VIRTUAL WORLDS

Proponents of VR like to claim that it is here to revolutionise gaming, but the technology has actually been kicking around since the ’70s, initially used for military and flight training purposes. The first VR headsets designed for gaming emerged in the early ’90s, when Sega announced a headset for its Mega Drive console. Unfortunately, Sega VR never made it into consumers’ homes, with only a half-baked arcade version ever seeing the light of day. A handful of other manufacturers attempted to develop similar technologies, but the gaming public remained indifferent until 2012, when engineer Palmer Luckey and id Software co-founder John Carmack revealed the first Oculus Rift headset at the E3 expo. The Rift was a revelation for the VR industry. Improved tracking, a wider field of view, and better eye displays meant that it was a serious piece of hardware, prompting a huge resurgence in public interest in VR. The cat was out of the bag. By 2016, more than 200 companies were developing VR-related products. Major competitors, such as HTC’s Vive and Sony’s PSVR, hit the market. Samsung and Google released headsets that used the player’s smartphone as a display and motion sensor, although these struggled in performance compared to “tethered” headsets that connected to a PC. The release of the Oculus Go (and later the Quest) brought the option of untethered VR, using an onboard Qualcomm chip to render graphics without a PC. The success of 2019’s Valve Index says that gamers aren’t done with VR headsets that hook up to powerful gaming PCs, but the popularity of the Quest series suggests that as portable gaming tech improves, VR might shift away from PCs and become more like a self-contained console industry.