Why does the VR industry think 2016 is its year? It's the hardware, stupid

Re: All I want from VR

Get a headset. Set a date and time for a conference call. Enjoy.

Re: All I want from VR

Facebook is extremely likely to do something like that with Occulus, it's a better option for exposing you to their core product than gaming.

Re: All I want from VR

VR ONE Cinema from Zeiss plus Google Cardboard (either Android or Apple) is a pretty good sneak peak of where we're heading. Have used it on a plane before, it's pretty useable at the moment.

Re: All I want from VR

Yes, but what you want is so, very, very limited in what vr can do. I dont know any of my friends that would buy it if you couldn't do gaming properly. I have a 105" cinema and use 3 x 42"screens for gaming, but yet i've barely used them since i got the occulus last year.

Re: 1994?

Well if all you are training is Cockpit Procedures, then yeah, 64k RAM (and a a whole fake cockpit of switches and instruments) will do it.

However, if the now-more accessible techniques of simulating complex fluid dynamics and finite element analysis (to reduce, not replace physical testing) didn't save money and time in the design of aircraft, they wouldn't be used as widely as they are.

In engineering, product design and architecture, CAD isn't isn't just about visualisation (though that itself is often invaluable); it is also a whole suite of tools to help groups of engineers - often from different disciplines - work together.

At a more modest level, a man down the road from me makes wooden propellers for light aircraft. His CAD needs aren't as sophisticated (single user, standard file system), but to model new propellers and generate cutting paths for his CNC router he still benefits from a modern, consumer-class desktop.

For sure, one of the influences that has made 3D CAD cheaper is that GPUs were made in huge numbers (thus sharing the R&D and tooling costs amongst more people) for the price-concious gaming market, so on that point I will concede your point that a lot of computing power is 'wasted' on mere entertainment.

Re: "we've come a hell of a long way"

Why pick Gears Of War?

It's a 3rd person game, and personally I don't think 3rd person is all that suitable for VR immersion, at least not without some major change to how the games are produced/shot etc.

I've always thought 3rd person games are less immersive anyway, as to me it just looks like your controlling something on screen, rather than actually being there in the action like you are (or at least seem to be) in a 1st person game.

VR will be best suited to driving/flying type games, where you are in the cockpit/drivers seat, or standard 1st person games.

Although you could still be right on the need for a bucket, at least for FPS games (driving/pilot games don't really have this issue, even with the current dev kits).

Hopefully the retail versions of at least the high end devices (Oculus and the HTC/Valve Vive) should resolved most of this for the FPS type games (where it shows up the worse). Although I can't see the Gear VR being able to cope with FPS games all that well, although it will probably do driving/flying/movies etc without issue.

For reference, I've played Elite Dangerous on a DK2 for several hours without any issues.

Re: Dirt cheap, but good enough

Quote: <em"The main obstacle right now seems to be making it easy (and cheap) to create the content. Cost of a rig and hardware capable of managing the post processing in a reasonable time are obstacles which will stop all but the most determined from becoming content producers for now."</em>

Isn't that dependant on the content that's being created?

If your talking about games producers, which is where I'd suspect most of the content is going to come from, at least initially, then those people will likely already have all the equipment needed for creation anyway, and might only need a software update to their chosen 3D engine. (They might need to by a headset to test though). All major game engines now have VR support, even the free Unity engine, which lots of people now seem to be using (even a recent AAA PC game used it), has included VR support for some time at no cost.

Producing VR videos/movies/TV, or VR scanning of real world locations etc, that's going to need investment, but I can't see this side of things taking off for a while yet, until VR at home becomes more common.