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I would not put le's future into vr. vr has burned people since its creation decades ago. If those parameters you mentioned hold true to augmented reality then at least it's a hedge because right now it's unclear which will win out I think.

Not to bring up painful memories but mobile seemed tried and tested and that ended up not working out. And that's with everyone already having a phone. This is very much experimental with each customer first needing to dish out hundreds of dollars just on a "gimmick."

 

I'm not saying it won't be the next big thing. Prices will drop. And if consoles sold on various input/output ideas, this may too. And I do appreciate how amazing the experience must be.

 

Even as far as LE is concerned with regards to this, I have mixed feelings. I'm sure it's valuable to get in early on something that ends up succeeding. Leadwerks is in a pretty strong spot in general so spending some time on supporting this could end up paying off. Or maybe not.

 

I guess my point is simply that it's a risk and I know you like to take those sometimes, with good reasons. And unlike Rick, I imagine you're not going to spend most of your time on this in the coming future, to the exclusion of everything else.

The potential is huge, and no one is taking advantage of it yet. It's really great stuff.

VR is expensive, and not for the common gamer I'd think. Might be cheaper later.

 

Finally, post-processing effects are pretty much a thing of the past

Shadertoy seems to have an entire VR section to their flat pixel shaders :-)

@game when did I say that?

The biggest thing is hardcore optimization that you wouldn't normally consider. Like moving Leadwerks to a more threaded structure and implementing Vulkan graphics. That benefits everyone, although Leadwerks 5 may have some structural differences, and it would require some restrictions on the flexibility. For example, being able to modify surfaces freely would become very problematic if the different threads are constantly accessing that data.

@game when did I say that?

Apologies if I misinterpreted what you meant by putting "le's future into vr."

I dont know about VR. It strikes me a bit like 3D TV. Nice idea, looks good but is just too much hassle. I could be wrong I guess time will tell.

Don't make the same mistake as with the last 'off-road' experiment when LE was going mobile. I do believe this will go the same way, but that's me. Anyway there are one statement that worries me a bit.

 

Finally, post-processing effects are pretty much a thing of the past since they work on a flat image and not in a real 3D world. The next major iteration of Leadwerks is going to be engineered specifically with these parameters in mind.

 

Do I read that post-processing is going away? Where do that leave us that do not aim at publishing any VR-games. Please explain a bit more about what this future idea leave us "normal" game makers. I'm just starting quite a intense effort here and don't wont to end up i same disaster as the last mobile-idea ended up in. An engine that went backwards two or three steps and took years to get well again. Tell me were not going there again and that I do not have to worry about that

Those two sentences aren't connected, they just happen to be next to each other. I just mean you don't want to use bloom when your game is running in VR, which is kind of nice because it's the one way VR conditions favor faster performance.

 

The only changes this would mean for a future version of Leadwerks is the following:

• Performance increases, since the demands are so incredibly high.
  
• More built-in C++ support, like a C++ class that acts like a Lua script.
  
• Possibly some more restricted program structure, due to increased reliance on multithreading.
  

 

You have nothing to fear.

Sounds great Josh