“Virtual reality really is going to take over the world… it was better than real life — people will get lost in this and not want to leave.” Indie developer Lee Vermeulen, in a blog post about his experience with Valve’s Virtual Reality tech a’t Steam Dev Days.
‘Virtual Reality Really Is Going To Take Over The World’
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9 responses to “‘Virtual Reality Really Is Going To Take Over The World’”
Invest in vomit buckets people………we will all be millionaires.
In “Ready Player One” the people who can afford it move into little studio apartments dominated by wall-mounted harnesses. They wear haptic feedback suits and retina displays to interact with the virtual world, eat when physical food is delivered through a chute in their door, and do the rest of their required bodily functions in a tiny bathroom.
They should use a projection system to project the nodes..?
*sigh* Those of us who were there last time remember all of this hype.
At the PATA conference in 1992 I applauded when Arthur C Clarke said “”Virtual Reality won’t merely replace TV. It will eat it alive.”
It is fun, it is immersive, it also pales pretty quickly after a while. The first experience with the rift is always mind blowing, like your first roller coaster ride. Ride coasters every day for a week though, and the excitement pales and you start to get bored.
I think VR will be popular long term with flight sim and driving afficionados, if there were still real video game arcades, it could do well there as well.
FPS, not as much fun as it sounds, head tracking is fantastic, but the disconnect between walking whilst sitting down breaks the experience somewhat.
Despite what the other devs say, nausea and headaches will always be a problem for a sizeable chunk of the market, hell, there are plenty of people who get nausea and headaches just seeing a 3D movie.
Also, the isolation factor.
For a family, you buy a console, and everyone plays it. When they aren’t playing it they are watching netflix on it etc. It is good value.
For VR, one person plays it, and is extremely isolated whilst doing so. They can’t see or hear you, and you are somewhat at risk, if there is a fire or other problem in your house if you are on your own, you won’t know about it.
So sure, the market that covers PC gamers that game at a desk on their own for hours is a good potential market, as it has a lot of the same issues (single player, isolation, deep pockets etc.) but that market isn’t big enough for VR to ‘take over the world’.
No tech that requires a helmet, or at least a visor, doesn’t work well with people with glasses, causes nausea, eyestrain and headaches in a reasonable portion of its audience, isolates you from anyone else nearby, and is (relatively) pricey is going to take over the world.
Find its niche and be successful, sure, but I think successfull like perhaps Steering wheel add-ons and after-market controller successful, not TV or telephone successful.
Eh? That only became a thing within the last console generation. Nobody had any problem buying a single-purpose machine in the preceding decades, and plenty still don’t.
And this is different to people who sit around with headphones blasting god knows what how? 😛 I myself only use “regular” headphones that don’t encase my ears though, so even when I’m completely immersed while playing piano or something and not paying any attention to anything around me, I can still easily hear what’s going on. A lot of these “issues” sound made up.
A comparison to steering wheels and joysticks is pretty spot on. I don’t think anyone actually expects VR to suddenly emulate the explosion of smartphones.
It’s a high end gaming device with fairly specific requirements and outcomes. Why does everyone expect it to be something it’s not, rather than appreciate what it actually is.
A ferrari is not a people mover…. and a barina is not for towing a boat.
One thing I do agree with him on, is that the new Valve controller felt great in FPS games, but was not so good with other games. I think I will be using the Valve controller for FPS and the PS4 controller for other game types.
On his other points, having tried the new rift prototype with IR LEDs and a camera, the tracking is on par with Valve’s demo. It tracks your height and tilt movements much better. The resolution on Valve’s setup was really good vertically but not so great in the peripheral areas, they appear to be using two separate mobile phone screens mounted vertically. The headset is uncomfortable but that is to be expected on a prototype.
The Valve tracking fell apart when you looked certain ways, probably due to no tracking marks on the floor. Whilst it worked well otherwise, I think it is a dead-end tech wise, you aren’t going to mark up your walls to achieve tracking. Not in a mass-market sense anyway.
Good to see some progression, but still a long way to go.
Wait, you got to try out both of them? So jealous.
Why on earth would you stick QR codes all over the walls? There’s like a million other ways to do position tracking. This seems like a massive step backwards