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[vermadas]

RoadToVR article on the VRLA 2017 keynote by Unity CEO John Riccitiello.

About a year ago I put this slide up [above]. And it’s not for lack of enthusiasm for the AR and VR world that I own the white line and the industry forecasters own the red line. One of the challenges I think we’re risking right now is so much enthusiasm that’s out there in the marketplace has people forecasting crazy stuff that’s going to happen so near-term that it’s virtually not believable. One of the forecasts I read recently said that the VR/AR marketplace is going to be $164 billion three years from today. Now… the entire game industry, hardware and software—including the juggernaut that is China—is only two-thirds that size, after most of my lifetime building to that point. Now I’m not suggesting [AR/VR] isn’t going to get to $164 billion and then $264 billion, and then $364 billion; I think ultimately the world of AR and VR, the world of 3D compute, is ultimately going to be as big as the internet—it’s going to be trillions, but we’re not there yet, and we have to measure ourselves. So if you look at the shape of my line there, through at least 2022 or thereabouts, I’m a little under the industry forecast. So if you happen to be an industry analyst, and if they show up to events like this, look… I think it hurts us to the degree at which people write articles for the major press and say that our industry is underperforming […] and we should write this off. It is going to work. It’s just not going to work in the timeframe that we like to talk about.

It's tiring to read all the doom and gloom posts surrounding VR on GAF recently. It's consumer tech in its infancy and it will take time before it truly takes off.

 

[cakefoo]

Since before consumer VR was a thing, even people poised to profit off VR like Riccitiello, Luckey, etc have voluntarily expressed that VR has a long, humble road ahead of itself.

In other words, get used to taking "Told ya VR would be a failure like 3D" comments in stride. If technology prevails, we'll have the last "told ya so."

 

[Ruud_Luiten]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

 

[perfectchaos007]

Since before consumer VR was a thing, even people poised to profit off VR like Riccitiello, Luckey, etc have voluntarily expressed that VR has a long, humble road ahead of itself.

In other words, get used to taking "Told ya VR would be a failure like 3D" comments in stride. If technology prevails, we'll have the last "told ya so."

Don't look at me I've been saying VR would be a hit since I bought my Virtual Boy in 95. Us Virtual Boy stans have been saying VR is the furture for more than 2 decades and in about 5 years we'll finally get the recognition we and Gunpei Yokoi deserve. I played the hell out of Wario Land as a child

 

[Mr Swine]

Give it 5-10 years so the tech matures a bit more than now at a cheap price point and then I think it has a future

 

[Ionic]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

At least this wasn't first post.

I'm glad to see recent developments in wireless and eye tracking tech coming to light. That's stuff I expected to see in five years not... one. Would certainly be interesting to see a future where due to performance savings from foveated rendering, VR games able to have far greater graphical fidelity than standard screen games. Just got to get some super high pixel density screens in these things too. I think it will just get harder and harder for people to ignore what the medium can do.

 

[ArtHands]

Mark Zuckerberg said he is guessing it will take 10 years. We just started year 2

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...ars-for-virtual-reality-to-reach-mass-market/

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

Also get used to more posts like these along the way as VR mature

 

[12Dannu123]

In terms of PC VR. Let's be honest it'll always be a very tiny niche.

The future of VR/AR is Mobile/standalone HMDs.

The only companies that have a platform that is mobile or standalone is Google, Microsoft, Apple and Oculus, any other competitor is either a tiny niche or will wither away.

 

[Champion]

Mark Zuckerberg said he is guessing it will take 10 years. We just started year 2

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...ars-for-virtual-reality-to-reach-mass-market/

“I honestly don’t know how long it will take,” he said. “It could be five years, it could be 10 years, it could be 15 or 20. My guess is that it will be at least 10.”

You cant be serious...

 

[sneas78]

Don't look at me I've been saying VR would be a hit since I bought my Virtual Boy in 95. Us Virtual Boy stans have been saying VR is the furture for more than 2 decades and in about 5 years we'll finally get the recognition we and Gunpei Yokoi deserve. I played the hell out of Wario Land as a child

Same. Amen!

 

[Doomshroom]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

thats not true i care cant wait for farpoint and startrek. Also hoping for some awsome VR games at E3.

 

[KHlover]

I'm sure it'll become a 100 billion market...in enterprise. Consumer market? ehhh

 

[sirap]

I've said this way back in the DK1 days, but gaming is the end all and be all of gaming. It's just the most obvious/flashy choice. Social is one step above that, but the real meat of VR imo will be in education and industrial applications.

VR is still in its teething stage, but look at how far it's come since DK1 was first announced. We're already getting wireless, and folks are coming up with some pretty ingenious solutions to finger tracking and haptic feedback.

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

Glad we got that out of the way /s

 

[dark10x]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

Why even make a 3D comparison? That doesn't make sense. 3D was just a different method for viewing the same content on a flat screen. VR inherently offers new ways to play, interact with and experience things. They are in no way comparable.

 

[massoluk]

They just need to have more support from the porn industry

 

[Trace]

Why even make a 3D comparison? That doesn't make sense. 3D was just a different method for viewing the same content on a flat screen. VR inherently offers new ways to play, interact with and experience things. They are in no way comparable.

Maybe he's never tried VR before and just wants to drop his hot take on the newest and flashiest stuff?

Personally while mindblowing VR isn't quite there yet, I'd have to be a moron to not say that the potentials are absolutely insane. Social VR with roomscale will be insane once it becomes wireless + cheaper.

 

[Spyder_Monkey]

VR's not going to take off, been saying this for years.
-Too expensive
-Splits the market
-Software isn't there
-Very few major game developers are taking it seriously.

This is another case of tech companies looking as sci-fi movies to try to find the next big thing like what Apple did with the iPhone.

 

[120v]

there's advancements in VR every day pretty much. love my rift but we're definitely in the stone age as far as consumer VR goes... as long as the bill can be footed as a loss leader it should be fine

 

[sneas78]

I honestly believe the screen that gives us VR has to go. We need a different way to project 3D objects. Can one project a 3D object using vapor? ... call me crazy.

 

[Phife Dawg]

AR and VR as big as the internet? Yeah, good luck with that John.

 

[spekkeh]

The tech is too cool for me to make any definitive statements. And Valve together with Unity and Unreal have been making major strides to make it easy to develop for (theres a bug in the Unity code that needs urgent fixing though). But we should also be mindful that a lot of sci-fi never panned out, and not because it was technically impossible.

(That dinner scene had a hint of dystopian satire for a reason)

As long as VR constricts your view, I can never really see it take off in the mainstream. I think we have to wait until a decent mixed reality solution.

 

[Lakuza]

I only have the gear vr at the moment (still waiting on more games to come out on psvr that I am interested in before investing so much) and the potential is massive. I always enjoy showing it to people that have never tried vr before however theres definately issues for long term use with the catalogue of games being weak.

As of now, it feels like 90% of the gear vr store are poorly done shovelware type experiences/games/apps. There doesnt seem to be much interest shown from bigger companies atleast on the gear vr. But from what I've seen of the other headsets, there seems to be a lot of similar looking / playing games (too many stand still arena shooters).

Add to that the high price. My pc is vr ready but I can't justify paying so much for the headsets yet without software motivation. I'm assuming theres a ton of people in the same boat as me which explains the risk involved for bigger companies so I agree that VR isn't going to become a mainstream success at a consistently rising pace but it will get there eventually and I will be there to get one once it gets closer to that point.

 

[big_z]

Why even make a 3D comparison? That doesn't make sense. 3D was just a different method for viewing the same content on a flat screen. VR inherently offers new ways to play, interact with and experience things. They are in no way comparable.

I think he meant it as the next gimmick companies were hoping would be a major cash cow. At home 3D was a poor experience and VR isn't viable either. It just isn't ready for the consumer market. There is a future for VR but we're not quite there yet.

Mark Zuckerberg said he is guessing it will take 10 years. We just started year 2

I think even that is a bit optimistic. Anyone without deep pockets investing in VR now is going to be hurting.

 

[ramparter]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

This is the equivalent of someone playing 24/7 world of warcraft and be like "lol why there are other games out there, I don't see the point"

 

[ScientificPizza]

In other words, get used to taking "Told ya VR would be a failure like 3D" comments in stride. If technology prevails, we'll have the last "told ya so."

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

.

 

[Rickenslacker]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

Not even close.

 

[Atheerios]

Yes, VR will get huge someday. But not now, we still don't have the technology needed for mass appeal.

I don't even think it will happen this decade.

 

[CEJames]

VR's not going to take off, been saying this for years.
-Too expensive
-Splits the market
-Software isn't there
-Very few major game developers are taking it seriously.

1) Ok... It can stand to come down a couple of hundreds.
2) And? Variety is the spice of life. What's wrong with it?
3) Subjective. Opinion. Don't state it as a fact. Some people find the software "very there and interesting" even as early as it is.
4) Huh? Seems to be on a similar playing field as even the Xbox & PS4 at the moment.

 

[Sparrowhawk]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

I want it at home, but not at the current price.

 

[- J - D -]

Mobile is the future. The likes of Samsung (and others) trying to brute force this fledgling platform into attaching is to me the most realistic hope for the future of this tech. Well, I'd say that more comfortable if people were actually buying software on it.

 

[always crazy bacon]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

It's not living room / social tech yet, it will sit in gamers bedrooms next to their powerful gaming rigs quite happily. It took a long time for the PC and consoles to be accepted in the living room. I question if they were really accepted or gamers grew up and had families of their own and could decide to put the gaming device in the living room.

 

[U-R]

Accepting that a technology that sounds good on paper but it's in practice impossible to sell to the non-enthusiast consumer takes a ridiculous amount of effort, ability to disconnect from your local tech-bubble, and self restraint: especially if you are a creative person and you sank a ton of hours of research and thousands of dollars in.

And thus we enter in the "next year is the year of desktop linux" stage of denial, except replace 'year' with 'decade'.

PS: I still think VR has a bright future/present, just not in gaming and with normal house uses.

 

[Kiriku]

Yeah, VR is way too expensive right now, no matter how you justify the pricepoint. And from what I've played still got some ways (years) to go before it's truly there from a technical point of view.
As a sidenote, it's always weird listening to gaming podcasts where they talk about VR on a regular basis when the number of people who has even experienced VR, much less owns a VR headset, is incredibly small. Like stepping into an alternate reality where VR is a widespread thing or something.
Still, I really hope it survives long enough to become a success, either as VR or AR (or both). And not neccessarily in gaming.

 

[Poster#1]

That chart tell me VR came out 7 years too early.

 

[ChazGW7]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

Completely false. The fact you feel like you can compare the two shows your lack of insight on VR.

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

 

[ZehDon]

... And thus we enter in the "next year is the year of desktop linux" stage of denial, except replace year with decade.

Not really. Linux is a competitor to an aggressively monopolistic product that is the widely accepted standard in both enterprise and personal computing spaces. VR has no competitor; the only bridge between it and adoption are the limitations inherent to the current iterations of the platform. The concept has been proofed, now it needs to be perfected.

At this point, mainstream adoption of VR is largely an inevitability, given how disconnected ubiquitous technology has already made the mainstream consumer. Spending a good amount of cash to strap a visor to your head, pick up weird controllers, just to play low resolution shooting galleries? Sure, that takes a special kind of enthusiast. Spending a hundred bucks to put on glasses to freely explore the solar system in ultra high definition, feel like you've got front row seats to the biggest concert of the decade, or be immersed in the next big cinematic experience? That's an easy sell. The delta is simply iteration time.

I jumped into VR with the PSVR for a few reasons, but the biggest was simply so that I could say "I was there". When it's outlived its usefulness, my PSVR gets packed neatly away into its perfectly preserved box, kept safe and secure. It's a piece of history - the first in a new wave of technology. It's like looking back and thinking "Man, I wish I owned a NES" or better yet, one of the first models of television sets. Anyone expecting Wii-levels of phenomenon were kidding themselves.

 

[Auto-Reply]

That chart tell me VR came out 7 years too early.

Not for me it didn't, I'm not getting any younger lol. I'm having the time of my life with VR rigth now!

 

[ArtHands]

In terms of PC VR. Let's be honest it'll always be a very tiny niche.

The future of VR/AR is Mobile/standalone HMDs.

The only companies that have a platform that is mobile or standalone is Google, Microsoft, Apple and Oculus, any other competitor is either a tiny niche or will wither away.

HTC has got their mobile plan too but you are mostly right. A standalone VR means it is not going to rely on PC/mobile, and in order to do that, it will need to have needed mobile components (eg on board GPU, internal storage). I have the same prediction as Mark Zuckerberg's that it will take a decade for that to happen at a consumer price range.

Over the decade, VR will introduce more components and diminish the reliance on PC/smartphone, so the cost barrier of PC/smartphone will reduce, while the headset price remain mostly the same. By year 7 or 8 you will only need a low end $400 potato masher/smartphone to power (wirelessly) a high end inside-out tracking VR. By year 10 I guess a proper standalone high end VR that cost $300 will exist.

Oculus has showed off Santa Cruz prototype. Hopefully we will reach there by year 7. Powering a VR headset wirelessly with a PC and eye tracking should be rather common within 4 years.

You cant be serious...

Is it too fast or too slow for you?

 

[Firenze1]

Nobody cares anymore... this is the next 3D movies kinda thing.

People just don't want it... at home

I agree with this. VR isn't here to get mainstream.

 

[Trace]

That chart tell me VR came out 7 years too early.

A product needs to exist for it to be developed and iterated on. The Galaxy S8 didn't just pop into existence, they made thousands of phones before it.

And the original G1 was a piece of shit compared to everything made since.

 

[Stiflers Mom]

I always laughed about all the VR stuff I tried, Gear VR, Oculus, etc.

Until I tried a Vive and was able to walk around in this virtual world. That really wowed me and I would love to have this thing at home for recreational purposes.

But honestly, I don't see any really good application for gaming in this, that I wouldn't prefer playing on a normal TV sitting on my couch with a dualshock.

 

[Team Filler]

I think Erlich says it best about VR hype for the next couple years.

 

[Dr. Black Jack]

VR will feel quaint when real deal persistent AR takes over, and everyone who spent thousands on a dumbass isolation goggle setup will look even dumber than they do using it now.

 

[digdug2k]

I love watching people who were convinced VR was going to be "the next big thing" try to pretend they werent delusional. Just admit it. You were wrong. It's fine. I love my Wii U but the thing failed. It's fine.

 

[Ionic]

VR will feel quaint when real deal persistent AR takes over, and everyone who spent thousands on a dumbass isolation goggle setup will look even dumber than they do using it now.

Kinda like saying people are idiots for buying Super Nintendo when there's a PS4 coming out eventually.

 

[Yukinari]

Kinda like saying people are idiots for buying Super Nintendo when there's a PS4 coming out eventually.

If VR had the library of the SNES id buy one immediately.

 

[Cipherr]

RoadToVR article on the VRLA 2017 keynote by Unity CEO John Riccitiello.



It's tiring to read all the doom and gloom posts surrounding VR on GAF recently. It's consumer tech in its infancy and it will take time before it truly takes off.

You do realize that this is just the return swing of the pendulum right? Im not sure if you were here or not, but VR enthusiast were absolutely OBNOXIOUS in literally every thread about the tech. Lord have mercy... any time any one of us got to try it and wasn't completely blown away, we were luddites who were "probably lying about having tried it anyway". VR was going to lay waste to everything and grow at an astronomical pace that would put smartphone gaming to shame, and any claiming otherwise was just nonsense.

I can appreciate enthusiasm, but DAMN. I always knew if things cooled off even a little bit, the blowback was going to be extreme.

 

[Kurt]

Agree when holograms are possible.

 

[Occam]

The problem, as with everything in this world is that there are so many ignorant people, eg. post #2. In 1983 he would probably have said the same about video games.

VR will eventually succeed, it's just a matter of time.