VR going mainstream? Yeah, next year, says Facebook, for the third year in a row Virtual reality is going to be huge. That's the official word – again – from the annual Oculus conference in California, USA, this week. One year on from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg taking to the stage to tell fellow nerds that he wants one billion people to try virtual reality, the Behoodied One returned this year, and …
PSVR has sold over 3 million according to Sony in August.
I think what VR really needs is standardisation. i.e. the ability to buy any headset from any manufacturer and have it work on any platform - just like a TV does. Would be nice to be able to choose different headsets based on price and specs/quality, and not have to worry about buying a new one for every different platform.
The VR experience from a phone slapped in front of your eyes is OK (I have a Pixel2, and tried the Google Glasses), and it's not bad, but it's a million miles away from proper immersive VR that the 3 grown up VR systems (PSVR, FacebookVR, HTC) offer.
Stick on a PSVR, and play something in the VR Worlds bundled games, and prepare to be blown away.
PSVR is cruising towards 4m sold, and with the recent price drop, it's really accessible.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-27-get-a-playstation-vr-headset-with-move-controllers-and-a-game-for-230
Honestly, I'm hella interested in cheap, Cardboard-compatible VR that runs on a PC (streaming "side-by-side 3D" video from a monitor to a phone and head movements back). What I'm not interested in whatsoever is any VR that runs exclusively as an Android app (probably delivering a 3D-movie or roller-coaster "experience" - no thanks), or any VR that insists that I explicitly have an Oculus or a Vive, or any VR requiring many hundred bucks of investment, or any VR owned by Facebook, Valve or their ilk.
Unfortunately, the entire industry's interests seem to lie exactly diametrically opposite to that.
We need to have a talk about how realistic your expectations are.
You are essentially asking for a very cheap, fully capable VR system, that has no vendor involvement that allows you to use whatever VR content you want, without any way for any company to recoup their investment (Sony) or track you (Facebook/HTC).
OK then......
"We need to have a talk about how realistic your expectations are."
Oh, I think they're _plenty_ realistic - I'm not asking for any hardware: unless someone particularly feels like trying to do a better job for less, I already have the hardware, considering my phone as-is can do the job just fine (with the right app, which I was willing to and did pay for) and considering Cardboard-equivalent goggles are a dime a dozen, and I already have one.
So basically _all_ I need is that folks who target high and mighty VR systems also deign to explicitly include a _"zero hardware"_ option just showing a side-by-side 3D split image on the PC monitor - a thing that lots modern of engines like Unity and Unreal already support (so much so, Unreal actually lets you enable it most of the time with a simple command line option without ever having to beg the devs to notice you).
In the end, all I need is the dev to bother adding "#include SBS3D.h" and add a menu option to enable it - and they would gain an extra customer, while advertising "we support VR (but only Oculus and Vive)" will only make me shrug and turn away. What is so unrealistic about wanting to throw actual money at someone just to find out they don't want it...?
The Vive sold about a half-million headsets in 2016 alone. I think your numbers are a bit old.
Oculus Go is supposedly over the million mark already.
Add up the PSVR, Oculus, Oculus Go, and Vive, and you're well over the five million mark, almost certainly much higher.
From the introduction of the Apple II in 1977, it took about five years before "home computers" hit the five million sales mark (Apple II, Atari, TRS-80, etc).
The Oculus Rift (the first mainstream headset to release) has been out for about 2.5 years.
VR sales are building at well over twice the rate home computers did when they were released.
I have a Rift, but I've not used it that much. The problem is it takes up too damned much room. The example Rift setup is always a large room, with the base stations on top of a reasonably sized desk with one monitor, keyboard, and not much else.
My (small) study has five monitors, twelve computers, and a load of peripherals. You can just about use a Rift in it, but strictly seated with no movement apps are the only option and they are in short supply. Google Earth remains fantastic, however.
I have got extension cables to use it in another room, but re-setting it up is a faff, and means I don't bother as much as I'd like to. The alternative is buying another computer for a different room, and that's realistically the thick end of another 600-700 quid..
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Sony are the only ones making any headway into VR becoming mainstream. There are over 80m PS4s in people's homes worldwide and these days £230 gets you the VR rig, move controllers and bundles Vr game.
PSRV skipped past 3m+ sales earlier in the summer. Wouldn't be surprised to see this at 4m+ by Christmas given further potential discounts and specials.
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Another standalone headset which can't run intensive games?
I can't believe Oculus hasn't released a true successor to the Rift after more than 2 years, leaving the true VR enthusiasts - the people who actually funded their initial enterprise - with no upgrade path except the HTC Vive Pro...
Personally, I'm happy with Windows Mixed Reality and I'm quite hopeful that 2nd generation WMR headsets will thoroughly leave Oculus in the dust.
The landscape is littered with VR headsets. People think they're really cool and after playing with them for a couple of weeks they're used to capture dust. They need a fully immersive reality as described in Ready Player One or Snowcrash where work can be accomplished as well as play. I'm not interested in a toy that costs me $400+ so I can sit on the couch and get fatter.
If I could collaborate with colleagues on engineering projects and be able to create and share designs in a way analogous to doing it in person, that would be great. In fact, I'd want something that was even better. Imagine creating a race car in VR enabled 3D CAD and then being able to put it in a virtual wind tunnel while you manipulate a virtual smoke wand around the car in real time just like if it were physical model with the bonus that you could make modifications on the fly.
"I'm not interested in a toy that costs me $400+ so I can sit on the couch and get fatter."
VR is not only three dimensional, it's all around you. So you tend to want to turn around a lot to see what's behind you. Couches wont work for that, you need a swivel chair. Which would provide a tiny modicum of exercise as you rotate.
On top of that, some of the devices provide 6 degrees of freedom, you can stand up, walk around, or run around. Room scale it is usually called. Can be quite the workout dodging virtual bullets.
I spent roughly $1,600 upgrading my main pc for my oculus, which cost me $800, then another couple of hundred bucks on craptastic games (the best game is still luckys tale, which came free). I show people the rift occasionally, play with it myself even less frequently. It's really been a disappointment, because I remember how excited I was about getting one back at launch.
Here's the problem as I see it...
#1... the cords... oh god the cords... I know there are some solutions (they cost quite a bit too) but in 2018, when everything (hell even my thermostat and toaster) are wireless and they still have not one, but TWO cords out the back of this thing (yeah, you're not fooling anyone with the bulky cord wrap you put around the HDMI/USB3 cords to make them look like one).
#2 Cost... That's gotten a little better with the discount pricing from last summer on the rift itself, but a decent computer (especially the absolutely ridiculous cost of video cards right now) is going to run well over $1000 to get this thing even moderately working (and if you want a top tier experience you really need around $2000 of computer in front of you).
Note: the memory price gouging going on (my 32GB of ddr4 cost $114 in summer of 16 is now $400+) and the outrageous price of top tier nvidia cards (they claim it's from bitcoin mining scarfing them up, but I think this is just another example of price gouging). My 2 1/2 year old 1080GTX which cost me $650 is still over $550 29/30 days of the month.
#3 Content... now I expected some crappy games being sold for VR at first, since it was easy money for small devs and no big companies were willing to invest the time/money to do a VR exclusive game, but it's been nearly 3 years and 90% of the games being sold on Steam and Oculus' stores are complete garbage. Even the good indie titles last about 1-3 hours. I've got over 30 VR games and only about 5 are worth playing for more than 10 minutes. They want to charge prime rates for the A class games, but they aren't really worth it either. Regular games don't really port over to oculus well (even using Vorpx or other conversion drivers). VR games have to be designed around the platform or else they will either make you sick or won't work well enough to play long term.
#4 (and this surprised me) - the Creepiness factor
Let me explain... many of the more decent games are horror right now. I live alone. Jason Voorhees could literally be standing behind me sharpening his blade for 20 minutes deciding which of my ears to cut off first while I'm playing one of these games and I would never know until the first slice. That's an extreme example but there's something really disconcerting about being submerged into VR, at home, alone without any way to know what's going on in the rest of the house. Needless to say, I lock my office door when I play VR, but still, creepy.
well, that's about it. VRpron is pretty amazing, too bad I got a GF right after I got my oculus (I'm pretty sure the two are unrelated). This tech needed to come out about 5 years ago... lol
oh, and of course, #5... zuckerberg... I think of him every day when I enter my office and see the 3 cameras looking down at me (yea, I know, they only see the infrared frequency.... right....)
"I always feel like, somebody's watching me.... I get no privacy... oh oh oh oh..." (for my fellow kids of the 80s).
You are insane and paranoid.
I also have a Rift and upgraded my main PC and I love it! It's the best gaming experience I have ever had. And sure you complete games in 3 or 4 hours. That's because you keep playing continuously for much longer periods. Some of these games just have that push to finish them. For instance I just couldn't stop Archangel as I really wanted to see how it ended. And then I realized that I actually finished a game completely on my own without even cheating. But the experience was awesome.
As for the politics involved. Yes, I too wanted mr. Lucky still at the helm and kept Oculus independent but that doesn't mean that the system is suddenly bad. I can still improve things on my end by finally getting that GTX1080(ti) and increase supersample.
The only problem I have is that game developers (including Google Earth dev-team) should stop promoting all making heights in these games. In google earth you float above the street (as the proportions aren't right) which is horrible when you're afraid of heights! That's what is holding me back in VR. My own fears and paranoia.
But otherwise the games are still very intense and enjoyable... and yes, I still have vertigo :-/
I'm sorry for your vertigo, but in my opinion Google Earth is the best thing on the Rift! It works seated, and with the 3D models it looks great - ok, it's not the same as reality by a long way, but it's still decent. Some of the streetview pictures work really well too (others don't..).
If you don't like Google Earth, I definitely wouldn't recommend trying the BBC's Spacewalk app!
"3 cameras looking down at me (yea, I know, they only see the infrared frequency.... right....)"
I dunno about the Oculus CV 1, but the Oculus DK2 (the one I have) it's fairly obvious it's not seeing visible light, since the silver coating on the lens reflects all visible light. Also, it's just an ordinary web cam. Fire up your favourite web cam software and see what the cameras can see. Though with strong sunlight streaming through your window, it can probably see a lot.
"...What Oculus needs is the VR equivalent of Fortnite or Halo ..."
Bollocks. They can make both these game into VR without too much hassle. If a few guys can make an ancient (Wolfenstein 3D) game into VR then I fail to see why those studio's (with much more money and resources at hand) can't port their stuff to the Rift.
Perhaps those big time studios hired the wrong people.
For the interested in Wolf3D in VR: https://further-beyond.itch.io/wolf3dvr
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