Join us as we take a look at the current state of virtual reality in gaming and beyond. By Christian Guyton
Virtual reality keeps coming back, like a bad smell. Or a nice smell; a pleasing scent of sandalwood for the proponents of VR, as they insist that it’s ‘the future of gaming’ or ‘the next level of immersion’. Some are completely sceptical, while others think VR just hasn’t quite hit its stride yet. There are applications beyond gaming, too, with virtual reality headsets now being used in medical and architectural fields.
The problem is that there have already been a few ‘futures of gaming’. First it was webcam body-tracking, then it was motion controls, then it was touchscreens, then it was motion controls again, then it was, uh, figurines with NFC chips in them? Yeah, we don’t know what was going on at Nintendo when it dreamed up the Amiibo, but the point is that gimmicks have been a part of gaming for a long time, and most of these fads have eventually fallen apart. Virtual reality has stuck around for longer than most, with the industry currently in its third ‘phase’ of VR products. The technology is improving significantly, too, with newer headsets, such as the Vive Cosmos and Oculus Rift S, claiming to offer superior motion tracking, graphical fidelity and immersion. The amount of money being poured into VR projects has certainly risen in recent years, with even Facebook swooping in to buy up big VR business Oculus for a staggering $2.3 billion in 2014.
Where is VR heading, though? Examining the history of the industry demonstrates a lack of innovation since the initial introduction of modern VR headsets. While the hardware has improved, the way VR works hasn’t really developed, and there’s yet to be a killer app that makes VR headsets a must-have product. So, we’re left asking: What’s next for virtual reality?
VR technology has been around since the ’90s, with the earliest commercial attempt being Sega’s brief demonstration at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1993, which was then canned before release. A few other manufacturers took a shot, most notably Sony, but the technology wasn’t quite there yet. The experience was fraught with latency issues and tunnel vision, and while it was a hopeful portent of things to come, most gamers weren’t exactly blown away.
Fast-forward a couple of decades, and we find ourselves in the mystical, futuristic land of 2012. Plucky tech startup Oculus began a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund its advanced, high-end Rift VR headset, designed by Palmer Luckey, with the support of id Software co-founder John Carmack, a big proponent of VR. The fundraising campaign was massively successful, raising more than 10 times the original goal of $250,000. The finished product was released to consumers in 2016, and was immediately popular, although the initial retail price of over £500 meant sales were hardly through the roof.
