Ignoring the stupid 'lack of white guys at Microsoft' sub-thread here.
Consumer AR is probably a good 3 years off before becoming anything close to mainstream. There is a reason that this came out during Microsoft Ignite, their vision for AR is still business focused.
In terms of VR support of xbox series console, I think they will just enable and certify Windows Mixed Reality headsets and users will probably have a choice, maybe that's a hope though.
Seems like a good guess; they already partner with Samsung on providing Xcloud on IoT televisions, and Samsung makes their own VR headset so I can see that getting compatibility in the future.
What would be particularly beneficial though is if Microsoft could work out a deal with one of these companies (again, most likely Samsung going by prior history) and provide the headset as a bundle with a system at a decent price. Could help drive adoption rates for it in the ecosystem.
Lol I know PlayStation's doing some big things with VR, haven't heard or seen much on their AR plans though. I did a little more reading into this Mesh stuff and it apparently IS a platform powered through cloud for other VR & AR headsets, including Microsoft's own stuff. It's meant to be hardware-agnostic so that VR/AR code written for the platform can run on any compatible device.
There is at least one such solution already available IIRC, but Mesh would have Microsoft's financial backing (and since this is a big boon for their services and business side, that's a lot of money backing it) and also be powered through the Azure cloud services and hardware. That's the most interesting part IMHO.
Technically speaking, this kind of means that if by some chance through a set of circumstances in the future, Sony's PSVR/PSVR2 headsets could also be Mesh-compatible. Maybe PSVR2 already is, using it as a backend platform to power it for online connectivity. This wouldn't mean PSVR2'd be compatible with Series systems, just that it would be using Mesh as a cloud infrastructure for PS5 games with VR support.
AR has about as much potential for gaming as motion controls. Seriously, how many Pokemon go do you need?
VR on the other hand, I don't see myself having much use for it, but I can see it being used by a sizeable amount of people for a great variety of games...
I don't quite see it that way honestly. VR is certainly beneficial but it on its own has limitations. I definitely want engrossment in virtual worlds but mixed virtual engrossment with a physical world that can act as seamless feedback will always be superior.
Just picture a future where a game can generate VR objects superimposed through physical items in the real world, using actual location data (dimensions, air moisture, elevation levels, etc.) to ensure mapping accuracy, all of that being powered through cloud servers and satellite systems. So if you're going to some building, wearing some mixed reality headset, you can actually see a different visual interpretation of that building in real-time as you walk around, based on the game's code.
This is part of the reason why, even though Stadia has been a complete failure, there are SOME aspects of it that actually are very foward-thinking. I think with a better service and ecosystem, and a more serious company or group of companies behind it, this kind of thing could become a reality maybe within the next decade. Preferably I'd like to see Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo establish some kind of consortium alliance to push this forward because the amount of sheer talent and resources needed to make it work, would require more than any single one of them could provide.
Microsoft of course has the financial power and industry/governmental partnerships to make it work plus Azure cloud platform. Sony has the gaming-orientated software resource teams that can provide a lot of the creative backbone for gaming applications (the ICE teams, etc.) plus a lot of media connections and resources that can be leveraged for producing some of the content. Meanwhile, Nintendo has the experience with handheld and portable system designs that are proven to work, and a great wealth of IP like Mario and Pokemon that can be used to creatively explore this type of stuff (we already see it with the Pokemon Go! demo someone posted earlier in the thread).
That's why I think you'd need a consortium alliance between them to help make this happen. Now, that wouldn't necessarily mean they stop making their own console hardware with their own software ecosystems; it'd just mean that for enabling this type of future mixed reality gaming to its peak potential, the three of them (and maybe other companies like Samsung, HTC etc....I don't think the MASSIVE tech giants like Google or Tencent would fit into this because of Microsoft's presence so they'd probably set up their own equivalent type of system) would pool their strengths and resources towards making it happen.
AR would still be behind the curve with regard to VR headsets because all of the them already have external facing cameras and could do some form of AR right? Even if the Hololens is far ahead the competition with regard to AR the value proposition is even more questionable with that perspective. The Hololens would do one thing much better at an extreme cost but every other headset could conceivably do the same things.
This is a good point, actually. I dunno how good the cameras in VR headsets are, though. Also I don't think any VR headsets or content in particular, leverages the camera to stream a feed that's projected back through the lenses of the headset with VR content mixed in.
To do that I picture you'd need extremely low latency, somehow being able to capture the feed through the camera and stream it back to the system and then the system process the stream and resend it back through the headset. But I'm thinking about this in terms of something that can best mix AR and VR together, so that the stream of the live feed captured through the headset camera is actually processed through the system and the game and virtual objects can be mixed in all of that treated as a single framebuffer that's then streamed back to the headset to display through the lenses.
Would probably need some serious processing power especially for anything of decent fidelity and high, smooth framerates. Theoretically the headset itself could have a lot of this built into it but that also jacks up the price astronomically. I'd love to see this become a reality with 10th-gen systems but it'd require the systems themselves to be built in handling that processing to keep the price of the headsets down (and having enough wireless bandwidth to do this; even with compression, might require something beyond Wifi 6).
Always take Microsoft videos / demos of new tech as a mere fantasies that will rarely reach production, and that often they don't even have the slightest intention of ever bringing to fruition beyond tech demos.
I know how marketing and R&D tends to work but this can be said for any tech company in all honesty. Sony, Nintendo, etc., they all have a wide assortment of patents for technologies that'll never show up in a commercial product, or prototypes from R&D that don't go any further than the prototype stages.
This isn't really so much about a specific product so much as it is about what the ideas it's working on could do for gaming over the next ten years alongside with the ideas that other products are iterating on (regardless of their commercial status or lack thereof), in pushing the concepts of VR & AR gaming to their fullest potential to innovate game design.
That's specifically why I mentioned not just AR but also VR and the cloud in the OP; IMO you need all three to converge and synergize together into a platform solution in order to bring about the game design innovations I'm thinking could occur within the next decade.
I donāt see VR becoming mainstream for a long time, maybe ever. It seems so misguided. Like one of those things you only think you want.
- nobody wants to stand up and pantomime the kind of shit that a typical video game avatar does. Not for any considerable length of time
- even if youāre sitting down with a gamepad, having to sit up straight and move your head/neck around is an annoyance
- nobody wants to wear a damn headset on their head no matter how light it is.
- most people do not want to be fully cut off from their surroundings
- motion sickness is a real problem and itās not something that is simply caused by technological limitations. Itās due to your visual input telling you you should be experiencing different forces from what youāre actually experiencing
I honestly donāt see VR being used for much beyond short, arcade-like experiences that donāt involve too much rapid character motion. Which is a pretty small subset of games.
Those are some limitations of VR for sure, though I'd argue to what degree some of them are actually major roadblocks to its mainstream adaptation. The point of people not wanting to wear a headset regardless of its weight for instance; I figure that if a company's able to produce a headset not much larger or heavier than a pair of glasses, why would anyone be fussed about that? Most people don't have an issue wearing sunglasses and this is a hypothetical headset not much larger than those.
I don't know if any VR headsets already do this, but maybe adding some sensitivity settings/bias levels for registering head tilt and movement would be great. That way you wouldn't need to keep your head movements 1:1 with the game world in order to keep a perspective locked at a certain position. To your last point, that's actually something I think would need addressing in future VR designs for absolutely sure, but it also means having to wear sensors around your body and, well, that gets very tricky and potentially sensitive. For the immersion factor though, I'm sure some folks would love it.
Anything that can cut down on the bigger roadblocks and also more seamlessly integrate the surrounding physical reality into the experience (that way you don't feel physically isolated to the point of causing distress) with little to no micromanagement on the player's side, is going to really help push the medium forward. But I think more content that actually leverages the full potential of VR would help just as much if not more. So far, I don't think there's been a single game that has genuinely done this yet, as virtually all games still feel like traditional gaming experiences with VR modes added on top.