I cannot stress how true this post is. You have nailed it on the head. So many people are building naive projects in Unity and--finding disappointment in the performance--are blaming VR in general.
The problem is that VR inverts the concerns for graphics developers. It used to be that fidelity was paramount, performance was secondary. Now, with VR, performance is paramount, fidelity is way, way secondary. It would be better to make PS1-era graphics that hit the high framerate, low latency requirements, and satisfy the proprioceptive issues than to try to push Unreal Engine to its limits if it means you're "only running at 30FPS".
I mean, we still accept 30FPS in desktop gaming. People are willing to run that slow if it means they can crank the latest AAA game to the "High" graphics settings. And it mostly falls into the same sort of hair splitting that audiophiles engage in if we were to argue that they aren't having a good experience at that point. But with VR, if you can't hit the native refresh rate of the display, you're going to have a bad time.
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I cannot stress how true this post is. You have nailed it on the head. So many people are building naive projects in Unity and--finding disappointment in the performance--are blaming VR in general.
The problem is that VR inverts the concerns for graphics developers. It used to be that fidelity was paramount, performance was secondary. Now, with VR, performance is paramount, fidelity is way, way secondary. It would be better to make PS1-era graphics that hit the high framerate, low latency requirements, and satisfy the proprioceptive issues than to try to push Unreal Engine to its limits if it means you're "only running at 30FPS".
I mean, we still accept 30FPS in desktop gaming. People are willing to run that slow if it means they can crank the latest AAA game to the "High" graphics settings. And it mostly falls into the same sort of hair splitting that audiophiles engage in if we were to argue that they aren't having a good experience at that point. But with VR, if you can't hit the native refresh rate of the display, you're going to have a bad time.