THE FUTURE OF VR
The problem with the future of VR isn’t working out what it looks like, it’s working out which possible future we might get
We’ve had a century and a half of imagining what virtual reality might be. The first pseudo-VR arrived in 1838, with Charles Wheatstone’s stereoscope. This produced a 3D image using two splayed lenses and a pair of slightly different drawings (see “The First Headset,” pg. 37).
Since then, we’ve been imagining what could come next. The first fiction to posit something recognizable as VR was Stanley G. Weinbaum’s Pygmalion’s Spectacles, in 1935. It featured a pair of goggles showing “a movie that gives one sight and sound… taste, smell, and touch… You are in the story, you speak to the shadows and they reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it.”
After that, our concept of VR stabilized. We knew what it was going to be like, we just had to wait for technology to catch up. Palmer Luckey’s creation of the duct-tape-and-prayer Oculus Rift prototype showed us the time had come.
Even now, there are multiple routes where VR may go. Is it going to be StarTrek’s Holodeck, where VR is headset-free? A totally immersive all-body VR, like TheMatrix? The parochial virtual universes of Iain Banks’s books FeersumEnjinn and SurfaceDetail? Are we going to be masters of our own universes, as in Otherland and Ready PlayerOne, or pawns, as in Neuromancer and SnowCrash? Let’s consider the possibilities….
THE
SHORT TERM
At the moment, there are four major options for VR, in decreasing order of impressiveness and price: Valve and HTC’s Vive; Facebook’s Oculus Rift ( we scored the Vive an 8, and the Rift a 7, to remind you); Oculus and Samsung’s Gear VR; and Google’s Cardboard. How are they each likely to improve over the next year or two?
As of this E3, the two big ones don’t seem likely to change very much. The HTC Vive launched pretty much as a complete product, tied into the relatively mature Steam VR operating system, with a wide range of games available. Using it, the only thing it really needs is a fix for the blasted “screen-door” effect, and more powerful graphics cards.
As Epic’s Nick Whiting says, “VR represents one of the most demanding computational applications, due to the resolution and framerate requirements. In the game development community, we were still looking at making games that can run consistently at 1080p at 60fps, and then VR upped the bar to nearly 2.5K resolution at 90fps. Add on top of that the fact that we have to render stereoscopically, and the result is that we’ve had to look back at older techniques, that we used to use in game development, to achieve the effects that we want at the speed we need.”
Oculus Rift, on the other hand, launched too early to stay competitive within the Vive’s launch window. Though a reasonable software lineup was in place, the core Oculus Touch controllers aren’t due to launch until later in 2016, alongside an array of exclusive games. The CEO of Ndreams, Patrick O’Luanaigh, sums it up neatly: “VR is a 5–10-year thing, and we’re in Year One.”
As O’Luanaigh hints, for both platforms, the games aren’t quite AAA yet. Most games coast on the immersiveness of the tech. The few good experiences— TheClimb, TheLab,Chronos, and Eve:Valkyrie— are single mechanic ideas scaled up into full products; they all feel simultaneously a little small and overstretched, no matter how compelling and impressive the core loop.
Whiting thinks this is down to developers slowly getting to grips with the tropes of the tech. “With the rapid pace of progress on the technical side, I think it’s easy to forget how long it takes to develop the rules for interacting with a new medium; the grammar and conventions. If you look back at early film, it took decades for cinematic conventions to take hold, and they’re still evolving. I think we’re seeing that same thing right now in VR, albeit at a much faster pace.”
What might change that is the entry of the larger publishers into the field, who’ll want to be on every platform. Ubisoft already has an Assassin’sCreed spin-off app that it’s demoing, and PSVR is being headed up by an array of familiar faces. As Whiting says, “I think a lot of the traditional funding vehicles, like publishers, were hesitant to start spinning up content teams to create experiences, because they didn’t have a firm launch date or price point to try to determine if it was worth the investment. However, now that we’re starting to see commercial headsets ship, that’s changed.” The addition of cheaper, third-party headsets, such as Razer’s $400 HDK 2.0, will hopefully increase the market size, too.
THE
CONSOLES
This year’s E3 was a bit of a game-changer for console VR, with both Microsoft and Sony announcing new consoles designed especially to support VR and 4K (although, realistically, few gamers target 4K, even on PCs—95 percent of gamers play on 1080p or lower, according to the Steam Survey).
The first outing for a console VR system is likely to be the PlayStation VR. That’s a pity, because it’s the weakest of all the non-mobile VR systems we’ve encountered. From our time using the headset, it seemed ergonomically very slick, but the demos didn’t throw lots of polygons around. And there were multiple reports from E3 of journalists experiencing “simulator sickness” on some of the new PSVR games.
So, both firms have recognized the need for better hardware. Sony’s more powerful PlayStation Neo (aka the PS4.5) will use exactly the same PSVR as the PlayStation 4. Indeed, reports indicate that Sony is contracting developers to ensure that there are no feature differences for games developed for the systems—and no games exclusive to the Neo—so that it doesn’t lose its existing user base.
Microsoft seems less protective of the Xbox One, presumably due to its weaker market position, but is still positioning its VR console Project Scorpio as an Xbox One Point Five. It’s got slightly more power than the Neo—which it’ll need to run the Oculus Rift headset that’s widely mooted to be its companion—but still not enough to beat the current best of PC tech, such as the GeForce 1080.
Meanwhile, Nintendo of America’s president, Reggie Fils-Aimé, said Nintendo wasn’t getting involved in this fight. “We’ve been looking at the VR space since the days of the Virtual Boy. With us, we want to make sure that our next content is going to be mainstream, mass market approachable,
and when VR is at that point, you can expect Nintendo to be there.” But not right now.
Despite those problems, Whiting and O’Luanaigh are among many who think that console VR has an advantage over PC. The huge install base for the consoles, and the lower price of PSVR compared to the big two on PC, will attract mass market customers.
Whiting thinks there are more subtle advantages to console, too. “You’re working with a fixed platform, which takes a lot of the effort of making a VR experience scalable across different hardware configurations out of the equation. Additionally, Sony requires certification for all of its titles, and that helps ensure a quality experience. That’s important, because unlike most traditional games, a bad VR experience can make you physically ill!”
O’Luanaigh agrees; “There will be over 40 million PS4s out there by the end of this year, and PlayStation VR is a high-quality, well-priced, plug and play platform that has already had massive levels of pre-orders. I expect Sony to hit VR hard.”
THE MEDIUM TERM
More mass market even than consoles is VR on mobile phones. Mobile VR has been mildly popular so far, but O’Luanaigh thinks it’ll become truly mass market in the next five years. “I think you will see big improvements to mobile VR soon—in terms of power, comfort/size, control systems, positional tracking, managing heat (so you can play for long session lengths), and so on.”
In particular, Google Cardboard has been a massive, successful experiment. By January this year, Google had shipped over five million Cardboard viewers, with over 25 million app downloads. That’s a huge number, when estimates of Samsung’s (much more expensive) Gear VR shipments are around the 800,000 mark. Google has also been working with HTC on the Vive, shipping the unique 3D oil painting application Tiltbrush for its launch.
Google Daydream is Google’s next step in VR, and its bet is still on mobile VR. Daydream and the VR tools to run it will be built into the next version of Google’s mobile OS, Android N, and developers are already building software for it. Much like the Gear VR, Daydream is a relatively premium product, built for high-quality, extended use. It comes with a unique controller that’s a bit like a very small Wiimote—its rotation and orientation are accurately tracked, and it has a small clickable touchpad.
Whiting thinks this is crucial. “A big step in the right direction for bringing more serious entertainment content to the mobile platforms is adding a standardized
controller. Without a controller, you’re very limited in the interactions you can perform in a game. I think that’s why you see so many turret shooter-style games on mobile currently.”
That said, mobile VR still has bigger problems to overcome, both in software and hardware. “While PC VR is hard, in a lot of ways, mobile VR is even harder!” says Whiting. “You’re on a much more constrained platform in terms of performance, and you also have to contend with heat and battery life issues. All that means that you either have to greatly simplify your content, or you have to really put in a lot of effort to making things look great.”
THE
OTHER CREATIVES
Beyond the hardware, the experiences that are being created will change substantially in the medium term. Because, although the first wave of VR kit was bought by developers (mainly indie developers) through Kickstarter, it’s been widely disseminated throughout the games industry. With the backing (and money) of Facebook and HTC, Oculus and Valve have given away thousands upon thousands of developer kits to developers. And HTC has just launched a new $100 million investment fund called Vive X, to “cultivate, foster, and grow” the global VR ecosystem.
Yet they’re already making other moves. Because all that funding and drive isn’t just going toward game developers—the other creative industries are circling, and keen to get involved. This could be an excellent outlet for movie creators, desperate to break out of the big cinema, big production cost loop. One could argue that the natural place for Guillermo Del Toro and Terry Gilliam’s feverish creations is in a firstperson virtual nightmare.
Some directors are already making the jump. For example, blockbuster film director Michael Bay( Transformers, Pearl Harbor, BadBoysII) announced in June 2016 that he was working with a new Hollywood studio, The Rogue Initiative, to launch a “gritty, danger-close action, coupled with (his) signature style and storytelling.” The Rogue Initiative also brings together management from Activision, Disney, and Pixar, and is currently working up at least four movie-style projects for VR. And Oculus has already snapped up some ex-Pixar folk to make Henry, a VR animated short, as well as larger projects.
Whiting sees the trend going further. “Film, architecture, and design have all gone in head-first. However, many of those fields don’t have a lot of experience in realtime rendering, which presents a significant challenge. That means we have to find ways to make it easier to technically create visuals at the fidelity they’re looking for, without necessarily having them fundamentally alter the way they make content. I think this is why you see so much excitement over techniques like multi-resolution rendering and hardware-accelerated stereoscopic rendering. The more efficient we can make the rendering for VR, the easier it will be to create great content.”
SOCIALIZATION
The most important element that’s missing from current VR systems is also one that the Oculus Rift is perfectly placed to solve: social networks. After all, since 2014, Oculus’s owner has been Facebook, which seemingly bought it to shore up the possibility of its social network being undermined by future technology advances, in the way MySpace, Friendster, and Bebo were destroyed.
Already, independent developers are releasing social VR apps, hoping to get the early starter advantage on the big companies. Altspace VR is one such app, that enables users to meet up in chat rooms, and play games with other users. Ruairi Rodinson, a QA consultant and game developer, has been meeting people in it.
“It was very different,” says Rodinson. “I’ve played many MMOs and LAN games over the years, but the simple fact I was making eye contact, and watching people’s heads and hands for body language, meant
it felt like I was in a room with people. Heck, the fact I could just walk away from the table and talk to someone in the corner, without exiting anything or losing the flow, similar to hanging out in a bar, made it unique—more like a pub experience, if you were meeting folk for the first time.”
That said, there were social elements that still needed technical fixes. Because Altspace is available on multiple devices, players have a greater or lesser capability to interact. “Some people got in your space,” says Rodinson. “They just stood too close. It felt rude, from strangers. Some got it, whilst others, who I’m thinking were playing on Gear VRs and flatscreens, didn’t ‘get’ the personal area, because folk with ‘ hands’ [indicating a pair ofVive controllers] tended to give a bit of space to me. But, still, I kinda wished for a ‘bubble’ to push people out of a space that I could define unless I wanted them in it.”
THE LONG TERM
The long-term future of VR could go any direction. O’Luanaigh thinks there are still huge technical advances to be made, which will require new great leaps forward in other technologies. “VR display technology that doesn’t use screens in front of your eyes— something like virtual retina displays that beam photons into your eye, meaning very small headsets that look like a pair of glasses (possibly just a small frame). This will allow AR and VR to work together, and for users to switch between one and the other. I’d love to see positional tracking that doesn’t require external cameras or markers. I’d love to see untethered high-end VR headsets. And I’d love to find a great solution to walking/ running on the spot in VR.”
We referred to TheMatrix and StarTrek earlier. It’s notable that many of these depictions of VR have been, in part or wholly, negative. The Holodeck was always threatening to escape its bounds, TheMatrix was about the enslavement of mankind in VR to power AIs, and cyberpunk novels such as Neuromancer were about society’s breakdown with the advent of VR.
That probably says more about the apocalyptic imperatives facing science fiction creators if they want their novel to be successful, than it does about the possibilities of the technology. But it’s true that, because of its immersiveness, VR is something that can be used for good— psychology, doctors, social networks—and bad: torture, propaganda, and brainwashing. The only limit is the human imagination— and you might say that’s no limit at all.