Can we please get VR on something not owned by Meta? :|
Waiting for Valves next VR set which is looking like it’ll have standalone as an optional add-on. Soon™ 💀
Soon™
Rest in HL3
For this particular game the PC version will support PCVR via Steam (and probably other ways as well).
Oh cool. That’s good to know. I was mistaken.
Strange the article didn’t menton it, but searching further it seems like you’re right.
I guess they are going out of their way to “big up” the Quest release in the press coverage because that is a separate platform / storefront and so can garner extra sales, while PC and PCVR are the same sale.
Genuinely mislead me to think the PC version wouldn’t have VR, though!
It definitely does obscure the fact that the PC version includes VR itself. I’ll buy it for Quest and PC myself simply to support the studio and hopefully help make sure they produce games for a few more decades!
When they first announced the remake they didn’t mention anything about native Quest support, but they did talk about PCVR initially (which was the day I finally invested in VR hardware). I’m honestly surprised they got it running on the Quest, though it does look like they had to reduce detail by quite a lot to get to perform decently on the Quest.
Please do the FMV bits “nicely” and not using pre-rendered clips like I’m the Myst remakes?
The FMV bits show characters in the world rather than just on a screen. Using FMV for that would be weird to say the least. I doubt they will.
I realized I composed that entirely incorrectly; here’s what I should have said:
I hope they use full-motion video for characters, rather than rendered CGI models. This didn’t look great in Myst, and it was really nice when an enterprising modder added FMV back to Myst. I get why (FMV doesn’t always work with VR) but I hope they give us the option on day one with Riven.
They will be using CGI characters, but it sounds like they hope to do a better job of it this time around. The 90s digital camera footage would be unusable for a modern game, beyond recasting and refilming I don’t see any other feasible way to make the FMV not look out of place in a modern game.
From gameinformer
One of the biggest technical challenges for Anderson and Gamiel has been bringing Riven’s characters back to life. The original game featured live-action video performances by several actors, including Rand Miller as Atrus, Sheila Goold and Regina Altay as his wife Catherine, and Royal Shakespeare Company alumnus John Keston as his father Gehn.
But it’s literally impossible to graft a 2D video from 1997 into a real-time, high-resolution 3D environment. Cyan’s previous remake, 2021’s award-winning VR and PC version of Myst, featured computer-generated characters in lieu of the original live-action performances. “It was… an experiment,” Miller laughs, but for the new Riven, Cyan hired a full-time animation lead, Autumn Palfenier, to raise the uncanny valley.
“For Gehn, we tried analyzing the [old] video and tracking certain features, but the resolution was so low, and it’s not even a full shot, so it just wasn’t doable,” Anderson says. Instead, they’ve been filming performances in Cyan’s basement using motion-capture technology.
“I can say on the record that this is a union production with SAG-AFTRA,” Gamiel says, referring to the same labor guild that represents Hollywood actors. “We wanted to get some incredible talent into this game.”
She won’t tell me who’s playing who but does confirm that Miller will return as Atrus and that the studio managed to salvage an old audio recording of John Keston, who died from COVID-19 complications in February 2022 at the age of 97. “We had an actor study John’s performance and then do it in sync with the original audio, so we got Gehn’s full body,” Anderson says. They show me a work-in-progress close-up of Gehn’s face, which exceeds my expectations.
I remember when this originally came out, it was a huge deal because of Myst and like everyone with a CD drive on their PC owning it. They packaged Myst in with just about everything back in the day and it was almost impossible to NOT own Myst.
That article really needed some proofreading. But, I am excited for this game very much.
