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Why are people saying "it makes more sense to make it affordable first"? When has an advanced new tech ever proliferated from the bottom-up? New tech is always

by anjc 8y ago

Why are people saying "it makes more sense to make it affordable first"? When has an advanced new tech ever proliferated from the bottom-up? New tech is always unaffordable, and becomes affordable as it matures. Advancements trickle down. I fear that this move towards cheap low-barrier VR will make it unattractive for users.

nafey 8y ago
Smartphones?
- ghaff 8y ago
  Not really. The iPhone really drove the modern smartphone and, even if the price has tended to increase (but that's partly because of the phasing out of carrier subsidies), it wasn't a low-end device. And Blackberries and Treos weren't cheap either.
cmiles74 8y ago
IMHO, there's not much of a market for a tethered VR headset. Some of the big components of a compelling and immersive VR environment include some ability to move around and interact with the virtual environment and (again in my opinion) a tethered headset really gets in the way of that. I don't think that means this needs to be a race to the bottom, but when you move to a portable device it looks like everyone starts looking really hard at smartphone-like hardware. That's a big jump from a custom desktop workstation and, for a lot of people, smells like a race to the bottom.
- sp332 8y ago
  But the untethered 6-DOF platforms are just barely coming out. Vive Focus (not sure you can buy this yet?), Magic Leap, and Hololens.
  - cmiles74 8y ago
    I wouldn't lump in Magic Leap and Hololens, I think they are targeting a very different market.
    - sp332 8y ago
      True, but that's literally all there is.
VikingCoder 8y ago
...because some people think that 6DOF HMD + Touch is the first real generation of VR, and now it's time to make THAT affordable. The other improvements to VR, at the high end, are less interesting to them. Sure, they're nice, but they essentially think 6DOF HMD + Touch is the Minimum Viable Product for VR. At least for the 80% Gaming / 20% Video market, as they said at Oculus Connect. That's what Oculus Quest is. If Oculus Quest feels "almost as good" as an Oculus Rift in many games, I don't know why you think that'll be "unattractive for users". Hell, I think Beat Saber alone is worth the price of admission on an Oculus Quest.
- wmf 8y ago
  I remember when 6DOF HMD + Touch + GTX 970 was the bare minimum... and then all these new headsets stated coming out with far weaker GPUs. I wonder if anything has changed or if they have just decided to sacrifice quality for adoption.
  - lhl 8y ago
    GPU requirements were dropped because the software has gotten a lot better. Here's a presentation from OC5 that highlights some of the more recent improvements (ASW 2.0 is particularly impressive): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLe7b2pUq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLe7b2pUq0
  - mortenjorck 8y ago
    Two of these things are fundamentals of VR presence (being able to move your head, being able to interact with your hands ) and one is a specific piece of high-performance silicon. Sacrificing some mesh and texture resolution is a completely different thing from sacrificing spatial movement.
- anjc 8y ago
  > ...because some people think that 6DOF HMD + Touch is the first real generation of VR, and now it's time to make THAT affordable. Of course it should be made affordable. But (for example) advanced mobile phone development was not stopped by manufacturers so they could focus on making iPhones affordable. There were continual cutting edge developments which eventually trickled down to budget models as manufacturing processes improved and market demands increased. This same cycle happens in all industries and for all products. It would be ludicrous for people to say "Ok, the iPhone 1 is good enough, let's stop all development of the iPhone 2 - they're too expensive anyway guys - and start working on iPhone Budget Edition", yet that's what people are suggesting for VR.
flukus 8y ago
> Why are people saying "it makes more sense to make it affordable first"? Because there is a chicken and egg problem with content. If you don't get enough users then no one will make content, if you don't have enough content you won't get users. I wouldn't be surprised if the content creators are being burned already.

by anjc 8y ago

nafey 8y ago

Smartphones?

ghaff 8y ago
Not really. The iPhone really drove the modern smartphone and, even if the price has tended to increase (but that's partly because of the phasing out of carrier subsidies), it wasn't a low-end device. And Blackberries and Treos weren't cheap either.

cmiles74 8y ago

IMHO, there's not much of a market for a tethered VR headset. Some of the big components of a compelling and immersive VR environment include some ability to move around and interact with the virtual environment and (again in my opinion) a tethered headset really gets in the way of that. I don't think that means this needs to be a race to the bottom, but when you move to a portable device it looks like everyone starts looking really hard at smartphone-like hardware. That's a big jump from a custom desktop workstation and, for a lot of people, smells like a race to the bottom.

sp332 8y ago
But the untethered 6-DOF platforms are just barely coming out. Vive Focus (not sure you can buy this yet?), Magic Leap, and Hololens.
- cmiles74 8y ago
  I wouldn't lump in Magic Leap and Hololens, I think they are targeting a very different market.
  - sp332 8y ago
    True, but that's literally all there is.

VikingCoder 8y ago

...because some people think that 6DOF HMD + Touch is the first real generation of VR, and now it's time to make THAT affordable. The other improvements to VR, at the high end, are less interesting to them. Sure, they're nice, but they essentially think 6DOF HMD + Touch is the Minimum Viable Product for VR. At least for the 80% Gaming / 20% Video market, as they said at Oculus Connect. That's what Oculus Quest is. If Oculus Quest feels "almost as good" as an Oculus Rift in many games, I don't know why you think that'll be "unattractive for users". Hell, I think Beat Saber alone is worth the price of admission on an Oculus Quest.

wmf 8y ago
I remember when 6DOF HMD + Touch + GTX 970 was the bare minimum... and then all these new headsets stated coming out with far weaker GPUs. I wonder if anything has changed or if they have just decided to sacrifice quality for adoption.
- lhl 8y ago
  GPU requirements were dropped because the software has gotten a lot better. Here's a presentation from OC5 that highlights some of the more recent improvements (ASW 2.0 is particularly impressive): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLe7b2pUq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLe7b2pUq0
- mortenjorck 8y ago
  Two of these things are fundamentals of VR presence (being able to move your head, being able to interact with your hands ) and one is a specific piece of high-performance silicon. Sacrificing some mesh and texture resolution is a completely different thing from sacrificing spatial movement.
anjc 8y ago
> ...because some people think that 6DOF HMD + Touch is the first real generation of VR, and now it's time to make THAT affordable. Of course it should be made affordable. But (for example) advanced mobile phone development was not stopped by manufacturers so they could focus on making iPhones affordable. There were continual cutting edge developments which eventually trickled down to budget models as manufacturing processes improved and market demands increased. This same cycle happens in all industries and for all products. It would be ludicrous for people to say "Ok, the iPhone 1 is good enough, let's stop all development of the iPhone 2 - they're too expensive anyway guys - and start working on iPhone Budget Edition", yet that's what people are suggesting for VR.

flukus 8y ago

> Why are people saying "it makes more sense to make it affordable first"? Because there is a chicken and egg problem with content. If you don't get enough users then no one will make content, if you don't have enough content you won't get users. I wouldn't be surprised if the content creators are being burned already.