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What's Popular in Virtual Reality's 3-D World? Netflix and TV.
Companies such as Samsung and Facebook's Oculus promote their virtual-reality headsets by highlighting awe-inspiring 3-D experiences for gaming and virtual travel. But one of the most popular activities among early adopters of the technology is less novel: watching 2-D movies and TV.
"It's been a surprise on the VR circuit because much of the work is driven by people coming from the gaming world, who are fairly dogmatic about what VR means," says Anjney Midha, founder of the San Francisco venture capital fund KPCB Edge. Figuring out what people want to do with headsets is crucial if companies such as Facebook are to make the devices widely popular.
Midha says consumer interest in a new way to view 2-D content shouldn't be surprising given the popularity of watching movies and TV on mobile devices with small screens. A 2-D video viewed using a VR headset can fill your visual field as if you were watching on a giant home cinema screen, even if you're in fact in a cramped dorm room or the middle seat on a budget flight. Virtual-reality apps from Netflix and Hulu even surround their 2-D content with a virtual theater, room, or beach scene to enhance the experience. Flat content is less likely to make you uncomfortable or nauseous, as 3-D content can.
People use the headsets in 3D reality to enter a 3D virtual reality where they can experience a 2D representation of 3D reality.
VR Arrives at Tokyo Game Show, Counted On to Revive Industry
Virtual reality has arrived for real at the Tokyo Game Show, one of the world's biggest exhibitions for the latest in fun and games.
That's evident everywhere. Players at the booths are donning chunky headgear covering their eyes and ears, immersed in their own worlds, shooting imaginary monsters or dancing with virtual partners, at Makuhari Messe hall in the Tokyo suburb of Chiba.
The show, which gave a preview to reporters Thursday ahead of its opening to the public over the weekend, features 614 companies demonstrating more than 1,500 game software titles.
It's still anyone's guess how VR will play out as a business in years ahead. But most everyone agrees that's the way of the future. And Yasuo Takahashi, director at Sony Interactive Entertainment, the game division of Japanese electronics and entertainment giant Sony Corp., believes 2016 will mark VR's debut year, helping revive an industry that has languished with the advent of smart phones.
Is the video game industry in need of reviving?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 17 2016, @04:42PM
I get where you guys are coming from, but I like sequels because you don't usually have to spend time relearning the controls. Also, a well-constructed universe is rich and extensible, and becomes a framework for more story-telling. Think the GTA series or Mass Effect.
There is a lot of room for stories whose characters aren't the Star Trek version of "aliens," namely, humans with different wrinkles on their faces, but things that have their own frame of reference that can take you into a different, non-human universe. Even within the human milieu there's a lot of room for times and cultures that haven't been covered to death by the modern game industry, but are equally dramatic. That is, there are 10 million takes on WWII, but there are no big-name games that span Ashoka's conquest of India, say, or a sailing game based on Polynesian exploration of the South Pacific. They each have their own unique dynamics, pantheons, and cultural tropes. It would be interesting as a person of European heritage to immerse in something like that, instead of another take on the Roman Empire. With a little creative license you could even do something with less-well documented histories like the Khmer.
Washington DC delenda est.