The most outrageous part was that the other three fingers also had buttons!
These buttons were distributed on the gun handle, horizontally elongated, slightly wider than a finger, with an ergonomic concave shape that fit perfectly when gripped.
The buttons themselves felt quite firm with a short travel distance. Because of the hand strap, they wouldn’t be triggered when held loosely, only activating when the web of the hand applied force and the fingers pressed down.
Of course, other buttons like the basic home button and back function button were also present, just in less prominent positions, since they were rarely used during gameplay.
Pei Qian couldn’t help but exclaim: “…So many buttons?!”
Compared to other common VR controllers, each controller had a full five additional buttons, meaning ten extra buttons across both controllers.
Although the middle, ring, and little fingers were less dexterous and generally wouldn’t be assigned special functional buttons, even without counting these three buttons, the controller still had the cockable hammer button near the joystick and the magazine eject button beside the grip.
These controllers were just ridiculous!
Old Song nodded: “Yes, Mr. Pei, we had too much development funding, so we had to go all out on the controllers!”
“I figured you can never have too many buttons. The more buttons, the more interactive operations you can use in the game. We’ve already added so many buttons, adding a few more didn’t matter.”
“Anyway, the functions corresponding to these buttons in the game can be developed and adapted gradually.”
Lin Wan picked up: “Don’t worry, Mr. Pei, the functions for all these buttons have already been arranged in the game.”
Pei Qian: “…”
What did he mean by “too much development funding” so they “had to” do more work on the controllers?
Is it my fault for giving too much money?
Shenhua Group also gave a lot of money, why not blame them?
This was outrageous!
Pei Qian was very clear that he had indeed given Chi Xing Studio a large sum of money to develop this VR headset. But he still didn’t have a very clear concept of what kind of VR headset could actually be developed.
He certainly hadn’t expected them to create such a seemingly complete headset with such rich features!
Pei Qian had originally thought that given the current state of the VR market, even if they made a product better than VR headsets on the market, it would at most be a half-finished product, still very far from becoming a truly hot-selling item.
But now it seemed he had guessed wrong again…
He silently put on the VR headset.
Then, an extremely vast scene appeared before him.
In front were waves crashing against the beach, with the island’s coastline extending to both sides. Looking behind, there was a forest on the island, where you could occasionally see small animals wandering.
A semi-transparent interface floated in the sky ahead, with icons for various apps.
Although VR resources were currently extremely limited, there were still some apps if you looked hard enough, such as some video software and currently rather rudimentary VR games.
Moreover, the VR headset ran on the AiZhuo system, so any AiZhuo software could be displayed in a flat format in the VR headset, making it easy to pad out the selection.
They had installed so many apps, obviously wanting to test whether these apps could run normally on the VR headset and how they compared to other VR headsets.
Pei Qian hesitated: “This login interface…”
Lin Wan explained: “Oh, because we were pressed for time, the login interface was made entirely using existing game resources.”
“The default is a scene from ‘Animal Island VR,’ and we’ve prepared two other scene backgrounds for players to switch to: one is the command ship space scene from ‘Mission and Choice,’ and the other is the Sanzu River scene with Higanbana flowers from ‘Turn Back to Shore.'”
Pei Qian: “…”
What the hell—no time so they just threw something together?!
You guys are quite clever, directly using scenes from existing games as the VR headset’s login backgrounds instead of creating new ones!
What would happen if players of “Mission and Choice” and “Turn Back to Shore” found out about this?
Among the many apps, several commonly used system applications were displayed specially, including a screen casting button.
The “Animal Island VR” game demo was running on the computer and wirelessly casting to the VR headset.
After clicking the screen casting button, an interface automatically popped up with a few simple instructions, requiring the computer and VR headset to be connected to the same network, or they could be directly connected via cable.
Once connected, clicking the game icon on the VR headset would automatically run the game on the computer, and the headset would enter the game screen.
Similarly, others could see what was happening in the VR headset through the computer screen, though it would look rather shaky. Of course, if you didn’t want others to see, you could turn it off in the casting settings, and then only a black screen would show on the computer.
Seeing that both Mr. Pei and Meng Chang had entered the game screen, Lin Wan explained: “Currently, ‘Animal Island VR’ is still under development. This demo primarily showcases some mini-games within it.”
Game development, like painting or filmmaking, is definitely not done sequentially from beginning to end.
In painting, you first sketch the outline, and after confirming the overall framework is correct, you gradually refine it. In filmmaking, scenes are shot according to location and the schedules of relevant personnel, possibly shooting the end before the beginning, and finally editing everything together.
Game development is the same. Generally, you first create a large framework, then focus on some core gameplay and basic functions, and finally go through everything from beginning to end to perfect all the details.
For a game like “Animal Island VR,” core content such as hunting, fishing, and planting obviously needed to be developed and tested first, while opening animations, transitions between different plot stages, NPC dialogues, and other content were less important and had lower development priority.
This playable demo mainly tested several critical mini-games in the game: farming, hunting, fishing, mining, chopping trees, crafting items, and placing items.
Although these small gameplay elements are simple—in conventional games, they might only require pressing a button—in VR games, players need to physically gesture, making them more complex but also greatly increasing the fun.
The quality of these mini-games would directly determine the actual experience the VR game provides to players, so they needed to be developed and optimized early, with no room for carelessness.
Both Pei Qian and Meng Chang were experiencing the game in silence.
However, their moods were quite different.
Pei Qian felt increasingly disheartened as he played.
VR games could already achieve this level?
This wasn’t scientific at all!
Chi Xing Studio had only been established for such a short time, how was this possible!
Meanwhile, Meng Chang was completely immersed in a feeling of shock and enjoyment.
So this was a VR game? It was magical!
It could only be said that in the gaming field, Meng Chang truly lacked experience. He had never used those foreign VR headsets or experienced simple VR games. Going straight to experiencing such a high-completion VR device and game gave him an extremely strong impact.
Knowing the specific principles of VR and actually seeing the entire VR world through the headset were completely different concepts.
Upon first entering this game demo, Meng Chang felt like an infant, needing to rotate his view to observe this completely unfamiliar world, learning from scratch how to walk and interact with the world.
“Animal Island VR” offered three movement modes: normal walking, teleport jumping, and vehicle movement.
In terms of movement efficiency, normal walking was the slowest, vehicle movement somewhat faster, and teleport jumping the fastest.
The reason for providing three different movement modes was mainly to meet the needs of different players.
Everyone’s susceptibility to VR sickness varied. Some people could only use teleportation in VR; using joystick movement would make them dizzy or even nauseous within two minutes. Others had stronger adaptation abilities and could fully adjust to joystick movement after a few minutes.
Using the joystick to move provided the strongest sense of immersion, allowing players to slowly observe the surrounding world rather than feeling disconnected from the entire world as with teleportation, which constantly reminded you that you were just an observer.
Vehicle movement was a compromise solution.
Upon entering the game, players would automatically receive a steam-powered balanced assist vehicle, which could be controlled using the trigger buttons as accelerator and brake.
On the surface, vehicle movement didn’t seem significantly different from joystick movement, but that wasn’t the case.
In VR games, the dizziness level of VR racing was far lower than that of joystick movement in first-person shooter games.
There were mainly two reasons for this.
First, when driving a car in reality, the body doesn’t move. When driving in a VR game, the body also doesn’t move, so the feelings in the game and reality are consistent. But when using joystick movement, you’re moving in the game while your body remains still in reality, creating a confused feeling in the brain and causing dizziness.
Second, the control methods differ. Joystick movement only has three adjustable levels: standing still, walking slowly, and running fast. The differences between these three movement speeds are very noticeable.
The sudden change in speed from standing still to running fast makes it difficult for the brain to adapt, causing a sense of dizziness.
Vehicle movement is different. Because it’s controlled by the accelerator, the vehicle starts slowly when you press the accelerator, with a gradual acceleration process that allows the brain to adapt slowly. And depending on how hard you press the accelerator, your brain can also anticipate the acceleration in advance, which helps alleviate dizziness.
In the game, these three movement methods were integrated, allowing players to freely choose without entering a settings interface.
Pushing the left joystick was for conventional movement. Cocking the hammer button on the left joystick would display a parabolic line pointing to the target location; releasing it would cause the hammer button to automatically spring back, teleporting you to the target location.
Additionally, holding the magazine eject button on the left controller would bring up a skill wheel. While keeping it pressed, moving your left hand to the steam balance car and releasing would summon the balance car and automatically mount it.
Afterward, you could control the balance car’s movement using the trigger buttons on both controllers as brake and accelerator, while also using the left joystick to adjust the direction of the balance car’s movement.