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potato_hamster on 17 July 2017
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SvennoJ said:
potato_hamster said:
VR is going through the same phases as 3D except 3D was cheaper and easier to implement in every way from the hardware manufacturers, to the game developers, to the consumers. Now, no one gives a fuck about 3D to a point where one of the industry's biggest pushers of 3D, Nintendo, is now making 3DSs without the 3D, Most TV manufacturers barely even advertise that their TVs are 3D compatible if they new models even are.

Every argument you can make in favor of VR you can make in favor of 3D. 3D had a far easier chance of succeeding and becoming an industry norm and it was a fad that came and went within a few years. VR isn't going to fare any better.

VR makes 3D actually work though. 3D alone doesn't add anything to the experience since your viewpoint is still stuck in place. VR unlocks 3D, at least in games. 3D videos are almost worse than 360 videos. Both suck with plenty of distortian and scale issues. Nor is watching a movie where you could be looking the wrong way any fun. Only the Joshua Bell VR experience impressed me so far from video content. Yet that's very expensive to make with 3D mapped environment with plenty of video streams merged and projected in that space to give you the illusion you can move your head around (within a small area)

So yeah, for video it might go the way of 3D. For games it's totally different.

I totally disagree.

VR is not a new idea. People have been making VR solutuons for decades now (remember Lawnmower man? That's 25 years old!) , and it's never seen mass success. I can remember going to a theme park decades ago and playing Duke Nukem 3D using a VR headset with a gun shaped controller. Two years after that VR area was replaced with something else because no one gave a shit anymore. This new VR fad will come and go too. Maybe next time it becomes a fad (and it will) it'll finally reach a point where it'll have mass appeal, but it definitely isn't close to there yet.

VR is just 3D + Expense. Once the novelty wears off, all you're left with is a handful of experiences that actually offers a legitimately enhanced experience and isn't a gimmick that people will become bored with. The vast majority of VR games are literally taking a game that doesn't need VR at all and making it VR for the sake of VR. But the expense? That's means that this round of VR was once again dead on arrival. It's still way, way, way too expensive for it to see mass adoption. You'll have to see great VR solutions for less than $100 that is easy to set up, maintain, and support before you'll ever see mass market success, and that's probably still decades away.