Are VR Headsets the next big thing?

[pcslookout]

What do you think?

 

[zink77]

Nope. Not anytime soon anyway. The reality is you need a killer app to drive it and the problem is it's competing with mobile phones, consoles and PC's that offer a better experience.

I don't see VR becoming popular until there's advances in materials science that can shrink it to the size of sunglasses where the electronics is super small and embedded.

It will largely be a technology for a small minority of early adopters and will be used in industry. The real problem with VR is lag, in the real world processing images have delays. On a computer, mobile phone or console, the lag time is minimal but increases as you want to interact with things.

Virtual objects lets remember are just arrays of values and numbers the computer has to store and process in memory, so more complex objects = more hardware power and more delays.

Everyone forgets the processing power involved in making objects interactive. The promise of VR is basically to interact and modify objects in a virtual environment like our real one but that has serious consequences.

 

[Sgt. York]

I hope not.

 

[Midwayman]

No. Not for the masses anyways. It is really isolating and no matter the fidelity that is a huge problem. Then there is just the problem of the HMD. People don't want to wear a big box on their face. Its part of why 3d TV failed so badly. Having to wear special glasses is a PITA. The biggest chance going forward Is AR. (augmented reality) I think a lot of people would put up with the hassle of wearing something for the day to day usefulness of it.

 

[ImpulsE69]

There are some very good things to be implemented in VR. However, the cost, the 'fake' cheap VR (like PS3, Phones) cheapen the overall take on it into nothing more than a gimmick. Many people don't care about the headset, it is more about the tethering, and what is required for good fidelity. Look at the whole phone thing. People don't care about isolation. It is all about the killer app. If the killer app comes to VR, the masses will accept it. That being said, if it isn't mobile, less people will care about it. They want to be able to still do the 'look at me' every minute of the day.

Thus, most likely it will only ever be niche.