TechnoLive: VR and Future Platforms (Maxim Pestun, Dmitry Trubitsyn)

The rising trend of this year is VR games. Rising even longer, but in no way able to lift the head trend - helmets and VR glasses. Every few months, another major technology company announces its virtual reality device. However, no one has yet offered a decent combination of price and quality. What awaits this direction of game development? Will virtual reality technology conquer the mass market? Will the boom of games for VR devices follow? And if the future is not for them, then for what?

These and other questions in the final TekhnoLive broadcast this year will be answered by the leading virtual reality programmer Maxim Pestun and the leading virtual reality designer Dmitry Trubitsyn. Read the decryption under the cut.

Past issues:
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• Player and game, interface as a link, Olga Schubert
• How to promote your game among thousands of competitors, Maxim Samoilenko
• How to create a successful mobile game, Ivan Fedyanin
• The history of the gaming industry, Alexander Kuzmenko

Video: https://youtu.be/rBlKwogJx1E

Alexander Kuzmenko: Good evening, dear friends, dear viewers. Today we have another series of "Tehnostrim" dedicated to the development of video games. Today we will talk about the most trending topic that you can imagine in the modern gaming industry - the topic of virtual reality. Today, our guest is people who are directly related to virtual reality - this is Maxim Pestun, the leading virtual reality programmer at Mail.Ru Games. Maxim, very nice.

Maxim Pestun: Hello everyone.

AK: And the leading designer of virtual reality Dmitry Trubitsyn. Maxim, Dima, you understand, now they are busy on the only project that we have in virtual reality in the company - is it AR Invaders?

Dmitry Trubitsyn: VR Invaders .



. .: We will reach AR again. Now we talk about the game, virtual reality and the industry. But first, let's talk about you. I ask this question to all the people who come here, everyone has a completely different story, but on the whole something similar. How did you get into the games? Maxim, let's start with you. How did you get here?

MP: It's a long story. About 10 years ago - maybe a little less, maybe a little more - I studied virtual reality at the university at the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of Moscow State University. At the friendly Faculty of Psychology, they installed a setup called Cave. This is a big box of screens, a cave. The screens are large, about 2 by 2 meters, that is, the person is placed there quite normally in full growth. There is a front screen, right, left and floor. Specifically, in this installation, only such a set of screens. The screen and floor are transparent. From opposite sides there are projectors that illuminate, make a picture. There is a person inside, glasses are fixed on it, and there are sensors on glasses, such horns, and they have round balls at the end for air tracking using infrared color. In the corners of this cave cameras are installed, where the position of the head of a person or player is tracked. After that, a picture is rendered on each of these projectors, and these are four computers, each computer renders its picture, they are all synchronized over the network, and an individual image for the left and right eyes is displayed. First for the left, then for the right, then they change back. And so it creates the effect of a virtual environment. And there we can feel a hologram, because we see our hands. The glasses are translucent, we look at the screens, and the screens fit so well together that there are no joints, and it seems to us that we really are in a virtual environment around the hologram.

AK: You describe it in detail, it is immediately clear that a person is a technical specialty.

MP: I talked a lot about it. I even have a whole story ready.

. .: I have already painted the whole picture. I had the feeling that I myself worked in this laboratory. And how did you suffer from this ...?

MP: In general, I started doing this for a very long time. We conducted various experiments together with the faculty of psychology, studied how virtual reality affects a person, how a person perceives virtual reality, wrote all sorts of articles. After some time, I came to work at Mail.Ru Group and immediately went to gamedev. I wrote here that “I want to come to work with you. Please consider my candidacy ”-“ Come, come. ” Passed the interview, everything was successful.

He first began working on Allods Online (MMO RPG).



There was playing the game. After that, I switched to another project, then I worked on many other projects. In the end, my experience with virtual reality - it existed in parallel - intersected with the experience of developing computer games, and now the VR Invaders project began. And now I do it.

AK: I see. Long story, but instructive. Dmitry, how did you get into the games?

DT: I am increasingly humanitarian, as befits a designer, although we are also a technical specialty, we need to be able to do a lot of technical work. But I came from gaming journalism - I was interested in games from childhood, I grew up with them. Then he worked in the publishing house "Tehnomir". Well, surely everyone knows the names of magazines better than the name of the publishing house itself - these are “Igromania”, “Best computer games” and “World of fiction”. He wrote articles there, was an editor.



DT: ... and then "The Best Computer Games" went into decline, and this was the main place where I worked. And at some point I realized that I needed to look for something new, opened HeadHunter, began to think what else I was fit for. And then a day later a friend who worked here as a programmer on the Allods Online project wrote me: “We need designers. Do you want to try? I'm like, “Well, why not try? Cool". And he relaxed me so much. Whatever I did, he said: “Yes, you do not strain there. Write something, come. Everything will be fine". I, nevertheless, approached responsibly, but did not think that there would be such a serious selection and competition when I went. But thanks to the fact that he so loaded me up, as if all this is easy, and it is already a decided matter. Apparently, I got here safely. And it was already scary to imagine five and a half years ago. For the most part, here I worked on the Skyforge project (this is also an MMO), but the time has come to engage in new, and be at the forefront of technology.



Moved not so long ago in VR Invaders. But we are already in full swing, and we should get out pretty soon.

AK: Here we must also add that the guys work in the office, and we are sitting on the same floor. Literally 10 meters away from me. And this is the coolest workplace that is in the game department, because people are sitting, negotiating and so on. Only in the daisy among those tables where the guys sit, constantly some strange people make strange movements, as we say.

MP: So we have problems with it, even almost injuries. If we two, three of us get up, then we begin to intersect.

AK: Yes, it is becoming too narrow. Let's go back to virtual reality. I will formulate the question simply, in a newspaper-based way: myth or reality? For myself, I still can not form the answer to this question. I've revised so much VR over the last couple of years. I was this February at the Games Developers Conference, in San Francisco. The most famous, probably, industrial exhibition, or rather even a conference. There it was difficult to find any stand or any booth without a VR. There was a joke that they had “VR Free”. And I still do not understand. I saw the HTC Vive, I saw Sony, which is now called the Sony VR.

DT: And Oculus, probably, here lies here.

. .: Naturally. I still can not understand. On the one hand, it seems to be cool, but after 10 minutes it starts to rock.

MP: This is a deep topic.

. .: Yes. In virtual reality, in my opinion, now there is some drawback, as I see from my experience: it is very difficult to move more than half an hour. Maybe this is a trend of modern times, when there is a short session and so on. Even an advertisement for video games, they saw how it was done: came home while the wife warms up the soup, quickly played. What do you think about it? Not from the point of view of the developer. Initially, it is interesting to hear you as a user.

DT: From the player’s point of view, I spend up to three hours in virtual reality, and I feel comfortable. Only you get out, of course, as from a bath - all red, but it is played comfortably. You get used to. But different people have different ways. We drive people to test the game, and someone gets tired very quickly - in 10-15 minutes - especially those who have vision problems. This issue has not yet been resolved, how to combine virtual reality and glasses. These people fly out the fastest. But I'm comfortable.

. .: That is, it is a question of habit. Very many gamers who have never played on the PC, but played on consoles, and vice versa, often take the mouse: “What, is it to play?”. And vice versa, they take gamepads: “How are they in shooters? It is impossible at all. ” Maybe.

MP: I can answer for the technical side. Why is ukachivaet? First of all, and this is the most trivial problem of any games that are under development - this is a low frame rate - the number of frames per second is very low. If it is below 45, then it is difficult to perceive. That is, we rotate our heads, the world begins to lag behind what we expect to see: the vestibular apparatus, the brain, eyes, it all starts to stray, not understand what is happening, and the body feels the effect of intoxication. Like some harmful substance got inside us. And we start to sweat, we are swayed, this effect occurs. For Oculus, Vive recommended frame rate - 90 frames per second, for both eyes. That is, we, respectively, have a camera for the right, a camera for the left eye, together it is about 180 frames per second. There are algorithms that can reduce the complexity of calculations, but approximately 180 frames per second.

And for this you need a powerful graphics card. At 90 frames, in principle, everything is fine, not swaying. If a person walks by himself, that is, we take, for example, Vive, he has a large tracking area, we can directly put on a helmet, take joysticks and go. 3 by 3 meters you can freely walk, and there will be no motion sickness. Perhaps there will be some discomfort due to the fact that the screen resolution is not very high, while the pixels are still visible due to the lenses. But there will be a problem when we begin to experience acceleration, any acceleration. For example, we are standing on some kind of platform, it will begin to rotate, and our camera will also begin to rotate. Or if some craftsman takes and decides to attach the effect of a shaking camera during an explosion. That is, we have a ta-da-da camera, and we will think that this is something with our head. It takes out right away. We even came up with such a term that we use among ourselves - “vestibular shock”. If you grab it, then after that it is better to remove the helmet, because you cannot get rid of it in the helmet. That's it, the vestibular shock has passed, we rest for half an hour. Only after that we can put on the helmet again and continue. If you continue, then fatigue will accumulate very quickly and after that the virtual reality will be rejected. I don’t want to return there because the body was bad.

AK: It is clear. We are still animals, we have some conditioned reflexes.

MP: Yes. This point cannot be passed. Before it is possible, after - no.

. .: That is, the development of games for VR is a very gentle process?

DT: A lot of subtleties need to be considered. And the first thing to start with is how the player will move and feel himself in this virtual space. The issue of displacement is very acute.

For example, if you say: “Here we have, let's say, a shooter, and we move from one shelter to another. What solutions can there be? ” In a computer game, of course, a joystick or keyboard, and here we come to the right place. Here we are faced with the fact that we must find a new way to move. What will it be? Often used teleportation. That is, I point to this point and find myself there. But it rips dive. How is it, I took and jumped? This is not as cool as walking down. But it turns out that the alternative is even worse, because if we show up to the point and the game itself drags us there, then one moment and everything will start rocking you. The feeling that you grabbed and led.

MP: There is an acceleration. It was 0, and then the speed appeared. This is acceleration.

DT: And the one that a person does not control. And this immediately causes sickening reflexes, and this is terrible. What options? You can move around, there is a lever here, we say that we are so paralyzed in a wheelchair, and we move the lever and drive forward. Also not the same, also not the legs. In general, the search is still underway. The question of how to create the illusion of a huge space in a limited space is still being resolved.

AK: Interestingly it turns out. That is, perhaps, all my problems in virtual reality, about which I spoke before, were connected not with hard, but with software?

DT: Yes, of course.

AK: So, the games were fig?

It is possible that all the games that I saw were, firstly, fairly simple. While I have not seen directly super-complex games. I saw them, if only it was a well-known project, a VR was attached around it and they fly in the same War Thunder, but in a helmet, for example.



And all the projects that I saw were very simple. I would even say they are more fun than games. They reminded me of the software that was originally released ... Remember when the mod for this direct control went, all these PS Move, Kinect and so on. Very similar to the primary software for Kinect. The idea seems to be great, but I don't want to play. The question is: why do you want to play VR Invaders?

MP: How did VR games evolve at all? At the beginning and now too, the games come out as sensations, like demo scenes. We want to feel what it is when there are dinosaurs around us. And what is it when the Sci-Fi world is around us? And we do not want to play for a long time, really. We just bought a helmet. We want to try as many of these impressions as possible. And what if you immerse yourself in shark cages? For 5 minutes, we want to see a lot of different things. That is, as in such a game - RPG, putting on clothes, counting statistics - we do not want to do this. We want to get the wow effect. Therefore, the games come out so short. The gameplay in them is usually either practically absent or some kind of minimal. They usually have no passage as such. You played it once, after that you started the game, and the same thing. These games come out, they are in demand, because people want to get acquainted with the technology. They now do not know yet whether they want to dive deep into it or not.

After modern games for VR, in a few years, solid games will appear in which we will play longer, make decisions based on how we played last time. That is, several sessions in a row.

Now we are doing VR Invaders for the transition mode. We can go in and play fast. In the style of such party mode, at the party everyone comes in, plays, gets some points and then passes to the next one. We also have a plot. We permeate those missions, tasks, levels that are in the game, with some plot. We tell it to the player and dive deep into the universe that was created in the game. And this is the main difference that we make the game on both fronts. That is, on the old front, where only the wow effect is needed, and on the new one, where more is needed. Where you want to dive, where you want to play the game. This is for those who once bought a helmet, got a wow effect and now wants: "Let's take the next stage."

DT: I would compare it in such a way that we have an immersion in the film “5th Element” (conditionally, the plot is not the same), which you can see once until the end, and then you can replay one exchange of fire with aliens, another exchange of fire and try to perform as best as possible and spectacular.

MP: Also suitable for party mode, everyone is trying to fill as many points as possible.

AK: And now in simple words. Here I wear a helmet. What's happening?

DT: What is the game about?

AK: It's all very cool about the transition period. I will remember this very cool moment. But in general, what is it, what kind of genre?

DT: We have a shooter, shooting. Robotic drones fly in large numbers, you shoot them with a pistol, they shoot at you, shielded you with an energy shield, blocking bullets. The gun can switch to different modes - shoot a plasma, line up a machine gun, mow all the laser. Different levels, different enemies, bosses and all this is strung together on a single storyline. The gameplay is this: I see the enemy, shoot, defend, shoot the next one.



MP: But there is an exceptional feature: that which we cannot experience in real life, in the virtual one.

. .: What, to die?

MP: You can shoot at you, by the way. Will die. The fact that in any footer could not be done, the gun does not turn around, it attached to the screen, and here ...

DT: And people wanted it. They asked: "Why am I shooting and not dying?". Had to do.

MP: Yes. Everything is fair. In whom hit, that killed. There is a time dilation, but we control it. It is integrated into the game process entirely. We press a special button on the shield, we have time slows down 10 times, and here we are in the matrix. We can lie back, the bullets will fly over us, and we will just admire how cool it is. It is necessary that someone supported from behind, because to stand as Neo will be difficult, but possible. And the player moves freely. We dodge bullets, we can step back, we can slow down time and just see how it flew.

AK: You have noticed that there are some genres in which periodically the times of decline are replaced by the times of the Renaissance. There is a beautiful genre called "Tire". In the 1980s there was a dawn in the slot machines, and then decay, everyone switched to home consoles. Then came all sorts of pistols, American Laser Games, all sorts of offices. A CD-ROM appeared and you could make real movies. As people then marveled 15 years ago: “Wow! It's just like in the movies! ” Now finally the shooting galleries have grown to first-person shooters. Great!

Here, by the way, we were asked before, how long can we expect VR to appear in online games? This meant complex online games like MMOs, which we practically started talking about. Do you think that sitting out a 15-hour raid in VR is real?

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