There have been 30million PS4s sold, by next Christmas that number will be even higher. He doesn't think Oculus, Valve, and Sony will ship more than 3 million combined.
Oculus has already shipped >200k dev kits. Assuming Oculus and Valve/HTC ship at least a million (>5X the number of enthusiast/dev kits), the 3 million total would have to mean Sony only gets a <5% attachment rate. Not likely.
Sony's headset will be competitive to with the Rift recommended PC specs (a GTX 970), even though it has way less power: the PSVR is primarily targeted at 60Hz reprojected to 120Hz, and it has a 1080p display that is RGB stripe instead of the Rift and Vive's pentile-esque 90Hz 1200x1080x2 displays. These two combine to mean PSVR will only have to push half as many pixels, for similar quality levels (PSVR actually has more subpixels than Rift and Vive; they throw away 33% of the subpixels you spent gobs of GPU power rendering). You aren't going to play games with fidelity of console TV stuff, but you aren't going to at the Oculus recommended spec either.
He doesn't explain why he thinks it will take until 2018 for Sony to get into the millions. We know the PSVR is design is finalized. As long as it is out significantly before Christmas 2016, they should get into the millions much earlier than 2018.
VR has far more physical constraints and problems than normal videogames/computer usage. There's likely to be a big hype-wave [1] growth curve if it's very good because of those reasons. It's going to take a long time for people to simply reconfigure their living rooms and home offices to take advantage of VR in any numbers, even longer in a corporate environment. Plus it's unclear if people will physically want to spend lots of time moving around so they can properly interact with virtual environments. Even fairly prosaic use-cases are going to suffer from gorilla arm type interactions, and just sitting at a desk with a keyboard/mouse and headset may not be enough of an improvement over today's desktops for people to bother -- and may in fact be an interactivity downgrade in many use cases.
Rift and PSVR are both targeting pretty limited mobility, neither will track the motion controllers 360 degrees in their default configuration (PSVR has only one stereo camera, Oculus is recommending two forward facing cameras, both headsets have rear LEDs so can be tracked 360 degrees, but the motion controllers can't be).
I have a Vive dev kit and it is amazing, but I agree the amount space is going to be an issue. However, since Oculus and Sony aren't going to support the same freeform movement, there will be plenty of experiences that get ported to Vive that don't need a lot of space either.
I haven't found gorilla arm to be an issue; most interfaces seem to be going with laser-pointer style where you don't have to have your arms out. It's more like a gyromouse. I've had no issues with pretty long sessions inside Tilt brush, which is probably the most demanding in that regard.
Several new locomotion techniques are coming on line from all the experimenting that are solving the sea-sickness issue without having to dedicate an entire room to physically walking around. Here's one of the most promising ones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKnM5gC-XpY , seems to have pretty much fixed things for sensitive people.
The initial Oculus release with gamepad only and no motion controllers is going to be a bit of a let-down; you are right that just playing the same games seated with a gamepad or mouse and keyboard in VR probably isn't going to be enough for it to be a mass phenomenon.
[...] the 3 million total would have to mean Sony only gets a <5% attachment rate. Not likely.
Attach rates for hardware add-on to a video game console are historically horrible. They might be lucky to get 5%.
And for gaming, it's always about the killer app. Given that we're still in a learning curve for VR game development, it's not unreasonable to say there won't be one next year.
Even PS Move had a higher attach rate than that. Granted, it was cheaper than PSVR will be (especiallly since PSVR might be bundled with Move), but I would still be surprised if PSVR is very far under 5%.
The main way I see it not happening is if it doesn't make it out in time for holidays with enough in stock.
The thing I'm still looking for: proof that VR has crossed from novelty to something useful. Maybe somebody here has seen it?
Take drones as an example. For years, people were buying them purely on novelty value. But now you can see actual commercial demand in agriculture and in filmmaking.
As a counterexample, take Google Glass. Tens or hundreds of thousands of units sold. But every time I asked somebody what they were using it for, I got answers like "it's so cool!" Once the novelty value wore off, they got put in drawers and never used again.
As a third, take smartwatches. When the Pebble came out, it was all novelty hype. But gradually people found uses. It's not a massive revolution, but there's enough of a market there for a small number of companies to have modest success.
So far, everything I've seen for VR mirrors the '90s wave of VR enthusiasm: lots of "erhmegerd 3D" and "think of the future", but no evidence of workaday value. People have theories of what that will be, but no proof. It could be too early, of course; sometimes technologies take time to find markets. But by now with hundreds of thousands of devices in circulation, I'd expect to see some proof from early commercial adopters. Is it out there?
Elite Dangerous is really fun with a Rift. It's not a novelty that you tire if after an hour, it's fundamentally a better experience. Taking of the rift after an hour or two in Elite Dangerous makes everything on your screen feel flat and lifeless.
It's like the difference between the color and black and white portions of the Wizard of Oz.
Ah, this is in the neighborhood of what I'm after, thanks. Personal testimonial is good, but what I'm looking for is evidence that a significant number of people are paying up for this experience and continue to do so.
As an example, consider 3D movies and television sets. For a while, many vendors were touting them as the next big thing, and you could find plenty of people who'd talk about well done 3D as an amazing experience. But now it's the rare movie that bothers with 3D, and manufacturers have mostly given up. There just was never the significant consumer enthusiasm that there was around, say, color film and color television.
I believe the killer app is going to be journalism, and not really VR but simply 360 video streamed from political and social hotspots around the globe. Political uprising in country X? Celebrity overdose/break-up/marriage? Observe in real time as if you are there via captured 360 video. For the technologists interested in virtual world virtual reality, it will be a let down. But for the majority of the public, 360 video will be VR. It will get more interesting for us technologists when multiple 360 video streams captured in the same space can be merged in a Photosynth like fashion to create a true virtual space one can navigate independent of any individual 360 video stream. That will be very much "true RV" and of actual places and actual events. Journalism is, IMHO, the VR killer app.
VR has a clear application in 3D modeling and CAD. I believe VR could make 3D modeling as accessible as word processing. The software doesn't exist yet, but it will come.
That is a plausible theory, but it is definitely not the proof I'm seeking. Stereoscopic 3D has had 150 years of people saying it will change X. But so far it has never changed X.
If I had, it wouldn't matter. Lots of smart people have been sucked in by novelty experiences to say, "OMG REVOLUTION" and then been wrong. E.g., Google Glass or the Segway. Heck, I thought Gopher [1] was the best thing ever and would change the world [2]. And I've made the mistake a number of times since. With, e.g., Jobs's NeXT. [3]
Well if you always wait for market confirmation before getting involved with something you'll never reap the benefits of getting in early. Personally I have a bit more confidence in my own ability to tell the BS from the real deal. If other people were wrong about the Segway or Google Glass that doesn't necrssarily make me wrong about VR.
I find this reply puzzling. I'm not saying you're right or wrong. I'm just here asking for evidence that it has more than novelty value. That smart people think something will change the world is interesting, but it's not evidence of market uptake.
Sorry, I'm not following your point. Yes, there are reasons those things failed (although in the NeXT's case it wasn't price; it was in the same ballpark as other workstation-class computers). But at the time, some smart people thought both were going to change the world.
Steve Jobs thought that the NeXT was going to change the world. (For its time it was certainly revolutionary, but I'd call it too revolutionary for sufficient adoption.) Sergei Brin, Marc Andreessen, and John Doerr thought that Google Glass was going to change the world. Many smart people were quoted similarly on the Segway. Ditto on 90's VR or any number of other interesting ideas that turned out to have some flaw or not deliver sufficient value.
I have used neither Glass nor the latest generation of VR. Which I'm ok with. If I did, I might or might not think them cool, but that's irrelevant. I'm not in any of the plausible market niches for early-stage VR, so my personal experience won't say anything useful. The kind of evidence I'm asking for here is not whether somebody thinks something is amazing. It is whether they are finding it useful enough on a day-to-day basis that they are paying for it and re-paying for it.
If they are, that's great. And if not, well, maybe we just aren't there yet. It can take time for technologies to find their feet. But given that I'm getting a host of replies with anything but what I'm looking for, that seems telling to me.
VR would make it easier to move the viewport around (just move your head) when looking at the isometric view of a model, but it does nothing really for building a model.
Definitely not. Google Glass was always in high demand -- by people who had never used it.
Brewster stereoscopes [1] were a smash hit at the Great Exhibition of 1851 [2]. 250,000 were sold in short order. But they fell out of fashion soon enough.
3D has a long history of being an exciting innovation that will change everything. But so far, the most successful and long-lasting stereoscopic product is the ViewMaster, which has become a sort of eternal novelty.
Interesting! From their website, I'm not seeing anything that I'd consider useful proof. Plenty of people were successful selling Brewster stereoscopes, but that was basically a novelty business, not something with sustained commercial or recreational use.
You seem to be somewhat conflating "mass consumer adoption" and "useful".
I'm not a fan of Facebook's mass consumer adoption strategy, I don't think it's ready.
I am very long VR over time but I think we are at the Palm Pilot stage not the iphone stage. Metaphors are not precise in these matters but perhaps that one is useful to you.
The input devices are a huge part of the story for VR and the 3d/VR wand controllers ie Oculus Touch and the Steam Lighthouse controllers are only in the hands of a few hundred people at this point.
We've had 2-3 years of tens of thousands of headsets but terrible input solutions so far.
That has produced shoddy demos and kiosk applications because of the lack of good input into the 3d environment.
Facebook is doubling down on this terribleness by going to mass consumer launch using xbox one controllers.
As others have mentioned, VR is transformative when the input solution fits.
Elite Dangerous with HOTAS controllers. Several driving games with steering wheels, Dirt Rally is great fun. Amazing experiences for more serious simulation games.
With proper 3d wands there are a number of new serious game types that will be very compelling but the content needs to be designed from scratch with VR input in mind.
As the serious creative applications (ie Blender or Maya3d, CAD/engineering,medical/science visualization, music etc.) actually get accurately tracked 3d wands I think we will see some transformative creation experiences.
After laying out vertexes in a properly designed VR application I think people won't go back, for example.
Trading desks and financial sectors probably have a lot of territory to explore as the screen pixel density improves.
TLDR; The money in VR is largely seeking AngryBirdsVR but I don't think that's going to happen soonish.
Just to be clear, I'm not looking for mass consumer adoption. I'm looking for the initial signals that prove that somebody is getting sufficient value that it's not just a novelty. E.g., the agricultural uses of drones are not mass market, but they're not just "OMG drone".
The Palm Pilot is an interesting example, but as somebody who had one, they were actually getting used. I used mine daily. When I broke my first, I bought a second. There was also quite a lot of third-party software, including a robust commercial market. E.g.:
I think we agree, except I'd call it a possible future. Maybe it's the future of jetpacks, Google Glass, or anaglyph 3D. Or maybe it's the future of the smartphone. I keep hoping it's the latter, but 3D has such power as a novelty that I worry that it's the former.
There are plenty of applications for it outside of gaming. For example: a company I know of is using it to demo planned building improvements (or entirely new structures) to clients and investors. Being able to see and move through a virtual environment can really help sell an idea.
Great article, I'm really enjoying the R&D going into vr at the moment and are even investing in the field myself by making VRDB.com. Despite that I believe there is going to be significant pressure from investors who are not necessarily VR enthusiasts and might not enjoy the ride as much. Let's just hope it isn't to the detriment of the future potential of VR
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 90.7 ms ] threadI think that long term, VR will be huge, but I expect slow growth, agreeing with this article.
Oculus has already shipped >200k dev kits. Assuming Oculus and Valve/HTC ship at least a million (>5X the number of enthusiast/dev kits), the 3 million total would have to mean Sony only gets a <5% attachment rate. Not likely.
Sony's headset will be competitive to with the Rift recommended PC specs (a GTX 970), even though it has way less power: the PSVR is primarily targeted at 60Hz reprojected to 120Hz, and it has a 1080p display that is RGB stripe instead of the Rift and Vive's pentile-esque 90Hz 1200x1080x2 displays. These two combine to mean PSVR will only have to push half as many pixels, for similar quality levels (PSVR actually has more subpixels than Rift and Vive; they throw away 33% of the subpixels you spent gobs of GPU power rendering). You aren't going to play games with fidelity of console TV stuff, but you aren't going to at the Oculus recommended spec either.
He doesn't explain why he thinks it will take until 2018 for Sony to get into the millions. We know the PSVR is design is finalized. As long as it is out significantly before Christmas 2016, they should get into the millions much earlier than 2018.
1 - https://gridjumper.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/picture-5.png
I have a Vive dev kit and it is amazing, but I agree the amount space is going to be an issue. However, since Oculus and Sony aren't going to support the same freeform movement, there will be plenty of experiences that get ported to Vive that don't need a lot of space either.
I haven't found gorilla arm to be an issue; most interfaces seem to be going with laser-pointer style where you don't have to have your arms out. It's more like a gyromouse. I've had no issues with pretty long sessions inside Tilt brush, which is probably the most demanding in that regard.
Several new locomotion techniques are coming on line from all the experimenting that are solving the sea-sickness issue without having to dedicate an entire room to physically walking around. Here's one of the most promising ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKnM5gC-XpY , seems to have pretty much fixed things for sensitive people.
The initial Oculus release with gamepad only and no motion controllers is going to be a bit of a let-down; you are right that just playing the same games seated with a gamepad or mouse and keyboard in VR probably isn't going to be enough for it to be a mass phenomenon.
Attach rates for hardware add-on to a video game console are historically horrible. They might be lucky to get 5%.
And for gaming, it's always about the killer app. Given that we're still in a learning curve for VR game development, it's not unreasonable to say there won't be one next year.
The main way I see it not happening is if it doesn't make it out in time for holidays with enough in stock.
Take drones as an example. For years, people were buying them purely on novelty value. But now you can see actual commercial demand in agriculture and in filmmaking.
As a counterexample, take Google Glass. Tens or hundreds of thousands of units sold. But every time I asked somebody what they were using it for, I got answers like "it's so cool!" Once the novelty value wore off, they got put in drawers and never used again.
As a third, take smartwatches. When the Pebble came out, it was all novelty hype. But gradually people found uses. It's not a massive revolution, but there's enough of a market there for a small number of companies to have modest success.
So far, everything I've seen for VR mirrors the '90s wave of VR enthusiasm: lots of "erhmegerd 3D" and "think of the future", but no evidence of workaday value. People have theories of what that will be, but no proof. It could be too early, of course; sometimes technologies take time to find markets. But by now with hundreds of thousands of devices in circulation, I'd expect to see some proof from early commercial adopters. Is it out there?
It's like the difference between the color and black and white portions of the Wizard of Oz.
As an example, consider 3D movies and television sets. For a while, many vendors were touting them as the next big thing, and you could find plenty of people who'd talk about well done 3D as an amazing experience. But now it's the rare movie that bothers with 3D, and manufacturers have mostly given up. There just was never the significant consumer enthusiasm that there was around, say, color film and color television.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
[2] And it was the best thing ever, but that's not enough to change the world.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT_Computer
Did you use google glass and have you used VR?
I have used neither Glass nor the latest generation of VR. Which I'm ok with. If I did, I might or might not think them cool, but that's irrelevant. I'm not in any of the plausible market niches for early-stage VR, so my personal experience won't say anything useful. The kind of evidence I'm asking for here is not whether somebody thinks something is amazing. It is whether they are finding it useful enough on a day-to-day basis that they are paying for it and re-paying for it.
If they are, that's great. And if not, well, maybe we just aren't there yet. It can take time for technologies to find their feet. But given that I'm getting a host of replies with anything but what I'm looking for, that seems telling to me.
Brewster stereoscopes [1] were a smash hit at the Great Exhibition of 1851 [2]. 250,000 were sold in short order. But they fell out of fashion soon enough.
3D has a long history of being an exciting innovation that will change everything. But so far, the most successful and long-lasting stereoscopic product is the ViewMaster, which has become a sort of eternal novelty.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Exhibition
I'm not a fan of Facebook's mass consumer adoption strategy, I don't think it's ready.
I am very long VR over time but I think we are at the Palm Pilot stage not the iphone stage. Metaphors are not precise in these matters but perhaps that one is useful to you.
The input devices are a huge part of the story for VR and the 3d/VR wand controllers ie Oculus Touch and the Steam Lighthouse controllers are only in the hands of a few hundred people at this point.
We've had 2-3 years of tens of thousands of headsets but terrible input solutions so far.
That has produced shoddy demos and kiosk applications because of the lack of good input into the 3d environment.
Facebook is doubling down on this terribleness by going to mass consumer launch using xbox one controllers.
As others have mentioned, VR is transformative when the input solution fits.
Elite Dangerous with HOTAS controllers. Several driving games with steering wheels, Dirt Rally is great fun. Amazing experiences for more serious simulation games.
With proper 3d wands there are a number of new serious game types that will be very compelling but the content needs to be designed from scratch with VR input in mind.
As the serious creative applications (ie Blender or Maya3d, CAD/engineering,medical/science visualization, music etc.) actually get accurately tracked 3d wands I think we will see some transformative creation experiences.
After laying out vertexes in a properly designed VR application I think people won't go back, for example.
Trading desks and financial sectors probably have a lot of territory to explore as the screen pixel density improves.
TLDR; The money in VR is largely seeking AngryBirdsVR but I don't think that's going to happen soonish.
The Palm Pilot is an interesting example, but as somebody who had one, they were actually getting used. I used mine daily. When I broke my first, I bought a second. There was also quite a lot of third-party software, including a robust commercial market. E.g.:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991003055719/http://www.zenith...
Based on your example, I would say that VR is even pre-PalmPilot.
It's still a territory for people building the future or for those wanting to peek at it.