So, for that reason alone, it’s strongly recommended that you take the time to double-check the ergonomic and comfortability features of the VR headset that you are considering buying, as the last thing you want to do is have to put up with unwanted headaches or discomfort while you try to immerse yourself in your favorite gaming worlds. Luckily, all of the VR headsets that we have included above all come with ergonomic features that will ensure you are able to play your favorite Nintendo Switch games without any aches or strains, but if you are planning on shopping around yourself, this is an important factor to not overlook.
Product Review: Oivo Switch VR Headset (Nintendo Switch)
I was asked to check out Oivo’s Switch VR Headset (disclaimer: they provided me with a unit to review) and I’m pleased to say that it’s a robust and comfortable alternative to Nintendo’s cardboard Labo headset, with the added advantage of the user not being required to hold it in place. So it works well for what it is – and it’s a decent price considering its build quality, but whether or not you personally think it’s worth a purchase hinges on how many of the VR-enabled games you either already own or intend to get.
It’s certainly a vastly cheaper investment than, say, PSVR – or even standalone headsets such as Oculus Go – but is definitely a lot more limited than those examples too.
Nintendo Labo VR kit review: a playful, bite-sized virtual reality arcade
For the last few years, it’s seemed like every major tech and gaming company has experimented with virtual reality to some degree, including Sony, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, HTC, Valve, and plenty more. “When I see people play virtual reality, it makes me worry, just as for example if a parent were to see their kid playing virtual reality, it would probably make them worry,” game design legend Shigeru Miyamoto told Time back in 2017, just before the Switch launched.
Instead of the chunky black headsets that have become synonymous with VR, thanks to the likes of Oculus and HTC, Nintendo is releasing a device that’s made of cardboard that you have to build yourself as part of the company’s Labo line of DIY accessories for the Switch. Much like Google’s Cardboard VR headset, Nintendo’s system is not your typical virtual reality experience.
They’re playful and silly — one has you shooting fruit into the mouths of hungry hippos; in another, you’re helping a frog leap over juggling balls — but they also serve as an excellent introduction to the medium. First launched last year, Labo is a line of accessories that can transform the Switch into a range of different interactive objects.
In the main kit, you get a range of things to build: a camera, a giant blaster, a bird, an elephant, a wind-blowing foot pedal, and the goggles themselves, along with a few smaller additions like a pinwheel and a snorkel. When you open the box, you’re greeted by a stack of unassuming cardboard sheets and bag filled with elastic bands and stickers.
It’s a testament to Nintendo’s design skills that spending two hours rolling up bits of cardboard to make a toy gun can be a fun group activity. Assembling a twisted elephant’s trunk gives you an idea of how it’s put together, but the “discover” section of the software teaches you how it actually works. It’s essentially a series of lessons, each playing out as a conversation between a goofy group of characters, that detail the inner workings of each Labo accessory. The blaster’s trigger can fire because the Switch’s IR camera sees a reflective sticker inside of its barrel, while the tablet’s brightness sensor allows it to automatically detect when you slide the screen into the VR goggles.
As I said in my review of the original Labo set last year, these lessons turn technology from something magical and opaque into something tangible and real. Things go a step further with the garage tool, where you can use rudimentary coding to design games and then build accessories to support them. As cool as things like the Labo piano and fishing rod were, they, unfortunately, didn’t have a lot of lasting appeal. In most cases, they were more like digital toys than games, the kind of thing that’s fun for a few days before the novelty wears off.
Nintendo remedied this with the vehicle kit that launched in September, which features a much more robust game that’s married to the core Labo experience. In the “marble run” puzzle game, for instance, you have to reach out and move metal plates and ramps with your hand in order to guide a rolling ball to the level’s exit. The same is true of the doodle mode, which is like a simplified Tilt Brush, letting you draw and paint in 3D space. Controlling the bird is simple: you hold the goggles to your face and then squeeze two triggers on either side to make it flap its wings. Not only does this add a surprisingly immersive element to the game, but for people who get sick or dizzy in VR, the breeze is very welcome and refreshing. It’s all very simple, but as arcade game developers discovered back in the ‘90s, even a basic shooter is a lot more fun with something resembling a real gun in your hand.
Now, there are obvious technical limitations for Labo VR, things that will be immediately noticeable if you’ve spent much time with other virtual reality devices. Labo VR is great for playing short arcade games in five-minute bursts, but with full support for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the way, it’s hard to see how holding a tablet to your face could be comfortable and enjoyable for long sessions with involved and engrossing action games.
Nintendo Labo VR kit review: The Switch makes virtual magic
It’s impossible not to think of Google Cardboard when putting together Nintendo’s Labo VR Kit construction set, which I did over the last week with my 10- and 6-year-old kids. Sure, Nintendo sat on the sidelines over the last three years while Sony, Oculus, Google, Samsung, HTC and others have made VR big and small.
Nintendo’s $80 Labo VR kit costs a lot more than the nearly-free Google Cardboard, but it also makes six things: goggles, a camera, an elephant, a bird, a blaster and a foot pedal that creates wind. A step-down $40 kit just has the goggles and blaster, and it’s a good starting point if you’re not ready to take the full dive.
The blaster is a big cardboard bazooka you drop the goggles into, and it lets you look around and shoot cute blob aliens in a bunch of rail-based levels. The game you use it with is like Pilotwings for birds: You fly around an island, feed chicks and collect things. It’s better when paired with the foot pedal, which blows actual wind via its giant cardboard fan and creates a breeze as you glide. This is similar to pieces in a kinetic ball-rolling puzzle game or doodling in 3D using an art app. Fortunately, the games know the controller’s limits and are laid out in a way that makes the most of the short “reach” of the elephant arm. Your kids may break them and if they don’t you’ll need a lot of shelf space or a big box to store them.
Another game-tinkering tool (Toy-Con Garage VR) allows recustomizing or creating new mini arcade games to try out, so there’s a lot to do. The Switch has a low 720p resolution screen so when it’s used for VR the display’s pixels are really large and slightly blurry.
Its battery life is pretty short (under 3 hours) and its controllers aren’t necessarily designed for VR, either, so while they’re wireless and have great haptics, they’re clumsy to use at times. All the Labo VR creations are made to be used without any head straps, so you have to hold the bulky, heavy goggles-plus-Switch to your face, which gets really tiring for more than 5 minutes, and the display sometimes has a fair amount of lag, too. The Switch uses its own gyro and motion sensors to allow head turning (called 3DoF in VR circles), which means no leaning in or walking around. That’s good news because it limits the possibility of injury and staying seated or standing is easier to do. But the motion controls need to be recalibrated sometimes, which requires you to lay down the Switch on a flat surface to recenter. Tapping a little exposed part of the screen near the nose piece can exit out of apps, but it’s not immediately obvious. The Joy-Con controllers need to be slipped into the Labo VR’s elaborate cardboard accessories, and syncing them and removing them gets fiddly. Maybe a new Switch, he suggested, with smaller pixels and a new controller, could benefit better from a full VR headset?
Super Mario Odyssey and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are getting extra updates that work with Labo VR. But, we had a really great time doing it all, and my kids were entranced and loved every second of it (fighting over the VR goggles, fascinated by the games and worlds, and curious to know more).
Hardware Review: NS Glasses 3D VR Headset for Switch
@Toadie Well, it is a fact that VR is here now and consumer ready for the first time and can offer absolutely compelling games and experiences, and it is selling in high enough numbers and supported by enough of the biggest and most influential companies in the world to sustain itself as the next gaming and entertainment platform that will absolutely continue with future generations of VR hardware and VR games (only pure ignorance makes some people think and claim otherwise at this point), and it’s getting better rapidly and is being worked on by more and more companies and getting cheaper and cheaper . And if someone disagrees with my assertion about VR now being in a similar position to the very early days of 3D and ultimately on a similar path going forward from this point onward too then come back and prove me wrong in say five years time when VR is dead and the gimmicky fad has passed–which simply will not happen.
My apologies if I seem like a **** for stating what is beyond obvious to me at this point, and for calling out the people that I see as being literally ignorant of what VR is, where it’s at and where it’s going in both the short-term and long-term future–and I’m mainly calling out the people who are acting like tools about VR but from the negative and dismissive point of view of the technology, which I am clearly opposed to–but it is what it is. Now, I don’t think anyone on Earth can predict the entire future of everything in the entire Universe with 100% accuracy, but I know for a fact it is possible to predict small parts of the future with not only a high level of accuracy but even 100% in many cases, as in the tiny joke-example I demonstrated above.
VR IS the next big thing in gaming, and indeed entertainment in general, and it has an amazingly bright future ahead of it.
Nintendo Labo VR Kit review
Nintendo Labo was a curious expansion for the Nintendo Switch: the range of peripherals made of cardboard that you assembled yourself over several hours bucked conventional ‘plug in and play’ wisdom, and made a case for parents wanting to do something interactive with their kids rather than parking them in front of the television. Aimed at ages 7+, and turning the Nintendo Switch into a bona fide virtual reality console, the VR Kit is a winning combination of learning, crafting and play that bridges physical and digital gaming.
Crafting takes anywhere between 30 minutes to three hours, depending on how dextrous you are, though with kids especially we recommend you plan for the upper end of those estimates (see box right). The Labo pieces manage to be both flexible enough to craft and rigid enough to work as it should, and it’s amazing to piece it all together and not have the cardboard not fall apart in your hands; after a couple of hours fitting tabs into gaps and following the Switch’s jazzy instructions we had a cardboard elephant in our hands, with rubber bands keeping the trunk upright and flexible, and we felt pretty proud of ourselves.
The Switch runs you through each step with a video you can pause, fast forward and rewind with ease, meaning you’re not struggling to keep up with what’s going on, while you can zoom in and rotate the on-screen Labo model in 360 degrees. You can also get an expansion pack with the Bird and Wind Pedal, though it makes financial sense to get the whole lot in one go if you want to get more than a couple of afternoons of crafting out of your purchase.
In play, the games themselves are hugely straightforward, and sidestep the usual issues VR has with motion sickness or in-game travel by generally sticking to a fixed camera angle, while also keeping you seated – you’ll be painting 3D sculptures, jumping over colored balls and smashing toy trucks without running around and knocking into the furniture. The Camera will see you taking snapshots of cuddly animals or marine life, while the Elephant’s trunk can become a hose or a paintbrush.
The Bird and Wind Pedal can work alone or as a pair, offering a neat reward to those with the patience for building the whole set.
Each Toy-Con is brilliantly realized, down to tiny details like the cardboard ‘clicking’ with the camera zoom, or the Blaster reloading when you pull the barrel towards you. You meet a cast of friendly cartoon characters who talk you through how to use each Toy-Con controller, from what button to press and which gestures to use, to the basics of depth perception and infra-red sensors. The starter’s guide to using the Labo VR Camera helpfully told us to hold the lens from the underside, and it’s already improved our real-life camerawork (see below).
This is probably the most complex part of the package, and requires more thought than the other VR modes, but for older kids it may be the first step on their journey to working on a mainline Mario game in 2030. The first Camera title you can try sees you underwater taking snapshots of different fish, and will pull you out of the game after you’ve taken three pictures so you don’t hang around down there for too long.
Every Nintendo Switch VR Game Ranked And Scored
Of every game that’s endeavored to support Labo VR since launch, Captain Toad’s efforts are perhaps the least offensive. In this twee adventure game you navigate tiny courses, avoiding dangers and solving puzzles.
The little diorama-sized levels look quite adorable inside the headset and the smooth, simplistic art style helps ease the sting of the 720p display.
Some of these, like a bird-flying game that reminds me of Pilotwings, are utterly mad (you hold a bird’s butt to your face) but a novel bit of fun.
Some third-person platform levels don’t really highlight the joys of VR, whilst games that utilize the Joy-Con’s motion controls are incredibly difficult to handle. Trying to throw a boomerang within one game is so infuriating I was tempted to lob my Joy-Con knowing full well it wouldn’t return. Still, the kit’s best games are decent enough to warrant a look and the welcome spurring of build-it-yourself mentality makes it unlike anything else in VR. But the handful of VR levels on offer in Super Mario Odyssey do carry a small spark of Astro Bot-infused delight. It’s quite warming to see Mario scarper about in VR, especially when he climbs up close to the camera and shoots his lovably naive smile. He probably thinks you’re gasping at the sight of his masculine, plump figure brought to life in VR, but really you’re just relieved to see a friendly face between the sea of pixels.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate brings Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and many, many more storied gaming franchises to VR. So I guess credit where it’s due; you can play all of this modern masterpiece with Labo VR stuck to your face if you so choose.
Someone needs to sit the developers down and give them a long and enlightening talk about why this is the absolute worst way they could have implemented VR.
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