This is he first time for me where an emergent new technology in the gaming world feels like a proper thing with actual potential, and not a just a novelty gimmick like motion controls, 3D and previous attempts at "VR" were. I had the chance to try the new Oculus Rift S and the HTC Vive over the holidays with some Beat Saber and Superhot and it was a really amazing experience. I have honestly never felt such awe for a game since my childhood days where I'd witness a brand new graphics engine like Source for the first time.
There is definitely a bright future for VR as the technology will only get better, cheaper and more accessible with time.
Yes, really, You are the exception. By now there is quite a few people who have tried VR in some place or another and the market has clearly shown sales are not skyrocketing at all. It's a very slow growth, we are talking about a few millions headsets per year, which is just pocket money market wise compared to smartphones or even PCs at large. Also, most of the software is utter crap (with a few exceptions like Beat Saber, Tetris Effect) and not convincing enough for anyone who cares about their spending.
The Altair 8080 is considered the first PC and it was released in 1974. The IBM PC was released in 1981 and PCs became widespread only in the 1990's, when they started adding multimedia features. So about 20 years for mass adoption.
The first touchscreen phone was introduced in 1994, the IBM Simon. Yet the first true modern smartphone to get mass adoption was the iPhone, 2007. And truly massive adoption worldwide happened after iOS and especially Android took off, a few years later.
VR has been around as a purely techie idea for 30 years but we haven't really had the tech for something worthwhile until recently. I'd say that we're probably 5-10 years from mass adoption, once we have some lighter high-performance headsets.
Early VR is 1960s ... it's been around longer than personal computers.
(oh sure, for military and experimental applications for the most part for a long time - and with a really high price tag - but it existed!)
If we're stretching things to go with the earliest examples of the tech, then computers go back even further with ENIAC in the 1940s. Even earlier if you count electromechanical devices.
Well, we're talking about mass market adoption. If they make 1% of people feel sick, that's tens if not hundreds of millions of people who will be actively campaigning against your product. This is definitely into early adopter territory.
Then you need super high graphical fidelity (resolution, refresh rate, field of view, etc.) and super portable equipment.
The current VR devices aren't the first commercially available ones. My first VR experience was in the late 80's and I think it was driven by an Amiga. Thirty years has passed since then and I think that maybe the market is what it's going to be.
AR has a ton of potential though (e.g. windshield HUDs).
Obviously, we're still at very early stages with this tech. It's silly to compare it with smartphones and PCs, since it's a very different class of product. There are some barriers for entry but, as I said they will eventually get ironed out. The price of a full set with a fidelity grade matching the current high end sets shouldn't exceed the price of a games console in a few years.
There has definitely been a huge increase in interest with titles like Boneworks and the upcoming HL Alyx. The Valve index has been sold out almost instantly and there's reportedly a huge backlog of pre-orders for it.
Your first paragraph has been the goto defense for VR for a decade now. I used it myself five years ago. But it's gotten old now. Tech is supposed to solve these problems faster than this.
The Valve index sold out because it is the only way to play one of the most anticipated games of all time.
there is no space for gaming to evolve at the moment without VR. The only thing that next generation consoles are bringing to the table is more advanced graphics. VR offers a truly innovative space for gaming to move into and whilst its not there yet in terms of hardware and software, I can see it being 'the future' as it were.
I think there's potential for things like Apple's U1 chip and Google's Soli chip to add cheap and accurate gesture control to consoles without the need to hold controllers at all. Add an array of mics and the next gen of Guitar Hero can be based on a group's singing and dancing but graded on a per-voice / per-body basis.
Because of a console's placement in front of a group instead of attached to a single person's head, I think it's better positioned for a wide variety of entertainment experiences.
Large TVs are now cheap enough that they can fill an entire group's field of vision with a shared experience as opposed to having to buy 1 headset per person. Obviously turning your head ruins the immersion of a TV, but I would argue that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes it's fun to be "trapped" in VR, but sometimes it just makes the experience more isolating and difficult to operate (eg how do I watch my kids playing on the other side of the room while I have a headset on?).
That same argument could have been made for 3D tech in TVs a few years ago, and we all know how well that technology took off. It seems most people seem to want an incrementally “better” experience, not a fundamentally different one.
I'd prefer physically accurate skeletal animation because even with all the mocap, animations still look sooo fake. Maybe neural network post processing step would do some good? Maybe some life-like flexibility in interactions instead of everything being little finite state machines?
Maybe some neural network game optimisation to be more fun for given player?
This is he first time for me where an emergent new technology in the gaming world feels like a proper thing with actual potential, and not a just a novelty gimmick like motion controls, 3D and previous attempts at "VR" were. I had the chance to try the new Oculus Rift S and the HTC Vive over the holidays with some Beat Saber and Superhot and it was a really amazing experience. I have honestly never felt such awe for a game since my childhood days where I'd witness a brand new graphics engine like Source for the first time.
There is definitely a bright future for VR as the technology will only get better, cheaper and more accessible with time.