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HTC has hit back against claims of declining VR sales figures:
The blog post in particular references a report from Digital Trends which talks about VR sales figures from Amazon, and proceeds to point out a number of ways which the data presented could be misleading.
Several points made by HTC Vive are ones that have also been addressed by VRFocus, as seen in an article about the modern VR cycle, and some comments in the weekly VR vs. article. HTC Vive were not pulling punches right from the very start, evening saying in the introduction: "Analyst reports are in and apparently, it's curtains for Virtual Reality (VR). Pardon us if we're not heeding the alarms. News of the so-called death of VR comes once a year and is greatly exaggerated."
From there, the blog post proceeds in a point-by-point fashion, discussing how early consumer VR was largely driven by smartphone-based devices such as the Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard. Not only have these devices been superseded by standalone units like the Oculus Go, which offer a better visual experience, but the promotional offers which were available for phone launches have now long since passed. HTC Vive also point out that PC-based VR companies are yet to release any solid sales figures, and that much of the growth of premium VR has been centered around location-based VR centres, something which the Digital Trends report did not address.
Related: HTC's Vive Pro to Launch on April 5
Facebook Launches Oculus Go, a $200 Standalone VR Headset
VirtualLink Consortium Announces USB Type-C Specification for VR Headsets
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 28 2018, @03:08PM (1 child)
I am sort of confused about the whole "stand alone avoids... '*OS*' problems entirely"
Giving me the solution of using Android, what we can likely agree is/was the first commercially successful spyware OS built for the purpose of advertising and that they knew no one would buy that so they gave it away for free... instead of Windows 10, which decided that tactic would work except they couldn't give it away reliably and forced it on anyone that couldn't resist even if they said no, really doesn't inspire enthusiasm or the desire to give them my money. Christ, even the eye tracking stuff available is just going to track what I looked at to make sure I get ads for it later on something else.
I have different older VR glasses that still see use on occasion (RCA, VGA, and S-Video input is not modern, but it is backwards compatible..). Many older games can sometimes surprise you even if they don't support VR, and some older games that are still fun and were designed for it (Descent, Mechwarrior 2, Magic Carpet 2 [which admittedly was not as popular as it should have been]) still are very fun on occasion. Descent has more longevity in the same way the original Doom and clones of Doom have replayability.
And they work just fine with DVD player, tv out put, etc. Even VCRs, which don't seem to have any OS vendor lock-in requirements.
Games that weren't designed for the older glasses can still provide immersion,
Also, winamp visualizations still looks good on them!
no windows is required unless you want windows games. no specific console is required unless you want that console's games.
There's just no way I am going to get a facebook account to play games. There's no way I am going to get windows 10 just to play games. and even if the android OS that controls some new VR glasses is somehow secured, it's like saying it's alright when it phones home it's encrypted for your safety and no you can't look at what its transmitting because Cloud.
I can only hope that Valve comes out with a Steam OS (that doesn't suck like their new chat client--so I am probably screwed and have to decide on either to discover girls or keep trying to play other types of games know I will at least be screwed that way).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 28 2018, @07:28PM
i remember these from old VR v.1 times. there was also a sony "headset" that replaced a monitor.
but i was poor (a kid) in those times so never got to play around with it ...