8 ms·

We're less than 2 months away from the first real releases of VR equipment and already the ecosystem is fractured in to at least 4 different platforms/SDKs/styl

We're less than 2 months away from the first real releases of VR equipment and already the ecosystem is fractured in to at least 4 different platforms/SDKs/styles: Oculus, SteamVR/OpenVR/Vive, Google Daydream, Playstation VR. I fear the fracturing will make total adoption lower and slower, as developers will have to choose sides or spend way more time developing for all platforms.

amelius 10y ago
Actually, I expected to hear more about VR after the releases. Could it be that the hype is over before it began?
brianwawok 10y ago
Or its a bunch of ideas thrown out there.. maybe 1 will stick and 3 will die. Sucks for early adopters with dead hardware, but if we in 2016 have the tech to make this work, our odds of hitting the money are pretty high right now.
- dave2000 10y ago
  That's what always happens. I'm glad those brave early adopters are out there, making difficult and expensive decisions and then regretting it so I don't have to.
  - monk_e_boy 10y ago
    Ignore the hype. Save your cash. Wait for version 2.0 You'd think we would have learned this by now, but I'm still way too excited about the vive.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  The problem though is that the company able to push their product to win the market and the company with the best product probably won't be the same.
michaelbuckbee 10y ago
The VR Ecosystem looks a lot like the console ecosystem, which has dealt with the problem by adopting SDKs like Unity or Unreal.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  True. Even then, I'm still holding my breath for Unity's VR API to support Google Cardboard. Anyone know when that's coming?
  - dharma1 10y ago
    You mean this? https://developers.google.com/vr/unity/ https://developers.google.com/vr/unity/
    - DonHopkins 10y ago
      Nope. I mean this: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/VROverview.html http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/VROverview.html The whole point is to use Unity's single high level device independent VR SDK (which enables many internal rendering optimizations), and to avoid plugging in yet another VR SDK in addition to a bunch of other separate GearVR, Oculus, Sony, etc SDKs, and having to write complex branching code (and build configuration scripts) in my app to support multiple APIs with my own ad-hoc layers of abstraction (which is costly to maintain and soon to become obsolete). That's Unity's job, and why I gladly paid them for a license. Unity has a device independent VR API that supports Oculus, GearVR, Sony and other devices, but as far as I know it does not yet currently support Google's Cardboard SDK. They've promised to support it, but they haven't delivered it yet, nor said when to expect it. Unless Google wants to pay me for wasting my time, the last thing in the world I want to do is to spend a lot of time and effort duct taping Google's Cardboard SDK onto the side of my existing app that already uses Unity's built-in VR SDK, and then Unity finally releases their the built-in support for Google Cardboard that they've been promising. The potential and promise is there, but until I can just tick the "Virtual Reality Supported" checkbox in the Unity player settings to transparently support Google Cardboard, GearVR, Oculus, Sony, Vive, etc, the rubber hasn't hit the road. Until then, you have to do short term dead end hacks like this, which will probably break every time anything it depends on releases a new version (which is often): https://github.com/ludo6577/VrMultiplatform https://github.com/ludo6577/VrMultiplatform
bryanlarsen 10y ago
Yes, a single ecosystem would help adoption, but it would also significantly reduce innovation. It's so early in the lifecycle that we're better off emphasizing innovation. Anybody buying now has to recognize that anything they're buying will be obsolete in a year or two. Once you realize that, you realize it doesn't matter too much if you pick the 'wrong' one. You'll be replacing your headset with v2 or v3 of the winner anyways.
- uola 10y ago
  "It's so early in the lifecycle that we're better off emphasizing innovation." Early in the lifecycle, when there is a lot of R&D overhead and risk, is where companies actually have incentive to collaborate. It's very unlikely that the ecosystem will "open" later, instead we'll have to (as you said) accept the ecosystem of whoever wins.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    And later in the lifecycle there are more vertical integrations that companies monetize, incentivizing collaboration to get as many users as possible. It's all a part of the race to the bottom, from cloud data services to internet browsers.
JoshTriplett 10y ago
And several more contenders as well that don't get talked about as much. One major problem is that none of them are open, and none of them have pushed to create standards; they all want to unilaterally define themselves as the standard. I think we'll get a more unified ecosystem when someone starts looking to collaborate on standards rather than exclusivity. Perhaps Google will do that with Daydream, or perhaps someone else will.
djloche 10y ago
It's really three levels: High End - Desktop ( Vive / Oculus ) $600-800 Console ( PSVR ) $400-500 Mobile ( Google / Oculus / ?? ) $99-?? Console vs Desktop vs Mobile -- that's the real issue. The leap from Mobile VR to Desktop VR is huge. PSVR -- remains to be seen what Sony does on the hardware front (PS4.5 with new ATI card, or ??).
- moogly 10y ago
  There's also high-end mobile (Samsung Gear). 300 bucks? 400? Don't know exactly.
  - moron4hire 10y ago
    Gear VR is only an additional $99. You have to have one of the select few phones it works with, but I don't think it's any more fair to count that in the cost of the setup than it is to count the PC in the cost of the desktop VR system, or the house in the cost of the roomscale VR system.
    - moogly 10y ago
      My bad! I went by the old Samsung Note-based price range. Had no idea they lowered the price that much.
      - dingo_bat 10y ago
        They also gave it away to a lot of S7 buyers. So most people have it for 0$.
      - djloche 10y ago
        It's the price of the shell, you still need the phone to put in it.
- Kurtz79 10y ago
  It's a good point, and I don't really see an issue. After all, to this day gaming is distributed already between console/desktop/mobile, with each audience being large enough to ensure good profitability in every environment.
eva1984 10y ago
Well. It is all about games.My bet is on PSVR for now.
- frenchie4111 10y ago
  At the beginning it will be all about games, but once the technology is good enough (Gen 3/4) it will transition to be the universal computer interface (replacing standard monitors).
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    AR will. VR's immersiveness is actually a problem for non-entertainment uses.
    - frenchie4111 10y ago
      There are more types of entertainment than games. It's easy to imagine VR Concerts, VR Sightseeing, and VR Movies / Television. There are also many practical VR uses that the immersiveness will add to: 3d modeling, real estate/architectural tours, teleconferences, remote debugging, systems design / modeling.
vikascoder 10y ago
Let us also not forget Google funded company Magic Leap going head to head with MS Hololens in the Augmented Reality space.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
moron4hire 10y ago
I think Android is a pretty good example of how "fracturing" is just FUD and not really that big of a deal.
- rpgmaker 10y ago
  Not even close to being the same thing. On android there's a common codebase that it's guaranteed to be there for all devices even if you have to add a couple of additional layouts for the odd cases, which it's what it mostly comes down to in this day and age. The same can't be said for VR right now.
  - moron4hire 10y ago
    It's not like there's a lot of freedom on how to express headset orientation. Every headset so far provides a quaternion you can poll. The word from developers like Northway Games with Fantastic Contraption is that even hand-motion controllers like the Vive and Oculus Touch are providing nearly identical interfaces. No, you won't have literal one-to-one code, at least outside of WebVR. But I highly doubt porting is going to be that hard. If anything, because you have to do the graphics on your own, there is an even greater chance of successfully building cross-platform systems. At the end of the day, it's all just GLSL.
aaronwidd 10y ago
Consumer VR is in it's infancy. Embryonic almost. In the early days of desktop computer, how many different OSes and hardware configurations were there? In the years of the automobile before the Model T, how many wildly different types of car were available to the public? One platform to rule them all will come in time, but we should be happy that for now the ecosystem is competitive, it means the consumer gets a voice in deciding what shape the tech will take
- ctdonath 10y ago
  Embryonic VR was the Virtual iGlasses tethered to a Pentium tower PC. Worked surprisingly well. Alas, the $600 price tag and similarly embryonic graphics tech was beyond the interest of most developers. Still have mine...
nl 10y ago
Well.. yeah? New technologies always results in lots of competing platforms, then consolidation, then stagnation, then a new competitor entering, new features, market chaos, then consolidation again. And people will complain at ever stage. And it has always been thus.
wrsh07 10y ago
I'm afraid I don't understand the nuances between when an ecosystem has healthy competition vs when it is fractured. Certainly if different systems support different amounts of a standard (eg browsers and the web standard), fractured seems like the right term. Is the requirement for a fractured ecosystem just different APIs for the same thing? Are ML frameworks fractured? I suppose they would be. What's the solution? Would you propose a VR standard? I imagine cardboard was an attempt at that. But standards are slow moving - not very effective at innovating. I think a standard will naturally emerge once we know what should be standardized. But you don't want to kill innovation yet.
VikingCoder 10y ago
...people commenting on this thread are using Mac, Windows, Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Android, iOS, and a few others... Does that make total adoption lower and slower?
nurettin 10y ago
People have differing needs and differing devices, so fracturing under the title "VR device" is perfectly normal. What developers need is a standardised API to access all of them with parts specialized to cater for each device's unique functionalities. Which will eventually happen. I cite ios+android libraries/frameworks as an example.
iagooar 10y ago
Once you have tried the HTC Vive, you'll know that any other VR system is already obsolete. Be it because of the experience or the hardware. I would adventure to say that the Vive makes all other systems look ridiculous. My bet is that in the future, VR will become more and more similar to what the Vive is offering now. Room-scale VR is a game changer, as much as VR itself.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  But Oculus will have room scale soon too: Oculus Touch is coming soon. It'll give controllers that add finger control to the mix, and a second camera to enable room scale. I'm waiting for reviews and availability of the GTX 1070, as well as better headset availability before pulling the trigger on a headset. Hopefully Oculus has their controllers out by then, otherwise I probably won't wait for them. (I won't wait for AMD either; if they want me to consider Polaris, they better release it ASAP).
  - devicenull 10y ago
    > But Oculus will have room scale soon too: Oculus Touch is coming soon. They haven't even shipped all their headset preorders yet, I doubt "soon" is the word you want there.

amelius 10y ago

Actually, I expected to hear more about VR after the releases. Could it be that the hype is over before it began?

brianwawok 10y ago

Or its a bunch of ideas thrown out there.. maybe 1 will stick and 3 will die. Sucks for early adopters with dead hardware, but if we in 2016 have the tech to make this work, our odds of hitting the money are pretty high right now.

dave2000 10y ago
That's what always happens. I'm glad those brave early adopters are out there, making difficult and expensive decisions and then regretting it so I don't have to.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  Ignore the hype. Save your cash. Wait for version 2.0 You'd think we would have learned this by now, but I'm still way too excited about the vive.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
The problem though is that the company able to push their product to win the market and the company with the best product probably won't be the same.

michaelbuckbee 10y ago

The VR Ecosystem looks a lot like the console ecosystem, which has dealt with the problem by adopting SDKs like Unity or Unreal.

DonHopkins 10y ago
True. Even then, I'm still holding my breath for Unity's VR API to support Google Cardboard. Anyone know when that's coming?
- dharma1 10y ago
  You mean this? https://developers.google.com/vr/unity/ https://developers.google.com/vr/unity/
  - DonHopkins 10y ago
    Nope. I mean this: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/VROverview.html http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/VROverview.html The whole point is to use Unity's single high level device independent VR SDK (which enables many internal rendering optimizations), and to avoid plugging in yet another VR SDK in addition to a bunch of other separate GearVR, Oculus, Sony, etc SDKs, and having to write complex branching code (and build configuration scripts) in my app to support multiple APIs with my own ad-hoc layers of abstraction (which is costly to maintain and soon to become obsolete). That's Unity's job, and why I gladly paid them for a license. Unity has a device independent VR API that supports Oculus, GearVR, Sony and other devices, but as far as I know it does not yet currently support Google's Cardboard SDK. They've promised to support it, but they haven't delivered it yet, nor said when to expect it. Unless Google wants to pay me for wasting my time, the last thing in the world I want to do is to spend a lot of time and effort duct taping Google's Cardboard SDK onto the side of my existing app that already uses Unity's built-in VR SDK, and then Unity finally releases their the built-in support for Google Cardboard that they've been promising. The potential and promise is there, but until I can just tick the "Virtual Reality Supported" checkbox in the Unity player settings to transparently support Google Cardboard, GearVR, Oculus, Sony, Vive, etc, the rubber hasn't hit the road. Until then, you have to do short term dead end hacks like this, which will probably break every time anything it depends on releases a new version (which is often): https://github.com/ludo6577/VrMultiplatform https://github.com/ludo6577/VrMultiplatform

bryanlarsen 10y ago

Yes, a single ecosystem would help adoption, but it would also significantly reduce innovation. It's so early in the lifecycle that we're better off emphasizing innovation. Anybody buying now has to recognize that anything they're buying will be obsolete in a year or two. Once you realize that, you realize it doesn't matter too much if you pick the 'wrong' one. You'll be replacing your headset with v2 or v3 of the winner anyways.

uola 10y ago
"It's so early in the lifecycle that we're better off emphasizing innovation." Early in the lifecycle, when there is a lot of R&D overhead and risk, is where companies actually have incentive to collaborate. It's very unlikely that the ecosystem will "open" later, instead we'll have to (as you said) accept the ecosystem of whoever wins.
- bduerst 10y ago
  And later in the lifecycle there are more vertical integrations that companies monetize, incentivizing collaboration to get as many users as possible. It's all a part of the race to the bottom, from cloud data services to internet browsers.

JoshTriplett 10y ago

And several more contenders as well that don't get talked about as much. One major problem is that none of them are open, and none of them have pushed to create standards; they all want to unilaterally define themselves as the standard. I think we'll get a more unified ecosystem when someone starts looking to collaborate on standards rather than exclusivity. Perhaps Google will do that with Daydream, or perhaps someone else will.

djloche 10y ago

It's really three levels: High End - Desktop ( Vive / Oculus ) $600-800 Console ( PSVR ) $400-500 Mobile ( Google / Oculus / ?? ) $99-?? Console vs Desktop vs Mobile -- that's the real issue. The leap from Mobile VR to Desktop VR is huge. PSVR -- remains to be seen what Sony does on the hardware front (PS4.5 with new ATI card, or ??).

moogly 10y ago
There's also high-end mobile (Samsung Gear). 300 bucks? 400? Don't know exactly.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  Gear VR is only an additional $99. You have to have one of the select few phones it works with, but I don't think it's any more fair to count that in the cost of the setup than it is to count the PC in the cost of the desktop VR system, or the house in the cost of the roomscale VR system.
  - moogly 10y ago
    My bad! I went by the old Samsung Note-based price range. Had no idea they lowered the price that much.
    - dingo_bat 10y ago
      They also gave it away to a lot of S7 buyers. So most people have it for 0$.
    - djloche 10y ago
      It's the price of the shell, you still need the phone to put in it.
Kurtz79 10y ago
It's a good point, and I don't really see an issue. After all, to this day gaming is distributed already between console/desktop/mobile, with each audience being large enough to ensure good profitability in every environment.

eva1984 10y ago

Well. It is all about games.My bet is on PSVR for now.

frenchie4111 10y ago
At the beginning it will be all about games, but once the technology is good enough (Gen 3/4) it will transition to be the universal computer interface (replacing standard monitors).
- WalterSear 10y ago
  AR will. VR's immersiveness is actually a problem for non-entertainment uses.
  - frenchie4111 10y ago
    There are more types of entertainment than games. It's easy to imagine VR Concerts, VR Sightseeing, and VR Movies / Television. There are also many practical VR uses that the immersiveness will add to: 3d modeling, real estate/architectural tours, teleconferences, remote debugging, systems design / modeling.

vikascoder 10y ago

Let us also not forget Google funded company Magic Leap going head to head with MS Hololens in the Augmented Reality space.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

moron4hire 10y ago

I think Android is a pretty good example of how "fracturing" is just FUD and not really that big of a deal.

rpgmaker 10y ago
Not even close to being the same thing. On android there's a common codebase that it's guaranteed to be there for all devices even if you have to add a couple of additional layouts for the odd cases, which it's what it mostly comes down to in this day and age. The same can't be said for VR right now.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  It's not like there's a lot of freedom on how to express headset orientation. Every headset so far provides a quaternion you can poll. The word from developers like Northway Games with Fantastic Contraption is that even hand-motion controllers like the Vive and Oculus Touch are providing nearly identical interfaces. No, you won't have literal one-to-one code, at least outside of WebVR. But I highly doubt porting is going to be that hard. If anything, because you have to do the graphics on your own, there is an even greater chance of successfully building cross-platform systems. At the end of the day, it's all just GLSL.

aaronwidd 10y ago

Consumer VR is in it's infancy. Embryonic almost. In the early days of desktop computer, how many different OSes and hardware configurations were there? In the years of the automobile before the Model T, how many wildly different types of car were available to the public? One platform to rule them all will come in time, but we should be happy that for now the ecosystem is competitive, it means the consumer gets a voice in deciding what shape the tech will take

ctdonath 10y ago
Embryonic VR was the Virtual iGlasses tethered to a Pentium tower PC. Worked surprisingly well. Alas, the $600 price tag and similarly embryonic graphics tech was beyond the interest of most developers. Still have mine...

nl 10y ago

Well.. yeah? New technologies always results in lots of competing platforms, then consolidation, then stagnation, then a new competitor entering, new features, market chaos, then consolidation again. And people will complain at ever stage. And it has always been thus.

wrsh07 10y ago

I'm afraid I don't understand the nuances between when an ecosystem has healthy competition vs when it is fractured. Certainly if different systems support different amounts of a standard (eg browsers and the web standard), fractured seems like the right term. Is the requirement for a fractured ecosystem just different APIs for the same thing? Are ML frameworks fractured? I suppose they would be. What's the solution? Would you propose a VR standard? I imagine cardboard was an attempt at that. But standards are slow moving - not very effective at innovating. I think a standard will naturally emerge once we know what should be standardized. But you don't want to kill innovation yet.

VikingCoder 10y ago

...people commenting on this thread are using Mac, Windows, Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Android, iOS, and a few others... Does that make total adoption lower and slower?

nurettin 10y ago

People have differing needs and differing devices, so fracturing under the title "VR device" is perfectly normal. What developers need is a standardised API to access all of them with parts specialized to cater for each device's unique functionalities. Which will eventually happen. I cite ios+android libraries/frameworks as an example.

iagooar 10y ago

Once you have tried the HTC Vive, you'll know that any other VR system is already obsolete. Be it because of the experience or the hardware. I would adventure to say that the Vive makes all other systems look ridiculous. My bet is that in the future, VR will become more and more similar to what the Vive is offering now. Room-scale VR is a game changer, as much as VR itself.

bryanlarsen 10y ago
But Oculus will have room scale soon too: Oculus Touch is coming soon. It'll give controllers that add finger control to the mix, and a second camera to enable room scale. I'm waiting for reviews and availability of the GTX 1070, as well as better headset availability before pulling the trigger on a headset. Hopefully Oculus has their controllers out by then, otherwise I probably won't wait for them. (I won't wait for AMD either; if they want me to consider Polaris, they better release it ASAP).
- devicenull 10y ago
  > But Oculus will have room scale soon too: Oculus Touch is coming soon. They haven't even shipped all their headset preorders yet, I doubt "soon" is the word you want there.