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posted by takyon on Saturday September 17 2016, @01:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the augmented-unreality dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by kaganar on Saturday September 17 2016, @07:05PM

    by kaganar (605) on Saturday September 17 2016, @07:05PM (#403199)
    This is kind of a "duh" article given the state of the VR industry, but you may not know what some of the relevant features of that state are:
    • There's a bunch of different types of VR platforms with different restrictions and input methods that require special-case programming. Sitting and viewing movie content doesn't require much tailoring, so it's an easy fit.
    • There's not enough VR-tailored content out there. There's lots of 2D content available that translates easily. And who doesn't love an arbitrarily-large monitor/TV that fits in their day bag? For every person who has a VR system, there's a thousand people (actually, much more) people with 2D screens. The money is not immediately in VR today. It will be one day, even if it looks more like AR instead, but that's not today.
    • 3D experiences for conventional computers setup don't translate cheaply or easily into VR experiences. On that note, vorpX [vorpx.com] is cool when it works.
    • Viewing 2D movies works as well as it possibly can on cheap VR hardware (except for Cardboard which nothing works particularly well on for over a few minutes) -- your head is relatively static, only rotational tracking is required (not all VR platforms support this), there's no framerate issue, and movies typically are relatively low resolution experiences (4k isn't that common).

    So, in short, basically this is like saying "People

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  • (Score: 2) by kaganar on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:54AM

    by kaganar (605) on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:54AM (#404124)
    Oops, bumped the submit button -- to conclude, basically this is like people saying "People watch mostly 1080p or less content on their 4k TVs."