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Why Steam VR?

xavier4or
Explorer
Newbie question here - I see several discussion wrt Steam VR games - but trying to figure out what are the advantages?  Are there unique VR games available via Steam that you can't get via Oculus store?

I checked a few of the popular ones and they seemed to be listed both in Oculus store and Steam.

Thanks!
59 REPLIES 59

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
I thought about getting Karnage Chronicles but it seems to play very similar to Mage's Tale (Oculus) and Prevent The Fall (Steam). I own both and lean more towards Mage's Tale. Plus, when it comes to RPG's I had the most fun playing Chronos and Crystal Rift.

Especially Chronos... that game really sets a standard for VR RPG's; so I find it difficult to play anything that doesn't meet or exceed that standard.

And when it comes to dual-handed combat, I have logged many long hours with The Unspoken. Another game that raises the bar.

The last VR game I enjoyed on Steam was Phantasma. It is not a AAA game but it was right up my alley with the warped/twisted/puzzle genre. I would have loved it even more if it was on Oculus Home lol

vannagirl
Consultant




Incidentally, if it weren't for Robo Recall, I'd have blocked OH from even launching when I use my Rift (I haven't found a way to do this without also blocking manual starting).



Maybe i can ask

If you dislike oculus so much why did you buy a rift and not go for full steam support with vive. Vive plays much better with its own sdk in steam just as Oculus does with theirs in home.

They also both rely on support i.e the customer buying off them to ensure they make money and bring out future generations of VR?

Just curious
Look, man. I only need to know one thing: where they are. 

BadDanME
Expert Protege
Just to make this clear. Of course you can find literally thousands of crap games on Steam, but it just isn´t true, that all of them are garbage and only Oculus hast the good stuff. 
And that is, what CrashFu was saying. And this just isn´t true. 
Sure, the fully polished games on the Oculusstore are fantastic, own much here too. But Steam also offers great games. That´s the only thing, that had to be said after CrashFu´s posting. 

Oh and another plus on the Steamstore, you can refund games, that are crap. 


[edit] @Zenbane And I was not aware that "fanboy" is something in the namecallingcategory. If I said idiot or something else insulting, I could understand this reaction. Maybe I am expressing myself wrong, because of the languagebarrier. 

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
Well I think we can move beyond the namecalling stuff. No harm, no foul.

Regarding this,
Just to make this clear. Of course you can find literally thousands of
crap games on Steam, but it just isn´t true, that all of them are
garbage and only Oculus hast the good stuff. 
And that is, what CrashFu was saying. And this just isn´t true.
You are misquoting what was stated. Here is a direct quote:
"But anything on there that's actually worth playing is either already on Oculus, or soon will be."

That statement acknowledges that Steam has good games. Surely you can see that.

The point being made, which I agree with, is that Steam does have a few games worthwhile. But many of those worthwhile games are available on Oculus Home right now, and the rest will one day be there.

Even I stated that when I see a game that I like on Steam, I will purposely wait longer until it comes to Oculus Home.

Furthermore, personal preference isn't really about truth, right? For example, I found Albino Lullaby to be an amazing experience; whereas some people found it boring. I find Steam VR to be garbage when compared to Oculus Home. But there are many people who have stated that Steam VR is a much better experience. Especially when the update was made to the environment Skins and Steam VR quest mechanics.

Simply put, I'm not trying to convince someone who likes Steam VR that they like garbage lol

And as I stated earlier, I have enjoyed some Steam VR games; Phantasma was the most recent.

BadDanME
Expert Protege
Of course personal taste always comes in here, and that is a good thing. But I play many games, that are only available on OH and many games that are only available on SVR. I don´t know a way, to tell if the exclusive titles are coming to one or the other platform in future, so why should I not play an available game on the platform that offers it (at least if I don´t know if it will come to my prefered platform)? 
CrashFu wrote, that all good games are on OH or will be (as you quoted yourself). How does he know that? This and the "So if you're really eager to play some half-assed college-kid projects that were rushed to completion to rip-off better games, then sure, check out Steam VR." part bothered me. 

[edit] "And as I stated earlier, I have enjoyed some Steam VR games; Phantasma was the most recent." 
I never said anything against your postings. 😉 
They were all reasonably written. 

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
There's always a strong chance that Steam games will come to Oculus Home. None of us knows it with 100% certainty unless a developer states as much, but it is a fairly reasonable assertion based on the simple fact that development studios likely want to reach as many consumers as possible.

The PC-based VR consumer market is still quite small. There's roughly 1-million users if we add up everyone who bought a Vive, Rift and PSVR together. But no single PC-based VR product has 1-million by itself just yet. Thus it is wise for VR software developers to sell their products on both Steam and OH.

For example, it took nearly a year but Brookhaven finally popped up on Oculus Home. Raw Data is another good example.

A more recent example is The Rogue Apprentice:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/517460/SteamHammerVR__The_Rogue_Apprentice/

It was recently announced on Facebook, by the developer, that Rogue Apprentice will be making its way to Oculus Home soon. This game looks fairly polished and for some of us, it's worth the wait to buy it in OH. Personal preference and such.

As for the colorful language used to describe rival products... that stems from a year-long history where the role was very heavily reversed. For the better part of a year, this forum was saturated with posts declaring Valve, HTC, the Vive, and Steam so superior that the rest of us must be "fools" and Oculus is on the verge of death 😄

Newcomers to the forum likely don't get the context that comments like that of CrashFu speak from. Don't take it personal. After 13 months of Steam users coming here to say, "Oculus Home sucks, and your little dog too," the dialogue tends to involve a sharp tone.

BeastyBaiter
Superstar

vannagirl said:





Incidentally, if it weren't for Robo Recall, I'd have blocked OH from even launching when I use my Rift (I haven't found a way to do this without also blocking manual starting).



Maybe i can ask

If you dislike oculus so much why did you buy a rift and not go for full steam support with vive. Vive plays much better with its own sdk in steam just as Oculus does with theirs in home.

They also both rely on support i.e the customer buying off them to ensure they make money and bring out future generations of VR?

Just curious

Wanting to block OH from auto launching has nothing to do with disliking it. It would rub me just as badly if steamVR popped up every time I wanted to use OH. I simply prefer more control over what's running.
 
In any case, I bought the rift for the hardware. OR has better display quality than the Vive at half the price. That seems a pretty good reason to me. There also isn't any real difference in compatibility, nearly every game I care to play is available for both, so that just isn't an issue. It's also worth mentioning that I bought VR to play games I'd already been playing. I bought it for the primary purpose of playing DCS, IL2 and similar games. Anything else worth playing is just a bonus, and I have found a few such gems.

Although offered on steam but not here, I bought both DCS and IL2 directly from the developers. I don't see either of them ever getting on OH due to their mammoth system requirements for VR. My R5 1600x and GTX 1080 TI run both at only 45 fps most of the time (occasionally see 90 fps, but rare). I had an RX 480 8GB prior to getting OR but had to swap for a 1080 TI since I was getting under 20 fps! Both games a gorgeous in VR though, if you have the system to handle them.

Other games I've enjoyed in VR are Robo Recall, Redout and Onward. The latter two are exclusively through steam as far as I'm aware though maybe GoG or one of those carries them too. I also have Elite Dangerous, never really cared for it on a 2d monitor a couple years back but I reinstalled through OH by using the redeem key function. It works well but I've since uninstalled it. I didn't find it any more fun in VR than on a 2d screen. The game is just too easy. But as said, that was bought years ago. OR was still just an early dev kit at the time.

As a final note on this subject, I do want OR to succeed and I know they sold me this bit of kit at cost or possibly even a loss ($400 here). I would buy games from OH as a show of support and the convenience if they had the types of games that interest me. The problem is, they don't, and that seems unlikely to change anytime soon.

Anonymous
Not applicable



vannagirl said:





Incidentally, if it weren't for Robo Recall, I'd have blocked OH from even launching when I use my Rift (I haven't found a way to do this without also blocking manual starting).



Maybe i can ask

If you dislike oculus so much why did you buy a rift and not go for full steam support with vive. Vive plays much better with its own sdk in steam just as Oculus does with theirs in home.

They also both rely on support i.e the customer buying off them to ensure they make money and bring out future generations of VR?

Just curious

Wanting to block OH from auto launching has nothing to do with disliking it. It would rub me just as badly if steamVR popped up every time I wanted to use OH. I simply prefer more control over what's running.
 

That's easy to do, just set Oculus Home ( OculusClient.exe) to " Run as Administrator".
It will never auto-launch again, just start it manually when needed.

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
I tried that but then it wouldn't let me launch it as admin either. Probably messed something up though.

Anonymous
Not applicable


I tried that but then it wouldn't let me launch it as admin either. Probably messed something up though.


That is odd, it is working well for me. Yeah give it another try, it should work fine.