I haven´t seen that much of VR click baits in the last few months, so I have started to suspect that VR didn´t really take-off as some companies had hoped for. Then I stumbled across this article (2 months old) https://www.pcgamesn.com/how-why-and-when-vr-will-fail
Which in my view do a really good in summing up the of rise and fall of VR (again).
PS. I just saw it was a repost of a one year old article. The author must have had a pretty good crystal ball…
Here is my completely unscientific layman’s theory & analysis:
I Think any media consumption device has to be looked at from the perspective of the following question.
Why did smart phone owners become a numerical majority Demographic in the U.S. population in only 7 years??.
Look at smart phone Advertising.
it is never about the abstract"Concept" of Smartphones as a technology.
It is simple selling of the devices themselves based on user features (Screen size, hardware performance storage asthetics etc)
They dont have to convince you that owning a smartphone in general is a good idea…merely that buying Brand X or Y is a good idea.
My theory is this:
…
…The Human brain simply will reject any fully immersive 3D environment including the actual real environment of our real universe.
Consider the amount of real time filtering
,of the real world,your brain is doing as you are reading my post on CGtalk on a 2D screen.
I believe the brain “Flattens” our three Dimensional world into 2D “Focus regions” in front of our faces
Much like the way the Smart phone creates the perfect little rectangular 2D focus region in the palm of our hands.
despite the fact that much of online content is 3Dimensional
Remember the augmented reality Craze of a few years ago??
How did that pan out?
And what about holography?
why did it never emerge as the next great
Visual entertainment experience.
And then there is the cyclical regurgitation of Theatrical movies in "3D"with those ridiculous glasses
every decade or so.
And how are those"3D" TVs selling??
https://www.cnet.com/news/3d-tv-is-now-more-dead-than-ever/
The human Brain Loves “3D” …until you lift it off of its 2D viewing surface and then the love fades quickly.
Everybody is waiting for cheaper and better 2nd Generation VR headsets.
Plus, the industry should have had 5 major AAA VR games ready when they launched the VR headsets.
For example, a Half-Life 3 VR title would have sold millions of headsets.
But… the trend isn’t going to “die” right away.
That’s because better, cheaper CPUs (AMD Ryzen, Threadripper) and better GPUs (Nvidia, AMD) are coming along.
So within 3 years, just about any half-decent laptop, PC, Console bought will be “VR capable” hardware-wise.
And then, with 2nd Gen VR headsets we will see whether VR “sticks” in the market or not.
I don’t see it dying this time. Particularly “Mixed Reality” or the evolution of AR. Have you tried the Hololens? It was the most incredible technological experience of my life. The holograms were real, opaque and tracked within the real world. they were occluded by real-world objects that went in-front of them. I could interact with these holograms just using my hands and there was immersive audio even though i wasn’t wearing earbuds.
It was a large device, expensive, with a low field of view and very little content, but these are all things that will be fixed with time.
I agree that VR and “Mixed Reality” are still at the point where companies are still trying to convince people ‘why’ they need this tech, but I dont see them going away this time.
My son Demoed this recently as was quite impressed as well.
The biggest challenge for this tech will be the uber hardware requirements.
Personally I am a bigger believer in AR than VR. AR seems more useful, VR still feels very much like a one trick pony (a very limited trick…). Sure, if we could have MATRIX quality simulations, then VR would be superior. I would guess that VR could be worth having a look at again, in 10 years or so, say 2030.
And, I agree with Skeebertus, why wasn´t there more high quality content available at launch? Very strange since so much effort was put into PR, trying to convince people buy a headset. The major selling point seems to have been, “We don´t really know why you need a headset, but you HAVE to buy it!”.
VR as we know it will, imo, always be a doomed technology. If something Star Trek’s holodeck or the Matrix is the ideal then anything less than that just feels like a poor substitute or a stopgap measure. It’s really that simple. The ideal is one of full immersion. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is far less impressive.
You’ve got to strap on and/or into hardware, which ultimately discourages lengthy scenarios.
True reality is a full sensory experience. VR, at best, can only engage two or three. How well it does that is limited too.
VR is subject to the same problem that plagues all other CG - the Uncanny Valley. CG is still evolving as a tech.
Even the best simulation software can’t mimic the nuance and depth of the real world. The ultimate version of VR will have to have full interactivity right down to convincing human NPCs. For VR to live up to the ideal, it has to be indistinguishable from the real world. This virtual world has to breathe and grow in all the very same ways. Current VR hits a wall. The tech isn’t there and neither is the software.
Where do you put it? A full immersion setup is going to take space. Even a modest setup with smallish platform will take up as much or more space than an average treadmill. Not everybody will have that free space, which cuts down the size of the market. A headset and hand controls? Now you’re barely even trying.
Let’s say, for a moment, that people are happy let the tech grow naturally and upgrade every year or two. Where’s the killer app? Purely on spec, the original Nintendo Gameboy was a piece of garbage. The battery life was great, but the rest of it was terrible. Slow. No backlight. Low res visuals. Tinny sound. Limited controls. In spite of that, the machine sold nearly 120M units. That was due in no small part to Tetris, also known as digital crack.
Where’s VR’s Tetris? There might be some potentially good titles, but there’s no one title that will single-handedly sell millions of units. People will buy anything as long as you give them a convincing reason to do so.
For VR to be more of a reality than an elaborate proof of concept, more work needs to be done. Better software. Longer play times with less/no fatigue. Deeper immersion. Small footprint. Low price point.
VR was, imo, dead in the water from the start. It is today where video games were in the mid- 1970s. It’s a curiosity. The tech and the software have gotten better and will continue to evolve. However, until the reality of it becomes less… virtual… VR will remain a novelty item.
VR, as it currently exists, is just an alternate way to consume software. It’s not an experience so much as it’s part of one. The other parts of the whole are still missing.
One way to kickstart the VR trend would have been to take 20 great 3D games made in the last 4 - 5 years and ensure that there is a VR-ready version of these 20 classics available at the same time as the VR headsets becoming available to buy.
I’m thinking Skyrim, GTA 5, Bioshock, Dead Space, Dirt, Trackmania, Fallout, Dishonoured, Team Fortress 2, Borderlands, Battlefield, Far Cry 4, COD and others.
Even an older but still atmospheric game like Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic would have played fantastically in VR.
VR headsets would have sold 5 x times as much as they do right now if there had been 20 solid launch titles.
I agree, but many of these games are FPS that are known to cause severe simulation sickness. I think the problem is that either you have a motion simulation that the body can accept or you don´t, there is no middle ground. That is the reason why I think that the success of VR are many, many years away.
If you want to punish someone, you name the person level designer for a VR FPS game in development. Imagine spending most of your day inside a headset with buggy code and inconsistent and jittery frame rates. I feel sick just thinking about it.
I think liking it or not is very subjective. Personally, VR gaming is not that suitable for me as I get dizzy easily playing for a long period of time. I tried once but I couldn’t take it. I think it would be better in the future tho.