There is no doubt that 2016 was a good year for virtual reality after the years of promise leading up to it. Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony getting in on the action too. I have played around with the Oculus development headset and there is no doubt that it provides an experience like no other. If you who haven’t yet tried it. It’s a very fascinating experience, one capable of tricking the brain into giving you the sense that you are really in another world – immersion breaking moments notwithstanding. Admittedly this was before the Oculus was available for consumer purchase and I’m sure some of those bugs on the software and hardware side have been ironed out.
With all that said, I’m not convinced that this will be a technology for the long haul, but rather a fad or phase like the Microsoft Kinect, or Playstation Eye Toy before it. Why? Quite simply, it’s easy to criticize these expensive, bulky, tethered goggles, alongside complaints that wearing them for too long gives people nausea, and the fact you need a pretty powerful gaming machine to take full advantage of them in the first place. Indeed, it’ll be confined to gaming enthusiasts for quite a while.
Of course, there is are budget versions – Google Cardboard or other similar products allow you slip your phone into them. It’s fun to look at a 360 video on YouTube, but once the novelty moment passes and all is said and done, no one is going to be rushing to strap thee monstrosities to their heads, except as a party game with friends.
The obvious counter argument is compelling at first. Headsets will get smaller, less bulky and probably even wireless once they figure out how to stream all that data the headset and maintain a reasonable battery life in such a small device. I get it, version 1.0 shows the promise of VR experiences like a giant expensive tech demo. We can see the pace of iteration is quite fast already. Facebook’s Oculus rift was outshone immediately by the HTC Vive by the virtue of their custom controllers, while Oculus initially offered an Xbox controller but has since rectified this mistake. This may set them back from what once was a dominant position in the VR space, and now arguably Facebook has overpaid for the Oculus transaction.
The problem with this counter argument is not that it’s flat out wrong, but rather by the time these quirks have been figured out we will already have moved on to AR (Augmented Reality) and the next shiny object is just so much brighter.
VR (Virtual Reality) vs AR (Augmented Reality)
If you don’t know much about this space, you may have heard about both of these technologies and even got them confused. VR (Virtual reality) is the goggles you put on, with a lens for each eye which projects you a virtual world. That’s pretty much it. It’s often used for gaming with the use of a controller of some sort or entertainment like 360° videos.
AR (Augmented Reality) is quite similar. You still have to wear something on your face akin to sun glasses. Other implementations have surfaced mobile phones using the phone camera. One example of this is something you have probably heard about – Pokemon Go, a very popular augmented reality game by an affiliated Nintendo studio and Pokemon franchisee (the audience peaked mid 2015). The premise is simple, it projects virtual things in front of you, superimposed on top of the real world.
Virtual Reality Shelf Life
Augmented Reality will be able to do will make you feel like Iron Man, with far greater possibilities in both productivity and entertainment. In my judgment it makes virtual reality no longer viable, or at the very least… desirable. VR goggles make us look like the human batteries in the Matrix films and that’s not a good thing.
Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new team at Facebook dedicated to creating social experiences in virtual reality. (Courtesy of Facebook)
Augmented Reality is likely to have its first consumer versions available as VR is part way into the second generation devices. I expect the argument will be made that it provides a different, complementary experience worth having along side VR, which is not competitive at all. This argument may hold for a time, but ultimately you can’t wear both devices at the same time like owning a phone and a laptop. Simply put, you can only wear one of these devices at a time and one of them will do a LOT more than the other alongside some overlapping experiences.
Ultimately, Virtual Reality is a necessary step to get people used to the idea of wearable technologies which augment our lives. Google Glass was the first to give this sort of world augmenting experience major investment. After initial excitement was there, it faded fast because of critical errors leading to the project ending (for now).
The next few years will be very interesting, and I’m clearly not alone in thinking this, Apple has yet to release a VR or AR device despite competitors clambering to come out on top and has even dropped the hint that they too, believe AR is the more compelling technology. But virtual reality is likely to fade into obscurity or at best occasional use.