This post gives a short summary of the landscape of VR devices and tools available today, continuing with non-mobile devices (read about mobile devices in the first part). I will also outline some pitfalls. A follow-up post will talk about the tools used to create VR content and optimizing your content for maximum reach.
Dedicated VR Devices
If you plug it into your PC, it’s a dedicated VR device. The most popular ones are Oculus Rift and HTC Vive (developed by Valve, but manufactured by HTC). Another one is the Playstation VR set, which only works with Playstation, but is a dedicated VR device nonetheless. All dedicated VR devices include (or offer on top) sensors for positional head tracking and controllers for both hands that track the hands and arms in relation to the head of the user.
While mobile VR devices are limited by the processing power of the smartphone inserted into the viewer dedicated, VR devices are much more powerful, although, again, dependent on the processing power of the PC used. Most manufacturers recommend using a recent PC with a very recent graphics card. Once that’s taken care of, the much higher bottom line concerning cost can be felt across the board:
- Close to full HD pixel resolution per eye at an 110 degree field of view (compared to 55-78 degree, and half of the smartphones screen resolution for mobile devices).
- 90 hz refresh rate compared to 60 hz on mobile devices.
- Tracks your head and hands in VR space, allowing for upper-body range of motion. The HTC Vive even tracks free-range motion in a 3 by 3 meter area via infrared sensor. This literally let’s you walk around in VR space (until you bump into a wall or trip over the headset’s wires).
- The high-powered GPU lets the user access AAA quality realtime 3D environments as we know them from AAA quality computer games.
Positional Tracking, Head Tracking, Hand Tracking
It is great and surprisingly accurate, especially the HTC Vive’s. However, it can be a pain to set up, won’t work in just any setting, and can grow inaccurate even within a single user session. On top of that, a major pitfall is that positional user input is not something that can casually be handled without a lot of experience in at least 3D programming. A good developer and solid user experience design are a must have to turn this into a usable end-user experience. All major SDKs (Oculus, Vive, Playstation) feature different approaches on how to implement these controllers, which means double or triple programming efforts to roll out VR content using tracked user input on all devices at the same time.
This is a good indication of where the VR ecosystem is at as a whole: still at its first device generation, which is not at all standardized across devices and mainly targeted at tech-savyy users. That being said, there’s about four times as many new VR devices announced for each following year than have been released the year before—so hardware and software quality are bound to improve and will become feasible for less tech-savvy users.
What about audience size?
Let’s stick to established terminology: dedicated VR devices are just that—dedicated. They require an initial investment close to 2,000 dollars to get you started and (especially the Vive) require a dedicated physical space where the motion trackers can be set up. The whole setup and operating process is very techy, and each system you want to support has its own ins and outs. These requirements cut down the potential audience size tremendously. The number of units sold to date does not exceed 1.6 million devices,many of which are owned by gamers (more on that later). Playstation VR has sold 0.75 million alone. This deserves special consideration because the Playstation platform traditionally is very closed to developers with strict in place to gain access. On top of that, Sony has specifically stated that it wants game content for its users rather than media and social VR content.
Mobile vs. Dedicated devices – what’s the difference?
It is very telling that through Playstation VR, most dedicated units sold have been shipped to gamers. This means that content for those devices will go beyond mere VR photo and video. Instead, highly immersive real-time 3D environments are indicative of high production values and costs, such as the IKEA VR Showroom and the Audi VR Showroom. Agencies and game studios work on these experiences for months at a time and then present them to a larger audience in a fixed setting,that is, at a store. This is “dedicated” VR concerning all aspects: hardware, software, use case, and setting. There’s nothing casual about it. Content production is complicated and takes a lot of time and money because any VR content for dedicated devices is going to be compared to triple-A games. There might be a niche for dedicated VR feature films but, so far, there are no case studies or white papers indicating that watching a 60+ minute film without much interaction in it will be something a lot of users desire.
To summarize, if you want to create VR games and have a decent budget and skilled team available, dedicated VR devices are just the place for you, even if the group of potential buyers of what you create is well below 1 million people—unless you happen to be a registered Playstation developer, in which case, it’s 1.6 million people. Another field where dedicated devices make sense is in advertising, where a still decent budget and a small team can create something that can keep up with a triple-A game at least in a short session. For everybody else, mobile VR devices are going to where it is happening, and you can be content with the fact that your audience will also be there.
Read on about tools to create VR content and how you can go about optimizing your audience reach in the next post.
Sources:
[1] http://venturebeat.com/2017/02/04/superdata-vrs-breakout-2016-saw-6-3-million-headsets-shipped/
[2] http://www.digitaltrends.com/virtual-reality/oculus-rift-vs-htc-vive/
About the Author
Andreas Zeitler is thefounder and CEO at Vuframe. He’s been working with Augmented & Virtual Reality on a daily basis for the past 8 years. Vuframe’s mission is to democratize AR & VR by removing the tech barrier for everyone.