Steam's monthly hardware surveys suggest the proportion of PC players with a VR headset plugged in roughly doubled in 2018.
For those that own a VR headset, this is good news. A growing active user base means more interested publishers. It's not exponential growth, but it's definitely a good start. I only recently demoed my VR setup to extended family. Even my less tech savvy relatives were quite impressed. One of the things I demoed to each group was the Epic Roller Coaster demo. Really, I'd forgotten how impressive it is the first couple of times through. It's a sit down experience and all you're doing is looking around. It definitely cuts down on the whole getting used to the interface, etc and gets right to the fun part of VR. Here's hoping for at least another 2x increase of users in 2019.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/steam-survey-vr-headset-ownership-roughly-doubled-in-2018/
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 04 2019, @11:07PM
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=27400&page=1&cid=730212 [soylentnews.org]
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/5/23/17383990/google-lg-vr-display-high-res-headsets [theverge.com]
I don't think the lenses are such a huge problem but they can benefit from further improvements:
https://www.roadtovr.com/new-flat-lens-give-vr-headsets-better-image-quality-making-lighter-compact/ [roadtovr.com]
"Heavy" is the last thing we'll see. Instead we will see them get more compact and lighter. Potentially allowing for a VR form factor that is more like sunglasses than a brick. A pair of sunglasses with AR/VR capability would be ideal (for the on-board CPU+GPU, use something magic like this [soylentnews.org]).
I can't deny that it may be expensive. We'll see what happens. But we benefit from large companies like Facebookulus doing the kind of R&D that will eventually improve all VR headsets:
https://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-patents-hybrid-fresnel-make-vr-optics-clear/ [roadtovr.com]
Here's some stuff about VR and eyesight adjustments:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/virtual-reality/stanford-vr-adaptive/ [digitaltrends.com]
https://www.alphr.com/virtual-reality/1008932/vr-vision-loss-sight-blindness [alphr.com]
I guess the ultimate solutions for people with certain eye disorders would involve eye tracking (already a done deal since it is needed for foveated rendering), testing software that allows you to make personal adjustments, and some kind of adaptive optics. Again, Facebook is at the forefront:
https://uploadvr.com/display-week-half-dome-facebook/ [uploadvr.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]