Is VR dead?

onearmedbandit46 · Apr 2, 2021

dario993 said:
lol its April Fools joke, yes googles like that surely wont shine in sun and reveal them soldiers wearing those positions, also it can measure hearth rate from the distance? even why for , to see how enemy is scared ? xD

Well almost every major news agency must be in on the joke going by a quick google search of the story. Where are you getting the heart rate monitoring information from, the linked article only refers to the soldier wearing the headsets heart rate, not of anyone else.

Turk · Apr 2, 2021

It doesn't really seem all that far fetched either. I'm pretty sure they've been talking about this kind of helmet for a long time. The tech to make hardware that's cheap and robust enough for the military is available now, this kind of ability is within the capabilities of just about any mobile phone. It seems like the kind of thing militaries around the world would be working on in the background anyway, now it's actually doable.

Probably not going to be standard issue, most soldiers probably don't need this type of helmet.

Deleted member 197115 · Apr 4, 2021

Andrew_WOT said:
Cracking down and banning secondary accounts makes it impossible to have one for Oculus only and with their recent banning spree, losing device and all VR content because of your political views becomes a real possibility.
How do they go around GDPR I wonder.

The history repeats itself https://www.rt.com/news/520068-facebook-personal-data-millions-leaked/

Deleted member 197115 · Apr 7, 2021

Not a lot of VR news these days.

HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Launches In May For $1,249

The HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition, an enhanced version of the company’s new VR headset designed for professional use, is launching next month, starting at $1,249. HP itself confirmed the news today, adding that orders will be taken from its official website. The G2 Omnicept Edition takes the

uploadvr.com

RCHeliguy · Apr 7, 2021

Hmmmm....

Oculus Quest just out sold every other headset ever sold in 6 months.

Rec Room VR was just valuated at 1.5 B.

This video says VR is going to hit mainstream a couple years earlier than he first thought.

Deleted member 197115 · Apr 7, 2021

Nah, don't even know what mainstream means, FB social networking in VR (who cares), for games, Alyx and few racing/flying sims aside, VR gaming does not gain much traction.
This thread was started 2 years ago, how much changed? We have lost a bunch of HMD manufacturers and VR gaming studios, AAA guys don't even consider VR for their titles anymore.
Every year that is promised as "VR year" just comes and goes, with more losses than gains.

RCHeliguy · Apr 7, 2021

Did you miss where a simple VR game was just valuated at $ 1.5 Billion?

Did you miss where VR headset sales are way way way up?

Money in VR space is picking up. Movie studios are looking seriously at producing content to be watched in VR.

The key problem for us is that "mainstream" is where VR needs to go and we are "niche".

But the same truths are still accurate. There will be trickledown that we care about.

Deleted member 197115 · Apr 8, 2021

Over the last 2 years I haven't really seen any of these "accomplishments" directly translating to my experience.
May be we need to revisit in a couple of years, right now all I see is a steady decline, not exponential growth. People play less VR than 2-3 years ago when it was a novelty with a bunch of studios making quick money grab senseless whack-a-mole titles so bad that nobody would buy them if they weren't VR.
I am just losing hope for any real breakthrough and starting playing on conventional monitors more and more.
May be it's just me who is not interested in Beat Saber or FB social experiments.

TedBrosby- · Apr 8, 2021

RCHeliguy said:
Did you miss where a simple VR game was just valuated at $ 1.5 Billion?

Did you miss where VR headset sales are way way way up?

Money in VR space is picking up. Movie studios are looking seriously at producing content to be watched in VR.

The key problem for us is that "mainstream" is where VR needs to go and we are "niche".

But the same truths are still accurate. There will be trickledown that we care about.

Candy Crush was evaluated at how many billions?
People assumed it meant the death of consoles because mobile games would just dwarf Nintendo handhelds. Instead, the Switch seems to go through "sold out" phases every year and the best iOS game that's come out in the last 4 years is literally Fortnite (something people prefer to play on their Switches, PC's and PS/XBox).

A single game blowing up means a single gimmick is popular. If people start abandoning consoles for VR capable PC's then that means VR could become the next "thing". As of now, I think FB acquiring Oculus might have been a death knell for VR. The only affordable mainstream VR system is infected with dirty FB garbage. It's either, commit fully to the FB/Oculus ecosystem and get a Quest 2 or spend $1800 on a PC powerful enough to drive it, and get a Reverb G2/Valve Index.

I'm with @Andrew_WOT on this... I remember when I first tried VR in 2016. It was supposed to be the next big thing, YouTube viral videos of people falling when they fall off a cliff in VR, all this talk about how VR shooting games would be the future and flat screen FPS was dead... All the VR demos are now dusty and inactive, no one even bothers trying to demo it anymore.

I even have a theory Valve is purposefully limiting supply because they don't want the used market to be flooded with used Index's bringing down the value.

VR headsets were supposed to get better and cheaper, instead they either got better but more expensive, or basically the same quality for the same price. The Valve Index is $1000. Sure it's better than the Vive... But it's also like $500 more expensive. I can't convince my friends to invest into that... Especially not when a GPU to drive it will also cost $750.

RCHeliguy · Apr 8, 2021

Topic: Virtual reality (VR)

Find the most up-to-date statistics and facts about the global virtual reality (VR) market

www.statista.com

The global VR market size is projected to increase from less than five billion U.S. dollars in 2021 to more than 12 billion U.S. dollars by 2024.

That's the market more than doubling in 3 years.

Investment is expected to be even higher with 17.6 Billion going into gaming and video alone and another 11 Billion going into other commercial markets.

Investment in augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technology worldwide in 2024,

We are in the calm before the storm.

What we've seen up to this point has been more like test balloons. Things are going to start changing fast.

What we will eventually see are smart glasses interfaced to smart mobile devices that grow out of our smart phones. When that market hits, there will be an EXPLOSION of new technologies being released and VR will come along for the ride.

GeekyDeaks · Apr 8, 2021

TedBrosby- said:
The only affordable mainstream VR system is infected with dirty FB garbage.

PSVR? Bang for buck that was much better value for me and I played a much bigger variety of games than on PC, which is just purely for sims. Hell, the res was poor, but for most games it didn't really matter and it was virtually faff free compared to my experience on PC

The FB thing is worrying, but I am hoping PSVR2 comes along soon enough to help contain that dumpster fire

Deleted member 197115 · Apr 8, 2021

Quite amusing how many things that led to 3D TV death are similar to what happens in VR.
Article also mentions holographic monitors.
Who knows, could be the next best thing replacing both.
Eventually we will have VR in one form or another, no doubt about that, the current format though could be the dead end.

GeekyDeaks · Apr 8, 2021

Andrew_WOT said:
Eventually we will have VR in one form or another, no doubt about that, the current format though could be the dead end.

I suspect you are probably right. Although there have been huge improvements to tracking, resolution and refresh, the current tech still reminds me a lot of my first experience with VR when I did a project with Virtuality back in the 90's at Leicester

RCHeliguy · Apr 8, 2021

The death of 3D TV with the technology being used seemed extremely obvious even just at introduction. It was DOA and I said as much to many I knew when the subject came up pissing of those who had just spent "big buck" buying a 3D TV. The "next best thing" you linked to could work. We just need 45 times the current bandwidth using the example in that video. That seems like a pretty big deal right now, but bandwidth seems to be operating at Moore's Law improvements these days, so maybe not a big deal in a few years.

Also 8K was the answer to a question no one was asking. Unless you have a wall sized TV there is no way for the human eye to resolve that detail unless you are much closer than a realistic viewing distance where you could see the whole image.

It should also be obvious for many reasons that that "the next best thing" doesn't help with VR although a different "next best thing" is definitely coming.

GeekyDeaks · Apr 8, 2021

RCHeliguy said:
It should also be obvious for many reasons that that "the next best thing" doesn't help with VR

I could see something like that being a great mid-way between VR and triples/ultrawide though. I'd certainly consider it if it became viable in the future. Probably a long way off though

RCHeliguy · Apr 8, 2021

GeekyDeaks said:
I could see something like that being a great mid-way between VR and triples/ultrawide though. I'd certainly consider it if it became viable in the future. Probably a long way off though

Think about it this way.

For watching a video, all the rendering is already done on render farms how ever long it takes and that doesn't concern us. All we care about is how much bandwidth it takes to move the 45 different angles of the same image to our TV. So it is simply an Internet bandwidth issue.

However for a gaming solution, if we had the power to generate 45 X more pixels we would have wide field of view, plenty of pixels and a nice fast refresh rate which is the VR trifecta.

For that reason I don't see this making it into gaming unless you want to wait 20 years for GPU's to catch up.

GeekyDeaks · Apr 8, 2021

RCHeliguy said:
However for a gaming solution, if we had the power to generate 45 X more pixels we would have wide field of view, plenty of pixels and a nice fast refresh rate which is the VR trifecta.

For that reason I don't see this making it into gaming unless you want to wait 20 years for GPU's to catch up.

Oh, I totally agree! I was just doing my usual trick of admiring cute but probably totally impractical tech

TedBrosby- · Apr 9, 2021

Even Sony believes VR isn't a market they want to invest into. I think they saw the writing on the wall because their only popular VR title was Beat Saber.
They had to have heard how difficult getting a racing game to look and run well in VR is, directly from Polyphony developers when the simple VR implementation in GT Sport was done.
The PS5 runs at optimum runs about the same GPU power as a 2070 Super. That's not bad for VR, but it's not good enough for good looking VR at a high resolution. And Microsoft hasn't even hinted at bringing VR to Xbox.

I think the knife to the back of current gaming VR is going to be Apple's AR glasses that are rumored to come out this year or next year. It's not going to be like traditional VR, and it's definitely not going to be "open platform friendly". People will rush to it, and it won't be useful to us sim racers.

The sim market alone isn't enough to keep VR alive and once Apple releases their vision for it, all the other uses for it will be fulfilled by their proprietary locked down junk. (I say this as an iOS Software Engineer, it's my job, but I know what Apple does to competition just by existing in a market).