Go in VR

What are your thoughts on playing go in vr? I am making a go board in Rec Room, so I am curious what are your thoughts on it.

Sure, why not? … It has already been done before in Second Life, but there is enough room in VR for many GoBans… But if I’m going to play Go on-line I’m probably going to play on OGS (or the Little Golem game-server if I want to play 37x37 Go)… Do you think you could bring all of the OGS features (AI reviews, etc.) to your VR Rec Room GoBan?

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It’s the first time I hear about Rec Room. Sorry if I am an old rusty tool. :wink:

I checked few videos on YouTube
like this one,
so now I have an idea about the environment.
If I understand correctly, players have a simple custom avatar with cartoon hands.

I wonder what the user experience could be playing a board game. I think it could be funny for gathering with people around a board, but I fear that the board itself would be difficult to see.
Did you make some tests? Or have any similar experience to share? Maybe someone did chess or backgammon in Rec Room…

Oh, wait, I found this one!

I think it can be doable but quite confusing for having a game. Maybe goggles can help, I don’t know. I’m having go meetings sometimes using Zoom + OGS and it’s nice to see friends but I found it very hard to stay focused.
Having a room in vr sounds nice but I don’t have vr devices (are datagloves still a thing?) and I am skeptical about being able to actually see the board properly.

I got motion sickness just looking at the video not in VR already, I wonder if I will actually throw up playing a game with VR for hours. Or maybe I will get used to it?

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Vr can cause motion sickness, but as long as you take rest at the moment discomfort shows its ugly head and do begginer friendly games, it is possible for most to get over it.

I was able to make a board in rec room. Dimensions of the board may be off, but I was able to see the whole board and place stones on the intersections. Dont know how it would feel with a whole game, but worse case I can just use smaller board instead of 19x19

The best head set for the cheap is quest 2 and I enjoy it.

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I only started doing rec room yesterday, so I do not know the limits. However, it probably doesn’t have the capabilities for the ai features and auto scoring. That probably requires a different vr game to be made.

However, it should be efficient to do stuff that people are able to do in person. Such as having a group go class with a teacher on a white board, individual go lessons, player made (unofficial) tournaments, and I believe people can record im recroom but not sure. It hasn’t been done before, so it is all speculation on my part.

This seems to already exist within the platform Tabletop Simulator, which has VR support

Here is a screenshot from a reddit post

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That looks fun!! The game mechanics is probably better then recroom, but recroom is free and probably more creative with the the possible in person reactions (maybe have multiple boards in a room, a white board for a go instructor to teach to a group, unofficial go tournaments). Never done the tts before and only one day in recroom, so I could be wrong :wink:

As I understand it - the main “value added” of Tabletop Simulator over dedicated apps for Go, Chess, etc… is

  1. you have every possible game and piece at your disposal
  2. if you lose the game, you can do an actual table-flip and send those stones flying all over the room ; )
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Lol :laughing: flipping the table. Technically, I can add that in rec room, but I don’t know how much ink that takes (ink is what limits the amount of items in a created room, and the more physics based it is, the more it cost)

With those money I’d better buy a vintage floor goban with slate and shell stones. :wink:

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So, I was able to make a room with all the black and white stones and go board. I don’t think I can make it physics based (where items are affected by gravity and other solid items) because that room used up 70%ish of the available ink

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Please share some pics

okay, here it is. It has all the stones for the game, just can’t tell since the stones are on top of each other

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Could you play a game with that?

Probably, I need to test it by playing both sides.