The quest for total immersion

[DrunkOnEstus]

And it's bolted on to 2GB cards, which makes it even more impressive.

Yeah, I might as well buy stock in Nvidia if I decide to put down for a couple of those. If we're going to continue getting Dx9 ports of 360 games, I may choose to invest in a monitor setup like yours instead of a beast card like that, as nothing really asks for that power yet outside of 8-16K texture mods and such. Oh and that screenshot filled me with ALL of the envy.

 

[ResonanceSD]

And it's bolted on to 2GB cards, which makes it even more impressive.

Yeah, I might as well buy stock in Nvidia if I decide to put down for a couple of those. If we're going to continue getting Dx9 ports of 360 games, I may choose to invest in a monitor setup like yours instead of a beast card like that

Finally managed to get a (fairly crap) screenie at portrait resolution.

The thing is though, you'll need a pretty decent card in terms of VRAM to run this sort of thing anyway. 2 cards with 1.5GB is about enough to get the game running, it does lag at some points due to the sheer amount of stuff in Skyrim.


Oh and running the game like this? You can NEVER alt tab if you want everything to run properly XD

 

[krazykidd]

I'm automatically immersed , i don't need no newfangled gadgets to help me immerse myself . Hell i can still immerse myself in an 8-bit game .

 

[Maxtro]

Eagerly waiting for quality consumer grade VR goggles.

Immersion for me would be while playing I hear nothing but the game, and see nothing but the game. Can't forget speaking about nothing but the game

Hopefully the goggles will come out in my generation. Within the next 10 or so years from now would be great.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

The thing is though, you'll need a pretty decent card in terms of VRAM to run this sort of thing anyway. 2 cards with 1.5GB is about enough to get the game running, it does lag at some points due to the sheer amount of stuff in Skyrim.

I can't avoid it, after those two screenshots I'm not sure the HDTV is gonna cut it anymore. I'm actually considering selling off a major portion of my collection (Colecovision to Wii) to do it right. I'f I'm gonna talk about surround sound adding so much to the aural experience, then visual surround has gotta be mindblowing.

Oh, you probably already know this, but just in case, in an SLI configuration you have as much VRAM as the lowest card. Even in a double 1.5GB setup, you're using 1.5GB total, not 3. Unless they changed something recently. Having 2GB would probably make a smoother clip in Skyrim, but it can't be worth that "small" of a jump yet.

Eagerly waiting for quality consumer grade VR goggles.

Immersion for me would be while playing I hear nothing but the game, and see nothing but the game. Can't forget speaking about nothing but the game

Hopefully the goggles will come out in my generation. Within the next 10 or so years from now would be great.

I don't know if you missed it, but prepare to be a happy person: http://www.oculusvr.com/

You definitely aren't waiting 10 years, Doom 3 BFG already supports it. I'm in a dilemma. The oculus rift looks awesome, but no 2 player capability, and the "head movement for camera" thing really looks like neck strain for a real session. But the screens in it are 3D. Though Resonance is really convincing me that having non-3D peripheral vision would be way better than wearing glasses to have 3D on a single monitor. But the goggles have obscene FOV. The times they are a changin' for sure.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Video games are a unique medium. Generally, we like them for entertainment because they offer a special kind of immersion that can't be emulated otherwise, the exception maybe being "choose your own adventure" books where the graphics are rendered in your mind.

I got to thinking about this when I finally got my hands on a 5.1 surround sound system and hooking it up. True surround has been the undermentioned sidekick to the ultra-graphics that make modern games "next-gen". Finally experiencing it, I realized how much I was depriving myself for years by using built-in television speakers with the volume moderately low. It's not just the "hearing things to the left of you when that's where they are" aspect, but also the simple fact that the low bass and relatively high volume provides stronger aural stimuli.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent starts with a very important set of tips. Don't play to win, put yourself in the character's shoes, turn off the lights, and wear headphones. Simply following these steps does wonders for the game, and equally so for games like Silent Hill. It does the lighting and visual team a disservice to wash it out with a brightly-lit room, and the people who carefully master the placement of sounds and music are put to the sidelines by simple speakers with a low volume. Even a not-so-great pair of headphones at the minimum will help to block out sounds in RL, outside of the game experience.

Even that initial tip can seem so devious: Put yourself in the character's shoes. What do you do to make this happen? Does it just naturally occur for you? Does the game have to be excellent for it to happen? That step is for the most part the reason this hobby is so beloved to us; a chance to be someone else, a character taking on things that are impossible in our world. Is it crazy to deprive ourselves of the full experience, the chance to hear everything the world has to offer and at a volume that ensures that it has our full attention?

tl;dr

What do you do to ensure complete immersion in a game? Does it happen naturally without you having to do anything? Is it important to take some preliminary steps to ensure that you're getting the total experience? Since getting a 5.1 system I almost feel like I need to replay a lot of games, to experience them "fully" with this new audio capability.

Speaking as someone for whom home theater is his other big hobby (aside from gaming): first of all, yes, surround sound is awesome. You're also right that it's about more than just putting point sources where they should be, but you missed out on the biggest benefit: ambiance. Basically, it puts you in the space where the action is taking place, with proper amounts of reverb in big rooms, the crickets and stuff coming from all around you like they should in outdoor scenes, and so on and so forth. Of course just upgrading from TV speakers has got to be awesome. A $20 set of computer speakers would have a better frequency range and more power than most built in TV speakers. A decent 5.1 setup will just blow it out of the water.

The second point is, if you think your system sounds good out of the box, you should try giving it a proper calibration. It requires an SPL meter, but it's /so/ worth it. I'd post a guide for how to do it, but I'm having a hard time finding one that explains everything without some sort of major mistake or omission.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Speaking as someone for whom home theater is his other big hobby (aside from gaming): first of all, yes, surround sound is awesome. You're also right that it's about more than just putting point sources where they should be, but you missed out on the biggest benefit: ambiance. Basically, it puts you in the space where the action is taking place, with proper amounts of reverb in big rooms, the crickets and stuff coming from all around you like they should in outdoor scenes, and so on and so forth. Second of all, if you think it sounds good out of the box, you should try giving it a proper calibration. It requires an SPL meter, but it's /so/ worth it. I'd post a guide for how to do it, but I'm having a hard time finding one that explains everything without some sort of major mistake or omission.

Thanks for the heads up. Yeah, that ambiance is pretty much what I meant by "aural stimuli", but I'm pretty wordy and boring like that. It's amazing how much it helps with creating the illusion that you're in the world. Visual immersion still involves looking at a 2D plane and pretending, but the surround sound has the ambiance of the world around you and in the room itself. I can't stress how big of a deal it is, and it's clear why Sony/Microsoft pushed for true 5.1-7.1 as a "next-gen" standard.

I spent hours calibrating my TV, and I went real OCD fine tuning the numbers. It's what made me put off calibrating the sound receiver, I think now that I have the bass, treble, and mids where I want it, with the individual speaker levels set, only to find out that I was okay with sub-optimal. If an SPL meter isn't crazy money I'll look into it, I've been all about trying to make the gaming investment as truly awesome and immersive (why the hell is this not a word?) as possible. Thank you again, I always trust a hobbyist.

 

[Entitled]

I'm in a dilemma. The oculus rift looks awesome, but no 2 player capability, and the "head movement for camera" thing really looks like neck strain for a real session.

I think what you are missing about the Oculus, is that it's head-tracking is not just a "motion controller for the face", like TrackIR, where you are nugging left and right to move the camera, but an 1:1 mapping of your surroundings.

It's intended to be accurate enough, to make you forget that you are wearing a screen to begin with. Besides, it's up to developers how they use it, it doesn't have to be connected to a gameplay feature that controls anything, just an added atmospheric element. For example in Doom 3 BFG, you still control your body with the controller to turn around, the head tracking just adds the simulated chance of ALSO being able to move your neck separately, if you want to. That's as much of a neck strain, as walking around IRL on a street, and occasionaly turning your neck to look at something.

That was one of the bigger problems why earlier VR helmets didn't catch on. They didn't have realistic motion controls, so even if some of the most expensive ones did have Oculus's FOV, to surround your vision, if you saw something in the corner of your eye, and instinctively turned there, either nothing happened, or the screen clumsily, inaccurately, followed you with a delay, making it feel exactly like there was a monitor strapped to your face.

With 1:1 motion tracking along with the 3D effect and the wide field of view, a VR helmet can accurately simulate EVERY aspect of how you see your real surroundings.

 

[Reaper195]

Until we get something more or less like the Matrix....I will never be immersed in a game. I'll enjoy the shit out of one, but total immersion? That's be the point where I don't even know that what I'm doing is a video game...which is impossible.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Speaking as someone for whom home theater is his other big hobby (aside from gaming): first of all, yes, surround sound is awesome. You're also right that it's about more than just putting point sources where they should be, but you missed out on the biggest benefit: ambiance. Basically, it puts you in the space where the action is taking place, with proper amounts of reverb in big rooms, the crickets and stuff coming from all around you like they should in outdoor scenes, and so on and so forth. Second of all, if you think it sounds good out of the box, you should try giving it a proper calibration. It requires an SPL meter, but it's /so/ worth it. I'd post a guide for how to do it, but I'm having a hard time finding one that explains everything without some sort of major mistake or omission.

Thanks for the heads up. Yeah, that ambiance is pretty much what I meant by "aural stimuli", but I'm pretty wordy and boring like that. It's amazing how much it helps with creating the illusion that you're in the world. Visual immersion still involves looking at a 2D plane and pretending, but the surround sound has the ambiance of the world around you and in the room itself. I can't stress how big of a deal it is, and it's clear why Sony/Microsoft pushed for true 5.1-7.1 as a "next-gen" standard.

I spent hours calibrating my TV, and I went real OCD fine tuning the numbers. It's what made me put off calibrating the sound receiver, I think now that I have the bass, treble, and mids where I want it, with the individual speaker levels set, only to find out that I was okay with sub-optimal. If an SPL meter isn't crazy money I'll look into it, I've been all about trying to make the gaming investment as truly awesome and immersive (why the hell is this not a word?) as possible. Thank you again, I always trust a hobbyist.

You're very welcome! The good news about calibrating with an SPL meter is it's dead simple. It boils down to setting the master volume to +- 0 db (assuming you've got a regular reciever) and then using the test tones on your receiver to get the volume of each channel to read either 85 db (which is the THX theatrical standard) or 75 db (which is a lower volume that's popular for home use.) Note that you want each channel to be at the same level; it's not some can be 75 and others 85, it's just a choice of how loud you want it to go and how efficient your speakers are. Mine is set for 85 because the speakers are too efficient to calibrate it to 75 in a room this size XD

If you've got a home theater in a box system that just has a regular volume meter, instead of the home theater style where the numbers tell you how far off you are from reference level (the +- 0 db setting I mentioned), just get the volume to a level you're comfortable with and use the test tones and the meter to make sure all the speakers are playing at the same level, whatever that may be.

Oh, and you want to put the meter on C-weight, and use the slow response if your system lets you play individual test tones indefinitely. If it just automatically jumps between them, with no way to choose an individual channel (my parents have an old receiver like this) keep it on C-weight, but use fast response. Slow response is nice because it averages out minor differences and makes it easier to get a read, but it's too slow if the test tone keeps jumping to different speakers.

As for why you should do this when you've already done it by ear: long story short, your ears lie to you. I once saw it described as being like trying to tell what two different objects weigh by hand. You can get a rough idea which is heavier and which is lighter, but once you get down to fairly similar sizes, say a few pounds difference on a relatively heavy item, you're not going to be able to accurately decide, and you need a scale. An SPL meter is a scale for volume, and it's important because those minor differences of one or two decibels are actually important. They make more difference than you might think.

Edit: Forgot to mention, take the reading from the listening position, with the meter on a stable surface and pointing up, instead of at an individual speaker. If you point it at any individual speakers, those speakers are going to read louder than they should.

 

[pilouuuu]

Weather in games makes me feel immersed. Surround sound helps a lot too. But do you know what I prefer more in games? Good A.I., great physics and a great deal of interactions. Games like Civ V, where every game is unique and the A.I. acts differently and sometimes surprises makes me feel immersed. Also things that are a result of the A.I. and not set pieces or cutscenes.

Games like Skyrim put me off the experience when the characters repeat the same sentences over and over or when they don't act realistically. But Skyrim is at its best when you see two enemies fighting and then a dragon arrives and attacks them, etc. i.e.: when things happen procedurally as a result of the A.I. and not scripted.

So, I'd have to say that more than graphics and sound what immerses the most are good game mechanics.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well the best I can do is play at about 2AM with no one making noise or interfering, possibly with headphones to make sure, usually best to play in the dark so it's just me and the screen getting real intimate.

But the biggest responsibility for immersion falls on the game, if you keep breaking your own world rules or reminding me it's a game then I will not believe even for a second that I'm observing an actual world through this porthole of mine.

A great example of this is Dishonored, by default that game flashes all possible gamey shit in your face, everything is neon outlined, all sorts of floaty arrow and text shit, controls flash on screen all the fucking time... how the fuck am I suppose to forget this is anything but a pile of polygons and scripts when you poke me in the bloody eye with it.
But then you switch it over to "I not retarded" UI and suddenly all that shit is gone, now it's just me finding my way in this world.

Obviously you can always brute force the problem (video is loud as hell)

 

[pilouuuu]

Weather in games makes me feel immersed. Surround sound helps a lot too. But do you know what I prefer more in games? Good A.I., great physics and a great deal of interactions. Games like Civ V, where every game is unique and the A.I. acts differently and sometimes surprises makes me feel immersed. Also things that are a result of the A.I. and not set pieces or cutscenes.

Games like Skyrim put me off the experience when the characters repeat the same sentences over and over or when they don't act realistically. But Skyrim is at its best when you see two enemies fighting and then a dragon arrives and attacks them, etc. i.e.: when things happen procedurally as a result of the A.I. and not scripted.

So, I'd have to say that more than graphics and sound what immerses the most are good game mechanics.

did you just say Civ V has good AI?

You should play Galactic Civilization's II then... your mind would be BLOWN.

Well, maybe I didn't express myself clearly. I don't think Civ V has such a good A.I., but I like the fact that in every game the experience will be unique, unlike games where every single time the characters will do the same. It's more the sort of game than the A.I. in that game per se.

Thanks for the tip! I'll check Galactic Civilizations II! :-D

 

[alphamalet]

Posted by accident, sorry!

 

[The_Waspman]

First person ultimately sells immersions IMO. Especially when done well.

Everything else just adds to it. third person and so on destroy immersion. :/

you are on the money about the everything else, headphones, surround sound, lower lights for horror games, etc.

See, I'm the opposite. I find nothing more immersion breaking than playing in first person. It just emphasises to me the fact I'm looking through a screen at an artificially created world.

Don't get me wrong, its not that I cant enjoy first person games. I've probably poured more time into Borderlands 2 since it came out than a combination of eating and sleeping, but I still dont feel its immersive.

And honestly, until games get rid of loading screens every two minutes, I'm not going to be able to feel immersed.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I consider 'total immersion' to be something only the insane can achieve. The level of immersion I get is fine, and I don't have to anything special besides play the game.

 

[FootloosePhoenix]

If the game is good and I have no pressing matters on my mind, I simply become immersed. And it's really wonderful, especially with an excellent new game. I think personal enthusiasm has a great deal to do with it. Partially for that reason, I don't tend to have the same feeling of immersion on subsequent play-throughs, unfortunately. Also because I know what the experience is going to be like and that just can't beat the fascination for the unknown.

I have a few particularly fond memories of times I've been totally immersed by a game. Like when I bought inFamous, for awhile every time I jumped off a tall building I would feel a whoosh of adrenaline on the way down. It was truly awesome. Also when I first played BioShock, I thought I was going to be scared out of my mind by it because I'd heard that it was a scary game. Turns out there were only a bunch of jump-scares in it that weren't a big deal (aside from those plaster Splicers in Fort Frolic...bloody hell), but for most of the game I was on the edge of my seat. A big part also has to come from the games themselves, of course; your first real glimpse of the world in Oblivion and Skyrim, for instance, were major immersion-sealing events for me and plenty of other players, I'm sure. Final Fantasy games also really immerse me once they get going.

This doesn't really count, but anybody remember that one button sequence-type mini-game you were introduced to early on in Jak 3? For some reason playing that totally subdues me. I usually get around 2,000 points easy in it because I'm just so zenned out.

 

[Therumancer]

Video games are a unique medium. Generally, we like them for entertainment because they offer a special kind of immersion that can't be emulated otherwise, the exception maybe being "choose your own adventure" books where the graphics are rendered in your mind.

I got to thinking about this when I finally got my hands on a 5.1 surround sound system and hooking it up. True surround has been the undermentioned sidekick to the ultra-graphics that make modern games "next-gen". Finally experiencing it, I realized how much I was depriving myself for years by using built-in television speakers with the volume moderately low. It's not just the "hearing things to the left of you when that's where they are" aspect, but also the simple fact that the low bass and relatively high volume provides stronger aural stimuli.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent starts with a very important set of tips. Don't play to win, put yourself in the character's shoes, turn off the lights, and wear headphones. Simply following these steps does wonders for the game, and equally so for games like Silent Hill. It does the lighting and visual team a disservice to wash it out with a brightly-lit room, and the people who carefully master the placement of sounds and music are put to the sidelines by simple speakers with a low volume. Even a not-so-great pair of headphones at the minimum will help to block out sounds in RL, outside of the game experience.

Even that initial tip can seem so devious: Put yourself in the character's shoes. What do you do to make this happen? Does it just naturally occur for you? Does the game have to be excellent for it to happen? That step is for the most part the reason this hobby is so beloved to us; a chance to be someone else, a character taking on things that are impossible in our world. Is it crazy to deprive ourselves of the full experience, the chance to hear everything the world has to offer and at a volume that ensures that it has our full attention?

tl;dr

What do you do to ensure complete immersion in a game? Does it happen naturally without you having to do anything? Is it important to take some preliminary steps to ensure that you're getting the total experience? Since getting a 5.1 system I almost feel like I need to replay a lot of games, to experience them "fully" with this new audio capability.

To be entirely honest I don't think we'll ever see immersion in games until we see some kind of serious VR system developed, which I doubt will happen in my lifetime, if ever. I say "if ever" because to work your dealing with something that is by definition going to have to tap the brain. If you look at how utterly low the average human denominator is, I can't see people being able to deal with things like datajacks built into their skull. Even if somehow it was done non-intrusively, looking at how people treat their hardware nowadays any kind of "home brain interface" is going to be suicide for your average person who shuts the thing off improperly and so on. What's more with the differances between older and younger generations I can see some parent that doesn't get it walking in and snapping off her son's VR gamebox and brain frying him because she's pissed he's blowing off dinner/homework/chores or whatever else. That's a whole differant discussion though.

See, unless you can create reality for all intents and purposes there is always going to be a serious divide, especially when you consider the need for "game logic" especially at the current tech level. I laugh at the suggestion that you should "put yourself into the shoes of the protaganist" for a game like "Silent Hill" or "Amnesia" when your actions within the enviroment are both quite limited (I can't improvise weapons or set a trap in Amnesia despite the prescence of plentiful oppertunities), and with "Silent Hill" where half the point is to run around looking for hidden snacks/ammo/easter eggs, the sheer unreality of the entire thing can't help but intrude.

Good sound can improve the experience of anythinjg with sound, but the rest of "enviromental adjustment" falls under the catagory of "trying too hard" and oftentimes arranging an annoying enviroment for the sake of trying to get a game to do something it's not capable of. I turn out the lights, put on sound filters, etc... then not only do you invite the "WTF are you doing" comments unless your totally solitary, not to mention missing phones ringing or whatever. One of the benefits of VR if it was implemented is that presumably you just sit there and don't have to awkwardly explain what your up to, though admittedly the need to react to the enviroment around you (as simple as ringing phones and such) is yet another reason why I can't see the technology ever becoming a norm in society.

That's just my thoughts anyway.

To be honest I'll confess I'll have some hope if we ever manage to see people take MMOs seriously enough to create fully IC servers and such with OOC behavior and comments punished by hardcore action from the admins. I'm at best a very occasional RPer given the way MMOs turned out, and the way how the everyman has refused to accept such things to the point of forcing RPers into communes even on alleged RP servers. Being able to create a virtual world to the point current MMO technology allows, and seeing the majority embrace it, might convince me we're approaching the point where we can start discussing fully immersive games (one early step) but right now that isn't how things are, society just doesn't permit it, and that means a lack of the nessicary acceptance to seriously suggest it when it comes to single player experiences, not that it really works anyway given the fact that the most "Realistic" games are still very much games at the core. In a real horror enviroment for example most people wouldn't stop to explore every detail of their enviroment, and slurp down snack foods they find hidden in corpse piles or whatever.

 

[ResonanceSD]

I consider 'total immersion' to be something only the insane can achieve. The level of immersion I get is fine, and I don't have to anything special besides play the game.

I played Oblivion/SI for so long that I caught myself trying to "harvest" flowers I walked past in real life. Immersion is possible.

 

[Joseph Harrison]

With Skyrim, I put in my headphones to my (rather big) TV, turned off the lights and just played the whole evening to early morning (It came out on a Friday thank goodness) and was absolutely wrapped up in the world!

I don't think I will gt such a level again for a LONG time.

Metro 2033, lights off, surround sound headphones, HD monitor, DX11 everything...god damn, I lost about 8 hours to that in one sitting and got a few really good scares out of that!

Yeah playing that game "Ranger Hardcore" difficulty in a dark room at 11 o'clock at night was probably the most atmospheric moment of my life. There were many times when playing that I would physically turn my self and forget to turn the character on the screen when I would hear something to my side. That game has an incredible atmosphere and it sucks you right in.