From VR to Flat Screens: Bridging the Input and Immersion Gap

Dany Lepage, Technical Director and VP of Technology at Lucky VR, delivered a candid presentation at QCon San Francisco about the company's ambitious journey to port their hit VR poker game to seven non-VR platforms including Steam, iOS, PlayStation, and Android.

The VR Success Story That Created the Problem

The adventure began with a VR poker game that became a phenomenon in the relatively small 20 million unit Quest market. The game's success stemmed from perfect VR fit—poker naturally works in VR because players sit around a table, creating unmatched social presence without needing to walk around or navigate complex 3D environments.

Lepage showed gameplay footage demonstrating the immersive experience: players could use their actual hands to manipulate cards and chips, creating a social experience that closely mirrored real-life poker tournaments. The level of presence and interaction was simply unmatched by traditional gaming platforms.

The Expansion Imperative

Despite the game's success, the business reality was clear: 20 million Quest units paled in comparison to PlayStation 5's 100 million+ install base, not to mention mobile and PC markets. The team set out to expand to multiple platforms while maintaining cross-progression and cross-play capabilities.

The expansion began in 2023 with PlayStation VR2, followed by Steam Non-VR, Android Mobile, PlayStation 5, iOS, and most recently Samsung Galaxy XR. Every platform supported cross-progression—players could start a tournament in VR and finish it on their phone.

Technical Architecture: The Success Story

From an engineering perspective, the expansion was remarkably successful. The team achieved simultaneous releases across seven platforms every three weeks, maintaining feature velocity comparable to their single-platform VR days.

Avatar System Challenges

The most complex technical hurdle was the avatar system. Initially, the game used Meta's avatar system, which was excellent but limited to Meta platforms. When expanding, the team faced a critical decision: migrate all platforms to a unified system or maintain two separate avatar systems.

They ultimately chose to maintain both Meta Avatar Style 2 (with legs) on Meta platforms and their own Lucky Avatars elsewhere. This created significant challenges:

• Cross-compatibility: Players on different platforms saw each other with different avatars
• DEI compliance: Supporting diverse body types required complex mapping systems
• Performance trade-offs: Real-time inverse kinematics for every character was too expensive, so they opted for bandwidth-heavy bone data transfer
• Apparel management: Clothing items needed adjustment for each avatar system
• SDK upgrades: Maintaining compatibility across evolving avatar systems

Input System Adaptation

The input system presented equally complex challenges. The team had to support:

• Quest: Full motion capture with hand controllers
• PC: Mouse and keyboard
• PlayStation: Gamepad with thumbstick navigation
• Mobile: Touchscreen interface

Each input paradigm required completely different interaction models. The social expressiveness that made VR poker special—celebrations, chip manipulation, body language—was nearly impossible to replicate on flat screens.

Release Management at Scale

The team developed a disciplined release process resembling a car factory more than traditional game development:

• Three active versions simultaneously (development, UAT, platform certification)
• Automated distribution to all platforms at release time
• Jenkins-based pipeline with direct store integration
• Backup plans for platforms with longer certification times (Apple, Sony)

This process enabled the team to maintain their development velocity despite supporting seven platforms.

The Product Fit Reality: Where It All Fell Apart

Despite technical success, the product performance was disappointing. Key metrics revealed the problem:

• Day 1 retention: 40% on Quest, 30% on Steam, 25-26% on PS5 and mobile
• Mobile first acquisition: Only 25% retention
• Social experience gap: Non-VR players couldn't express themselves naturally

The Core Mistake

The fundamental error was attempting to port a VR-first social experience to platforms that couldn't support the same level of expression. In VR, players use their bodies, manipulate objects naturally, and communicate through gestures and movements. On flat screens, they're limited to button presses and menu selections.

Lepage identified the key insight: "Input is the big thing. Being able to express yourself, if you're social on a platform, that was the key strength for VR games."

Missed Opportunities

The team realized they could have adapted the social experience for each platform:

• Contextual expression menus: Like Governor of Poker's bottom-screen options
• Prop systems: PokerStars Real Money app's approach of using props to interact with other players
• Platform-specific features: Embracing what each platform does best rather than forcing VR paradigms

Key Lessons Learned

1. Technical execution is solvable: Great engineers can overcome complex technical challenges
2. Product fit is the real challenge: Technical success doesn't guarantee market success
3. Input matters more than immersion: The ability to express yourself socially is more important than visual fidelity
4. Platform-specific design is crucial: What works in VR may not work on mobile or console
5. Metaverse approach has trade-offs: A unified backend creates compromises in user experience

The Future: Still Evolving

Lepage concluded that the journey isn't over. The team continues to iterate on the product, trying to find the right balance between technical ambition and product-market fit. The experience serves as a cautionary tale for developers considering VR-to-flat-screen porting: technical feasibility doesn't equal business viability.

The presentation highlighted a critical question for the industry: Is porting VR games to traditional platforms a doomed effort, or is there a way to bridge the input and immersion gap? Lucky VR's experience suggests it's possible technically, but achieving true product fit remains the ultimate challenge.

The story of Lucky VR's expansion from VR to flat screens represents both a technical triumph and a product design challenge, offering valuable lessons for any developer considering cross-platform metaverse experiences.