Comment from Nintendo Labo VR: There is no "Nintendo Magic" in these goals

Among all the other failures of Nintendo Labo VR, the biggest could be its lack of "Nintendo magic".

Virtual reality has already become a genre of play sold to millions of copies, with magnificent, fascinating and unique experiences ranging from the giant halls of HTC Vive to PlayStation VR stations to the cramped. When Nintendo approaches a new paradigm of control, it usually comes first in the recent competition with hardware innovation, game design revelation, or a brilliant combination of both.

But Nintendo Labo VR, the company's first serious VR product, is paralyzed by the lingering sentiment that its "VR-on-Switch" solution is the real obstacle to fun. His players are constantly being asked to get outside of virtual reality, whether it's long lead times on board, pint-sized virtual reality experiences, or the difficulty of having a 720p Switch screen filtered through a pair of glass lenses.

The result is a usable take VR, and I do not blame any Switch fan for having seen his starting price at $ 40 and his bite. It's a "legitimate" RV incursion as economical as you'll be able to do (assuming you've already enjoyed $ 300 of fun with a Nintendo-style non-VR switch). But this is not a great warning to slip on a Nintendo experience. VR Lab is a rare case where the big N actively fights against his own material and loses it to deliver everything that is close to magic.

Pixel problems

VR Labs articulates around a basic cardboard and plastic helmet, the size of an adult's shoe. This case, which takes about 40 minutes to manufacture from folded cardboard, accepts a Nintendo Switch console in a long, thin slot. (We've already described Labo's basic concept of building your own controllers – Nintendo's fourth attempt at the cardboard concept – if you're unfamiliar with it, follow my review. of the Labo robot kit from 2018.)

When a sensor uses Labo VR software, its light sensor recognizes that the material is properly inserted into a cardboard box (flanked by "soft" adhesive tapes). Its 720p screen then starts to work in "VR" mode – which means, a rectangular image is now split into two ovals. (If this does not switch automatically, you can press the "two ovals" logo on the screen with your finger.)

These images are translated by a pair of glass lenses, and the experience obtained is very similar to Google Cardboard. Hold the box near your face with a starting weight of 423 g, press its plastic face over your nose and move your head – although you should only do this in a fixed or swivel chair. As a VR system with three degrees of freedom (3DOF), Labo VR will accurately translate the rotation of your head to give the impression that you are doing the same thing in a virtual world, with two moving stereoscopic images that you allow to perceive the depth. But this illusion will be broken if you get up or move in any direction. Your virtual self is effectively stuck on a tripod.

Unlike Google Cardboard or Samsung GearVR, Labo VR lenses interpret a different pixel palette. Go back to 2015, for example, with the first official launch of GearVR, and you will find that his "minimum" phone was the Samsung Galaxy S5, equipped with a "Super AMOLED" display of 129.5 mm (129.5 mm) with a resolution of 2560 × 1440 pixels.In contrast, the Nintendo switch expands fewer pixels (1280 × 720) on a larger LCD screen of 157.5 mm (6.2 ").

Thus, the mediocrity of the Switch as a virtual reality screen is not simply due to the resolution in pixels. OLED panels have long been favored by VR helmet manufacturers, because of their "real" blacks, which are easier to look into the eyes of a VR helmet. Many of these OLED panels may have "low persistence" modes enabled, which reduces obvious blur effects. However, the LCD panel of the switch has no "fast switching" functionality to reduce annoying blur. Even worse, because the switch panel is very large, its actual VR display – these ovals – must be smaller to turn into glass panels of the shape and size appropriate for the eyes.

This latter problem becomes more apparent when one asks a Nintendo switch to operate in "2D" mode while it is inserted into the Labo VR headset. You'll have the head spinning almost instantly if you look at it with both eyes open, but if you close one eye and try this, you'll instantly notice a lot more pixel fidelity fed into each eye. All this to say: a 720p panel is pretty weak for virtual reality, but the switch actually works at inferior resolution than to make Labo VR work.

Far from Wii Sports

Most of Labo VR's experiments are designed to solve its blur problems, that is, they are short, slow and they constantly try to get the players out of the fun.

If you only build the default helmet, you will have access to 32 VR mini games. Less than half of them are doing something meaningful with your VR perspective. Some of them revolve around a Mario type avatar that you control with Joy-Cons (attached to the Labo VR headset because you have to hold everything with both hands). You run and jump while managing a frozen camera with the prospect of your head, but only a few of these challenges offer a valid reason to look around – usually to search for and activate objects and platforms in your periphery hidden visual.

Other "sports" mini-games do the same thing with a frozen perspective, to add a single floating hand to the formula: you only hold the headphones with one hand, then you will use the another to hold a joy. Con as if it was a real controller followed by hand. Spoiler: this is not it. By default, a standard Joy-Con only works in 3DOF detection mode, and this weakness is exposed when these games require you to imitate a golf putter, a basketball throw or a throw. boomerang. The combination of the inaccuracy of these movements and an awkward grip of the helmet makes these mini-games downright criminal for Nintendo (especially for the company that has virtually invented the movement-controlled sports game) .

The exceptions in this section of basic "mini-games" include a solid pinball, a football style 3D Pong version and a soccer goalkeeper challenge. But all these challenges are terribly short, and when you beat them, they reset themselves to make you replay the same challenge over and over. These highlights would have benefited from arcade type remixes at each finalization.