Oculus Rift: Existing games

 I have been looking at some existing games / games in development for the Oculus Rift the first one that really caught my eye was "Lost Loot" the video is shown below.

 

The game showed me that quite a high level of detail can be obtained on the Oculus Rift, although the models aren't particularly high poly the textures are excellent and create a unified and realistic visual style.
 

The game play itself is fairly simple but it I believe it is still in development, the game seemed to have a good standard of immersion, although in my opinion the audio isn't convincing enough for the most part, the sounds of coins being picked up and the sunken ship being discovered remind the player they are playing a game.

  "Dirt 3" seems very well suited to the Oculus because the player isn't walking around, they are instead driving a car and therefore no realism is lost through player movement because the player is sitting just the same as the character in the game. Again I was surprised at the level of detail that is obtainable on the rift it seems to be on par with the graphics of the xbox 360, though it is hard to judge without playing it on the Oculus myself.

One thing I noticed that may be an issue is the UI in the game, could it be disorientating to have it so close to the players face? would it be better to give a little distance between the players eyes and the UI? Again it is hard to say for certain.

My personal favourite is this mod for "half life 2" were the gun and headset work seperately, to create an entirely new level of immersion that I myself have not seen before, it could be quite disorientating but even still it really opens up a lot of possibilities with games.

I also picked this video in particular because it highlights how effective the horror genre could be on the Oculus, another thing i thought was very interesting was the way the ammo count showed on the side of the gun allowing for a clean HUD increasing player immersion.


In conclusion I have found out that two very important considerations that may be overlooked in Oculus game development are sound and UI, I have also discovered that the graphical capabilities of the Oculus Rift exceeded my expectations. Although I am fascinated by the seperate gun and head control in the half life 2 mod I think it maybe counter productive to focus on that aspect considering my current skillset but I may look into it again in future.