I'm big fan of the magic leap for gaming. It looks and feels really good.
I'm a big fan of the HoloLens for work because it's easier to navigate and works more like expected for business applications. I have not gotten to try the HL2 yet but I am excited for the broader FOV.
https://gamedaily.biz/article/1337/report-oculus-quest-has-s...
And it seems VR sales (EDIT: shipments) are hovering at around 6,000,000 a year (this tends to include the crappy VR headsets that are sometimes given away for free with high end phones).
https://www.androidcentral.com/nearly-half-all-vr-headsets-s...
This sounds like a lot...but it might not be. To put things in perspective, the Kinect sold around 20,000,000 units and was considered a failure by Microsoft which is why they abandoned it. I think the parallels between the Kinect and VR is worth noting, since most are really accessories to something else (or used for very niche purposes).
VR definitely isn't mainstream yet, but it might get there in a few years. I think Half Life Alyx will be an interesting juncture and maybe even a make-or-break point for VR.
I don’t really game on my Quest, but I do use it for a one hour workout everyday. My system is pretty beat up too, if it stopped working tomorrow I would get a replacement immediately.
Beat Saber is probably the best app for VR, because it solves that problem by not having any locomotion. The world locomotes to you.
But that works well for an abstract rhythm game. I don't know how well that works for anything else.
I’ve never used the knobs and triggers on my VR controller for anything beyond game selection. In fact, I think Oculus would do better just to put out additional simplified controllers meant for fitness gaming.
Nothing wrong with rhythm games if they can help you drop 40 pounds.
The space problem is easy to solve with....space. A VR gym setup could easily solve it by putting you in a racket court with an appropriate guardian, and then let the VR system do the rest. Otherwise we will have to wait for Omni directional treadmill tech to get better.
The game was basic, early "3d" (in the gaming sense), low polygon, low resolution, no depth or actual streoscopic, but this was the 90s.
I tried to check it out again on a subsequent visit to Malta but it had of course gone. Real shame, I saw nothing of its kind for decades later.
Edit: I seem to recall it costing 2 lira for a turn.
The main things I remember are; it was an FPS, it was indoors/enclosed, the lighting was bad so it was really hard to tell where walls/corners were and it was very, very red.
The controller was sort of ring/oval shaped, I remember basically nothing about the headset other than that it was tethered.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/02/25/its-the-simple-a...
PC VR is a dead end for anything outside of creative tools, very few adults want tower PCs in their homes anymore. When I demoed my Rift to friends they were completely blown away and the first question was "Can I use it with my MacBook?" and that was that.
When I demoed my Quest, one person sat down and ordered one straight after taking it off, he demoed it to someone at work and they ordered one, took it to a family barbecue and two of his relatives bought Quests.
Steam alone regularly has over 10,000,000 people logged in at a time [2].
I think saying "Adults dont want a tower PC" is a pretty wide sweeping statement. I agree about Alyx. If they release a full length game that has the same level of quality that Half-life 2 had, with the same level of mod and customization support, that is going to be the tipping point. If VR is still a sub-niche in gaming/PCs, we won't see it takeoff for another 20+ years. But we may see it become the new standard.
[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/808630/csgo-number-playe....
I don't think tethered PC-based VR is going away, simply because that setup is most flexible for development and experimental purposes, but for the mass market, I think a device like the Quest is the only thing with potential to truly take off. Especially if the weight of the headset can be reduced, as comfort remains one of the most nagging negatives of the whole experience.
Call it a tv and manage to get something to market before those have effectively gone extinct, and you have a market.
Get out of your bubble. Among non-casual gamers, tower PCs are very common.
Who cares that won't be needed for long
The Kinect experience could have been dramatically improved with a hand-held device (at least some buttons you could use to do grabs and stuff, and some kind of tracking looked possible). Several efforts along these lines were either canned by politics ("YOU ARE THE CONTROLLER" dogma that you thwarted at your peril) or by people dog-piling so many features into an initially simple product that the costs went out of control.
It looks harder to convince customers to use terrible VR gear. (I could be wrong).
Actually it's off the ground and becoming commoditized in those fields where it makes sense - AEC, digital design, training.
The reason they might not be familiar to you is that they are niches. There is no reason for everybody to use VR, but there are very good uses for some professionals.
If phone is a hammer (everybody has use for it) then VR kit is an arc welding tool - extremely practical for some uses, but not for all.
Or, pencil vs. oil paints. Oil paints are an essential product category, yet since the professionals who use them know them already and the market segment isn't that huge the non-artistically inclined consumer is likely not familiar with them due to lack of marketing dollars and hence media exposure.
I came from a stint at a company doing consulting and training for the defense sector mong other things. Considering the prices they asled, and got, from the government that is a big market. Adding some VR based training scenarios for the military, or emergency services, police, whatever, looks at frst glance interessting enough to at least dig deeper into. But no interesst. No idea why.
Military acquisition cycles can last for years, which slows down tech intro.
Interaction with the wider training tech ecosystem is also a factor. For example, course authors need good VR environment editors to create usable scenarios, scoring tools, etc. They would have to be able to import their large libraries of existing vehicle and weapon models. Anecdotally, it can take an hour of scenario editing to get a minute of usable scenario
One route in would be if an existing vendor of military sims (e.g. [0]) added a VR plug-in to an existing COTS sim already used widely by the military, and the military users then got a funding opportunity (e.g. a new platform with a fresh training budget) to enhance their existing kit.
But I do understand why people don't want to work with the military.
i agree VR is light years away (it's been just around the corner for years), but i don't even understand its potential. what are the big applications? i just can't get around its usefulness for anything but maybe video games.
In 11 days Valve will release Half Life: Alyx which is the most awaited VR game ever. I suggest you to tune in, it might shed some light on why it's so cool.
There are ton of applications both in use and being developed. That you don't see it hyped on TV doesn't mean it is not there. Industrial applications are not advertised and marketed the same way as video games.
> That you don't see it hyped on TV doesn't mean it is not there.
no need to be condescending. and who watches t.v. or ads?
your response doesn't elaborate on anything. i don't know what your company is. and just because you say you have lots of projects doesn't give me any information.
can you elaborate? i humbly asked what the actual applications are, and you just listed a bunch of potential fields of use. because i have heard of various applications in those fields, but i don't get the overall usefulness that matches the hype. for example, in medical, how is VR useful? don't you need to be able to see what's actually going on and not be in VR land? if one is getting a live camera feed with overlays, is that really considered VR? i have seen applications of 3D viewing, but i don't see how that's better than using a monitor with improved input devices.
in the case of practical immersive activities, i suppose i could have listed that as useful.
And we are only a small fish, there are hundreds of companies like ours.
And re applications - have you tried to google? No, I really mean it. You complain about me being condescending but you have posted an obviously unfounded comment, post another showing that you don't know much about the subject - and it is somehow my fault that I didn't spoon feed you with the information.
Look here, for example: https://www.sendiancreations.com/top-vr-business-application...
Or: https://virtualspeech.com/blog/vr-applications
Or: https://disruptionhub.com/business-virtual-reality-5-uses/
And those are just three top links straight out of Google. Google Scholar would give you also a ton of research papers describing applications in medicine, biology, chemistry, physics and many other fields.
>for example, in medical, how is VR useful?
Typical applications (out of top of my head the few I have been involved with in some capacity):
- surgery planning and training (e.g. orthopedic surgery, dentistry)
- pain distraction (e.g. for heavily burned patients)
- post traumatic disorder treatment (think Iraq veterans, car crash survivors, rape survivors, ...)
- anxiety treatments (phobias of public speaking, phobias of flying, heights, spiders, you name it)
- rehabilitation (e.g. post-stroke, various muscular disorders, post-surgery ...)
>don't you need to be able to see what's actually going on and not be in VR land?
The entire idea of VR is replacing the real world with a computer-generated reality. So no, you don't need to see it, modulo stuff like the chaperone/guardian systems that show you when you are about to hit a real wall, for example (most people don't have a hangar to work in). Also, if working with physical objects/props, those are going to be tracked and inserted into the virtual environment, so when you touch the virtual steering wheel of the new car you are designing, your hand will touch the physical model in the real world. But this isn't done universally - it depends on the application and task that the user is supposed to do (e.g. ergonomics evaluation of a car cabin doesn't require the same user immersion/feedback as e.g. a racing simulator using that same car)
>if one is getting a live camera feed with overlays, is that really considered VR?
No. That would be augmented reality using camera-based pass-through (the other way is an optical pass-through where you see the real world through a piece of glass where the computer overlays are projected on somehow - e.g. Hololens or Magic Leap).
See the concept of reality-virtuality continuum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality%E2%80%93virtuality_con...
At one end is reality, at the other pure virtuality (virtual world). Augmented reality adds something to reality (e.g. overlays), augmented virtuality adds stuff to the virtual world (e.g. a video-based avatar of the user). Virtual reality and augmented reality are pretty much at the opposite ends of that line, everything in-between is mixed reality. Now, to make it nice and messy, Microsoft has decided in their infinite wisdom to "hijack" for their marketing purposes this terminology that exists and is used for decades and uses it like this:
- "Holographic" for stuff around the Hololens (even though it has nothing at all with holography - 3D image is not automatically a hologram) - "Mixer reality" for describing something that can do both virtual and augmented reality. Which isn't at all the same same thing as the definition from the above.
>i have seen applications of 3D viewing, but i don't see how that's better than using a monitor with improved input devices.
"3D viewing" is not virtual reality. Virtual reality is defined by two things:
- immersion - you replace the real world with a virtual one completely, i.e. no overlays on top of a real world!
- agency and feedback (action-reaction) loop - you can act on the world and the world reacts to your actions, then you react to what happens, etc.
The first point doesn't necessarily require neither 3D nor goggles - you could do virtual reality using e.g. a large (think few meters large) screens too.
The second point is hugely important and that is what distinguishes virtual reality from "3D viewing", 360 videos or 3D cinema. If you watch a 360 video and try to pick up an object, nothing happens. The same if you try to come closer to something. You can't. Sadly, that doesn't prevent unscrupulous snake oil salesmen that want to push their 360 cameras and crappy video viewing/streaming/pay-per-view platforms from muddying the waters by selling their stuff as "virtual reality", even though it is not. It only serves to confuse people.
In virtual reality you can come closer and not only to pick that object up (e.g. using a glove, controller or even bare hands these days) but the object will react to your actions - first of all it will move with your hand, giving you the sensation that you have picked it up and then you can also interact with it - throw it, drop it, rotate it, open it or whatever is the object designed to do. This is what you need the hand/head/body/object tracking systems for.
I strongly suggest you try some actual virtual reality application (i.e. NOT a 360 video on a phone or some such!) and you will see (and feel!) the difference immediately.
I stopped reading your comment after this, because you are being a condescending ass. If you want people to listen to what you have to say (and it's clearly a lot) you should try being more friendly.
Thanks, MegaButts
Digital design in general.
For example, people using Quill can create animations incredibly rapidly.
One of the really annoying habits of all of these companies in both VR and AR is they want developers to pay $$$ as early adopters and then also have an expectation around those same developers building all the experiences.
The one exception I've seen to that rule was Valve. Valve sent me multiple HTC Vive headsets, even shipped them to Australia, so we could build against and demo their early VR, from nothing more than a meeting at their office.
And we showed those headsets to thousands of people at our office and tradeshows (Real Estate). I can only hope that it repaid that generosity.
Notably, their two big $1B+ acquisitions were Beats and Next.
Unfortunately for Magic Leap, it's just too early for AR headsets to be viable. The technology needs another decade or so to mature before it can be truly mainstream, probably. It can only survive in research labs with funding from some other source, not as a standalone business.
Timing is everything for startups and Magic Leap was too early. I've been saying it for years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17829798
ML problems was hype, hype and more HYPE. And then under-delivering, the device was in many ways actually worse than the first gen Hololens, despite costing more and coming to the market later.
Oh and also the confused messages straight from the top - is ML a hardware company? A software platform? Services platform? Marketing to professionals? (then why those game demos and not some more pro oriented?) Marketing to retail? (then that price is a non-starter). Etc etc etc ...
None of Magic Leap's many problems would have mattered if there was actually a market for the product to sell into. But the market needs a product that's better than any available technology allows today.
The same Hololens 2 - except there Microsoft isn't able to deliver these due to manufacturing issues.
That something isn't selling millions of pieces like an iPhone doesn't mean that there isn't a market for it.
Magic Leap's problems were mostly of their own making - their gizmo wasn't significantly better than Hololens, in many aspects it was actually worse. For ex. the "goggles" form factor limiting spatial awareness - big deal e.g. in factories where a maintenance tech wearing it could get hurt or killed by a moving piece of machinery that they couldn't see.
They have also focused mostly on hype rather then things that actually matter to businesses (given the price and form factor trying to market it to public was a non-starter - Microsoft didn't even attempt that). And, finally - you can't actually buy the gizmo, even if you wanted to - they aren't selling it anywhere except in the US! Unlike Microsoft, which has no such issues.