12% of Americans are planning to buy their own VR headset in the next 6 months!

Except then we're back to requiring another device to be present (and one with a sufficiently fast connection).

VR HMDs have higher refresh rates than most monitors. Plus they're basically using phone displays in the Rift.

 

That definition is becoming pretty darn blurry these days. I can and do make calls from my smartphone, tablet and laptop. About the only thing I don't have voice calls from these days is an actual telephone.

I would imagine consumer VR will be easily usable for phone calls when it finally takes off.

 

Okay, so get a virtual desktop on amazon and run a remote desktop on that.

(Yes, I'm grasping at straws).

 

I don't really agree with the comparison of vr and "smartphones". Smartphones (mobile computing communication devices) are the convergence of two core technologies, communications and computing. Both of which have fundamentally impacted our culture. VR is a IO tech that lays on top of those things and a way to utilize them. It would be more comparable to the touchscreen rather than the device as a whole. (at least on type of tech it is). There is no unique killer app to VR that the smartphone had that to push its growth.

Additionally, VR (as a broad impactful tech) is a move in the opposite direction of virtually every cultural/technological advancement in last several decades. The tech changes that become ingrained trend toward the invisible and frictionless. People don't really want tech/computers/devices, they want what they can do. Broadband, bluetooth, voice recognition, localized/personal predictive data, frictionless connectivity, simplified interactions, etc.

Smartphones exploded with the iPhone, because it was very easy to use and surfaced most used features, and gave you better ways to do many common tasks in more condensed ways. For example pretty much all phones now have video call capability. But today the most common form of communication is texting, much more used than even real phone calls. Texting allows people to communicate in a multitasked way. Same with games. Mobile gaming didn't exist a decade or so ago, and now it is a third of the gaming market. And all of the most popular of those are ones that are delivered in very small chunks (<2mins). Basically, usage patterns of tech almost always move toward the multitasking/additive environment. Talking to another person on a phone has proved to be too immersive for most uses. Where does that leave VR?

I think VR is fun, and will do well in its space(s). But a broadly adopted daily tech, game changer, it ain't. AR on the other hand....

Also, as a developer, unless it is really something you want to do, there isn't much need to get familiar with to be "current" or whatever. The current state of modern tools means that it is pretty simple to develop for.

 

Lot's of VR design is working with the limitations, things like not having white and black contrasting will be solved in the future. That being said the biggest issues currently are that people just design like a regular game and it ends up terrible.

Lots of people design with the "wow factor" of VR in mind and just make some dodgy demo with huge things... this might be cool at say Pax or something but eventually you just get bored especially if you've been seeing the same S*** every year since 2012. Room sized demos are generally more impressive and give a greater feeling of immersion.


A huge issue is that VR is it's trying to be more then it is ATM. Sure we might be able to help people with dementia or let a engineer on the ground fix the space station or create interfaces for high quality remote surgery but these are not the bread and butter of Oculus or Vive, even 360 video and stuff like that are just not what the focus needs to be on at least for the next few years.

People who own these devices want Skyrim or Journey or Shadow of the Colossus or... and currently we just don't get games like that. We get a few levels of a game for $30 or a game that's like a mobile game for $30 and it actually makes sense. If you are a developer sales on this platform is just going to be less than PC as it's a small subset that actually owns a headset and higher prices are required to have a chance of making a return.

Now imagine if you are making a 5 hour narrative focused game that's at the quality people want. Even if you have 4 people working on it and have invested a year of time if each person wants to make like $20,000 then you need to sell the game for $80 not to mention people probably want more then that and if you wanted to make as much as being a senior developer at a large studio each you'd need to sell the game for $320 and that's just not doable. I've actually tried to be really conservative with these numbers as a years dev time probably won't be enough and booths and showing plus other development costs will take the cost of development up significantly. Not to mention that's assuming they can work within their limitations to make something cool 5 hours is a long time to have compelling in any game and especially VR.
A game like that might cost $500,000 to make and is just too much of a risk to take. And even this isn't what people want we are talking 10-100 million dollar games are what people really want in these devices.

VR needs more money invested into larger titles!

 

But you are correct, the nature of the games that will be popular are going to be bigger scope games. And my belief is that quality bar is going to have to be higher to succeed, both in game play and visuals (not meaning realism, but consistent quality.) There are several companies making big games.

My comment about them being simple wasn't clear. What I meant was A) a skilled developer will have no problem transitioning, (many developers have a lot of experience switching platforms) and B) the technical issues are minimal, the biggest difference is in design.

 

I think in the early days, the companies that have a financial stake in the success of VR are going to have to make some games. I guess Valve is in the best position to create a killer game or two for SteamVR. Oculus has money, and can fund the development of something. I don't imagine many other big companies really taking the risk of creating a major title that really goes full in on the VR experience until the market is more proven.

 

VR porn, enough said, that will help drive the niche for a long time once it is high quality.

 

Yeah. As yet I haven't seen a single title that makes me say "I must have VR for this".

Content sells hardware, not the other way around.

 

That would be especially awkward for anyone who walks in on that session as the person going about their business thinks the door opening is part of the video. ;-)

 

About a month ago I was discussing virtual reality with another developer and we both concluded that a god game might be enjoyable. Black & White used a disembodied hand to control and navigate the world. I don't know how effective those input controllers are for the Rift and Vive though. They might not be able to measure your hand movement accurately enough.

 

I'd buy headgear for Black & White VR

 

87% of all statistics are invented but only 14% of people know that.

 

VR headsets are luxury items. You don't need them (like a smartphone) for anything: you just WANT them. Just like BoredMormon said: smartphones evolved from combining cell phones with PDAs. There was a strong business driver for that. What will drive VR? Escapism? XD There are many genres of games which can't use VR ever.

 

Comparing a VR headset to cellphones is not a good idea, they were a natural evolution of mobile phones and had a functional reason to exist as well as being rad. VR is just rad it's not like it expands on anything really... BUT game consoles are very successful and they don't do anything that people need either.
IMO AR = phones, VR = Game consoles. The biggest difference is that AR will build off of the advancements made in VR so it's really a requirement to have good VR before good AR is possible and that's a good reason to put money into VR even if it's not crazy successful.

What genres?

 

Basically all 2D games. If you make something defined in screen space its ill suited for VR. Most casual games: match-3, HO, etc. Most isometric strategy/RPG games. Most 2D platform games. Those modern 2D top-down rogue clones. The list goes on and on...

 

It is worth noting that smart phones are also luxury items. Sure they have a higher utility then VR headsets. But they are a long way from needed.

(Something or other about walking to school barefoot and uphill both ways.)

 

The vast majority of products out there are luxury goods. You simply have to decide which are important to you and which you are willing to live without to have them. Virtual reality could very easily be an alternative to traveling for some people as you can partially immerse yourself other environments for far less than the costs of traveling to them.

Recreation is an important aspect of human biology. We literally cannot function properly without some of it in our lives and escapism is merely one of the forms it can take. There is nothing wrong with escapism unless it begins to consume you.

By the way you don't have to be wearing a headset in order to experience escapism. Have you ever read a book or watched a movie that you were very engrossed in? That's escapism too.

 

A 2D platformer could be really cool if it was 360 degrees wrapping around the player. One of my favorite VR things is one of the credits screens in Valves "The Lab" where it's a little arcade shooter in VR with the arcade machine in front of you. It's really cool.
If you are trying to say that 2D games are not 360 stereo 3D then yes that's correct but they can still be presented in interesting ways using VR... in the very worst circumstance it can just replicating regular gaming.
I'd also say that 2D isn't a genre but rather a presentation method.

 

Love that post, but I'm wondering about this bit. I easily believe that more SMSs are sent than phone calls are made, but I think that on its own is pretty misleading. Even a trivial phone call ("Can you pick up milk please?", "Sure") is worth at least two SMSs, and any actual conversation is going to be far more than that, but is just a single phone call.

So I wonder how the comparison would stack up if it measured items of information exchanged, or even just plain old words, as opposed to connections made.

 

I dunno. Texting has some key advantages. It's asynchronous. That means that the users do not both have to be communicating at the same time. It also allows users more time to respond.

And of here in Melbourne cell coverage and quality sucks. So texting is a much more reliable then voice calls that frequently drop out.

So I text more then I voice call, even in terms of information exchanged. It wouldn't surprise me if the stat was true.

 

What an epic link

 

Indeed. Also I think the effort involved means the conversation tends to more concise. If I just need one piece of info, it's a simple ask and response, a call requires at least some pleasantries.

Though I text way more than call, my calls tend to be much longer than they used to be. If I actually call someone now, it's generally to just chat.

Also, it's harder to send gifs on a voice call.

 

It is hard to make a direct comparison on that level, I believe most of the stats are based on surveys rather than statistical data. But usually the ratios are in the 100s : 1 range. And often they include in "texting" things like tweeting, fb, forums and other social media.

 

It is also damn slow. I type on normal keyboard faster than I do on a cell, so every time I need to text, it ticks me off. I occasionally think it would be great to have a wrist keyboard with actual buttons or something like that.

 

Early smart phones had physical keyboards. This tends to mean a sacrifice on screen space, which is why the on screen keyboards are pretty much ubiquitous at the moment.

Speed might be a practice thing. For short conversations I can send the message in less time then it takes for the phone to ring through.

 

I cbf looking into it thoroughly, but I'm pretty sure the claim "12% of Americans" is a lie. The survey was to a specific audience - who look to be their subscribers, who are probably already gamers, who are also people who are already online enough to visit that website and take the survey - not a general populace. In which case, a title like "12% of Newzoo gaming subscribers surveyed plan to buy a VR headset" would be more accurate.

 

Occasionally a phone pops up with a flip-out keyboard under the screen. I'm not sure how well they work out, though. The keys generally are smaller than drawn ones, they're static (ie: can't show a numbers only board, because it's a physical thing), I'm not sure how good the tactile feedback really is, and it adds a whole load of moving parts to the phone which I assume means increased cost and many more potential points of failure.

Oh, well, if it includes any form of digital text then sure, I'd be shocked if it didn't beat phone calls.

 

It's incredibly common for statistics to be misused in misleading ways, accidentally or otherwise. Partly because not everyone knows how to understand them, partly because not everyone knows how to use them, and partly because most viewers won't do their own research to verify them.

I read a great article a few months ago about a team who deliberately got some real statistical results by performing a real study, then mining those results for a dodgy conclusion (I think they argued that chocolate could lead to weight loss) and publishing it. That conclusion made it into mainstream news all over the world before the team announced something like "well, what we were really studying was how many news sources would look at the statistics for themselves before announcing our results as scientifically proven facts". Every fact that they presented was true, but the conclusion they drew was rubbish, and they wrote articles explaining this.

Those articles, of course, didn't make it into the news anywhere. "Chocolate leads to weight loss!" is easily newsworthy and attention grabbing, not to mention tells people something they want to hear, so the facts behind it get glossed over if they're looked at at all. "Scientific studies are actually hard to read and understand, news outlets regularly get them wrong"... not so much. Someone making a mistake is hardly newsworthy, and people especially don't want to hear it when they're the ones making the mistake. Plus, most news outlets would be smearing egg on their own faces if they published that.

 

Arr the filthy pda's... have a few in my drawers somewhere... or did I throw them away... might have biffed them by now.

Ill remain skeptical on those numbers.

3D went pretty much no-where, despite marketers best attempts to convince me I needed it in my life... nope. The thing that annoyed me about 3D was it was gimmicky. The subtle 3d was always enjoyable, but the crap flying out of the screen... yeah nah.

 

My first was a Kyocera 6035. It had graffiti via Palm OS. That kinda sucked.

I have been using Siri to send texts on occasion lately... It works well, but feels odd.

 

VR is nothing like 3D televisions. It is relatively easy to understand many of the limitations of current VR and many of them have been mentioned in this thread. It is really hard to understand why VR is so compelling without actually trying it. Despite being a nauseating mess of pixel soup, DK1 was still a revelation for me. The consumer Rift and the Vive are so much better and the Vive with the 3D tracked controllers and the roomscale VR is particularly amazing.

VR may really end up being a niche market, but there are many niches where VR has the potential to be absolutely ground breaking.

 

I just recently got the CV1 and am trying to think what it could be really good at. A few games are amazing on it, but a few gave me slight nausea. Not so bad that I don't want to use it, but it kinda reminds me of the nausea induced by say too much tequila one night. It's not like I would never drink tequila again, but when I see it I am reminded of that unpleasant feeling and I avoid it. Right now, when I think of donning the HMD, I feel slightly uneasy about it because of just one game that was nausea inducing. This can be a real problem for mass adaptation of VR.

That feeling never happened with a smartphone, tablet, etc. Those were all about doing what I wanted and the device being easy and accessible to use.

VR is so different. It does something I've never experienced or seen before, other than in reality. It may be that like CG we get accustomed to it. I remember the first CG humans induced a feeling a nausea, aka the 'uncanny valley', but now I am much more tolerant of it and the CG has also improved. The VR experience is so amazing, there really HAS to be a good use for it, I just haven't really experienced it yet.

 

It wasn't until I saw the hobbit until I really brought into 3D. So many movies simply make a 2D movie with 3D cameras.

Its the same with VR. A regular game with a VR headset won't cut it. The first VR game to make it big will be one specifically designed to take advantage of VR's strengths and ignore its weaknesses.

I've played VR games, but most of them still fall into the gimmick stage.

 

With this in mind, I can't fathom why Facebook and the others who've bought heavily into VR aren't all busily funding must-have VR games for it. Where is the Oculus equivalent to Halo or Uncharted? Where is the game that everyone wants to play that's only available with someone's VR headset?

 

Exactly. I brought an XBox just to play Halo. I then went on to buy and play other XBox games. As yet there is nothing that says go buy a VR device.

Devs will flock to a platform that has player numbers. Players will flock to a platform that has content. So new platforms are very much chicken and egg scenarios. Noone plays them because there is no content. No one makes content because there are no players. Funding the initial flagship content breaks this cycle.

Which brings us back to why bother spending millions of money on a VR platform if you have no intentions of funding a great VR product?

 

For me it was Harry Potter Deathly Hallows part 2. There were several moments in movie where they used 3d to evoke a feeling, like when when they were talking in private, the camera fov made you feel like you were jammed in a corner. And several other places. They were actually using to augment the story telling, not just as wow gimmick.

One of the worst of these was that bird over paris demo they showed at the Unity talk. It made me cringe.

 

To me, this is 3D done properly, and if it was the norm, I might have been more inclined to be enthusiastic about it. Think it was Pacific Rim for me.

VR needs to stay away from gimmicky stuff if it wants a chance... I still doubt it will gain huge popularity with those bulky headsets. Cant imagine anything worse than sitting there with a bike helmet strapped to my eyeballs.

There is also the problems around people who cant physically stand having images so close to their face, as well as people who need glasses..

 

At least for me I could take my glasses off in a VR headset. However I currently don't need glasses to see things a few inches from my face. So people with more serious defects may have issues.

 

The Oculus devkits were focused at infinity. The CV1 and Vive are focused closer but still at a distance.

 

PSVR is crazy comfy it doesn't clamp your face at all. Still looks goofy but it feels much better then the Vive or Oculus consumer.