Revolutionary Verge

Is it time to put away the bucket?

I might be a tad biased, given I’ve been dreaming of Virtual Reality for over 20 years, but in my mind 2016 was one of the most important years for PC gaming since the advent of 3D graphics accelerators. VR finally arrived in a format that worked, was incredibly fun and solved so many of the technical issues of the past.

That’s not to say it turned out to be the overnight success that so many pundits thought it would be. With total sales being a fraction of the first bullish speculations, VR launched with a tiny pop more than a bang. And yet those who have tried it, and can see how quickly it has evolved over the last two years, will know that we’re on the verge of a revolution in the way we game.

Today’s headsets are expensive, heavy, not exactly comfortable and still have image quality issues such as low resolution and haloing. They also require some rather grunty hardware to deliver the silky smooth framerates required so that players aren’t reaching for a bucket. Finally, most of the games for VR are still really tech demos padded out to test the new mechanics this revolutionary form of gaming requires.

Yet I predict that within five years all of these issues will be resolved, to the point where HMDs will be just like popping on a pair of sunglasses, and toda y’s quaint 2D screens will be seen as retro-gaming. And that’s why I’ve given VR the coolest technology of 2016. There was a bunch of other hardware that also made me tingle in all the righ t places, and you can read more about that in our Tech of the Year feature. Meanwhile I’m keeping a close eye on my letterbox, eagerly anticipating the arrival of my Oculus Touch controllers…