Be awed by Skyrim on the Oculus Rift, then let down by its limitations

Here's some exciting news: Skyrim, the game where you hunt and murder dragons, is relatively playable on the Oculus Rift VR headset. Rather, it's workable, and should you have an Oculus dev kit (they're shipping out right now), it's not terribly hard to make the game play nice with the headset. Now here's the sad news: navigating menus is nigh impossible, according to the Penny Arcade Report. Here's PAR's Ben Kuchera on the issue, which he says goes deeper than Skryim:

"The Rift does not do well with menus, in-game text, or any user interfaces that aren't purely graphical. It's a major shortcoming of the hardware, and it makes games like Skyrim that throw many menus of that kind at you intolerable to play in a serious way. You'd have to remove the headset every time you need to read anything, much less compare weapons or assign skills."

In our experience with the Rift headset, menus weren't an issue -- but that's because it's something we never encountered. Given the development nature of the device, demos were always very guided experiences, with games being loaded independently on a separate PC and not something press had to deal with while trying to use the headset. It's possible that games like Skyrim will receive mods that make the (many, many) in-game menus usable, but it's certain that support won't come from the game's publisher, Bethesda Softworks, as it recently finalized production on the game. For a taste of Skyrim running with the Oculus Rift, head past the break.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

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Source: Penny Arcade Report, YouTube