I’ve heard good things about Vive, and it seems they correctly identified the VR=hands angle, which I feel is undisputably true. You can’t have decent VR without fully integrating hands into the experience.
But I doubt any of it will be remotely mainstream in 5 years, for the reasons I outlined above.
Again, that guy is equating the rift with VR, not the vive. I’ve tried both, at least when I tried them, there was no comparison. It was like comparing a bicycle with a ferrari.
That guy is wumpus :).
This is what I think. While I see inmense growth potential for VR, it think it’s going to take too long for it to really become widely adopted, and inexpensive (in the $500 range) AR is probably too close for VR to really have a chance to pick up before AR (which I believe is the next huge thing) hits. At that point VR becomes a subset/niche application of a much more widely used AR exosystem.
However, A lot of the technologies overlap. Those companies investing in VR now will have a huge advantage when AR starts to pick off (2018-19? whenever the second version of hololens/magic leap comes into the market).
Eh… Niche might be defined as an arbitrary user number threshold, that’s true. But videogames (non-mobile, non-free-to-play) are still sort of niche compared to most other forms of digital media (compare the numbers of people that watch the most popular movies/TV shows with the number of people who play the most popular games). VR, in it’s current form (videogame-centered) is bound to become a small subset of the market until/unless it picks off outside of the gaming world.
I am totally biased, but in general I’ve seen the two camps (VR is awesome vs. VR is dumb) split between those who have tried modern VR and those who have not. For most I’ve seen, actually trying it converts them. Maybe they don’t think that it’ll take over the world, but there’s definitely the realization that VR is real and cool.
I think there could be some parallels with the beginning of the 3D card market in the mid-to-late 90s. They were clunky, there wasn’t much content, and nobody knew what they’d be good for. And it took years (and lots of market shakeups) for them to become mass market. Remember the days of the 3D-only 3dfx cards?
So I guess my point is that we don’t know where VR will go. But right now it’s super cool just to play games with it. Who cares what you look like playing a game at your PC (or TV) at your house?
I’d ask the people spending billions of dollars on VR what they expect from their investment. I doubt they drop the money they do to grow a technology that falls somewhere short of the iPhone in impact.
Here’s one guy’s expectation:
One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.
And yet he’s talking of AR, not VR. I think that’s the real target. And as others have said, I see the huge potential/killer apps being there (a superset of VR technology).
Advertising… advertising everywhere.
I always thought they over paid for the acquisition.
But who knows, 10 years down the road?
Not really, I think you’re missing the point.
Yes, you’re right: no one wants to be forced to answer a videophone when they’re wearing nothing but a towel.
But no one is forcing you and there’s no reason you have to use the tech that way. And there are plenty of people who do want to use videophone tech sometimes. There are 15 million Facetime calls every day, for example.
“But that’s dwarfed by the number of voice calls, text messages, and e-mails sent every day!” Yep. So what? The question isn’t whether video calls are used by everyone all the time. The question is whether they’ve found a successful niche, which they have.
“But I don’t use video calls, and I don’t know anyone who does!” You know what? Me either. Doesn’t interest me. But again, so what? I’m sure the 15 million people who use Facetime don’t care whether two random guys on the Internet approve. They know why they want a video call, and that’s all that’s required.
An anecdote. My niece got married this summer, but my sister/her aunt was away and couldn’t be there. We did a Facetime call so my sister could see the ceremony from 5,000 miles away. And it was awesome that she was able to participate. Did we look like dorks aiming a tablet at the ceremony and carrying it around during the reception? Yes, yes we did. Were any fucks given? Not a one. Videophone tech is useless and annoying … except when it’s awesome.
Great, but the point I was addressing is why video phone didn’t take off when it was predicted they would be in every home. Which is exactly the point you are missing.
You see where I’m going here. The question is not whether you’d rush out to buy VR, or whether there are some people are so acutely self-consciously they’ll feel dorky even when using VR in the privacy of their own home, or whether VR will completely overtake regular gaming in just a couple of years (which is the implicit benchmark in most of these threads, Lord knows why.) The question is whether it can carve out a niche amongst hobbiests, and then expand from there. Which seems extremely plausible to me.
I didn’t say anything about VR, so who’s missing the point exactly?
So, the Vive has a pass-through camera and laser position sensors? Those two things are Oculus-killers by themselves (if well implemented), as far as I’m concerned, since they solve one of the big issues with VR, which is the loss of situational awareness.
Furthermore, if the pass-through camera can be seamlessly blended with VR imagery… yeah, this could very well be the first real step towards AR - as long as they manage to embed the Lighthouse system into the headset itself, as to not depend on an external installation. Yeah, that would be pretty huge.
No, and no. But it detects when you get close to the boundaries of the “safe” zone you can setup.
Sigh. Well, maybe the next generation will have those things.
To be clear, I have tried multiple forms of modern VR. And after I did, I desperately wanted to go back to playing Alien: Isolation on a giant monitor at 4k resolution with a mouse and keyboard instead.
Seeing a movie in IMAX 3d does not immediately make all other forms of moviegoing stupid 2d wastes of time.
VR is really years away from where it needs to be. At least 5 if you are super mega optimistic, probably a decade or more as a realist, and as a pessimist, maybe not in our lifetimes (next 30 years).
I will still buy the Oculus and Vive if they are ever released, but it is a lot of sweaty, heavy, wiry crap to put on your head and set up and dick with and connect to a very high end gaming rig… to get a pretty grainy, low res experience going that has no killer app but lots of novelty for novelty-philes. It is really a Kinect kind of thing.
Heh. Videophones are in every home … or at least every home with a smartphone or a tablet that can run Skype or Facetime. The technology has become ubiquitous (if not universally used) while us old coots have spent our time confidently saying it would never go anywhere.
Maybe back in the 90s, hardly anyone reads Time Magazine anymore.
You are absolutely correct. However, that cover image is making its rounds all over the 'net.
CastAR already has that covered, with its clip-on true-AR thing.
I’m biased, being a CastAR kickstarter backer, but I’m a whole lot more excited about it than I am about any full-goggle VR system.
I’m working on one of the 3 major platforms. Nobody really knows whether it’s going to succeed or not, but that’s part of the fun of developing for the platforms. There’s certainly a lot of momentum and money, and the technology – displays, graphics, processing power, sensors, cameras – are much farther along and more affordable than ever before.
The games are likely to be different from the kinds of “flat” games we’re used to, but it’s similar to the early days of film or stereo audio – there’s no real vocabulary yet, people are going to be experimenting with what works and what doesn’t for a while.
Maybe it’s a niche. But I would encourage all of you to try one or more of the modern systems before rushing to judgment.
It’s not going anywhere it it’s not being used. It’s irrelevant because who is using them? I know of people who use them to see relatives overseas but beyond that, not much.