In 2016, Did Virtual Reality Experience a New Dawn or a Massive Flop?
Everything I’ve played in virtual reality so far that’s been a developer jamming VR into an existing thing, I’ve hated. Fallout 4, Doom 4, you name it. This idea that virtual reality is triple-A franchises plus headsets feels all wrong.
Games like Drool’s Thumper are the opposite of this. I play that game in VR, and it’s a rhythm-racer that demands insane concentration, and I’m topping leaderboards. I play it outside VR, and I’m a twitchy, offbeat mess. There’s a focus and perspective thing going on there that the headset clearly enhances.
To your question about VR’s language, it seems like a chicken-egg of inputs wrestling with outputs. Today’s optically wraped, screen-driven VR uses all these ancient input ideas. Like your neck is now your wrist, and your eyes are your mouse pointer.
The argument goes that Google Maps is already a form of augmented reality—call it version 1.0. The question, thinking about silent running ventures like HoloLens or Magic Leap or the next version of Google Glass, is what 2.0 looks like.
See the full story here: http://time.com/4618376/virtual-reality-success-or-flop/