Until we have the technology, VR will always be a fad. Most people think of the previous implementations of VR from the 90s, but we've had it ebb and flow a bit since then. Since then we've had the Virtual Boy, 3D shutter glasses, polarized light 3D, the Nintendo 3DS, nVidia 3DVision, and now this. There's going to always be someone chasing that white whale.
There are also fundamental issues with certain aspects of 3D. If we build 3D games like we're looking into a diorama, then we have nothing to worry about; the brain is easily able to accept is as a mini environment that just extends what our monitors are doing. If we try to insert ourselves into that diorama, we'll have issues with the way our inner ear balance tries to perceive the world. The nausea isn't just from motion sickness, it's the disconnect between what our eyes see and our body is telling us; however if we were to somehow get our brain to re-learn that, I fear we won't be able to walk due to needing to relearn that disconnect.
Then there is the whole depth-of-focus which needs to be implemented correctly. With anything shot with a camera, we're seeing things out of focus as 'blurry', whereas the human eye doesn't see them as blurry. We just get a sense of double-vision on anything that's truly out-of-focus (see: Magic Eye posters from yesteryear for exploiting this).
Despite having eye tracking software and hardware now readily available (and fairly cheap), we still haven't implemented it correctly. We can use eye tracking to simulate true depth-of-focus, and coupling it with VR would at least allow us to see what it would be like to truly replicate what exists (If the eye looks at something distant, do the double vision thing for other items and adjust as the eye focuses on other parts).
I feel VR will have its place, but I also feel that AR will dominate the market far more than VR. I'd love to play war games on a tabletop, personally.Flatfingers wrote:Personally, I suspect that if virtualization does go consumer-grade, it won't be VR -- putting the self into a virtual world -- but rather AR: putting virtual things into the real world.
You mean something like this or Facebook's $200 device that's supposed to be out 'soon'?Hyperion wrote:I think that if/when you see good quality headsets in the $200-300 range, it won't be a product looking for a market. But I also don't see that happening until about 2020 or later.
Either way, I think each technology or combinations of technologies always leads to other technology that gets created/discovered. For example, even if VR doesn't take off from here, we've been pouring lots of money into finding a way for extremely low-latency. We've also been pouring a lot of money into wireless HDMI as well. So no matter what, we'll walk away with technology that can be used elsewhere.