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Virtual reality is having a moment, however the technology remains to be removed from mainstream. Following the discharge of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in early 2016, headset sales quickly flattened once early adopters had purchased their gear. It seems the typical customer isn’t as desirous to pay US $600 for bulky goggles simply to peruse the reasonably limited catalogue of accessible VR content.
If more consumers can’t be persuaded of the worth that VR could bring to their lives, an industry projected to breach a trillion dollars in sales by 2035 might flop. Faced with that possibility, NYC Media Lab welcomed virtual reality and augmented reality experts to Viacom last week for a daylong discussion concerning the way forward for these two budding technologies.
There was, not surprisingly, plenty of pleasure about VR’s potential amongst the group of creators, designers, entrepreneurs, and investors. There was also a healthy dose of realism concerning the state of the industry and the drawbacks of existing VR gear. “For VR to essentially work and succeed, it must be so good that you desire to put an unpleasant plastic thing in your face,” said David Liu, creative director for virtual reality at Viacom.
Though 2016 has been a breakthrough yr for VR, only a few people actually own a headset or are consuming VR frequently. Hard numbers are difficult to come back by, but recent reports suggest HTC has sold about 140,000 Vives since its launch in April 2016. For comparison, Apple sold roughly 444,000 iPhones per day in its most up-to-date quarter.
When a panelist on the Viacom event asked the pro-VR crowd what number of attendees had a headset at home, only a smattering raised a hand. Early demonstrations of AR have also struggled to seek out mass appeal. (Google Glass, anyone?)
Despite the slow start, insiders are more optimistic when they give the impression of being ahead. Shawn Cheng, an investor with enterprise capital firm Vayner/RSE, said he expects VR to succeed in mainstream, which he defines as the purpose when roughly one-fourth to one-third of the population has a headset of their lounge, within the last half of 2018.
On the 2016 Gartner Hype Cycle, an industry measure of technology readiness, virtual and augmented reality are expected to emerge from the “trough of disillusionment” and ascend the “slope of enlightenment” to realize widespread adoption inside five to 10 years. Meanwhile, machine learning, self-driving cars, and smart robots remain huddled across the “peak of inflated expectations.”
At the New York City event, content developers, tech investors, media executives, and entrepreneurs focused on expanding the quantity of VR content available to customers while still delivering a high-quality experience that may convert first-time users into devoted fans.
Already, several experts said, too many VR startups and developers are putting out shoddy or nauseating demos, thereby shooting themselves—and potentially the entire industry—within the foot. Customers turned off by those demos may never return, leaving VR to go the way in which of 3-D TV.
“I see a lot sub-par VR content on the market and it infuriates me,” said Resh Sidhu, creative director for virtual reality on the design studio Framestore.
For newcomers, the professionals offered some suggestions: Hire storytellers and user experience designers as early as possible, so that they can shape a demo or product from the beginning with the shopper in mind. Don’t produce footage with too many cuts or an excessive amount of camera motion, which are likely to make people sick. And use the “Why VR?” test, which fits like this: If there isn’t a compelling reason to provide a movie or experience in VR, don’t do it.
Natacha Merritt, director of VR for WestSummit Capital, adds that startups on this highly-competitive space hoping to spice up their possibilities of funding should recruit candidates that reflect the variety of their potential users. Her firm, which counts only three female co-founders in a pipeline of 200 firms, has begun to prioritize meetings with female founders. “It’s a giant red flag once I see a [presentation] screen with a board of 10 white males,” she said.
It’s a critical time for producers to win the hearts of latest users, as VR spreads from the gaming world into places familiar to a wider audience. Media firms including The New York Times and NBCUniversal are experimenting with VR movies and documentaries, which is strictly the form of high-quality content that VR insiders say the world must see.
“We want to seek out as some ways as possible to attach with our audiences and tell our stories,” said Kelly Alfieri, executive director for special projects at The New York Times.
Compared to other sectors, media firms have been particularly aggressive about pursuing VR for storytelling and live event coverage from the technology’s early days. Since NYT VR launched a yr ago, the group has produced 20 VR movies. Two weeks ago, they announced a brand new project called Daily 360 that publishes a brand new 360-degree video every single day.
To pull that off, Alfieri’s team sent 500 cameras to reporters world wide and asked them to begin shooting. She admits that much of what they sent back at first was unusable, but says reporters’ skills have improved over time.
NBCUniversal, which owns The Weather Channel and E!, has produced over 40 VR and 360 degree video projects since 2014 and broadcasted 86 hours of VR footage throughout the 2016 Olympics. The company predicts VR will likely be “a big revenue stream” over the following five years. Recently, Universal Studios Florida debuted an in-person VR experience themed around a haunted house for Halloween. For the 30-minute experience, users paid $50.
So far, most firms haven’t been capable of show a robust financial return on their early VR experiments. At this stage, many consumers are simply doing it for the PR buzz. Looking ahead, one panelist suggested VR startups may need more luck landing projects in the event that they develop VR enterprise solutions, comparable to the 3-D modeling for architectural firms pitched by a startup named Geopipe or the 3-D medical imaging demonstrated by MediVis.
Other firms are refining the VR experience in other ways. Jim Preston of FOVE says his company’s eye-tracking feature, available in a Kickstarter-funded headset scheduled to ship in January 2017, will allow users to scroll and choose items with a look reasonably than reaching for a mouse or controller.
Eye-tracking may also make the VR experience more realistic, he says, by allowing foveated rendering, which fully renders images in a users’ direct line of sight and leaves the environment barely blurred, much like peripheral vision. This feature may also reduce the processing power required in a headset and improve battery life, which could make it easier to roll out wireless models.
However, there may be a downside—eye tracking adds 8 milliseconds to motion-to-photon latency, or the time it takes to update a screen following a user’s movements. VR requires a motion-to-photon latency of under 20 ms to maintain users from getting sick or disoriented, so an 8 ms delay would eat up nearly half of that point.
Every detail counts, because as more consumers encounter VR for the primary time, these issues could mean the difference between someone who puts down a VR headset and never picks one back up, and someone who buys one for themselves and their family members.
Right now, it’s fair to say that the industry remains to be determining what varieties of VR content are value producing and how one can generate profits from these projects. As Brett Leary of Digitas described it, lots of players have dipped their toes to into the water but few have taken the plunge. “There’s no shortage of really cool ideas but I feel the dollars are still going to be type of test-and-learn,” he said.
Then, once VR and AR have finally reached mass adoption, we are able to all begin to looking forward to the following hyped tech, smart dust.
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