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The problem is capital investment. A VR arcade will be cutting edge for what, 18 months at the most? After that the hardware is no longer better than what you c

by TrevorJ 11y ago

The problem is capital investment. A VR arcade will be cutting edge for what, 18 months at the most? After that the hardware is no longer better than what you can achieve at a consumer level. That's not very long to make back your investment. I do think there is a place for a third party business when it comes to VR though in the realm of 'guided' RPG's and narratives. Imagine paying 25 bucks for you and your friends to join a 3D D&D style adventure with a professional DM and actors in mocap playing the part of the major characters. There's a lot of compelling things that could be done in this arena, and it takes the focus off of the tech and makes it more about interactivity and immersion. There's also quite a lot of relatively cheap untapped talent in local improv/community theater scenes to find some reasonable acting talent. Heck, mocap is getting good enough that your actors could have home studios easily enough withing a few years.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
Would you really need a physical arcade for that though? If everyone has a black box strapped to their face and can communicate sub-100ms, would people even know that they weren't in the same physical location?
- modeless 11y ago
  People don't need to be in the same physical location. However they do all need to be in arcades so that they can all have access to warehouse-scale motion capture setups as well as physical sets and motion-captured props that would be impractical to keep at your house. Actually, it would be more interesting if they weren't in the same physical location. A VR arcade chain would be a great way to hang out with friends in other cities; you could all visit the local arcade location in your city and then hang out together in a shared virtual space. The game would almost be secondary. Imagine being able to play pool with your friend on the other side of the world, with a real pool table, real cue, and virtual balls. That would easily be possible with a VR arcade.
Zikes 11y ago
That high capital investment is what makes arcades ideal. Even if they're only "cutting edge" for 18 months, even the previous generation of that hardware will still be outside of the range of most consumers.
kistaro 11y ago
There's one thing a VR arcade can have that very few consumers can have, in areas where VRcades might be likely to thrive: physical space. Immersive VR requires at least some space to move around in, or set up a big omnidirectional treadmill in. As the human population grows but Earth stays the same size, personal living quarters will always be at a premium, the rent will always be too damn high, and space to set up this awesome VR rig will be prohibitively expensive. VR machines could be consumer-grade and still draw an audience, because of the people locked out of the market due to lack of space to set up a rig. Consider what we have now that isn't even VR- I don't have space to use a Kinect.
- ObviousScience 11y ago
  Just one minor quibble: the reason we have density issues in cities is not that Earth doesn't have enough space for humans to spread out -- even if we only count the nice parts. No, the answer is that we actually seem to enjoy living in really dense clusters and spend a premium on trying to pile more and more people in to the mess. (Well, there's some argument that wealthy people have had an undue influence on the societal process of urbanization, but that's digressing.) Other than that, I actually think that arcades are posed to make a comeback, precisely because of the issue you highlight: the only way to have enough open space in a building (in a major city) to really walk around in requires splitting the rent or being really wealthy.
  - m_mueller 11y ago
    I don't think cities form out of enjoyment (although this becomes a factor for many people after a city and its services have already formed). They form because there is some infrastructure or geographical rarity that many people can benefit from, thus they move there. Train stations, harbors, water ways, airports, mines and castles come to mind as a seed. Once people move there, more and more services become available, making the location more and more attractive for employers, people seeking jobs and people seeking apartments. A certain density is optimal for economic productivity, thus cities are usually don't deviate much from that density, except in places where zoning is heavily regulated. East Asia, especially SK and Japan, is a good place to see how cities grow organically.

by TrevorJ 11y ago

jsprogrammer 11y ago

Would you really need a physical arcade for that though? If everyone has a black box strapped to their face and can communicate sub-100ms, would people even know that they weren't in the same physical location?

modeless 11y ago
People don't need to be in the same physical location. However they do all need to be in arcades so that they can all have access to warehouse-scale motion capture setups as well as physical sets and motion-captured props that would be impractical to keep at your house. Actually, it would be more interesting if they weren't in the same physical location. A VR arcade chain would be a great way to hang out with friends in other cities; you could all visit the local arcade location in your city and then hang out together in a shared virtual space. The game would almost be secondary. Imagine being able to play pool with your friend on the other side of the world, with a real pool table, real cue, and virtual balls. That would easily be possible with a VR arcade.

Zikes 11y ago

That high capital investment is what makes arcades ideal. Even if they're only "cutting edge" for 18 months, even the previous generation of that hardware will still be outside of the range of most consumers.

kistaro 11y ago

There's one thing a VR arcade can have that very few consumers can have, in areas where VRcades might be likely to thrive: physical space. Immersive VR requires at least some space to move around in, or set up a big omnidirectional treadmill in. As the human population grows but Earth stays the same size, personal living quarters will always be at a premium, the rent will always be too damn high, and space to set up this awesome VR rig will be prohibitively expensive. VR machines could be consumer-grade and still draw an audience, because of the people locked out of the market due to lack of space to set up a rig. Consider what we have now that isn't even VR- I don't have space to use a Kinect.

ObviousScience 11y ago
Just one minor quibble: the reason we have density issues in cities is not that Earth doesn't have enough space for humans to spread out -- even if we only count the nice parts. No, the answer is that we actually seem to enjoy living in really dense clusters and spend a premium on trying to pile more and more people in to the mess. (Well, there's some argument that wealthy people have had an undue influence on the societal process of urbanization, but that's digressing.) Other than that, I actually think that arcades are posed to make a comeback, precisely because of the issue you highlight: the only way to have enough open space in a building (in a major city) to really walk around in requires splitting the rent or being really wealthy.
- m_mueller 11y ago
  I don't think cities form out of enjoyment (although this becomes a factor for many people after a city and its services have already formed). They form because there is some infrastructure or geographical rarity that many people can benefit from, thus they move there. Train stations, harbors, water ways, airports, mines and castles come to mind as a seed. Once people move there, more and more services become available, making the location more and more attractive for employers, people seeking jobs and people seeking apartments. A certain density is optimal for economic productivity, thus cities are usually don't deviate much from that density, except in places where zoning is heavily regulated. East Asia, especially SK and Japan, is a good place to see how cities grow organically.