It always feels like some form of VR tech comes out with some sort of fanfare and with a promise it will take over the world, but it never does.
It always feels like some form of VR tech comes out with some sort of fanfare and with a promise it will take over the world, but it never does.
The shit with VR, specifically, is baffling to me. We have pretty good tech for it and yet nobody seems to know what to actually do with them. Hardware is at a good starting point, but the software is mostly bullshit.
I shit you not I know a University where they have AR (with haptic gloves, not just VR) headsets worth around 70k euro and nobody uses them.
A student watched porn in class on one of them though, so I guess the taxpayer investment was worth it…
Honestly, immersive video is hands down the best use of VR today in my opinion and like no one outside of porn is doing anything interesting with it.
Dude had the right priorities.
Gaming. It has completely replaced flatscreen gaming for me. Playing FPS on a screen feels so ridiculous to me now.
VR has given us an incredible amount of funny videos where the user will decide to run full speed into a wall or something. That and “hoverboards” have kept America’s Funniest Home Videos on the air.
For sim racing games, it’s actually pretty helpful for being able to look around, check mirrors etc.
Outside of that it feels pretty gimmicky
Beat Saber and VRChat are genuinely cool at least. I think what it comes down to is that the illusion of physically being somewhere is cool and can be useful for some stuff but not as cool as everyone used to assume. More abstract entertainment and art works basically just as good or better most of the time because it doesn’t require specialized hardware, acclimating to nausea, and learning novel control schemes.
I remember setting up a VR og Skyrim with an old android and some infrared LEDs. It was pretty cool at first, but I couldn’t play more than an hour without some kinda discomfort. I’ve tried some of the newer guys, and aside from being much higher def, it’s largely the same thing. I don’t want or need it in my life.
Games designed specifically for VR are pretty cool. Conversions less so.
Yeah, I played super hot VR and it was a pretty cool experience, but that isn’t a sit and play for hours type game.
Edit: grammar