I have to think it’ll stay an arcade and power user thing indefinitely. The full experience needs large, clear section of your house, and housing is getting more expensive. Break down your costs per sq ft and see that you’re paying an awful lot for it.
Games like Beat Saber don’t have to move around too much, but the experience will always be limited if games have to keep the player in one spot and can’t use room scale. That said, Beat Saber can be pretty decent cardio workout if you put effort into swinging your arms (as opposed to lazily flicking your wrists around). Sweat buildup on the headset can be an issue, though. Keep some alcohol wipes around.
Racing/airplane sim stuff is one of the best uses. People who are into that are willing to drop a lot of money.
For VR to truly shine, I think we need brain interfaces like the Matrix or SAO. Though I think even that will be a double edged sword as people train their brains to do VR stuff which feels similar enough to RL that it might be hard to context switch. Not to mention I doubt I’ll be able to trust any corporations creating those either on the maliciousness angle or the competence one.
Even compared to what currently exists, full VR experiences will be fundamentally different. Current accessibility tools seem to be “provide sensory data to the brain or react to brain activity and let the brain figure out how to use it”, whereas true VR would be more like “suspend these normal comnections and replace them with virtual ones that reproduce reality well enough for people to enjoy using it, doing normal body stuff plus maybe things that aren’t possible like flying and magic with thought alone”.
That said, if you can handle moving around in a VR world with a control stick without getting nausea, headset VR is continuing to improve, though the pace seems to be a bit slower because I think the bubble has deflated somewhat.
I have to think it’ll stay an arcade and power user thing indefinitely. The full experience needs large, clear section of your house, and housing is getting more expensive. Break down your costs per sq ft and see that you’re paying an awful lot for it.
Games like Beat Saber don’t have to move around too much, but the experience will always be limited if games have to keep the player in one spot and can’t use room scale. That said, Beat Saber can be pretty decent cardio workout if you put effort into swinging your arms (as opposed to lazily flicking your wrists around). Sweat buildup on the headset can be an issue, though. Keep some alcohol wipes around.
Racing/airplane sim stuff is one of the best uses. People who are into that are willing to drop a lot of money.
For VR to truly shine, I think we need brain interfaces like the Matrix or SAO. Though I think even that will be a double edged sword as people train their brains to do VR stuff which feels similar enough to RL that it might be hard to context switch. Not to mention I doubt I’ll be able to trust any corporations creating those either on the maliciousness angle or the competence one.
Even compared to what currently exists, full VR experiences will be fundamentally different. Current accessibility tools seem to be “provide sensory data to the brain or react to brain activity and let the brain figure out how to use it”, whereas true VR would be more like “suspend these normal comnections and replace them with virtual ones that reproduce reality well enough for people to enjoy using it, doing normal body stuff plus maybe things that aren’t possible like flying and magic with thought alone”.
That said, if you can handle moving around in a VR world with a control stick without getting nausea, headset VR is continuing to improve, though the pace seems to be a bit slower because I think the bubble has deflated somewhat.