Virtual Reality: Whole Lotta Hype - For Now

[gene]

We have no doubt Virtual Reality (VR) will mature into an amazing experience for gamers. Someday, when VR no longer requires total isolation and a face-mask, it might carry the kind of mainstream appeal as home theater when it comes to bringing alternate realities to the masses. Think Star Trek Holodeck. But for now, it's the focus of a lot of hype, a lot of overly-optimistic sales projections and obscene amounts of investment capital for the foreseeable return.

Will it replace home theater? We don't think so.

Read: Virtual Reality: Whole Lotta Hype - For Now

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I think that more in depth explanation why it's so hard to archive HD (or better) resolution for vr, demands it's own article and it's not straightforward as it may seem

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

And as for usage, i agree at home it probably won't be big success, but on long commute I rather disconnect myself and watch TV show on large virtual screen

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Related : https://www.creators.com/read/speed-bump/04/17/201350

 

[j_garcia]

My PSVR can be used to watch movies. It is an interesting function that sort of makes you feel like you are sitting in a theater, without all the other people. Looks like you are watching an IMAX screen.

For gaming it is extremely immersive and adds a lot of atmosphere and sense of immediacy. That said, most games still aren't there yet and I can enjoy most games just as much without it. There are a few that were well designed that are better in VR mode, but most are not.

Though I don't see it as "the next big thing", I do think the tech will continue to propagate and grow and quality hardware is both coming down in size and price, I think it will remain a niche market for quite a while. We do VR demos here regularly at work since the screens are what we do. EVERYONE seems to like it and be excited about it, yet you don't see the average person going out an buying even the cheapest ones. It has a ways to go.

 

[Wayde Robson]

I think that more in depth explanation why it's so hard to archive HD (or better) resolution for vr, demands it's own article and it's not straightforward as it may seem

Do you have any insights into that more in-depth explanation as to why it's so hard to achieve HD or better res in VR? I'm interested in doing a followup that touches on this.

I kind of assume it has to do with strange side-effects of the eye being so close to the monitor. Resolution and distance has a similar relationship as toxicity and dose.

Let me know of any helpful links or even your own insights/opinion.

Thanks

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

http://vrscout.com/news/vr-video-look-soft/
Here's a good explanation, starting from paragraph titled "Resolution"
("Smaller and smaller streams" and "Much bigger is better")
tl;dr: We'd need 5 or 6" lcd screen to have resolution of at least 5760 x 2880 to see noticeable improvement in resolution and my bet we won't see such things outside labs in 2017

 

[TICA]

Agree, a very niche market, software size and quality still in progress, but don't see it anytime as "overtaking" the Hometheater market as its claimed by investors.

 

[j_garcia]

Since most systems are still single user, shared experience would be extremely cost prohibitive for the better systems. At roughly $1k-$1.5k per unit including the system to support it, that definitely isn't going to replace the typical HT anytime soon since I'd say the average household utilizes a system probably closer to one of those units. The pricey units are not wireless, yet another limitation.

 

[Alain Singapore]

One of the aspects that was not mentioned in the article is motion sickness. It can get a lot worse than simulated 3D on a flat screen. This will be putting off many people.

The problem that Oculus and similar headsets solved is the field of vision. It is now wide enough to remove the impression of looking through binoculars that plagued the VR experience a decade ago. The collateral effect with a wide field of view is that it needs a lot more pixels to fill up that space. 8K HD is probably the frontier to break in order to achieve a proper suspension of visual disbelief.

I do not believe in VR theatres. VR is an intimate solitary experience. It is something to do when you are alone.

One barrier to break will be feedback. Audio is nice but you need more sensory feeling. The breakthrough will come from immerging into an isolation cocoon covered by effectors to provide the reactions to your actions unless we manage to get direct neuronal simulation before that step. Real VR will be The Matrix.

VR movies will be even more gimmicky than 3D movies. Movies are stories, stories are being told, are being listen to. It is an act of contemplation and imagination. VR is just the opposite: being part of the action and being shown everything.

VR is all about gaming. And extreme gaming with that. Doom, and Wolfstein 3D before it, has the genome of VR. It takes you there, first person, and you experience the ultimate challenge: death, horrible deaths that keep repeating at an accelerated pace. Meeting cartoonish avatars in cartoonish decors to chitchat is not going to fit the bill, unless it gets you to a new psychedelic level into the next digital Woodstock.

 

[Pogre]

I do not believe in VR theatres. VR is an intimate solitary experience. It is something to do when you are alone.

Give the tech time to get there and people will combine it with doing something else that's usually intimate, solitary and you do alone...

 

[Tao1]

Do you have any insights into that more in-depth explanation as to why it's so hard to achieve HD or better res in VR? I'm interested in doing a followup that touches on this.

I kind of assume it has to do with strange side-effects of the eye being so close to the monitor. Resolution and distance has a similar relationship as toxicity and dose.

Let me know of any helpful links or even your own insights/opinion.

Thanks

VR done properly requires a huge amount of processing power. Using an Occulus Rift or an HTC Vive requires a further expense of $400 or more on a good graphics card to drive it. Realistically though, you are probably looking closer to $600 or more to drive VR properly.

In PC gaming, rendering a game at 4k and at 60+ fps takes a lot of processing power from the video card, and thus is an expensive thing to do. Now take VR where two images need to be rendered (one for each eye), then be at a high resolution and a high frame rate to avoid being motion sick. This effectively makes VR a $1000 investment for the VR unit, + $400-$1000 for a graphics card + a PC which is from the last 3 or so generations of processors.

VR done improperly can make people motion sick due to low frame rates, or low frame times which gives the user a delay in what they see in relation to their head movement which confuses the brain. Essentially there are so many implementations out there trying to get past the hardware 'horsepower' requirements which are not giving people great experiences. That $400+ investment is something for the enthusiast market, so trying to cut that fairly necessary expense out to be compelling to the main stream is a situation set up to fail.



Looking at it a different way:

Enthusiast PC gamers have more needs for features and quality of their monitors. A standard $200 monitor will be a sub par experience probably due to pixel response time alone. In order to get a good high res monitor, with the features desired, the enthusiast will be spending probably $700+ on a monitor. The enthusiast already has the PC and graphics card to run it, therefore I would argue that a $1000 VR rig is competing with monitors for that segment.

However VR is trying to appeal to the mainstream right off the bat, especially when the hardware required for a proper experience is not there for an obtainable price. I think if they had first tried to tap into the enthusiast market, where their product is actually pretty price competitive considering experience/price, they would have a segment to leap frog their products into the mainstream.


Luke Lafreniere of LinusTechTips has been a spokesperson for VR in the PC gaming community. He would be one of the best people to talk about VR:

 

[Wayde Robson]

VR done properly requires a huge amount of processing power. Using an Occulus Rift or an HTC Vive requires a further expense of $400 or more on a good graphics card to drive it. Realistically though, you are probably looking closer to $600 or more to drive VR properly.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply Tao1 and the video. I like LinusTechTips, good site. That's interesting that the vertigo some people get from VR may be exacerbated by the timing being off due to low quality performance. I haven't watched the video yet but I'm about to.

 

[Tao1]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply Tao1 and the video. I like LinusTechTips, good site. That's interesting that the vertigo some people get from VR may be exacerbated by the timing being off due to low quality performance. I haven't watched the video yet but I'm about to.

Hey no problem, although I have to give the credit to Luke and the things he has said over the last couple of years. There are a few more VR related videos on that Youtube channel where he talks about various things. Somewhere he went into more detail about motion sickness and VR, and latency being a cause.