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Wearable watchers, CCS Insight, had good news and bad news for the virtual and augmented reality industry today. Sales are tanking but look! New hardware!
The report underlines just how much the industry has been driven by users of smartphone-based VR, which peaked at 8 million units in 2017 before plummeting to just 3 million in 2018. The net result is the total VR shipments in 2018 will actually end up less than 2017.
[...] But all is not doom and gloom. Stand-alone VR is tipped to hit the big time in 2019, with 29 million of the wireless beauties expected to ship in 2022.
VR vendors, not least the Facebook-backed Oculus, hope so. The Oculus Quest is due to ship in 2019, free of the pesky wires and PC gear needed with the Rift. A cheaper tetherless variant, the Go, has already shipped.
Meanwhile, virtual reality cafes are empty.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:58AM (5 children)
Fuck content and games. Virtual Reality Window Manger :)
I want a VR headset that I can develop with on Linux/BSD, that doesn't require shit proprietary drivers, phones home, or requires Steam to operate. With untethered hardware and the ability to track my hands and fingers, I could easily imagine an awesome window manager.
Who needs multiple 4K screens when virtually you are free to put data wherever you want in the virtual space. Cerebro anyone? The possibilities for notifications, docks, multiple screens, different ways of organizing data, etc. I've always wanted a moving background. With VR, I can literally be floating in a nebulae out in space with multiple screens around my head, and data presented in front of me on an IMAX like wall.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:08AM (2 children)
The VR window manager and a VR cinema mode for 2D videos (exists already) should be relatively easy to accomplish and not need much updating. Actual made-for-VR videos and games need to be an ongoing thing. And it indirectly benefits you since greater adoption of VR means more people picking up on the window manager use case, more hardware competitors, more progress.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:04AM (1 child)
I wasn't thinking literal 3D video, although your point about it driving the window manager is a good one. The 2D Video Window Manager is just a monitor with a regular window manager right? I meant to indicate that I overwhelmingly support a 3D VR Window Manager over games, and see games as the least of the possibilities almost. Until you give me a really immersive RPG that is Final Fantasy kind of detail level. The games were just not taking off, although I found a couple really cool. They were about as simple as pong though. Even with the wands and lack of haptic feedback, using your current mouse and keyboard, it would be really useful.
With haptic feedback and a better interface, which would be scanning your hands very fast, I can see all kinds of applications benefiting. I could use a 3D VR Sketchup that allows me to grab and place objects, scale them with my hands, and sculpt if I want to. A 3D D3JS with network flows depicted in 3D, customer records like cylinders with an avatar on the top, .etc. A network monitoring platform that completely rips off Zion Control in the Matrix II. Review logs and see 3D representations of regex matches. Actually see into the file and be able to move through symbols, organize, and sort them. What could readable programming be like in 3D?
I see commercial applications that are worthy in their own right. Get a little frustrated when gaming is driving this :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:37PM
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:32PM (1 child)
> Who needs multiple 4K screens when virtually you are free to put data wherever you want in the virtual space.
They're trying, but it's going to be a while based on early prototypes: https://youtu.be/L2sCJpR3x8o?t=495 [youtu.be]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:04PM
For the virtual desktop manager and some games, it would be nice for the headset to have some presence awareness so that it finds a desktop/laptop keyboard and any external mouse using its front-facing camera and sensors, and overlays a faint, accurate representation of their location. Use simple machine learning so it finds these things no matter what brand/model they are, without picking up clutter on the desk, and labels the keys correctly. Maybe make them disappear if you withdraw your hands. Then I would use it to sit in a chair and play a stealth game.
Just throwing some ideas out based on the laptop and wireless mouse already in front of me.
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