Do you think that VR will become mainstream?

Do you think that VR will become mainstream?

  • Yes

    Votes: 52 32.3%

  • No

    Votes: 93 57.8%

  • Other

    Votes: 16 9.9%
  • Total voters
    161
With Elon Musk building microchips for the brain, I suspect that VR will change where the VR world will be directly injected into the brain. We will see, taste and smell as if it is real. Like the Matrix presented it. The human body will essentially just be a thing to keep the brain alive.

We will be born into and live inside a computer program. I can totally see robots maintaining the system and occupying the physical world and us living in a virtual one.

In fact, many think this is already the case. If the brain is truly the most powerful computer in the world I suspect once we tap into it, it might just be the end of the physical world as we know it.
 
Ross85 said:
With Elon Musk building microchips for the brain, I suspect that VR will change where the VR world will be directly injected into the brain. We will see, taste and smell as if it is real. Like the Matrix presented it. The human body will essentially just be a thing to keep the brain alive.

We will be born into and live inside a computer program. I can totally see robots maintaining the system and occupying the physical world and us living in a virtual one.

In fact, many think this is already the case. If the brain is truly the most powerful computer in the world I suspect once we tap into it, it might just be the end of the physical world as we know it.
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Not a fan of Ready player one style living. You can never replace real contact with a person.
 
Grieta Thanburg said:
Not a fan of Ready player one style living. You can never replace real contact with a person.
Click to expand...
Ready player one showed how South Africa will look in a few years. The idea of winning a game and becoming a millionaire is a reality today. Streamers get contracts in the millions of dollars.

The other part was how people live. containers stacked on top of each other that is our future, because look at RDP housing, is falling apart. Shipping containers are safer.

Now let's look at VR and what Apple is doing. Arguably it will be the best headset ever. Everyone will own one in 10 years. The price is high now but it will go down. It is a lot cheaper to build a small screen than a big one.

The trick is what Elon Musk is doing. Implants are going to become normal. Humanity will become one with cybernetics. We have no choice. If we want to live longer and be smarter then that is the price.

But you can just see the police having a little remote that can turn your legs and arms off. But not in my life time.
 
TelkomUseless said:
I would say no.
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Look when I was a young boy. We never imagined TVs in our pockets neverminded computers in our pockets. Today we have the most powerful thing in the world called the internet. There is almost nothing you can't know in a few taps on a screen. Go back just 50 years and tell people that it would be possible they would never have believed you.
 
Probably will be in the interim as we head toward The Singularity predicted by Ray Kurzweil. I see the prediction has been pushed up to 2045 from 2030 as I remember it from the early 2000's and of course yes, like Ross mentioned above, Neuralink is already here (That container squatter camp scene did look familiar... with everybody playing: who wants to be a millionaire)

On another note, I see Ray has been Director of Engineering at Google since 2013. He has another prediction for 2030 saying all disease will be eradicated by mainstream utilization of nanotech by then. With the advent of Xenobots, as with AR and VR technology, I'd say a lot can happen in 7 years.

 
Timeframe?

Not in the next 10 years, no.
20 years, probably also not.

50 years from now, who knows?
 
VR has had a boom in the past few years, and if you had asked me this question a year ago, I would have wholeheartedly said "yes", because of the advancement and adoptions of the likes of the Quest headsets and even Apple playing in this space. If you think about it realistically though, VR faces a few problems aside from the technical issues such as motion sickness, the weight on your head, limited field of view, etc.
One, it's a solitary experience. With consoles and PC games, people can play and spectate video games together. In VR, not so much unless you cast your headset to a TV or monitor, but it's not really the same. Sure, it can be fun sometimes, but on a daily basis, probably not so much.
Two, physical space. Not everyone lives in big apartments or houses with large empty rooms where you could take full advantage of enjoying a game in VR. At this point you can't even really do VR outdoors as you might fry your lenses and damage your eyes, etc.
Three, expectations of what games are like and what people can do in VR. Everyone has fantasized about running around in Doom or some other FPS in a virtual world, but the truth is, an normal person can't run around and physically fight monsters for hours on end.
Controls and traversal in the VR world needs to be refined a bit. Right now either you have on rails gaming experiences where your character moves automatically or you move around with your thumbsticks, but this also detracts from the immersion - ideally one would have an omnidirectional treadmill to physically walk or run on, but those aren't exactly common, cost the same as a small island, and once again would take up space in your house.
So, in a nutshell, I'd say, no, won't become as mainstream as gaming consoles in the next 5-10 years unless there are revolutionary breakthroughs in various technologies.
 
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I don't know enough about VR but I can only think that it will become more & more prevalent in the very near future.
 
It's interesting reading these comments. One of my companies does commercial grade VR tech. I have a theory though about VR adoption relating to gamers. Games are essentially a form of role playing. Role playing requires only the imagination -- look at children playing with dolls or toy cars. One doesn't need VR 'immersion' in order to role play. I don't see it ever been adopted en masse, otherwise it would already have been.
There are however plenty of commercial uses for it.
 
Ross85 said:
Look when I was a young boy. We never imagined TVs in our pockets neverminded computers in our pockets. Today we have the most powerful thing in the world called the internet. There is almost nothing you can't know in a few taps on a screen. Go back just 50 years and tell people that it would be possible they would never have believed you.
Click to expand...
I agree what you say. But there was 1000s of tech that didn't make it to mass market too. Look at google glasses etc...

Yea.. we can have super computers, but if your internet is crap/slow then PLayer 1 is not going to work.

I still have my doubts VR would become mainstream...
 
Tough to say.
Wouldn't be too surprised if I've spent more than 1000 hours in VR at this point, but my main area of interest is rhythm games - primarily Synth Riders, a little Beat Saber, etc. I quite enjoy this both from a gaming perspective as well as being able to use it as a cardio workout.
Flight sims also work quite well here, though any games where you have to walk around can be nausea-inducing. An exception would be something like Eye of the Temple. I know that a lot of people who enjoy VR like Half Life Alyx (which I think mostly uses teleport-based movement which a number of apps do to avoid issues re: nausea), but although I own a copy I never really got hooked. Other seems to like VRChat (more than alternatives like rec room), but apps like that also aren't really of interest to me (and Meta's "flagship" Horizons Worlds looks even worse).
Re: video, Quest 2 works great during loadshedding as an alternative to a bigscreen TV, but again you wind up locked in your own world so at present that's somewhat limiting and anti-social. There's also an extremely limited amount of VR video content - though one industry might be an XXXception. I've used a Cape Town city tour when traveling as a way to demo the headset's capabilities but that's good for a few minute demo for people curious about the city rather than something that'd keep you for longer. Youtube and Oculus TV also seem to have an annoying preference for 360 degree VR content over 180 degree VR content, which means you might have to turn around while watching a film. VR180 nicely fills in your peripheral vision which in my view adds a lot of value when watching something 2D. As a generally don't like to watch films standing up on or in a swivel chair, to me VR360 is worse than flat screen.
 
Not in it’s current way shape or form.

VR is a ever evolving medium with both input and the headsets themselves.

The other issue is content. Most studios are scared to touch it.
 
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Like I said above, the Quest out sold the latest xbox so make of that what you want.

I have had the quest 2 since lockdown and I first bought it just for excercise(VR boxing aka. "Thrill of the fight" when we were stuck in the apartment) but then I got into Half life Alyx which was mind blowing and then started playing games like the latest MS Flight sim.
Once you realize that that is the closest to real life flying or gun fights you will get in this week it can become a bit addictive.

Better FPS multiplayer games will help since most of them are a bit of a miss.

Using the Netflix app or Youtube is like sitting in your own cinema. Thats pretty cool too.
There are apps where you can explore different places in the world that was recorded with 360 degree cams.
Horizon Venues had One FC fights that you can watch as if you are at the cage as well as live music performances. Have not been in that app for a while.

So as someone who actually use VR and have seen some of the cool and immersive stuff you can do, I do believe it will become mainstream.
 
Reading all the comments, it seems that most people here don't have VR headsets and are going by what they've heard/read.

As for the motion sickness - for most people it just takes some getting used to.
Starting off, when I stood in my VR area it felt very nauseating to move around with a joystick while standing still IRL. I was worried that perhaps I'll never get used to it.

Some games have a slider to adjust the anti-nausea - which basically narrows your field of view significantly when moving around which helps a lot.
Your brain no longer feels like it's really you moving around, or atleast, much less. Same as sitting in a cockpit and flying around - that feels natural.

Took me about a month going from nausea to natural. (And over that month period, only spending very little time trying nausea inducing games).

As for content, there is more than enough for me as an avid gamer.
I spend about 0.5-1hr a day in VR competing against friends and getting exercise, or jam SP games like Walking Dead / Into the Radius when solo.
Then when tired there's still all the other "normal" PC games to tackle.

Lastly, the cost to entry has been steadily dropping and I no longer see that as a huge deterrent.
It's cheaper for someone to buy a 10k Quest headset than a full gaming system, and for those with full gaming systems - they can stream/cable PC VR to the headset.
 
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