VR glasses quickly became popular once they hit the market. At first it was a clunky technology, especially when you look at the very early stages such as back in the 60s when the very first VR headset was created.
Right now, it’s slowly become a more streamlined way of consuming media and/or playing games, with things like Google Cardboard allowing massive numbers of people who cannot afford a full-fledged VR headset to get a taste of virtual reality. Here, we’ll take a look at the most prominent actors in the market, as well as what we can expect from them in the future.
The Actors
Let’s take a look at the three most prominent actors in the VR market. Of course, there are others, like Huawei or Pimax, that have their own special VR technologies in the making, but they aren’t really contributing in any way at this moment, so they won’t be taken into account.
Oculus Rift
Oculus VR, a division of Facebook, is largely considered to be the one that set the groundwork for VR technology in general. The Oculus Rift is among the two most popular VR headsets on the market right now (the other one will be discussed in the following section). This headset uses an OLED panel with a 1080×1200 resolution per eye, for a total of 2160×1200 pixels. It can track your head’s tilt across all axes, as well as the headset’s position in the room, using the constellation method and infrared trackers. It’s scheduled to be superseded by the Oculus Rift S, which will most likely be an iterative upgrade of the existing one, and will be released this year.
HTC Vive
As we could have clearly seen with graphics card prices, having just one company on the market is very unflattering to the consumers. So it’s a good thing that’s not the case for VR headsets as well. The main reason that this is the case is HTC Vive, Oculus’ greatest competitor in the VR market. In terms of providing a bulky but powerful VR headset, these two companies are pretty much the same. The main difference are the nuances in how the technology tracks your position. Compatibility with other controllers and games remains pretty much the same.
PlayStation VR
Although not as popular as the previous two, this VR headset is definitely nothing to scoff at. Since it was developed and published under a company that specializes in creating gaming consoles, it offers a lot of compatibility. As a good example, both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift only support Xbox controllers and games. So, if you have a PlayStation and want to play VR games on it like Beat Saber, your only option would be to opt for this one.
The Outcome
VR was considered science fiction until a few decades ago. Similarly, there are some ideas that are borderline sci-fi that should be taken into account when discussing the future of this technology.
VR vs. AR
One of those ideas is augmented reality. The difference between VR and AR is that AR, as the name suggests, only adds certain things to the world around us, such as objects, pictures, textures, sounds etc… Although the difference is vague, AR arguably holds more potential in the short run, as it utilizes the textures and environment of the real world without having to render it, which allows possible AR headsets to be much lighter, and to also be able to be turned off and used as regular glasses instead.
VR and the Cloud
Imagine the possibilities of combining virtual reality and a cloud hardware and database center. With only a fast enough internet connection, you could theoretically use VR on the go, anywhere in the world! In terms of how awesome that would be, it could compete with our review of another service which rocks. Not only will it allow for increased portability, but also better synchronisation. You could theoretically have a cloud-based server with a game world that would update in real time across a large number of users with VR headsets connected to that server.
3D Glasses?
It’s very clear that VR is the future, and it’s no wonder that Facebook was ready to pay $2bn for the ownership of Oculus. With that in mind, what can we expect to happen to the good old 3D glasses? There’s already a large amount of people that prefer to watch regular movies instead of 3D ones because they have slight headaches after using these types of glasses for an extended period of time.
It’s obvious that they won’t completely go away in the near future. However, it seems pretty much inevitable that they’ll eventually be superseded by VR headsets. Imagine if you could feel as if you’re standing next to your favourite heroes in different movies and looking around with them. It’s a radically new way of consuming media, which definitely won’t replace the traditional movie theater approach, but it probably will make the usage of 3D glasses obsolete.