So how did reality stack up against these predictions? A lot of comments in here seem to be implying that this article was overly optimistic, but I don't see any real numbers backing that up.
I do get the feeling that sales fell short of expectations, but is that really true? And by how much?
> I do get the feeling that sales fell short of expectations, but is that really true? And by how much?
No one actually knows at the moment, or rather: The people who know don't tell. There are many rumours flying around (e.g. "Vive was sold around 140k times" based on SteamSpy data) with corresponding dismissal ("We have sold many more than 140k units and are very happy" was HTCs answer) and so on. I think it will take a while until we can say if sales fell short or not. Maybe in a year.
The market for high quality headsets is still small to support high quality VR content, which is expensive to develop. Casual (phone) headsets don't generate much revenue. So it's growing, but not generally profitable. The question is will it grow enough to support a large ecosystem?
High quality VR is simply too expensive right now for anyone but the most hardcore PC gamers due to the requirement for a high end gaming rig in addition to the headset. Facebook and Valve will have to continue subsidizing VR content and developers until they can change this.
Playstation VR hits a decent sweet spot on price/quality IMHO. $350 for a PS4, $100 for a pair of PS Move controllers, $60 for a PS camera, and $400 for the headset. That's a total of $910, but cheaper if you already own some of the components. 36 million homes already had a PS4 as of this past January, so they can cut $350 from that price.
The quality isn't as good as a Vive, but I've been able to play for hours without nausea. I bought an Oculus DK1 shortly after launch and suffered pretty severe nausea within 20 minutes most of the time. I was worried that I might be one of these people who just doesn't have the stomach for VR, but now I suspect it was the lack of head tracking on the DK1.
It really bothers me that VR is segmented between "full featured" and "mobile" as outlined in this report.
Roughly speaking, the extra features needed to bring a high end phone to Occulus/Vive level is 90fps (make it optional to save battery of course) and USB-C video in. The rest of the tracking sensors/LEDs and whatnot can be built into the headset.
Meanwhile you're expected to pay $700 for a phone and $700 for a headset, each of which has about an 70% overlap in the most expensive components.
On top of all that, it sucks that the headsets for full featured VR vary in comfort and design but are hard wired to the displays. Most reviews say Vive is the least comfortable of the batch but the most immersive.
Ideally the head mount would be a separate thing from the display/processor like in the mobile VR space. That would allow you to find the head mount most comfortable for you, and also to upgrade your VR internals while keeping the same head mount for several generations of technology.
So in my ideal world, VR would be a licensed or open standard system like Dolby whatever or THX are for audio. For example, if you bought a phone with the Whizbang VR logo on it, it would work with your Whizbang VR logo head tracking sensors, Whizbang VR logo head mount, Whizbang VR logo controllers, and be compatible with the Whizbang VR software API. But all that stuff could be made by different manufacturers.
> So in my ideal world, VR would be a licensed or open standard system like Dolby whatever or THX are for audio. For example, if you bought a phone with the Whizbang VR logo on it, it would work with your Whizbang VR logo head tracking sensors, Whizbang VR logo head mount, Whizbang VR logo controllers, and be compatible with the Whizbang VR software API. But all that stuff could be made by different manufacturers.
That are exactly the goals of OpenVR and OSVR. Both APIs allow any vendor and any software to communicate with each other. In fact I used a Rift DK2 with razer hydras and leap motion (the driver for the latter being third party). Riftcat and trinus are two examples of third party OpenVR HMD drivers.
You can now buy lighthouse sensors and make and sell devices royalty free (currently with a temporal condition for licensing of attending a seminar).
The reason Vive controllers connect to the HMD instead to a USB dongle or link box is that dev kit users complained the wireless connection was problematic sometimes; But you can use them with a different HMD (through USB) or you can use different controllers with the Vive.
There are limitations at this time with mixing different tracking systems but I think it's reasonable since it's currently unusual, and I'm sure there will be third party solutions for either API when it's not that unusual (in the case Valve themselves don't offer a solution). The Hydra driver already has a calibration step to have it match the HMD.
In a few days Oculus users will be able to access a big library of Vive games using their Touch controllers. But unlike with the Vive and all other vendors, Oculus hardware can only be used with their runtime.
I've had similar thoughts on the subject. Once the hype around consumer VR became palpable, I was amazed at how quickly it segmented and fragmented. Should be interesting to watch the market mature though..
> There are hundreds of millions of gamers on consoles and PCs, and many of them buy hardware accessories to improve their game play. However, the vast majority of the top selling peripherals are $30-50.
They obviously don't focus on PC players. Graphics cards should count as a peripheral and mice and keyboards are above the $50 price point for most PC gamers.
I think that you have a stereotypical hardcore gamer in mind, not the silent majority of people who have 8 games in their Steam library which they play occasionally on their laptops. They may not be that vivid as a stereotype, they don't post on forums, they don't read gaming press - but they are PC gamers, and, most likely, the majority.
> I think that you have a stereotypical hardcore gamer in mind, not the silent majority of people who have 8 games in their Steam library which they play occasionally on their laptops
I think you are making some assumptions. People have been downplaying PC gamers as a minority but we can look at Steam hardware surveys. Also the numbers don't lie when you look at games like league of Legends. League's player count and also the eSport events and viewer counts shows how big this PC player base is. It has been growing year after year.
People have just make assumptions that mom's playing casual games online counts as the majority. BUT the vast majority of casuals moved to mobile years ago. This analysis is just really missing the current picture.
VR gaming is kind of like motion controls. Cool idea that is fun for a bit but can be exhausting for long term use. Best thing for VR right now is consuming media or for short special experiences.
Dedicated video on laptops basically doesn't work for VR unless it is the NVidia 1000 series, or a select few other models, because of power saving features that routed even dedicated video through the igpu and added latency.
Sine I have recently done a literature review on the topic the bullet points for medicine/healthcare and emergency work are a bit thin. Specifically for medicine there are tons and tons of academic publications and it's used for all sorts of training (mostly surgery). Emergency services use it mostly at the squad leading level and for some operational aspects. There are also some police use cases (even though I haven't researched that). I do remember one paper where researchers basically let criminals and students break into virtual houses and steal stuff to understand the process better.
I remain a bit skeptical when it comes to VR outside consumer though (maybe telepresence might be an exception). Most traditional businesses seem to be more interested in AR (for warehousing etc.)
Also, photos are not only much cheaper than VR, deceptive photos are hardly more expensive than honest ones (just don't point the camera to that corner). With VR, there would be an enormous price difference between having a VR presentation and having a VR presentation where your hotel actually looks as good as on the pictures.
Sure, prices for doing this in VR are astronomical compared to photos today (the article mentions this being one of the “commercially insignificant this year” use cases).
But knowing that the required technology, like 360° cameras, spatial mapping and easily “photoshopping” 3D spaces, will become cheaper down the road, it makes sense for hotels to do some pilots to being testing the higher-level applications of this.
This is ofter quite true. However have you read this thing? It's a pretty good balanced analysis. Also I think they anonymise vendor names to avoid promoting one vendor over the other
But if what it's selling you is a good impression of the depth and quality of the author's analysis, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I've not read it in detail, so I can't give any view on that.
Can't press the read more button on mobile. Why is that button there anyway, isn't it pretty obvious that someone who opens the page wants to read the content? More and more websites do this, mainly news sites.
Shambolic website IMO. Large cookie banner at the top. Header comes and goes. Read more button. An attempt to render a PDF I think. Everything that is wrong with the mobile web would be an apt title for this link too.
The stuff on top takes up 200px, 150px if you click away the cookie warning, if you go beyond 1920px in width the "Contact Us" and "Explore Content" boxes (Does anyone ever click on those?) break out of their boundries...
Why is the search box that prominent?
"About Deloitte" and location selection do not have hover css, when everything else does...
If you resize your window the content is replaced with mobile content and the obnoxious "Read More" button appears.
The z-index of the "Contact Us" bar is messed up (It disppears behind the useless "Did you find this useful?" bar)
Those are just some bad things I noticed. Deloitte is not exactly a little IT shack. Their web presence is embarrassing.
I do get the feeling that sales fell short of expectations, but is that really true? And by how much?