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posted by chromas on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the lol dept.

Phys.org:

A few years ago, virtual reality was all the rage in Hollywood, helping to fuel the rise of Silicon Beach with the promise of reinventing the entertainment business.

At its peak, investors pumped $253 million into two dozen deals involving virtual and augmented reality start-ups in L.A. and Orange counties in 2016, hoping that pricey headsets projecting virtual worlds would become as popular as smartphones. But investment in the technology has slowed dramatically in recent years, and what seemed like a promising boom has largely fizzled.

Several California companies that raised millions of dollars have shut down or have laid off dozens of workers, as businesses scrambled to readjust their strategies in the face of lackluster consumer demand for VR headsets and a drought of capital.

Take heart, VR enthusiasts. It took several tries for video streaming to catch on, too.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @10:22PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday January 15 2019, @10:22PM (#787078) Journal

    VR isn't going away this time.

    What we've seen is the early adopter effect yet again. Tethered (at least using wires) is dumb, headsets should have front-facing cameras (and probably side cameras like HTC Vive Cosmos), they should have eye-tracking and foveated rendering, resolution and framerate can go up (framerate at least to 120 Hz, preferably to 240 Hz). There should be 6 degrees of freedom, never 3, and as much body awareness as possible without the use of external sensors, with the possible exception of hand controller gadgets. Headsets will become thinner and lighter, and battery life may improve as internal components become more efficient and battery energy density increases.

    And don't forget developments like this one: Oculus Research Presents Focal Surface Display. Will Eliminate Nausea in VR [soylentnews.org]

    Again, early adopters get a product that doesn't take advantage of years of additional research and lessons learned.

    Games and content are another problem for early adopters. You don't get the critical mass of content until there are enough people with headsets, but the first people to get headsets will have the worst selection of content. The solution is to make cheap mass market headsets, which Facebook and others are starting to do. It also helps that prerendered or live streaming 360-degree video can be made relatively easily compared to games, and is not difficult to render (you can even view 360-degree video on an older laptop with a click-and-drag UI, or on a smartphone using the accelerometers).

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