The state of VR - Lost it's steam?

Factum

Factum

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I have seen VR being promised a lot of times (I think the first time was around 20 years ago):
tse0AZ9.jpg


Now I see the same patteren emerge once again...first major publicity, an influx of hardware...and then it kinda dies off again.
The pace of news slows down...then the hardware options slows down...and finally the software written for VR starts to become further and furhter apart.
So I am wondering....have VR come and gone again, like before in the past?

Because I am having a déjà vu-feeling about VR right now...like I have seen this "pattern" before.
 
VR is the future, like it or not. However it still has severe limitations (especially in the display department, but it's also not very light and not very comfortable yet) so it is very niche and will remain so for a few years still. We've all been spoiled by large monitors with an insane number of pixels over the last few years, VR just looks so damn horrible even on the best headsets (well maybe not the Varjo but that's no gaming headset). And that's coming from someone with poor eyesight that can't even be fully corrected.
 
kalston said:
VR is the future, like it or not. However it still has severe limitations (especially in the display department, but it's also not very light and not very comfortable yet) so it is very niche and will remain so for a few years still. We've all been spoiled by large monitors with an insane number of pixels over the last few years, VR just looks so damn horrible even on the best headsets (well maybe not the Varjo but that's no gaming headset). And that's coming from someone with poor eyesight that can't even be fully corrected.
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Odly enough so are the points you adress as the "weak-points" of VR...the same reason it failed before...
 
reaper12 said:
LOL, comparing VR now to VR in 1994. You see a pattern? You should get your eyes tested.
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Still can't drive the resolution and refresh rate to get rid of flyscreen door and its 2019..

Enough said.
I loved the experience but still wary to drop cash on it yet. Another two years than that might change.
 
Factum said:
I have seen VR being promised a lot of times (I think the first time was around 20 years ago):
<snip>

Now I see the same patteren emerge once again...first major publicity, an influx of hardware...and then it kinda dies off again.
The pace of news slows down...then the hardware options slows down...and finally the software written for VR starts to become further and furhter apart.
So I am wondering....have VR come and gone again, like before in the past?

Because I am having a déjà vu-feeling about VR right now...like I have seen this "pattern" before.
Click to expand...

No worries. VR is here to stay this time around. And that's a Factum.
 
Factum said:
You should read posts before posting and suffering from foot in mouth syndrome...post #2 would be a good place to start...
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LOL You see a pattern, what pattern? Saying that the hardware is slowing down in a year where there are more headsets available then ever before. With 5 headsets just been released or in the process of been released (Reverb, Quest, Index, Vive Pro Eye and Rift S) and more to come later in the year like the HTC Cosmos. The VR market is one of the fastest growing markets and with the likes of the Quest VR will hit main steam in a big way.

Software is growing, Hardware is growing, VR has never been in better shape and at this point you think VR has come and gone? In late 2017 I might have understood if somebody posted something like this, but, now when VR is in it's strongest position ever with all signs that it's going to continue to grow? Even Valve are starting to produce headsets.

LOL, as I said, you need you to get your eyes checked, because there is no pattern.
 
N4CR said:
Still can't drive the resolution and refresh rate to get rid of flyscreen door and its 2019..

Enough said.
I loved the experience but still wary to drop cash on it yet. Another two years than that might change.
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That's your opinion, it's not enough said. Not everyone minds the SDE. If that was the case the market wouldn't be growing.

Also, have you tried any of the new headsets? They have massively improved on the SDE, in some cases so much improved that you actually have to look for it to notice it.
 
Oculus Quest is basically the "first" real solution for most people... the bulky wired stuff was all prototype
 
I like the idea of a hybrid. The lighthouse sensors and the ones built in to the unit. So far all the VR HMD's out/coming out are nice, but I see most complaints
are about the tracking. The stand alones are good for beginners or for farting around, but no replacement for a PC driven unit.
 
Some people have rooms dedicated to their 2 speaker HiFi audio setup, others have a room devoted to their plants and gardening...<coughgrowroomcough>....VR is just another example of a niche hobby like rollerblading or RC Planes or what-have-you. It hasn't lost its steam so much as the human limitation in its current state of hardware means expectations had to be adjusted....we wont get Call of Duty VR and Tomb Raider VR, but we'll get more and more shooting-gallery style shooters where limited movement and slow-paced mechanics make sense. Super Hot and Beat Saber for example, I expect more games like Gorn and such (bring back THE BILESTOAD!) will make an appearance, that new Darth Vader game, sword-and-shield fighting....less about frantic movement and more about slow human-paced exploring. You can get around the balance/nausea limitations by keeping movement slow (so your body doesn't react as harshly to the momentum of going from 0 to 20mph windsprints to 0, like say in the ports of some shooters.....we are seeing a 'new type of gameplay' emerge.

I'd like to see more "In the cockpit/seat" simulations appear. Like why don't we have a decent WW2 Tank Sim...the game could be seated, you could literally stand up to take different positions in the tank if you watned to move around, and the speeds wouldn't make you retch.

Over time I expect VR to simply evolve until the software hits that point where there's enough of it to attract casuals. It'll happen eventually, I'm just glad we've got what we've got today.......
 
reaper12 said:
That's your opinion, it's not enough said. Not everyone minds the SDE. If that was the case the market wouldn't be growing.

Also, have you tried any of the new headsets? They have massively improved on the SDE, in some cases so much improved that you actually have to look for it to notice it.
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What resolution do you mean? Because it theoretically should need quite a large resolution to avoid that effect. Much like projectors. Other reason is there are headsets out there that you can't even drive full speed and at high bitrate due to link limitations.
I am keen to try new ones though, when back home in a month I'll check them out at my local PC shop and also hopefully put an order in for some Zen2 goodness.

I am the sort of user that does notice visual issues quickly... entertainment background, seen it all before and screens/colours/etc are obvious to me when wrong.
 
N4CR said:
What resolution do you mean? Because it theoretically should need quite a large resolution to avoid that effect. Much like projectors. Other reason is there are headsets out there that you can't even drive full speed and at high bitrate due to link limitations.
I am keen to try new ones though, when back home in a month I'll check them out at my local PC shop and also hopefully put an order in for some Zen2 goodness.

I am the sort of user that does notice visual issues quickly... entertainment background, seen it all before and screens/colours/etc are obvious to me when wrong.
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For some of the new headsets It's not just an increase in resolution. They are using LCD displays with RGB pixel structure which means they have a lot more subpixels than the OLED displays of the Vive and Rift. This means much reduced SDE. The HP Reverb is 2160x260 and can run comfortably on a GTX 1070. As for your Link Limitations, you are forgetting about Virtual link which is supported by all the major players in VR and is already on Nvidia's Turing GPUs. The new Valve Index is supposed to have amazing clarity.


But, your opinion and my opinion doesn't really matter to this thread. VR is growing, that's a fact. The OP posted as if there was a pattern emerging of VR starting strong then stagnating before dying out again, that's not the case at all. You might not want to get into VR because of reasons, and that's fine BTW, but other people do and it seems more and more people are buying. VR growth is so good that Nvidia has put a special connector just for VR on their cards(the Virtual link I mentioned earlier) The Oculus Quest seems like it's going to be a massive hit. Despite lower quality graphics people are raving about it about on the various forums. It's going to really increase the presence of VR in the mainstream market.
 
I actually don't really use VR to game at all right now.

I invested about $10K into a 8K 3D VR camera + NAS + apps to store, stitch and encode video. I'm doing it to "record memories" from a 360 3D perspective. 8K is so much better than 4K video. It's a day and night difference between the two. So far 8K 3D capture viewed through a Pimax 5k+ results in very sharp capture that's room scale. I expect that distance to extend once I have a HMD that's native 4K per eye (not counting the Pimax 8K). Things tends to start losing detail beyond 50-100 feet or so, but that's a lot better than 4K capture which is blurry even up close.

One day my family will be able to "go back in time" to watch ourselves, including my son who is now 6 weeks old. When I watch the videos right now, it's almost like I'm a ghost sitting in a parallel universe watching things play out.

VR is truly game changing here but that masses haven't quite realized it yet, likely because it is expensive to do this and also takes long to go through the entire workflow as well. At 8K resolution, a denoised video will take about an hour to encode for every minute captured (on a 8086k CPU). I'm going to have a build a media encoding machine and probably sink another $2-3K into that. But this is some of the best money I've ever spent.
 
More homes have VR now than ever before in history, I think that's a trend that will continue to grow. Now that you can get a kits for well for under $1k it's in the realm of the "consumer market".

To me it looks like a matter of display technology finally catching up and making home VR a reality, but it's undeniably a niche market still and will need to get a lot cheaper, streamlined, and have more impressive content before little Billy and Sally start asking Santa for one.

It reminds me of the PocketPC days. Us nerds thought we were hot shit with our PDAs and styluses, but the mass market didn't care until Steve Jobs polished the hell out of it.
 
blade52x said:
I actually don't really use VR to game at all right now.

I invested about $10K into a 8K 3D VR camera + NAS + apps to store, stitch and encode video. I'm doing it to "record memories" from a 360 3D perspective. 8K is so much better than 4K video. It's a day and night difference between the two. So far 8K 3D capture viewed through a Pimax 5k+ results in very sharp capture that's room scale. I expect that distance to extend once I have a HMD that's native 4K per eye (not counting the Pimax 8K). Things tends to start losing detail beyond 50-100 feet or so, but that's a lot better than 4K capture which is blurry even up close.

One day my family will be able to "go back in time" to watch ourselves, including my son who is now 6 weeks old. When I watch the videos right now, it's almost like I'm a ghost sitting in a parallel universe watching things play out.

VR is truly game changing here but that masses haven't quite realized it yet, likely because it is expensive to do this and also takes long to go through the entire workflow as well. At 8K resolution, a denoised video will take about an hour to encode for every minute captured (on a 8086k CPU). I'm going to have a build a media encoding machine and probably sink another $2-3K into that. But this is some of the best money I've ever spent.
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If you could post some more details about your setup I would greatly appreciate it! I'm a huge proponent on capturing home videos, and am in the market for a new video setup. I shoot now on a Canon 80D and never thought about doing 3D VR. I'm very intrigued.

My parents sold the house they built 43 years ago last year, the house my 2 older brothers and I grew up in. A few weeks before the move, when the house was clean (but still furnished) we went home and took 360 degree photos of each room, hallways, barn, driveway from multiple distances etc. Then, I put them on my Oculus Rift PC and can view them. Even though they're not the greatest quality ($200 camera) it's incredible. I get teary-eyed every time I view them, as I know I will never go into that house again.
 
GPU's need to be much faster. You can tweak the HMD stuff but in the end, the GPU needs more power.
The Pimax 8K X is native 4K each eye, but they can't get it to run at a rate good enough since the GPU does not have the HP.
 
mazeroth said:
If you could post some more details about your setup I would greatly appreciate it! I'm a huge proponent on capturing home videos, and am in the market for a new video setup. I shoot now on a Canon 80D and never thought about doing 3D VR. I'm very intrigued.

My parents sold the house they built 43 years ago last year, the house my 2 older brothers and I grew up in. A few weeks before the move, when the house was clean (but still furnished) we went home and took 360 degree photos of each room, hallways, barn, driveway from multiple distances etc. Then, I put them on my Oculus Rift PC and can view them. Even though they're not the greatest quality ($200 camera) it's incredible. I get teary-eyed every time I view them, as I know I will never go into that house again.
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This is my setup:

Insta360 Pro 2 with flash drives SD card bundle and extra batteries: $5500
Zoom H3-VR 360-Degree VR Audio mic: $300
Tripid: $250
Pimax 5k+ HMD: $700
56TB NAS: $2000 (could definitely do better as I bought 4x14TB drives for density)
USB hub: $50
Adobe Creative Cloud: $20 / month
Mistika VR: $70 / month (but 3 months free with Pro 2)

I went with the Pro 2 because at the time it was the only option available that could capture 8K 3D (at 30fps) for under 5 figures. It is also a noticeable upgrade over the Pro ($3500) which is only capable of 6K 3D at 30fps or 8K 2D at 30fps. The Pro 2 has way more capture modes which include 8K 3D at 30fps, 8K 2D at 60fps, 6K 3D at 60fps, and 4K 3D at 120fps. Now there's the Insta360 Titan coming out... but $15,000 for 10K 3D at 30fps isn't really worth the jump to me, unless is has near perfect stitching and the 3D comes out looking perfect... and I mean perfect.

This guy also really good educational VR composition videos - helped me a ton so far: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEqIv7lVwOOLnwxuuhQFuQ
 
blade52x said:
I actually don't really use VR to game at all right now.

I invested about $10K into a 8K 3D VR camera + NAS + apps to store, stitch and encode video. I'm doing it to "record memories" from a 360 3D perspective. 8K is so much better than 4K video. It's a day and night difference between the two. So far 8K 3D capture viewed through a Pimax 5k+ results in very sharp capture that's room scale. I expect that distance to extend once I have a HMD that's native 4K per eye (not counting the Pimax 8K). Things tends to start losing detail beyond 50-100 feet or so, but that's a lot better than 4K capture which is blurry even up close.

One day my family will be able to "go back in time" to watch ourselves, including my son who is now 6 weeks old. When I watch the videos right now, it's almost like I'm a ghost sitting in a parallel universe watching things play out.

VR is truly game changing here but that masses haven't quite realized it yet, likely because it is expensive to do this and also takes long to go through the entire workflow as well. At 8K resolution, a denoised video will take about an hour to encode for every minute captured (on a 8086k CPU). I'm going to have a build a media encoding machine and probably sink another $2-3K into that. But this is some of the best money I've ever spent.
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That is an awesome idea, I hope I remember this for my future family.
 
Being lucky enough to grow up in the 90's and see the golden age of computer gaming I was blown away back then by the CD-ROM, full fidelity sound, and 3D Video cards. The experience I get from VR beats that experience. The immersion is a whole different level, that no other form of interaction can come close to.

You could say that a 3dFX Voodoo card was a shit 3D card by any modern standard. But it was mind blowing at the time. And that was at resolutions that aren't even used on...anything anymore at this point (800x600, whoopie!).

Even Google Earth Street Mode is fascinating application of VR.

We've had 100 years of creating media that is optimized for 2D flat screen presentation. Moving to 3 dimensional space requires a change in the way media is created. Give it time while everyone re-thinks about how content is created and presented. I assure you, it will be worth the wait.
 
blade52x said:
I actually don't really use VR to game at all right now.

I invested about $10K into a 8K 3D VR camera + NAS + apps to store, stitch and encode video. I'm doing it to "record memories" from a 360 3D perspective. 8K is so much better than 4K video. It's a day and night difference between the two. So far 8K 3D capture viewed through a Pimax 5k+ results in very sharp capture that's room scale. I expect that distance to extend once I have a HMD that's native 4K per eye (not counting the Pimax 8K). Things tends to start losing detail beyond 50-100 feet or so, but that's a lot better than 4K capture which is blurry even up close.

One day my family will be able to "go back in time" to watch ourselves, including my son who is now 6 weeks old. When I watch the videos right now, it's almost like I'm a ghost sitting in a parallel universe watching things play out.

VR is truly game changing here but that masses haven't quite realized it yet, likely because it is expensive to do this and also takes long to go through the entire workflow as well. At 8K resolution, a denoised video will take about an hour to encode for every minute captured (on a 8086k CPU). I'm going to have a build a media encoding machine and probably sink another $2-3K into that. But this is some of the best money I've ever spent.
Click to expand...

This is one of the coolest things I've read lately, thanks for sharing!
 
I've always seen VR as being the PC version of 3D for TV and movies. It comes and goes and almost no one cares. Each time it has a resurgence the media swears it will stick around and change the way we view or interact with our entertainment. Then its gone again. There are too many limitations of current VR technologies. Cost, headgear, etc. all come into play. Its not unlike 3D TV or film in that regard. I think one day a form of these technologies will emerge and stick, but I don't think it will happen anytime soon.
 
It will only lose Steam if Valve releases HL3 (VR) and it's garbage and everyone abandons them in favour of Oculus/MS/whatever-platform-store-launcher :p

I don't think it's like 3D TV, nobody I knew cared for that junk except James Cameraman and a few others... but it could stay a niche product for a while like steering wheels and other "xtreme gaming" accessories. The AR scene by some reports is bigger and may become mainstream more rapidly... say in everyday vehicles or workspaces
 
Youn said:
It will only lose Steam if Valve releases HL3 (VR) and it's garbage and everyone abandons them in favour of Oculus/MS/whatever-platform-store-launcher :p

I don't think it's like 3D TV, nobody I knew cared for that junk except James Cameraman and a few others... but it could stay a niche product for a while like steering wheels and other "xtreme gaming" accessories. The AR scene by some reports is bigger and may become mainstream more rapidly... say in everyday vehicles or workspaces
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I agree that AR may very well reach mainstream ahead of VR.
 
I think the folks at Oculus may not consider anything mainstream until they hit something like 50-100 million, so PSVR has a loooooong ways to go before claiming that prize
 
In my opinion vr is just now getting real traction with the occlus go and now the quest. with veteran vr game and app developers really finding how best to utilize vr we haven't even seen the peek of what vr can do. I think standalone vr is the future


But I do think in the future we will have ar/vr hybrid headsets
 
reaper12 said:
LOL You see a pattern, what pattern? Saying that the hardware is slowing down in a year where there are more headsets available then ever before. With 5 headsets just been released or in the process of been released (Reverb, Quest, Index, Vive Pro Eye and Rift S) and more to come later in the year like the HTC Cosmos. The VR market is one of the fastest growing markets and with the likes of the Quest VR will hit main steam in a big way.
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Doesn't look like it:

0djlV8U.jpg
 
Is there any VR game people could reasonably play competitively as an e-sport? Any VR experiences you want to come back to every night for months on end?

Everything I have seen so far amounts to a pile of glorified tech demos. I am super keen to see what Valve brings out in software, but they clearly don't think its there yet.

When the porn gets really good, that could make for a killer application. Like if VR porn became substantially better then it could be worth the effort. I don't think we are at the point yet where people would rather get off while wearing a headset because the orgasm is that much better.
 
Dan_D said:
I've always seen VR as being the PC version of 3D for TV and movies. It comes and goes and almost no one cares. Each time it has a resurgence the media swears it will stick around and change the way we view or interact with our entertainment. Then its gone again. There are too many limitations of current VR technologies. Cost, headgear, etc. all come into play. Its not unlike 3D TV or film in that regard. I think one day a form of these technologies will emerge and stick, but I don't think it will happen anytime soon.
Click to expand...
Brick strapped to head with wires and loss of awareness of real world surroundings is the biggest fault. I’m a nearly 40 year old dad with four kids. I get onto thin ice as it is if I spend too much time gaming - if i strapped a brick to my head and totally checked out my family wouldn’t approve. If I was a single man I’d give it a go, but at this stage in life it’s kind of a non starter. There are 1 and 3 year olds to watch and make sure they aren’t tearing stuff up. If I’m playing a game, I still have to know what’s going on in the house.
 
Played around with a Oculus Quest and was very much impressed. You can have a play area 60ft by 60ft! There was little screen door effect, much like or similar to the Samsung Odyssey+ which is at a higher resolution. Colors looked great. I was limited to 30 minutes. No wires, put it on and go and it was comfortable - more so then a Vive. I can't help think these will sell like hotcakes and may pick one up myself.
 
noko said:
Played around with a Oculus Quest and was very much impressed. You can have a play area 60ft by 60ft! There was little screen door effect, much like or similar to the Samsung Odyssey+ which is at a higher resolution. Colors looked great. I was limited to 30 minutes. No wires, put it on and go and it was comfortable - more so then a Vive. I can't help think these will sell like hotcakes and may pick one up myself.
Click to expand...
I thought these things required some pretty heavy duty hardware to play VR games. Like a hard minimum of a 970 card, and dual core 3ghz I3 skylarks generation CPU. How is a $400 all in headset that relies on its own internal CPU and GPU doing the rendering up to snuff?
 
Archaea said:
I thought these things required some pretty heavy duty hardware to play VR games. Like a hard minimum of a 970 card, and dual core 3ghz I3 skylarks generation CPU. How is a $400 all in headset that relies on its own internal CPU and GPU doing the rendering up to snuff?
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Same as different video cards in PC's. It will adjust the graphics to what it can handle.
 
Fuzzy_3D said:
It reminds me of the PocketPC days. Us nerds thought we were hot shit with our PDAs and styluses, but the mass market didn't care until Steve Jobs polished the hell out of it.
Click to expand...
Yep, I loved my pocket pc and my palm pilots. They didn't really catch on until the iPhone as you said..
VR will eventually have its day I think in a similar fashion.
 
VR is still healthy and growing... The tech just needs to get better and even cheaper before it gets true mass adoption appeal - that's when you will see the really big numbers hit. Most likely that is still a good 3-5 years out.

For the enthusiast crowd, it is doing well and I feel the Index along with the Quest is going to start ramping up VR growth numbers like crazy before this year is out. The last year or so has been somewhat stagnant due to the lack of new HMD tech that offered any real meaningful progress/gains when it came to VR capabilities. The bulk of the enthusiast VR crowd had already bought in as well...

But now with the Oculus Quest in the mobile VR space (true wireless) and the Valve Index hitting the "premium" PC VR gaming segment, I predict there is going to be a very big up-swing during the next 6 months as VR continues to grow for both existing and new VR enthusiasts. Give it some time... it'll get there. The PC took almost 20 years before it was in 50% of US households. A viable consumer VR solution that works and is affordable has only been around for ~3 years now.
 
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