almost any PC game unless I'm getting unplayable performance the response time between me moving the mouse and my screen moving with it is effectively instant. Every VR system I've ever seen though has a substantial lag time between moving and your view updating. That's just not going to work.
Re:VR Demands Specialized Input Devices (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, for "faux-VR" interfaces like the Wii you need to consider that it has to do a *lot* of procedural faking of response (gesture recognition), which adds a lot of extra lag since it typically can't recognize the motion and initiate it in-game until after you've already completed it in real life.
For more "hardcore" VR (well, at least not for most of the consumer-oriented stuff being done since the Oculus was announced, professional stuff has had different priorities) the problem is generally not that the lag is any worse than on a traditional PC - but that the same amount of lag is *much* more obvious. Your brain has a lifetime of experience correlating head motion and visual response to build a consistent map of the world, with continuous response times that make 60FPS look glacially slow in comparison. Insert more than the slightest amount of lag and it thinks something has gone very wrong and acts to correct it: the nausea/vomitting response - which helps correct the vast majority of lag-inducing effects in the natural world.
As for interaction: Consider - when you move a finger there's a roughly 1/8 second lag between when your brain sends the signal and when your finger actually moves - that's a hardwired signal propagation delay, but under most circumstances you'll never notice it because that lag is built into your brain's understanding of the interface and has been continuously updated as you've grown and the lag increased. Suddenly add another few milliseconds of lag though, and suddenly your brain is constantly saying "Hey, WTF!?! I just moved my hand, why isn't the damn thing respond... okay, NOW it's moving".
It's not that the interface is substantially more laggy, it's just that you're going from a completely artificial interface (button-presses, etc) to one that closely mimics what your brain already knows how to operate. Any discrepancy is going to throw it off-kilter. In fact I would suspect that hard-core VR enthusiasts are going to have some issues with real-world coordination. Maybe not to much of an issue if you're already a klutz anyway, but you may have to make a choice between being good at virtual or the real thing.
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> If you are talking about button presses, there is no direct event to line up.
Right. But if we're talking about using your hands/feet/etc. normally in VR space (or even via 6DOF "wands"), a.k.a VR interfaces, then there *is* a 1:1 event correspondence, and lag may become extremely disorienting and/or interfere with your real-world reflexes as your brain learns to compensate.
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But what happens to your real-world reflexes once you've acclimated to having your hands move with 50% more lag in VR? It sounds nice and all to have your hands move "before" you tell them to, but an awful lot of reflexes depend on timing, not just speed.
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There ar
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You could be right. I hear a lot of people talk about how disorienting this is, though, and I was trying to address that issue. My feeling was that a joystick for movement and actually aiming a physical device might feel more natural with a VR headset on.
I guess we'll probably have to wait a bit and see whether you're correct that a mouse and keyboard will work well enough for first-person games. It could be just a matter of tuning the controls properly for a FPS/VR experience, or of players adapting to
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I just want to have an infinitely large computer screen with no additional cost beyond buying the VR glasses. I don't give even one tiny shit about the "virtual reality" part. I basically want to be able to set my virtual desktop to some ridiculously large size, then look around at it using the VR glasses as a viewport.
Then I can drag windows off to the side, look at something on the other side of my virtual desktop, and basically never have to maximize a window ever again. Bonus points if I can have a few
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Then I can drag windows off to the side, look at something on the other side of my virtual desktop, and basically never have to maximize a window ever again.
I hope you're not a coffee drinker, because if you are, I can foresee the demise of a lot of keyboards from this setup :)
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I just want to have an infinitely large computer screen with no additional cost beyond buying the VR glasses. I don't give even one tiny shit about the "virtual reality" part. I basically want to be able to set my virtual desktop to some ridiculously large size, then look around at it using the VR glasses as a viewport.
Wouldn't that be a fun Window Manager to write? :-) However, instead of an infinitely large flat surface, I'd rather sit inside a ~6 foot virtual sphere. Important programs go right in front; reference docs, database queries, and utility/diagnostic apps would be to the left and right; email, IM, Facebook, news feed, and other "status"-y applications would be above or below. In hectic/messy work situations, you might end up with apps fully surrounding you, though obviously you'd be able to rotate the sp
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Infinite Window manager 'eh? You should have a look at Eagle View [sourceforge.net].
Works exactly as it does in the video. I think it needs a little 'lock-to' as it can be a little sensitive (that could be my mouse though).
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Short-term though, you're going to fuck up your eyes using any first-gen consumer VR for 8-10 hrs per day (a la any work situation), and it'll be cheaper/more expedient to just buy an extra monitor.
You're eyes are focused at infinity with this gen. of VR, so no eye strain. It's unclear if there will be any long-term physiological affects, though. Eventually, retinal displays will have shifting focus based on the in-world content.
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When you put on a VR headset, you essentially demand a HOTAS [wikipedia.org] type control system, so your hands never have to wander around searching for where to go, as you're not essentially blind to the world.
While I agree with the below comment that a mouse and keyboard will do just fine, that's probably only true for more serious gamers. For more causal gamers (and for all sorts of other situations that will pop up) I'm guessing there will be a forward facing camera on the headset. If you look down at your hands, you'll see your hands (and the keyboard). Probably with the keys used in the game highlighted and labeled.
Well at least we'll have some more space combat (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Well at least we'll have some more space combat (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cool story, bro. Thanks for your opinion.
Now I'm going to go off to play some Elite: Dangerous, Star Citizen and No Man's Sky.
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Now I'm going to go off to play some ... No Man's Sky.
Cool story, bro.
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I didn't. This was my first comment in this thread. My point is, you say you're off to play this game, but it hasn't yet released.
VR + motion capture :) (Score:1)
I think a lot of people are unaware of just what a huge paradigm shift in gaming is on the way, once VR and kinect-style motion capture are integrated. Giving the player a character in a game, the model of which seamlessly moves to remain in sync with their real body, matching their innate sense of proprioception, is going to be a game changer (pun intended).
Imagine a world like Skyrim, but one where if you look down, you see yourself as your character. Arms and legs doing exactly what they're doing in real
1st gen, 3rd gen.. not good enough til 5th gen. (Score:1)
When we get to VR5, then the tech will be ready.
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But you'll be able to get almost a whole book on one little tape.
*clap clap* glee! This topic has been on my mind! (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, so your basic game camera modes are top-down, isometric, third person, and first person. Simulations build on that with chase cams, orbital cams, fixed cams, and mobile cams that rotate around the subject. In VR, each one of these will have consequences, and those consequences need to be known.
Let's start with the obvious. First person will work, right off, no changes. It's the most suited to VR. Third person will work, but where we feel like we're watching our characters when we're in third person mode on a screen, in VR we it will feel more like an out of body experience. That is, if we continue to identify with the character, otherwise we'll feel like some kind of disembodied entity following a protagonist. We have to keep the player from feeling compelled to look "around" things, so keeping from obstructing the player's view will take on a new importance. If a tree gets in the way of the shot, instead of feeling like a tree is in the way, we'll feel like we've run into a tree.
But speaking of disembodied entities, that's exactly what top-down and isometric views will feel like. So, let's hone in on that. Will virtual worlds feel like shoebox dioramas or will we feel like birds, aircraft, or perhaps deific figures peering down upon the world? These analogies can be expressed literally in virtual spaces, so playing with them in interfaces can potentially do amazing things for the experience. Imagine a city-builder game, top-down, in VR, where the occasional cloud or birds below are timed and positioned just right to reinforce that feeling. Now imagine that the borders of the window and map make us feel like we're looking down on a model. Tilt-shift post processing can become very important, very soon!
Now we come to sims. Making these the first wave of VR games is a gimmick. It's like the gratuitous addition of objects protruding from the screen in 3D movies; done just to let us get the full experience. What do you imagine in VR? Feeling like you're flying, roller coasters, feeling like you're going very fast. But look at 3D. Having arrows or monster claws or whatever come out of the screen is neat the first few times, and then it takes more finesse. Simulations will probably be just like that. But there's a much bigger issue to think about here. It becomes apparent with simulations, but applies backward through this post all the way to first person.
Hone in on that rotating cam. Can you see the potential for motion sickness and dizziness? Uh oh. That same potential applies everywhere. The awesome thing about VR is that you can feel like you're there. The tricky thing about VR will be that you feel like you're there. I foresee posts about people throwing up while playing flight sims; not even trying to be funny. So, there's some balance between free movement, the rush of certain kinds of motion, gameplay, and the not-so-nice things our brains will do to us under certain conditions.
And we have absolutely no idea how to quantify or even accurately describe the balances involved in this. VR is going to rock when it fully takes off! I can foresee even an entirely new cinematic experience where we watch movies shot such that we can feel like the director or cameraman as we go. Imagine The Matrix with a character selector and cam changer similar to video games. Yes, please! Right? But VR is also going to involve some pain. We need labs quantifying these boundaries and building limits into engines, and we need that starting two years ago!
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Valve was always here.. in the Oculus Rift ! (Score:3, Interesting)
What if I told you that Valve's VR has been here all along and it was hiding in plain sight -- inside the Oculus Rift itself? [reddit.com] Early on, Valve worked with Oculus to improve their head mounted display. The Oculus Development Kit 1 added Valve technology and became the Crystal Cove prototype. The prototype was re-released as the Oculus Development Kit 2. Oculus continued to receive assistance from Valve, but then in March of 2004, Oculus was purchased by Facebook.
For reasons not published, the cooperation between the two companies ended. Oculus went ahead and developed a Crescent Bay prototype, which was very similar to the best of Valve's prototypes at the time, but with the alternate camera arrangement that was used on Crystal Cove. The Crescent Bay prototype was not sold to the public, perhaps related to issues involved with the split between the two companies.
What you've seen with the Valve/HTC Vive is actually the culmination of Valve's ongoing research which Oculus has benefited from. After the split (and losing Abrash to Oculus), Valve continued to work on the hard problems and developed a new tracking technology based on lasers and inexpensive photodiodes, and controller input. The Valve/HTC Vive prototype is the latest public revelation of their ongoing work. It isn't any wonder that Valve's "new headset" has gotten high praise -- they've been breaking ground for some time, you just never knew.
We can expect both HTC/Valve and Oculus to evolve between now and the release of their first consumer product.
Wait to see what Nintendo does. Again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember how crappy controls in 3D games were? Then Nintendo came out with Super Mario 64 and everyone went "oh yeah this is how it should work". But what about fighting in 3D? Ocarina of Time and z-targeting pretty much established that. Now I admit that story wise Nintendo doesnt always excell. But I don't think anyone can make controls more intuitive then they can. Hell even Mario Galaxy with its insane physics is easy to pick up and figure out how to move when you are jumping from one floating asteroid to another.
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Crappy control in 3D games went away with Descent and Quake. The former had awesome controls with my Wingman Extreme flight stick and the latter made mouselook a thing.
Nintendo didn't do anything. In fact, their horrible controller made playing games far worse.
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Those games are first person which didn't require anything special in terms of gameplay. You were the camera.
Descent had horrible controls. It was very difficult to figure out where you were going. What made the games I mentioned exceptional was how they coordinated the camera and control for you providing an intuitive gameplay.