I would like one or maybe the VIVE, will wait for reviews of both first. My main concern is that there are no games I would want to play. I have looked at Eve Valk and it looks boring to me.
This article has me concerned:
http://tmi.kotaku.com/i-think-im-getting-bored-of-virtual-reality-1591731928
I was interested in watching movies but I heard that isn't that great either. I will wait for some thorough reviews and to see what happens with games first. I would love VR and I will pay, but I need there to be some games for me. Most of the stuff I play now would not work in VR.
I think that article has a lot of good points, especially this one:
That was my big takeaway as I strolled through the no-longer-hallowed halls of virtual reality: I needed more. When these thingsOculus Rift, Sony's Morpheus, whatever else is announced by thenlaunch, the wow factor won't last. Not for long, anyway. In truth, I really don't think it'll even be enough to get many people in the door. Oculus wants to drive down the price as much as possibleand that's good!but there's still the matter of convenience, of choosing between strapping on a hot, claustrophobic mask for hours versus just, you know, playing a video game.
While I am excited for it, I do recognize it is somewhat of a niche product:
1. You can't share it; you have to play solo. You can sit next to someone else with a second Rift, but...eh. It's not like sitting down in your living room with your family & friends to play a game or watch a movie.
2. As the author mentioned, you are strapped into a large, hot, claustrophobic mask for hours versus simply turning on your TV or projector. This isn't going to be appealing to everyone. Down the road, they will fix these issues...eventually it will be a thin, lightweight, wireless headset...but not for many years.
3. Particularly without accessories, I do think people will get used to the effect & get bored. They are really going to have to work hard to do things in games to amp up the VR experience so that it stays fun & relevant and doesn't just because a beautiful, expensive gimmick.
The primary reason I want to get into VR is to make exercise less boring. I bought a VR exercise bike & I'm really curious to see if (1) playing a game controlled by an exercise machine in (2) an immersive environment will have the psychological effect of making exercise more fun by creating such a powerful distraction that I don't dread doing it every day. I feel the best when I do at least thirty minutes of cardio a day (really 45 minutes), but I have to fight myself to do it a lot, especially when I'm tired. The best setup I've done is by putting my exercise machine in front of the TV with Netflix, but because the TV doesn't turn off when I stop working out, it's easy to veg instead of work. With the VirZoom, for example, you have to pedal to go faster in the car racing game, so you can't just be a loaf. I can see a lot of interesting things down the road, like customized HIIT programs tied into competitive games like that, so you get sucked in easier.
Honestly, I don't know if VR will ever truly take off like they want it to. I am personally overly excited about it, but that doesn't mean it's going to be wildly successfully. 2016 marks the year it becomes readily available to consumers, but all of the headsets are hefty, tethered to the source player, and require expensive devices to run, so they're not exactly 100% accessible to everyone in the way that say consoles & flat-screen televisions are. But, they'll get better over time...what remains to be seen is if they can stay relevant long enough & add enough to the user experience to grow.
I think horror is a great genre for VR, for both games & movies. Flying solo with an enclosed headset gives you a lot of opportunities to all kinds of great scares. I think the hardest thing for content creators to break into will be filmmaking. My buddies in the filmmaking world who are experimenting with 360 3D VR camera rigs are running into a lot of issues...you have to hide the tripod (or drone, or whatever mounting system you use), make sure everyone who isn't in the film is out of the shot, yet still light people effectively & monitor their performance, etc. It's doable, but it's not cheap and it's not nearly as straightforward as simply shooting with a standard camera or even 3D camera setup. Nokia has a pretty neat $60k rig that is highlighting the future of VR movies:
https://ozo.nokia.com/
Things like the Walking Dead would be insane, or LOTR. It takes a lot more planning because you're not controlling the shot in terms of where the viewer is looking...you have to provide cues for the main action as well as interesting stuff to watch if the viewer is looking somewhere else. There's also various possibilities in watching 2D films on a big virtual screen, 3D films on kind of a 2D virtual plane, and partial VR films, because I don't imagine you're going to want to spin around 180 degrees on your couch just because something is filmed in a 360 bubble. I'd imagine what they'll settle down on eventually will be like a half-sphere video setup where they can mostly control your POV & FOV, but you can still look around and get that 3D VR effect, but you won't have to move around too much in your chair. It will be interesting to see what actually ends up working over the long term.
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