Technology
The state of VR
March 2020 | |^59
last year, while GearVR hasn’t had a
new hardware announcement since- PSVR has remained a constant, a
good metric of how well VR as a whole
is performing, although as the release
of the PlayStation 5 looms, it seems
likely that Sony may take a moment to
evaluate the direction it wants to head
in regarding VR.
John Carmack himself was recently
decorated at the third annual VR
Awards, receiving a lifetime
achievement award for his work
with Oculus. However, during his
acceptance speech, he noted that he
and some of his colleagues “really
haven’t been satisfied with the pace
of progress” with regard to VR
development and expansion. He
also admitted that VR is still an
incredibly niche market, and
remarked that there was a lot of
work “yet to be done” before VR
could properly hit its stride. Since then,
Carmack announced he was standing
down from Oculus to focus on artificial
intelligence projects instead.
As far as we’re concerned, he’s right;
VR seems to be stagnating. Oculus
released the Rift S in early 2019, and a
few months later HTC shot back with
its Vive Cosmos. Both were quality,
high-end headsets, but with more of
a focus on improved hardware specs
than genuine innovation. Improved
camera tracking, higher resolution
screens and so forth. They’re all good
improvements, but useless without
top-notch software to match them.
The biggest change made by the
Vive Cosmos is a reworked headset
design that enables the wearer to
raise the ‘visor’ without removing
the whole headset.
Even Oculus, arguably the progenitor
of the modern VR headset, isn’t
moving rapidly. The Quest and Rift S
aren’t rethinkings of VR, just upgrades
to existing tech; like the PSVR and Vive
Cosmos, they’re not pushing the VR
industry forward in a meaningful way,
even if they are great products. The
problem with VR’s failure to expand
might lie elsewhere, then, perhaps
more on the software side.Blame the games
A common opinion is that VR is lacking
a killer app; that one game or program
that is a genuine game-changer. So far,Virtual origins
Right: The HTC Vive has remained Oculus’s
main competitor in the VR market.EVE: Valkyrie was one of the first major VR titles, demonstrating the power of the hardware.© NINTENDO, CCP GAMES
VR has been kicking about for a while
in various forms. Perhaps the most
memorable precursor to modern VR
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Boy, a table-mounted headset that
demanded you press your eyes into it
to experience wonky stereoscopic 3D
games in all their red-tinted glory. It
was frankly horrible, and a huge
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The Virtual Boy (pictured above)
might be a familiar industry
touchstone, but it wasn’t a true VR
headset; the focus was on headache-
inducing parallax 3D. Sony’s Glasstron
visor was a true predecessor of VR as
we know it today; a proper head-
mounted display that enabled gamers
to take a seat in the cockpit of a war
machine in MechWarrior 2. Sony
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across three years in the ’90s, and
while they weren’t a huge success,
they would set the stage for Sony to
produce PlayStation VR nearly 20
years later.
Some smaller companies tried to
take a stab at VR before the turn of
the century, too, none leaving much
impact. In Britain, IBM-funded
company Virtuality Group
experimented with VR headsets in
arcades, and some have argued that
the arcade is the perfect setting for
VR; a chance to try out games and
experiences in virtual reality, without
having to fork out hundreds of dollars
for the hardware. In fact, modern VR
headsets aren’t an uncommon sight in
arcades today, although the decline of
arcades in general doesn’t bode very
well for that avenue of success.
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history of VR led to Palmer Luckey’s
Oculus Rift prototype in 2012. It was a
fresh start; an effort to revive VR with
the new technology of the day. And it
worked. VR was back with a bang,
ready to enter a new golden age, only
to grind to a halt again as the buzz of
excitement died down, and the harsh
realities set in.