Viewfinder launched today across PlayStation 5 and Steam, bringing its perspective-shifting first-person puzzling to traditional monitors. Ever since we saw the demo pop up on Steam earlier this year though, it was pretty apparent the mind-bending indie title would make for a great VR game. If you were hoping for VR support though, you’re probably out of luck.

“We did some prototyping of a VR version a while back – it was interesting, but there’s definitely some challenges to solve with things like forced perspective,” Sad Owl Studios developer Jacob Keane tells Road to VR. “It’s likely if we do a VR version it’ll be a slightly different game, similar to how SUPERHOT and SUPERHOT VR are different games, rather than a straight port.”

 

If the team does decide to go the SUPERHOT VR route—i.e. creating an entirely new game that borrows assets and mechanics, but created specifically for VR headsets—it would allow them to better integrate VR-native mechanics from the ground-up, and also optimize how the game’s perspective-shifting gameplay works when rendered for stereoscopy, and not flatscreen.

When asked what Keane thought of playing the PC game with VR modding software such as VorpX, it wasn’t exactly recommended.

“I cannot imagine vorpx is going to be a nice experience with this game (worse than usual!) due to the whole.. perspective issues, and the bunch of weird rendering tricks we do,” Keane says.

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While there’s no VR support in sight for what promises to be a fairly successful entry into the puzzle genre—it’s already garnered critical acclaim from IGN, GameSpot, and the Guardian to name a few—at least there’s hope for a proper VR title at some point in the future.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • ViRGiN

    If they succeed in flat, there won’t be VR version.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    It should be obvious that games based on distorted perspective like Viewfinder or Superliminal don’t really work in VR, because these exploit how our brain interprets flat representation of 3D images. It has to do that all the time, as we can perceive depth through stereoscopy only for a few dozen meters/yards. For objects beyond that the light that hits the left and right eye is basically the same. This is even worse in VR due to the low resolution. I don’t have current numbers, but for the 960*1080 per eye Rift DK2, basically everything beyond 9m/10yd was effectively monoscopic, as the positional difference between the eyes for any edge was less than one pixel.

    That’s not actually a problem, because our vision uses a lot of different methods to determine depth, e.g. blurriness, brightness and most of all comparison. A row of trees getting smaller and smaller is not some horticultural experiment, but most likely a row of trees of similar size with some being further away. A head above a brick wall is most likely not floating there, but attached to a person standing behind that wall.

    In theory there could be a line of shrinking trees or a floating head, the 2D projection of the 3D scene is ambiguous, but our brain picks the most reasonable explanation. Games playing with distorted perspective use exactly that: create an ambiguous image, expecting the player to interpret it according to experience, but then requiring the unexpected, “wrong” perspective and have you pick up the seemingly distant tree that is actually just small and just in front of you.

    But this of course only works if there are no other conflicting depth informations. So if the end of the row of trees is covered in fog, you cannot switch your perception to there being small instead of far away trees. And if you have true stereoscopic vision like in VR, this removes all the ambiguity, you’ll just know whether the tree is either small and close or large and far away, so any puzzle based on the ambiguity of the 2D projection will be solved automatically.

    Playing with perspective in VR sounds like a cool concept, but is very hard, because there is actually too much visual information available in VR, leading to less “wrong” guesses. This is not limited to games. In the movie Inception, two of the characters walk up a flight of seemingly endless Penrose stairs, only to end up at a gap in the stairs that was invisible from their start perspective. That would never have worked in a 3D movie, as you’d immediately have noticed the still hidden gap from the changed parallax of the two steps beside it.

    • Dragon Marble

      Yes, if you’ve ever seen some of those optical illusions in the museums which will have to close one eye to be able to see, you would understand.

    • Glen

      I would like to point out that I have played VR games that completely switched your perspective view when interacting with things. True, it was a tiny bit nauseating, but still possible.

  • Nevets

    “If the team does decide to go the SUPERHOT VR route—i.e. creating an entirely new game that borrows assets and mechanics, but created specifically for VR headsets—it would allow them to better integrate VR-native mechanics from the ground-up, and also optimize how the game’s perspective-shifting gameplay works when rendered for stereoscopy, and not flatscreen.”

    A particularly longwinded way of saying that if this game is developed in VR, then it’ll be optimised for VR.

  • Amazing game, I love its trailer. Not sure it can be translated properly to VR, though

  • It’s not an overly complicated game, it just drills holes in the map and drops some geometry into those holes. This looks great in 2D, it’s a neat sleight-of-hand… but in VR you’d see right through it. There wouldn’t be that moment when 2D becomes 3D the second you move, you’d see the different the second the 3D replacement appeared. You can’t fool stereoscopic views as easily as you can flat screens.

    They might be able to get around that issue if the 2D replacement wasn’t instant, but instead had a period of stretching into existences from a compressed, flat package. That might work… or give you the mother of all headaches from the vertigo.

  • Till Eulenspiegel

    I just played it, it’s not really that innovative. It’s very similar to Virtual virtual reality. Just portal in a portal. The photos are just pre-made polygons that superimposed on the scene. The voiceover is annoying, typical low budget indie personality.