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I'm not sure I have much to contribute to the idea of VR beyond my years of playing MUDs, MMOs, and Second Life. So I'm seeing VR from the POV of the desktop he

I'm not sure I have much to contribute to the idea of VR beyond my years of playing MUDs, MMOs, and Second Life. So I'm seeing VR from the POV of the desktop here. What I think is the key problem with VR is the problem with all kinds of technology: form factor. For years cell phones were bulky niche products that didn't have many users until the mid-90s when candy bar and clam shell form factors were good enough compared to the bag and bricks of the 80s. That's when cell phones took off. Smart phones had a similar problem that was solved with better touch screens and better storage/processor. Now, VR has always had a huge problem with the goggles and other interfaces so I think VR to be able to be attractive to people (especially developers) it has to be smaller, better resolution, and as easy as wearing sunglasses and/or winter gloves (IMO, I think a glove form factor is the bare minimum for any controller scheme or at least a good enough pair of gesture sensors that are easy to place and calibrate). Until a good enough form factor takes over there's no way VR will ever break beyond niche. It's just that 2016 made that niche bigger. So I'll be waiting out this wave of VR out until they have a form factor that's easy and cheap.

purplelobster 10y ago
That's a very good analogy. Just don't underestimate how quickly the tech can progress in this day and age, I did that mistake myself. Less than two years ago I was very excited about the Rift and bought a dev kit. As someone who works in computer vision etc, I was convinced though that good tracking would be many years out, and then suddenly there were the lighthouse solution from Valve. Now I've had the same thought about inside-out tracking (by means of vision), but even that seems to be arriving much faster than I initially anticipated. Today every big tech company from MS, Google, Facebook, to Valve, and hardware companies such as Samsung, HTC and Nvidia/ATI manufacturers are pushing hard on every frontier of VR. I agree the form factor has to change to allow mass adoption, but expect much faster progress than what happened with phones in the 80s.

purplelobster 10y ago

That's a very good analogy. Just don't underestimate how quickly the tech can progress in this day and age, I did that mistake myself. Less than two years ago I was very excited about the Rift and bought a dev kit. As someone who works in computer vision etc, I was convinced though that good tracking would be many years out, and then suddenly there were the lighthouse solution from Valve. Now I've had the same thought about inside-out tracking (by means of vision), but even that seems to be arriving much faster than I initially anticipated. Today every big tech company from MS, Google, Facebook, to Valve, and hardware companies such as Samsung, HTC and Nvidia/ATI manufacturers are pushing hard on every frontier of VR. I agree the form factor has to change to allow mass adoption, but expect much faster progress than what happened with phones in the 80s.