VR Industry: The Goods and the Bads

The VR industry is kind of like the Wild West of innovative gaming right now. With systems like PS4, Oculus, and the Vive, VR is slowly becoming more and more accessible for the developers and the general public.

Lets start out with the positives that come out of the VR industry.

The Possibilities!:

• Oh wow. Its real.

By this, I mean, VR is entirely what you don't want to expect it to be. Someone who has never experienced VR will try to not get their hopes up about the level of reality, but the realism is astounding. You can get your hopes up. 

The best personal example was when I was playing the Lab, sitting on a hillside in Iceland, throwing sticks for a robot dog. Somehow, VR makes you staunchly aware of how little stimuli it really takes to fabricate a surrounding in our minds. Scary.

• Its versatility 

While VR is primarily focused on gaming, it proves itself useful in a wide variety of settings. In a classroom or lab, VR allows one to interact with game objects to represent real world objects. They can then manipulate these objects in a more abstract way to help improve understanding. 

Some find VR useful in a more literal sense. For work-spaces or workouts, the idea of simulating a more pleasant surrounding environment is appealing.

Now for a quick look at—

The Limitations...:

• The price point

VR is expensive. The biggest limitation of the system will continually be related to the price of the system itself and the equipment required to run it all. 

• The power required

I think that I have a pretty beastly computer, but to run VR on it would push it to its absolute limits. I previously lived with a VR developer, and it took his Mega Computer a substantial amount of power to render and test games.

• The set-up

Getting the Vive to run in our tiny apartment living room was an event. When he pitched the idea to me, I think he phrased it as "Do you want to gut the living room for a Vive?"

Two tripods, a mess of cables, and enormous PC, and a three month-old kitten was excessive, and difficult. Even with not a spared expense (equipment wise) we would still run into bugs and game that would not work at all.