thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft...r-to-play-with-others-across-lots-of-devices/
So today it looks like Microsoft revealed their Mesh AR (pseudo-VR as well?) headset; there's absolutely no telling when this will be a mass-commercial product or affordable, but I find the existence itself very interesting. It's a continuation of their Hololens technology but, more importantly, I feel it'll be devices like this which represent the true future of VR and, more specifically, AR, into mainstream electronics over the next decade.
For something like gaming in particular, as good as various VR headsets have been (Oculus Rift 2, HTC Vive, etc.) and upcoming ones that are sure to bring some innovations of their own (PSVR2), one of the bigger flaws of these headsets IMHO (which really is more a limitation of current VR as a whole) is that the headsets essentially cut you off from the reality around you. I understand that immersion is their biggest selling point and part of the immersion is to lose yourself in a virtual world, but I'd say we already spend too much time these days "losing ourselves" in virtual worlds as-is, whether it be gaming, social media, Twitch, Youtube, etc.
While, yes, a future of VR & (in this case moreso) AR-centered around devices like Mesh and whatever its contemporaries end up being, does to some level also invite losing oneself into the virtual abyss, at least these type of technologies can allow us to still engage in person-to-person direct contact, and still enjoy simultaneous existence and acknowledgement in the physical world we exist in, using the virtual technology to heighten its presence and add to it, rather than simply needing to trade one for the other. And again, in terms of gaming, this can open up some fantastic design opportunities; when paired with technologies such as the cloud (specifically, services on the cloud that provide real-time data on various global systems such as traffic and weather, or even astrological data), I believe genuinely new and creative types of game design could be tapped into, paired with design templates devs have already mastered through more traditional methods.
So, I guess it's just a long-winded way of me saying that I feel things like Mesh are a glimpse into the fuller future of what truly refined VR & AR technology can do for gaming. Maybe in bits and pieces this gen, but by 10th-gen we could see some really special things. Speaking of 10th-gen, I've been doing a lot of thinking on it in my spare time, lot of back-and-forth discussions etc. I personally think VR/AR, more specifically the type of what we see with something like Mesh (though its implementation alone I would not say is enough; preferably something of a marriage between technologies like Mesh with technologies like PSVR/Oculus/Vive etc. would be best and I think potentially it's doable), will become a cornerstone of standard inclusion with 10th-gen gaming, no longer relegated to simply peripherals that fragment the user-base.
But I'd like to see how others feel about growth of VR & AR over the next several years and what role you think it'll play for 10th-gen systems, if any. In what ways do you think it still needs to grow and improve, etc. Let's talk it up.
