Will VR be a fad?

Merlin5

Merlin5

Merlin5

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I'm excited about VR and looking forward to receiving my Gear VR in a couple of weeks. A gamer friend said it's a fad and too expensive, it won't do well. I remember playing a bit of Skyrim on my 3D monitor years ago, it looked great. But I don't know if many gamers have bothered with 3D gaming.

My question is, who strongly believes that VR will be a massive success, and who thinks there'll be shelves of headsets crying from their dust coated lenses, watching their owners reverting back to the pick up n play simplicity of 2D games?

VR, here today gone tomorrow?
VR, here to stay .... beg, steal or borrow?
 
Smart phone companies, Facebook and console devs i.e Playstation have bought into it. Here to stay

The Oculus Dev kit 2 was a good gadget and great fun to test VR games. It wasnt perfect but tech is still pretty new. Give it a few years and it will be incredible - I was very impressed with driving games and the overall quality for the low (ish) cost - ~£280
 
I think VR is here to stay, especially among the PC gaming community, however I anticipate support will be lacking in a lot of games for the next 3 years, even with support from all the biggest game engines. I'm personally excited to try VR and certainly think that for some games - Star Citizen for example - I wouldn't go back to 2D gaming. I'd hazard a guess that VR headsets will become about as common to own as high end GPUs amongst the PC gaming community within 4 years.
 
Think there's too much money invested for it to be a fad.

Once some real "full size" dedicated VR games start coming out for it and the headsets themselves get smaller/cheaper I think its popularity will soon ramp up.
 
I don't think so at all. Even though its come and gone in the past - I'd put my bets on it's here to stay now.

At least I hope so with the £750 I've invested!
 
Not at this point, no. I can see why the previous iterations were fads, it just was never consumer ready, no matter how much they tried to push it. Too expensive, performance wasn't really there, it just wasn't that good.

Now there is too much money invested from many companies, the content is being made, and it can be made by the community, not just big companies. Even though it's expensive for the majority, it's still affordable to an extent, and within a month there will be 10's of thousands of headsets in homes around the world.
 
Can't see it becoming the standard for some games but the potential for others is interesting - would be pretty epic if you could for instance create a green screened physical cockpit and have it automatically composited into the VR for vehicle based games so you could see your actual controls, body and maybe chair but everything else VR.
 
Don't know about fad, but I think many will collect dust as people realize that wearing something like that over your eyes isn't really possible for more than a few minutes at a time, in your average household. There's phonecalls, texts, other occupants calling for attention (kids etc), your dog and so on. In my case, this is why I'm personally not going to bother. I know it wouldn't be feasible for me and would be a waste of money for how often I'd be able to use it. With monitor gaming, I can quickly answer someone's question, see what they want to show me, and quickly turn back to gaming. Can also see Skype etc messages coming in at the same time. With a VR headset I couldn't do that. Pause game (impossible on multiplayer), remove headset, restart. Possible further interruption a few minutes later.

I think it will grow more into a content-creation type of thing, for professionals. And for education (probably will help focus).
 
But 3D TV probably had a ton of money invested in it and there's probably thousands of sets in houses, and now where is it. Samsung have dropped it. Playing devil's advocate, but couldn't this headstone soon say VR?

Capture.jpg



At the end of the day, however ingenious new tech is, people want simplicity. Putting 3D glasses on or a headset isn't particularly convenient or comfortable to many people as just watching TV or picking up a game controller without faffing around with the accessories.
 
Merlin5 said:
But 3D TV probably had a ton of money invested in it and there's probably thousands of sets in houses, and now where is it. Samsung have dropped it. Playing devil's advocate, but couldn't this headstone soon say VR?

http://s16.postimg.org/mny686ec5/Capture.jpg[IMG]


At the end of the day, however ingenious new tech is, people want simplicity. Putting 3D glasses on or a headset isn't particularly convenient or comfortable to many people as just watching TV or picking up a game controller without faffing around with the accessories.[/QUOTE]

There are probably a lot of 3DTV's around because they were produced in such a way that buying a TV around that time, you'd be hard pressed to get one that didn't have the 3D technology built in. I own one of them, used the 3D aspect a handful of times, but it was never immersive at all. I wear glasses and it was pretty much impossible to wear the 3D glasses on top of my normal glasses, so that was a major factor.

I don't think I ever saw any reviews that showed 3D TV to be that awesome either, although I've not really looked. But you can go on YouTube now and just see how many people are finding VR massively immersive for so many things, learning, gaming, experiences. That's where I think it has a major advantage.
Click to expand...
 
This 3D TV analogy is very myopic.

One the one hand you have a trashy gimmick that was forced upon consumers by marketing departments, and on the other you have (imo) the biggest leap in media consumption since the TV was invented.

The two are incomparable, and if VR somehow fails then it won't be because it was a gimmick.
 
Viable long term, VR will change the world just like the smart phone has done recently. Just how TV did back in the 50s. People that have not yet used a full VR system based on the rift or vive have no concept of just how game changing it really is.
 
Won't be a fad. Smartphone, tablet sales/development have all (or will) plateau and VR is the next big thing. In 5 years time, most households will have some type of VR device.

IMO it can't be compared to 3DTV in any way. An absolute gamechanger for me.
 
Some implementations will thrive, gaming for example. Though not liked by some (including me in a lot of cases) it's going to work great for a lot of games for a lot of people.

However, VR is starting to be used in retail to sell products, i don't see this staying.
Movies i'm not sure on either.

It's still very much in it's infancy, so time will tell.
 
I don't believe it is just a fad, but I have to say the arguments put forward in this thread are very poor.

Not being a fad because it's a 'gamechanger' could have been said about 3D TV, similarly to the amount of money sunk into the tech. You really need to explain why. For example, 3D TVs allowed you to watch very similar content but with added depth perception, whereas VR is designed to allow new types of content to be created and consumed.

Personally, I feel VR will succeed not because of games. Games are entertainment and not the main choice for entertainment in society anyway., But the professional reasons to develop VR further will mean it has true staying power, at least to keep it alive until literally we all have one.

Then again, Who's to say that augmented reality is the proper next leap and this is a stop gap?
 
I think that 3D TVs failed because watching films is a social thing for many, and having to put glasses on to watch it was a faff that people weren't willing to suffer for the 3D effect. If it had been 3D without glasses then I think it might have succeeded.

Gaming is very much a solo pursuit for many people. They lock themselves away in a room and game. The VR devices - while a faff to put on - provide new options and enhance the gaming experience in ways far beyond simple 3D depth. The headset doesn't detract from the social elements as they largely happen online rather than sitting next to eachother.

I think it comes down to hassle at the end of the day. 3D TV was a small hassle for a very small benefit. VR is a bigger hassle for an enormous gain in immersion.

VR isn't going to take off in a big way though until you can buy a good headset for a small amount of money and connect it to a basic PC and get a good experience. This is going to take time.
 
Here to stay and it'll only get better and better. I can't wait until there's a decent one that's a better price. The Rift is probably worth £500, but I wouldn't use it enough to warrant that cost. Maybe some time in the future when most games support it then it'll be worth that price for me, but not quite yet.
 
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