The future of Vr
Mark Ramshaw reveals how virtual reality is sparking innovative projects in games, animation and design
VR is now being taken more and more seriously. Discover the latest VR innovations in games, design and animation with our 14-page guide
Some may still find it incredible that virtual reality is now an actual reality, and furthermore one with the potential to influence multiple computer graphics industries. By turns a science-fiction staple, lab experiment and bad 3D joke, VR spent so long as vapourware that few seriously expected Palmer Luckey’s 2012 Kickstarter campaign to usher in the fastest moving period in computer graphics in 25 years. But VR is here, and it’s not to be ignored. In the last 12 months alone, there have been three major VR headset launches, a flurry of activity from GPU giants AMD and Nvidia, and a wealth of investment in new virtual reality tools and projects.
Even so, that loaded expression ‘may you live in interesting times’ could so easily have been coined for those exploring VR right now. Such is the accelerated, headlinegrabbing nature of this nascent VR cycle that some feel that both experiential and sales expectations have been over-inflated. And, as with any new technology, there has also been a steep learning curve to deal with – as everybody scrambles to figure out how to practically and creatively harness the potential offered by this new world.
This is to be expected given that virtual reality has been so eagerly awaited, and is so profoundly different to anything that’s come before. And, as ever, the headlines don’t necessarily offer an accurate picture. True, Oculus may have just closed its in-house animation team, Story Studio, but given that Google adopted the opposite position via a buyout of Owlchemy Labs, the move is arguably more an indication that Oculus has chosen to pass on the content-creation
baton and focus internally on advancing the technology. And while VR sales of $300 million in 2016 pale in comparison to an investment of around $2.6 billion, it’s a respectable figure for a new market, while estimates of $1.3 billion sales in 2017 suggest the investment will pay off. Certainly key players like AMD are talking in terms of longer-term success rather than short-term gain.
“It’ll likely be a few years before VR becomes truly mainstream,” acknowledges Nick Thibieroz, director of game engineering at AMD. For its part AMD is actively working to research and refine technologies and features to improve performance and make VR an even more affordable proposition. “Essentially AMD’S work involves both hardware and software technologies that help to reduce render times and to hit the desired frame rates. We obviously can’t comment on future products, but it’s fair to say that we’re thinking about rendering for VR when designing future hardware.”
A NEW DIMENSION
Even if VR ubiquity is a little way off, its impact is already being keenly felt across multiple sectors. The most visible of these is the games industry, where developers are scrambling to embrace the emerging market. Hearteningly, there are a good number of smaller developers already finding innovative ways to utilise virtual space, while the larger studios race to develop the kind of killer apps that help popularise new platforms and rack up impressive sales. There’s already talk that the upcoming VR edition of Fallout 4 will be such a title.
Creative opportunities also abound in animation. There’s no rulebook as yet for creative, immersive VR narratives, but then that’s what makes it so exciting. Artists working in this field have free rein to define just how the interactivity and animation techniques used in the games industry can be used to change the whole nature of storytelling. Perhaps even more profound is the potential for VR to transform the creative process for professional designers, where the leap from flat monitor to three dimensional, inhabitable space changes the nature of 3D design, evaluation and visualisation.
The first generation of VR devices are surprisingly capable, but in the next few years we’re going to see lower latency times, faster rendering at increased resolutions, and doubtless increased affordability. Factor in a much needed move to wire-free headsets for greater freedom of movement, affordable full body sensor systems, eye tracking to enable more subtle user interactions and advances in foveated rendering techniques, and this is clearly just the beginning. It’s not a matter of deciding whether to embrace VR, but rather a matter of when.