Category: VR vs.

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VR vs. Friends With Benefits

It’s always amusing to get feedback on VR vs. as invariably it falls into one of two camps. Either it is from someone unfamiliar with the rather different tone of the column compared to the rest of VRFocus or it’s often a pretty good thought provoking comment. This week just gone was the former.

“Was the writer on meth?” was one comment this week, from a disgruntled reader unhappy at the style of the piece. Oh well. No one ever said this (or any) column was for everybody. I can assure them though that if they’ve managed to avoid this weekly assemblage of words for as long as they seem to have, it’s unlikely to bother them again. VR vs. makes up exactly 1/80th, or 1.25% of VRFocus‘ standard weekly content. So there’s a whole 98.75% to ‘make up’ for the disappointment.

Also, to answer their question, no. I’m not.

Though it seems like it’s a interesting idea. I’ve submitted “What is Polybius like when high?” as a new feature suggestion. To my knowledge no VRFocus staff member is on drugs with the exception of poor Rebecca who, at the time of writing, has been carted off to hospital. I mention all this as I wanted to thank the reader who so kindly wished her well a couple of weeks back, hopefully she will be back with us soon – though not so soon as she’s not finally able to have this operation.  In any case there will be even grander flights of fancy in future weeks. You’ve all be warned.

Polybius screenshot 2Now, I’m a little bit pressed for time on this week’s VR vs. as I’m being pulled into looking over things going on with our VRinFocus event which kicks off in 49 or so days. If you’ve not checked that out, incidentally, and you or someone you know are looking for investment or looking to invest in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) endeavours, I highly recommend doing so. (Click here to find out more.) So, I wanted to run something by you today that’s been bothering me for a bit – if that’s okay. Not-so-much a question as me thinking out loud. Well, via a keyboard at least.

Standalone VR. What’s in it for the PC hardware manufacturers, exactly?
Because as far as I can see, not a heck of a lot.

Obviously, standalone isn’t going to supplant tethered VR overnight and the likes of Intel have their own operations going on. But, for the last few years we’ve had Oculus and others, though chiefly Facebook’s VR division, working hand-in-hand with the hardware manufacturers – DELL and NVIDIA and other people full of capital letters – to push PCs and laptops to be more ‘VR Ready’. This has resulted in a lower bar in terms of the specification needed to be able to use VR headsets on the PC. At the same time this has helped to push down the cost required for you or I to buy a VR ready system. It’s got those hardware manufacturers, those PC makers, invested in VR’s success.  It’s been great to see how things have developed since I’ve been at VRFocus, now a heady three years according to my invoice history.

It seems to me that in an untethered VR world there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of things for these companies to get excited over, unless you are helping, for example, Oculus to make the Oculus Go and the Oculus Santa Cruz by supplying the components. Those head mounted displays (HMDs), and VR on them will now live and die by the quality of experience they provide on their own. That in itself is great as it removes the PC barrier for entry but at the same time… you’re removing the PC from the equation as a PC for these headsets is effectively redundant.

So, does this mean that we’ll see that progress stop in this area? Will the idea of the ‘VR ready’ PC cease to be as VR hardware providers get, in some ways, cut out of the great VR experience? Does the bar keep being pushed or does it stop? What’s there to keep them invested? To keep them on board with VR being the future, if, ultimately, there’s no financial benefit for them?

VR is set to standalone – and it feels like in time it could find that alone is indeed where it stands.

 

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VR vs. The Room

Everybody stop what you are doing! Yup, you. You reading this. Stop what you’re doing as well. Cancel all the plans you have. I don’t care if you’re getting married in the morning, if you’re currently in an argument with a foreign power, if you’re about to win a contest, or even having lunch. Stop the nuptials, hold fire with the end of the world and seriously, for heaven’s sake put that sandwich down.

I have hot breaking news. Well, maybe not breaking and maybe not hot. I have lukewarm news you might not have heard about. It involves Oculus and no it’s not about the issue they had over the weekend with the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in America.

Oculus from Facebook artIf you’re not familiar with that story, which we reported on Sunday, there was the usual Oculus demo booth at the conference showing off virtual reality (VR) to attendees.

There was just one problem with them doing so, the shadow hanging over CPAC was what was going to happen or be said in the aftermath of the tragedy that occurred in Florida. The current President of the United States has pretty much blamed everyone and anything at this time and yes, the spectre of “it’s the videogames I tells ya!” has descended once again having long since supplanted the idea of the ‘video nasty’ being responsible for every horrendous thing in the eighties and early nineties.

Oculus turned up of course, with their usual array of videogames demos.  Unfortunately, that included Bullet Train. Which quickly became the face of ‘violent videogames’ at the event, with people upset that with all this going on guns were ‘being used to sell products’ and in the face of much criticism, the title and others (apparently) had to be withdrawn. Now I’m reliably informed by comments in response to our reporting on it that it is a “non-story”; I would say in response tell that to Oculus. Because by the time we reported on it a heck of a lot of national and international outlets including the USA Today and the BBC already had.

Bullet TrainIronically, what’s perhaps more awkward for Oculus was it wasn’t them expressly that the scorn fell on. Barra apologised on behalf of the company, but the headlines all were to do with Facebook. It was Facebook‘s mistake. It was Facebook who didn’t think. Oh dear… More bad publicity for the parent company.

I don’t blame Oculus for touring with Bullet Train. After all, the demo has been a part of their booths since “the year dot” (as my Mum would say), and it’s likely not something they even consider anymore. Bullet Train remains one of the best introductions to VR for gamers that you could ask for. That said, whilst there is a bit of a difference between the VR demo (why hasn’t it been replaced with Robo Recall, incidentally?) and what happened in Florida, Oculus did fail in this instance to do what you should always do – read the room. I’ve always felt that to be something of an American phrase. Reading the room. It is a good one though.

It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that Oculus were a little bit slow on the uptake. Considering which, that brings me back to the amazing news that I wanted to share with you. Don’t look now everyone, but the Oculus Store on the web actually has a search function at last! Holy crap! I don’t know exactly when it happened, but damn if it isn’t progress. Actual, honest to God progress. I know the addition of a search function to a website is hardly going to set the world on fire, but damnit I’ve been banging on about their web store – their OFFICIAL online store – not having such a fundamental aspect of online retail for well over six months, and it had been like that for a long time prior to me talking about it.

[Insert Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah here]

Look! Look at it! I even like the section dropdown now. Very useful. That’s all it needed. A little bit of forethought. Unfortunately, it seems, Oculus are still in afterthought mode at the moment. Hopefully though they’ll learn from these. Both of these. Because each situation in its own way showcases Oculus’ awkward ability of being its own worst enemy.

And if your biggest problem is yourselves, that makes it so much easier for your rivals.

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VR vs. A Busman’s Holiday

Some people don’t learn, do they? If you recall the first part of last week’s column you might remember me discussing someone getting all bent out of shape because a story about a videogame where the developers specifically mentioned the possibility they would be developing it as a PlayStation VR title was tagged witrh the PlayStation VR tag. (I know, it sounds stupid to even have to write it.)  Well, this last week they got all antsy again.

This time they were upset by a story, the latter part of which discussed a trailer being released for said videogame that was labelled up as PlayStation VR in the title – despite no official declaration of a console version yet. That’s pretty newsworthy I would say. Of course, no it wasn’t according to our friend, and no, this wasn’t to do with the PSVR either. Apparently. Despite, you know, the PlayStation VR trailer. Instead it was, we were informed, just clickbait.

Umm, I’m pretty sure that’s now how that works. Especially when a) it’s not mentioned in the title or description at all and b) the subject complained about not existing actually exists plain as day and there’s even an external video about it.

Unfortunately, their “J’accuse!” behaviour at our foul crime of labelling something what it was about ended up with Disqus deciding it was spam. I can’t blame it frankly. But the accusation was so ridiculous I was actually quite happy to leave it there to entertain people at the logic – or lack thereof. But no, they then got riled up when they found it was gone and kicked off with the ALL CAPS and F-bombs annnnnd… managing to get themselves banned. So well done there, fella.  If you’d waited another hour you’d’ve seen it reappear again.

It was a similar sense of bemusement that I felt a couple of months ago when we were in Malta. A sense that somehow this was all just an inevitability of the situation.

This of course gives me an excuse to go back (finally…) to the story of the team’s festive trip to Malta, first chronicled in VR vs. Travel.  As you might recall the entire team for once was off on a trip, including, amazingly, #TeamLeftBehind. Myself and Rebecca were going somewhere! Although where Rebecca really needed to go was hospital to have surgery – and she still very much does.

Meanwhile Peter was also far from 100% as he had some sort of chest infection/flu, and the fact he managed to review Fallout 4 VR when the code came through, spending hours in VR when the last thing he needed was to have a headset on (we had taken a HTC Vive out with us, incidentally) was nothing short of miraculous. Seeing the coughing, wheezing Peter animatedly trying to get radroaches away from his legs was one of the highlights of the trip. Sadly, Peter’s act of review heroism wasn’t thought of so highly in the comments as he never came across some of the graphical issues other did, and subsequently didn’t mark the title down for such an issue. C’est la vie! Or should that be ‘c’est la vay air’?

Fallout 4 VR screenshotAnyway…

After several days hard graft and much wondering about whether we were going to blow ourselves up with the gas cylinder powered heaters that were a necessity to survive the apartments in the evening. We finally had pushed ahead enough on content that we were to be able to spend the last day actually out looking around the northern island of Gozo.  We decided to take a bus into the city of Victoria, which is Gozo’s capital and found that doing so was something of a wait. Looking around the dusty landscape, rocky outcrops and hedges full of cacti some considerable time later, I was convinced that we were more likely to have a roadrunner and a coyote come tearing past than something with wheels on it. Eventually, of course, one did. But a little seed of doubt had entered my mind. Something was off. Something was wrong.  I wasn’t familiar with public transport in foreign lands, but still, for a weekday service it felt somewhat… limited.

Arriving in Victoria after the trip in a very stuffy bus, saw me and Rebecca dodge around all the various stray cats that filled the city. Cats are to Gozo as Barbary monkeys are to Gibraltar. They’re everywhere and they’ll happily scamper off with anything remotely resembling food if they think you’re offering it to them. (I.e. you own any food whatsoever.)  Our first tourist stop was the pharmacist though, as now I was feeling pretty awful myself and Rebecca was in an awful lot of pain. Travelling through a little shopping centre of sorts, the team were surprised to find all the shops closed. That seed of doubt was germinating fast.

“Maybe they’re having a siesta?” Nina suggested. Peter and I looked at each other dubiously.

More wandering found an open pharmacist, thank goodness, and some open souvenir shops too – but even more closed stores. As we trudged down some back streets to find more and more closed businesses my seed of doubt was at this point a 50 foot tall oak tree filled with a variety of cheery woodland creatures. With a sense of dread, I opened Google on my phone.

As I’d suspected in our great wisdom we’d managed to pick, of all days to come out, Republic Day on Gozo. It was a bank holiday. No one was going to be doing much of anything.

Well… arse.

The group visibly deflated, groaning loudly. All except Nina who looked at me like I’d grown an extra head, “How did you know that?” I looked pointedly at my phone, but she didn’t get the gist so I suggested I could read perfect Maltese and pointed at a random road sign. This explanation was deemed acceptable. Resigned to making the best of things, Kevin and Peter led the way as we plodded off in the direction of the citadel.

Victoria Citadel in Victoria, GozoIt was a reasonably sure bet that Victoria’s Cittadella wasn’t closed – and if it was we were probably going to launch a 5-person siege of the battlements in protest. So, we marched up the various hills (much to Rebecca’s discomfort) before a final very steep road indeed.  As the rest got to the top however, Peter and Rebecca realised I wasn’t with them.  I was at the bottom still reading a pamphlet. Reading and laughing. They looked confused.

I walked up to join them, brandishing it in the air. It was for a sort of tiny private cinema. What were they showing? A 360 degree video of Gozo from the air.

“No way!” Peter laughed, “Is it open?”

“Nope!”

“Aww, damn it.”

As we chuckled over the possibility of engaging in a proper virtual reality (VR) ‘‘busman’s holiday‘, something else caught my eye halfway up the same hill. It was a picture of a Samsung Gear VR. I went over… and nearly went over. ‘Did you know that you could download a companion app to find out all about the Cittadella – as well as see it in VR?’ asked the poster. I initially thought this was the same item as the 360 degree video. But no – it was a completely different thing.

Less than twenty metres apart, up a hill, in the middle of Northern Malta we’d stumbled across two different VR items in a matter of seconds. We weren’t even deliberately looking. What was that about VR and mainstream, again? And the hilarious thing was we couldn’t try out either of them!

The day wrapped up after a trip up to the battlements, lunch at a cafe which I turned down as I wasn’t feeling hungry.  On the way back there was one final laugh. In the UK as part of us having a monarchy still you may have seen the letters ER associated with a crest. This is the Royal Crest and the letters represent the reigning monarch at the time. You can see different ones on post boxes and older buildings. Currently it is ER which stands for Elizabeth Regina; the R often referred to mistakenly as ‘royal’ but in this instance specifically Regina means ‘queen’ . I’d forgotten the place had obviously been renamed after Queen Victoria, and so her version of the crest appears in the city’s coat of arms.

Or, as I put it on Twitter…

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VR vs. Some Very Stern Words

It’s odd what some people get bent out of shape about. Spending your career (I think I can call it that at this point) in an online role means you see plenty of it – and if you’re involved in social media you’re going to see a heck of a lot of it.  You’re also going to get a lot of it too. Over the last decade or so I sort of fell into social media as it rose to be a marketing tool and I’ve had all sorts slung at me down the years. Threats, abuse, slightly too interested in my personal life girls (and guys), people ringing up the office to ask the legal team personal questions about me. The works. So, if you’re gonna call me an idiot just know that, well, I’ve had worse. In fact, I’ve said worse about me myself, so, there you go.

Recently there was an interesting two and eight in the comments about a post where a virtual reality (VR) videogame was announced and someone was very angry it was listed on the ‘PSVR feed’ when it was not a PlayStation VR title. The reason why it was tagged as PlayStation VR was because the developers expressly said they had plans to bring the title to Sony’s headset. News about PSVR? That’ll be tagged PSVR then. Except, they insisted, that was news “not relevant” to PlayStation VR at all. Any title could come to PlayStation VR, so we shouldn’t tag that. It was an interesting argument, one I couldn’t understand for the life of me. The developers expressly mentioned Sony’s headset but it isn’t news about it? Huh?

In the end I apparently failed to explain to their satisfaction that, well, 1 = 1 and we’ll obviously tag a story with whatever it is about. Instead I was a jackass who didn’t know what they were talking about and I should take my “condescending attitude” and “shove it up your Mod ass”. Rather un-phased by the whole thing I just responded that “my ass is glorious and majestic. Thank you for noticing.”

And it is.
Very.

All of this got me to thinking about another set of comments we once got on VRFocus. Which had me heading over to YouTube to ‘relive’ what is quite possibly the most epic and, frankly, unhinged rant a channel I’ve had a hand in has ever received.

Now, YouTube is as YouTube does at this point – am I right? Being a channel owner on YouTube is like spinning the wheel on Wheel of Fortune. Who knows, you may have a big hit. At the same time the way YouTube is setup and ever changing its own rules you know there’s the chance all your had work will ultimately be for naught and your channel lost to the ages. It’s felt for a while that YouTube’s ‘Wheel of Fortune’ has been adding more and more ‘bankrupt’ sections as the years roll on. It has also been on a bit of a redesign kick in recent months and a Beta of YouTube Studio is waiting in the wings to fundamentally change the back-end experience for YouTube channels. To that end I got thinking about whether or not the aforementioned rant was still there as I’d been ‘saving it’ for a special occasion.  In that way Social Media Managers always save messages that prove points or are so outrageous as to be something to discuss at later events, panels or what have you.

This rant was particularly special in that it came, of all things, at the expense of the poor Samsung Gear VR. It’s terrible crime? It launched.

Back on November 23rd 2015 we put up the Gear VR Launch trailer aka “It’s Not A Phone, It’s A Galaxy” as Samsung celebrated the launch of their smartphone-based head mounted display (HMD) and showed both it, and some of the Gear VR experiences that you could enjoy at the time, off.

One man though was very, very angry about this and his name was Chua Neng Lis. I know very little about him. He used to work in a plastics factory in or near Minnesota. He also got very upset about North Korea, America and South Korea once on a CNN video, so I imagine wherever he is now he’s been pretty miffed about the last few months. Lis was not pleased about the situation with the Gear VR at all – especially as he seemed to think he’d come up with the idea in the first place.

I should point out that I’ll be posting the message text as is without changing any punctuation, spelling or presentation.

“thats still not virtual reality. your. just. mocking. and. manipalteing. my. ideas.

and. you. think. its. so. fa faaaanny. cause. the. poor man. can. get. wealthy. off. of. the. poor. mans. idea. so. you. stoled. it. from. him. and. kept. the. poor. man. poor. so. you. can. point. fingers. and. laugh. at. the. poor. man. to. do. something. about. it.”

There is of course something to be said about corporations and capitalism and the ability of the rich and poor to earn a fair living, and on reading the first time I honestly thought up until this point that this is what Lis was trying to convey.

“when. i. take. your. brains. out. youll. understand. how. the. world. goes. round.”

Oh.
Okay it wasn’t that at all.

That was just the first of nine messages left on the video by Lis which proceed to get more and more bizarre.

“HOE. WAS TELEPATHY. STEALING MY IDEAS FROM TELEPATHY AND TELEPATHY CHANNEL. OH RIGHT. I CAN DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. BUT WAITE. TO KILL YOU AFTER IM DEAD.

AND NOW YOUR TRYING TO STOP THAT. LOL. NOW ASK YOUR GHOSTS THOUGHTS STEALING FROM. YOU. IS IT EASY OR HARD TO KILL ME AFTER IM DEAD. OR ALIVE.”

Whose ghosts? Ours? Samsung’s? I should point out that no he’s not referring to ghosts as in spooks/spies, but actual ghosts. It seems Lis has a BIG thing about ghosts. Also vampires. According to him America is full of cults and vampires. I blame Buffy. She’s slacking off.

“AND THATS STILL NOT VIRTUAL REALITY. YOUR USEING THAT DEVICE TO STEAL MORE IDEAS. FROM PEOPLES BRAINS AND HEADS. EVEN USEING AND STEALING OLD DATA AND INFORMATION. YOU ALL TOOK PART HACKED. AND STOLED. INTO YOUR OWN MINDS BRAINS AND DATA. TO ACT OUT LIKE ITS YOURS. WHEN YOU KNOW IN YOUR BRAIN AND MIND. ITS NOT YOURS. EVEN IF YOU WOULD. “LIKE”. TO THINK SO.

OH YEAH. ASK YOUR GOVERNMENT. “GHOSTS”.

THEY KNOW I CAN KILL YOU. USEING THAT DEVICE.

NOW HOW ABOUT THAT ARE YOU GOING TO STEAL. AND UPLOAD WHAT I JUST SAY AND SAID. AND MY BRAIN. UP TO THAT DEVICE ALSO TO. CONTROL AND KILL THOSE PEOPLE AND MINDS.”

He can kill ghosts with VR? Literal ghosts working for or with the Government?

“yeah i can kill you with that device of yours. AND IM NOT JOKEING.”

Well, that clears that up at least.

“MISTAKES. ARE MADE. AND PROBLEMS. HAPPEN. AND YOU DONT THINK. I DONT ENJOY OR HAVE FUN. KILLING PEOPLE ON MY OWN. LOLOLOL.

YOU SHOULD LOOK UP YOUR NEWS MEDIA FEEDS. AND HOW MANY DEATH IS OCCUREING. DEFINETLY NOT YOU HOOKING ME UP. ITS YOU HOOKING YOUR SELVES UP. TO. SOMETHING. THATS KILLING YOU. AND WAITEING. WAITEING TO JUST NAB YOU AND KILL YOU RIGHT AFTER. YOUR BRIGHT IDEAS AND SHOWS. ^_^. NOW WHOS WATCHING AND LISTENING TO ME OVER THIER. HRMMMMMMMMMM.”

Yoda’s changed a lot over the years, hasn’t he?

“HONESTLY THOSE GHOSTS GIVEING YOU IDEAS. AINT SAVEING YOU OR YOUR ASS.

YOU CANT CONTROL THEM. THIER CONTROLING YOU.

LOL. CANT HELP YOU THIER BRUHHH. YOU CANT STOP THEM. LOL.”

So if you’re keeping track on this and I can’t blame you if you’re not. Either we, Samsung or the American Government (I assume) are in league with the undead who are stealing minds potentially via VR which isn’t VR and he invented it.

“NOW. WHO CAN STOP THEM. THAT YOU HEARD. YELLING AND TALKING ON TELEPATHY CHANNEL. HRMMMMMM. 2013. was. the. DATE. LOOK IT UP YOUR SELF. I HAVE THE SECRET CODE TO KILL YOU YOUR CULTS RELIGION GOVERNMENT AND RACE OFF. AND YOU THINK. YOUR GOING TO BE RECORDEING MY THOUGHTS ON TELEPATHY.”

Well, no… I mean you’re kind of telling everyone your thoughts via a YouTube comments section. Not really the same thing as telepathy.

Incidentally though reader, those thoughts you’ve been having? Demonetised.

“NOW HRM HRM HRM. WHY WOULD YOU GO AND SAY THAT. YOU CANT EXTRACT THOUGHTS YOUR SELVES. AND WORSHIPING A GHOST TO.

HOW ARE THOSE GAY CULTS. AND GAY VAMPIRES AND VAMPIRES TREATING YOU. HUNTING THEM DOWN VERY WELL. ARENT WE.”

Ah, there are the vampires I mentioned earlier. And yes, he also has something of an issue with homosexuality too. Because clearly we needed some issues with homophobia in the rant as well.

“ALSO YOUR STEALING MY MORES CODE FROM ME. STEALING FROM. TETRIS. AND. ASIANTOWN.NET.

EVEN MY PERSONALITY MORE CODE. WHERE I CREATED MULTIPLE PERSONALITYS. HRMMMM. NOW WHERE AND HOW DID YOU GET THAT FROM. HRMMMMMMMMM. FOR SURE YOU KNOW YOU STOLED. IT. AND FOR SURE. YOUR PLAYING THE BLAME YOUR SELF TO CLAIM GAME. NOT YOURSSSSS. FOOO.”

Yeah, foo. That L block’s got it coming.

“yeah,. to. bad. you. couldnt. kill. me. and. interrupted. my. cause.

AND NOW YOU HAVE TO LIVE WITH IT. KNOWING. I WILL KILL YOU ALL OFF. FOR GOOD. AND HUMANITYS SAFETY. BECAUSE OF YOUR OWN RULES AND LAWS. YOU STATED. ON TELEPATHY CHANNEL. AND IN YOUR MOVIE SCRIPTS SCRIPTS. AND DOCUMENTS. ABOUT ME. AND MY KIND. AND PEOPLE.”

Well, er, I think killing us all off because Gear VR launched is a bit over the top. I mean, why can’t you just write a grumpy petition on Change.org?

I won’t go into the next bit too much because he just descends into ranting about whoever his targets are at this point being gay and getting their comeuppance (I guess?) by being violated by the supernatural. Needless to say, it all comes to a universe redefining climax with the inadvertently hilarious phrase-

“SPIRITS. UP THE BUTT HOLE FOR YOUU. FOO;”

And to prove I’m not making this all up…

VRFocus YouTube Rant

Yes, these did get reported by the way and I’m very much hoping someone got to speak to them.

But when you get upset with me or us online just bear this in mind: I’m really not that phased, and that’s because honestly you are not in the same league as someone like this guy. Hell, you aren’t even in the same dimension, probably. And here you were thinking people getting bent out of shape over exclusivity periods was over the top.

More FOO you.

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VR vs. Nostradamus (2018 Edition) – Part Three

Okay, here we are. Part three and just in the nick of time before we all phase out of January and into February. It’s also rather close to me disappearing by way of a week off around my birthday so let’s get these underway, shall we? As with some of the ones before some or potentially all of these are connected in some way – but this time not with an overall theme. More than one could, in theory lead in to another and another after that. In one case it deliberately does. It’s time to get back to the more familiar names in virtual reality (VR) starting with one prediction that I kind of had last year too.

Time /HourglassBefore we do though, can I just say my thanks to Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) who kindly waited until I’d got my VR vs. article including predictions about them and new motion controller technology out before patents about such were found? You can both learn from this Nintendo and Magic Leap!

9) Oculus’ Progress Entirely Undone Within Weeks

I have a work in progress theory about Oculus. Either the place is built on an ancient Indian burial ground or Zuckerberg broke into the Ancient Egyptian tomb of the lost Pharaoh Tech-man-khamun or something when he was younger and has be cursed in a particularly odd manner. As I’ve said before on this series, sometimes it seems that no matter what Oculus does they can’t do good for doing bad, often getting what I at least consider to be the rough end of the stick when it comes to how things pan out.

If they announce X, their rivals will reveal X+ (and probably be cheaper than X just to rub it in), it’s just the way it is. Something always turns up to spoil their day… and there hasn’t been anything yet to do so from their Oculus Connect 4 announcements.  In fact, in a refreshing change of pace, everything seems to be going quite smoothly for the company as it moves towards the release of its two standalone head mounted displays (HMDs) – the Oculus Go and the Santa Cruz.

Now, to be clear I hardly want this to happen, but I am betting on their own tendency for misfortune to follow them that some factor comes along that ruins their party.  As to what this is, I’m not sure. Originally I had this written down as ‘entirely undone by Vive’ and even that it was Oculus’ ‘announcement karma’ but I’m still not entirely comfortable with the wording. Will it be Vive? Will it be someone from Oculus or Facebook’s side that causes a kerfuffle à la Palmer? Or will everything be fine and Oculus continue their good progress without getting set back? We’ll see, won’t we.

10) ZeniMax Reveals Own HMD

Okay let’s get into the juicy bit.

We’re due, and soon I’d wager, the next chapter in the saga that is ZeniMax versus Oculus et al and I have to say it’s something I’m not particularly looking forward to. Ultimately it doesn’t help VR’s standing in the minds of the populous in the slightest. We’ve kind of wondered just what ZeniMax have planned within VR itself, and this prediction is that within this year we’ll have our answer – and it will include details of ZeniMax’s own headset.

Yes, it would make far more sense to leave well alone until things are finally settled in court. I just don’t think they’d care that much about complicating the issue further still. I’m not saying it’ll be a world beater, it may even be something akin to that being produced by Starbreeze (and now Acer) with the StarVR, more targeting event spaces and VR arcades than home use. But I’m thinking if ZeniMax think they are entitled to a piece of the pie (if not the pie entirely) they have the financial clout behind then that they may continue thing by getting more directly involved in the hardware. As for how it is revealed, well it’ll probably be some sort of patent filing as opposed to any actual announcement but either way.

You’re probably thinking that if that actually happened it’d make things very interesting indeed, setting the cat among the proverbial pigeons… and you’d be completely right on that point. So let’s address that next!

ZeniMax vs Oculus11) …And Is Hit With A Patent Violation Claim By Oculus. AND Others

I’ve always been of the opinion that the only thing preventing VR from ultimately becoming a success was itself. That is to say the most likely path for immersive technology was to fail was if it effectively ate itself. Since the beginning of the present generation of VR (let’s call it the second generation after that from the nineties and that which we’re heading towards the third) there’s been something of a degree of camaraderie, for want of a better word, between companies. Whilst the fanbases of each HMD can sometimes throw their toys out of the pram for the makers themselves there’s still that altruistic feeling of ‘we’re all in this together’, even if in some areas they’re not and there’s the odd barbed comment that zips across from Middle Manager No. 6.

ZeniMax do not exactly give off that sense. So, if things do kick off with a ZeniMax HMD expect that, beyond the inevitable claim from Oculus that the headset violates their own patents, that other hardware developers claim the same. Samsung seem destined to be dragged ever deeper into the lawsuit anyway and aren’t afraid of litigation over patents (see: Apple) but I wouldn’t put it past HTC or Sony to make a complaint too to protect their own interests.

Lawsuits! Litigation! Injunctions! Blocks! Unimaginable legal power! Unlimited legal rice pudding! Etc…

12) But It’s Samsung That Surprises Everyone

When all is said and done I’m going to put my virtual money on Samsung being the hardware manufacturer that actually makes one of the biggest splashes this year with something complete out of leftfield. New hardware? Probably. I think we’re owed something from Samsung in that regard now.  The Gear VR does the job and always has done but when it comes down to it is it enough to continue tweaking the design every so often – or is it time for them to step up their game?  I think the latter, and if they cut loose we could see something quite special.

Samsung LogoTechnically I have several more predictions but I might add those in a supplemental update down the road. For now though that’s the end of my predictions for this year. We’ll see how well I did this time in 2019.

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VR vs. Nostradamus (2018 Edition) – Part Two

Are we already approaching the end of January? What the heck happened to it? It feels like only yesterday I was wondering how I was going to beat the blizzard (and the train strike) to get to my friend’s place for some New Year’s fun and games.  Now we’re rapidly closing in on February and even CES seems like it is becoming a distant memory.  Well, if you’re like me it won’t be a memory for long, because next week we’re having our little Post CES Review event in London – for which details can be found here.  I won’t be in attendance because I am needed elsewhere, especially with poor Rebecca consumed by illness, but it should be fun and informative. Kevin J and Nina will be on hand as far as I’m aware and the amount of companies coming to it and talks available seem to be increasing all the time.

For us though, it’s back to the business at hand. That business of course being my predictions for 2018… that I’ll have to remember to deal with swiftly in 2019 if the beginning of this year is anything to go by. Companies seem to be going out of their way to prove my predictions right before I even get a chance to talk about them. Honestly(!) This week mostly sees us lurking in the world of console based virtual reality (VR); but there’s still a couple of ones with me sticking my neck out a bit.  Let’s start with the one that was nearly derailed this last week.

5) Nintendo Remains Positively Nintendo About VR

If you read my 2017 results you’ll already know that we had something very similar for last year with Nintendo, VR and the Nintendo Switch. This one however does not specifically involve any pre-existing hardware but is more in line with the attitude shown towards VR by the videogame giant. In that some people will say one thing about the company and VR in a positive light only for other notable staff to be decidedly against the entire idea.

Now historically Nintendo’s top brass have, in investor calls and the like, been open to the idea of VR and have confirmed Nintendo are at least investigating the possibilities of it. The other side of that coin is the likes of everyone’s favourite father of a plumber Shigeru Miyamoto whose enthusiasm for the tech can be described as that of a man faced with trying to swallow a very angry wasp. While Reggie Fils-Aimé when discussing VR might as well be played into the room by Shania Twain singing That Don’t Impress Me Much at this point.

Expect Nintendo to remain non-committal to VR, for the management to continue to insist they are looking into it and for the likes of Reggie to keep making a frowny face.

6) Sony Announcement Reveals The PSMR

I was tempted to say this would be part of an initial announcement of the PlayStation 5, but I think based on the previous time-scales and PlayStation 4’s utter dominance of this generation of consoles, that Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) would be unwise to go back to the hardware well so soon after the PlayStation 4 Pro. Unless they are REALLY desperate to do something about the Switch, or despite all common sense try a Vita 2 or similar I’m not expecting any hardware announcements this year. E3 2019? Oh yes, we’ll get it then. But not before then I think.

What I do think we’ll have is another announcement related to the PlayStation VR. Yes, we had an update, of sorts to the head mounted display (HMD) back in 2017 – the revised CUH-ZVR2 – and it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that after this run of hardware we’ll see a third iteration, presumably a CUH-ZVR3 with additional tweaks at roughly the same time.  However, while SIE might not be as concerned about the Switch to suddenly invoke the PS5 they aren’t silly enough to ignore the developments in VR.

SIE seem pretty happy about how the PlayStation VR has played out for them, in fact from the get go they’ve been pretty pleased. The only time Sony haven’t been really in the running on console is with the PlayStation 3, certainly for the majority of its lifespan, which were thanks to its hubris and arrogance after the PlayStation 2 became all powerful and dominant.  The PS2-era slogan “Welcome to the Third Place” becoming painful apropos. It was a painful lesson, one they have learned well. So, it can’t have escaped their notice what’s been going on not just with HTC and Oculus but with Microsoft as well. Wireless is in, adaptability is in, and the PSVR as things stand is going to begin to look a bit behind the times. After all it’s still, effectively, using hand-me-down controllers from the aforementioned PS3. PlayStation Move was announced 8 years old in March.

With two years under its belt in 2018 I think it’s time for PSVR’s successor to come along – not the PSVR2, but the PSMR – the PlayStation Mixed Reality HMD.  Much like Microsoft’s headset it may be a slight misnomer to call it that but it works well as a moniker and differentiates it from that which has gone before. A wireless console headset for PS4 (and eventually 5) that not only is capable of VR with improvements of the original PSVR but also has augmented reality (AR) capabilities. Bringing back what SIE essentially tried with the technology before with Wonderbook but upgraded. Why not? Seems like it’d be ripe for re-examination. Throw in much better tracking and a new generation of motion controllers and you’re looking at SIE sewing up console VR for another 2-3 years.

Wonderbook7) Xbox One X Gets HTC Vive Functionality Added

This one may confuse some people, and I can’t say that I blame you. To be clear I’m not saying the Windows Mixed Reality HMD doesn’t come to Xbox One X, I’m just saying that the Vive does. Yes, this is despite previous tie-ups with Oculus and the Rift. Personally, I’ve always thought HTC Vive was a much better fit in terms of both Microsoft’s corporate aims and just the way the hardware is.

For the Xbox in general if they’re going to pull the trigger on VR support it needs to be this year. They missed a trick in 2017 with their hemming and hawing and the One X needs an extra party piece for people to care about it all over again. Why not VR? We already know that it can handle it thanks to those mixed messages at announcement and it’d be particularly good for HTC so they can tout the adaptability of the Vive. That and it’d be quite the blow to Oculus if they got in first considering the previous cooperation I mentioned.

If I were Microsoft I’d try and bring all three headsets to the XBOX One X and say you’re all about technology and choice. All very good things for marketing at a time when people won’t stop complaining about the lack of exclusives for the platform versus the PS4.

Xbox One X

8) Saban Reveals VR Troopers Reboot Plan

No. No I’m not joking. Just hear me out.

As long-time readers of this column will know I’m not exactly fond of the mainstream media, websites and the like talking about VR. That’s because those that clearly know nothing about the issue will bring up things like Lawnmower Man or VR Troopers for yuks, and look down on the technology. Yes it is something associated with VR.  Surprisingly they are not VR, they aren’t now and they frankly weren’t at the time either.  Still, who cares about accuracy when there’s money to be made right?

Saban are obviously best known for Power Rangers in the West, but thei line-up of titles down the years (and by “years” I really mean “the nineties”) include such ‘classics’; as Masked Rider, Big Bad Beetleborgs and of course VR Troopers. Now if you were Saban which of those properties would be the most likely to be marketable in the current climate? Money always talks, even if it were a short-term thing I could see them doing something with it and if not now they never will. Would it help or harm VR? Maybe both. But as if Saban would care two hoots about that.

VR Troopers

That’s enough for this week. Come back in seven days’ time to VRFocus for the third and final part of this year’s predictions.

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VR vs. The Darkness – A CES Story

Everything was fine. People sat, stood, worked alone and in groups, thought reflectively on what they’d seen or talked in excited terms about what they were going to. Was it going to be good? Was it going to be bad? What exactly were they going to say about it? For the VRFocus team out in the US it was pretty much the same for all the other attendees at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. There was the usual problems. Get to your meetings on time. How on earth do I get an Uber in this mess?

Then things started flickering, like an omen of nothing but bad times in a Hollywood thriller the power blipped briefly then went down.

For me, sole survivor of #TeamLeftBehind after poor Rebecca finally gave in to the illness that had bothered her since well before our Maltese trip there didn’t seem much of a fuss to me initially. As anyone who has hosted or organised events, particularly big events will tell you, no matter how well you organise it whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy’s law is a regular attendee of conventions around the world. The trick is to affectively (and effectively) roll with the punches.

A minor blip, a power surge perhaps. Lightning struck a generator or a substation or something, I mused from back in the UK. Dismissing things and getting back on with my work. They have backup generators, contingencies for this sort of thing. I mused as a slight note of panic began to creep into the messages. Unfortunately, as the people who are left behind during events will tell you, when you’ve been working long long hours and there’s an inconvenience over wherever it is everyone else is, by day three your sympathy for such incidents is pretty much zero.

However, the power stayed off.
The drama had begun!

I have, to my knowledge never written a ‘bonus’ VR vs. for VRFocus before, but I thought it would be a good thing, considering all that happened that evening if we didn’t keep for posterity some of the fun that was had during that short time period. And fun we did have – well I did certainly, at the helm of the VRFocus Twitter account. The most fun I’d had (not) at one of these events in years.

Things began when it became clear that the power was not coming back anytime soon. Back in the UK I started laughing, well, you had to didn’t you really? Here they were in the City of Lights and all the lights had gone out. I started joking that next year somebody would come on stage and announce a revolutionary new design:

As technologies go, I think that’s ones gonna be a corker. As panic began to set in, and when it also became obvious whatever we talked about until this was over was kind of irrelevant to what was going on live. I set about keeping the Twitter audience informed on just what was going on and offered a suggestion how things could be salvaged.

Kevin J was back at the hotel, however the maid had ushered him from the room and he wasn’t able to sort out anything. Peter and Nina on the other hand were in the press room where it had already been dark for a uncomfortably long time.

“There’s no Wi-Fi in the press room and no power. The power has turned off in the north hall.” Nina confirmed via Skype.

“What?” Was Kevin J’s reply. “Great.” And he was right this really wasn’t the best of times for us for this to happen. I did however get my first response.

Wait, does this mean CES is now #BROKEN or #WOKEN? Will we ever know? Probably not.

“Pete has no power on his laptop. Apparently it’s gonna start up soon.” Nina confirmed to us, but time passed quickly. We’d also heard not a heck of a lot from Pete

“Is Pete’s laptop actually dead?” I asked cautiously

“Yup.” Came his response from the beyond, “Wrote the headline for my Noveto hands on then RIP. Power’s fluctuating all over CES.” It was with a heavy heart I informed Twitter of our loss.

Nina again: “Guys central hall has completely shut down… Everything is on battery and is going to die in 10 min ”

She sent us a candid shot of the press room, all confused. Just as I found a CNBC tweet of them broadcasting footage of the power going out and people looking unsure as to what exactly they were supposed to do next.

Thankfully @VRFocus is a fan of older technologies as well, and as tech goes this one is pretty retro.

Some did have some issues with this revolutionary new tech paradigm that was now on display.

And working on the Metal Gear theme…

But others agreed that the new reveal was going to change everything.

Some people were still reading what we’d written at least. Though one reader’s eyes were playing tricks on them with our Arizona Sunshine article.

Another update from Nina had grave news. “I’m gonna be down too soon. Phone battery dying too.”
And barely a few minutes later she was lost to us as well.

Being a forthright sort of fellow I then descided to knuckle down and get planning straight away for next year.

 

Ultimately though all good(?) things must come to an end.

There were still questions to ask, of course, in all of this. Like whose fault was it in the first place?

Whatever the case, the power came back on and everyone was reunited with their wi-fi connections bringing to an end this little CES story

And they all worked tiredly ever after…

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VR vs. 2017 (Predictably) – Part 2

Hello everybody and welcome back to this two-part VR vs. where I look over the results of last year’s predictions as to what 2017 would bring and see how I actually did in the great scheme of things. So far I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how successful I’ve been at being a technology prognosticator – you can click here to read part one.  Now we go into what makes up the second half of the predictions, taken from parts two and three of the VR vs. Nostradamus series of posts.  We start off with wires – or should I say the lack thereof.

Prediction: “Oculus And/Or HTC Reveal Viable Wireless VR For 2018”
Result: True

Let’s rewind back to the end of 2016. Whilst there had been talk about wireless, standalone or ‘untethered’ options for virtual reality (VR) there certainly hadn’t been a heck of a lot done about it yet. The first inklings that something might actually become of this was at Oculus Connect 3 where we got the first indication that Oculus at least were at least openly trying with the initial reveal of the Santa Cruz. A cobbled together prototype which was more a proof of concept than anything else.

Over 2017 we’ve had lots of wireless news to talk about mostly from the likes of TPCAST – we’ve got an unboxing video related to that particular bit of kit on the way, incidentally – and other ‘solutions’. But whilst there was nothing concrete discussed by HTC about a full-on wireless Vive until the Vive Focus, at this year’s event Oculus announced both the Oculus Go and the finalised Santa Cruz for this year which means another one in the win column for me.

I once caught a virtual fish, and it was…

Prediction: “That After This, Google Immediately Steal Their Thunder”
Result: False

Again, this might require some explanation. But during 2016 poor Oculus had a particular problem in that whenever they announced anything they ended up being undone by their competition in the following couple of weeks. Either the product was technically better or cheaper on price than the item they just announced. I ended up feeling kind of sorry for them as everyone started having a go at Oculus being expensive. They couldn’t do right for doing wrong it seemed.

As such, I was (regretfully) expecting someone, once the announcement above happened, to steam in and make Oculus look bad once again. As it happened I failed this prediction in about three different ways.  The first was that whilst Google did end up announcing at Google I/O a standalone headset it was one to be made in conjunction with HTC Vive and Lenovo – and this was announced before Oculus Connect 4. So, I fail on time. Also of the announcements I believe the Go/Santa Cruz combo was actually received better than Google’s announcement. So I fail on popularity. And just to rub it in Vive then went on to abandoned the project! So I fail on that point as well.

The great irony after my prediction would be that it was, of all the companies involved in immersive technology, it would be Google who were the victims of having the rug pulled out from underneath them. Ambushed, as they were, on augmented reality (AR) by Apple’s ARKit and meaning they had to release ARCore not long afterwards in a manner that many outside the know would think to be a copycat move when it was Google who had openly been working on AR for some time with the likes of Project Tango.

Google-And-Vive-Standalone
The headset that never was.

Prediction: “Apple Waits”
Result: False

See previous. They did not.

This year was very much about AR for the firm with ARKit, but also other ventures. Including an AR experience at their visitor centre and even AR teddy bears in its stores.

That said it wasn’t as if Apple ignored the topic of VR completely. Multiple times throughout 2017 Tim Cook took time out to say that he didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about VR. Then again, Apple are not currently trying to sell products in that particular area. I think we all know that when they do they’ll change their tune.  There’s things going on in the background, that at least suggest an interest.

Apple Visitor Centre AR
In the end, only the miniscule Tim Cook could use Apple’s new HQ when it was finally built.

Prediction: “Call Of Duty Or Battlefront Go For It”
Result: False

Oh, I was so hoping this would end up true. As I mentioned at the time it would greatly benefit VR if one or both of the big wartime first person shooters (FPS’s) threw down the gauntlet with an actual VR version, adaption or proper full on experience based off their series. No, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare – Jackal Assault VR Experience doesn’t count. Do you even remember that? My point exactly.

When you think how much sway over gamers each brand commands, having them say “no, this is really cool – it’s the way to play” would be massive for the tech. Especially if they then delivered. But as it turned out we got pretty much bupkis from both. Battlefront never entered the conversation and all we heard about CoD was much speculation about what the CoD of VR would inevitably be and a whole bunch of PR waffle from others about why their product was going to be it.

As a brief aside: If you are in videogame PR, marketing or you’re a videogame’s director or something don’t say you’re going to be the next CoD or something. A) You’re not and B) it’s not very original at this point. 

Call of Duty Infinite WarfarePrediction: “FOVE Are Acquired – And Probably By Samsung”
Result: False.

I’ll be honest. I’ve no idea how this didn’t happen. Everyone and their proverbial mother seemed to be bought by other companies in 2017. Considering the atmosphere I certainly thought going into the year, that considering their closeness, and as others began to buy up similar companies, that Samsung would finally bring eye-tracking firm FOVE under their wing. If nothing else than to protect their own interests. But no, they didn’t.

On checking we’ve not even heard anything from FOVE in a while, the last news piece we ran was in August. I still think this is going to happen down the line.

FOVE Lifestyle4
Contrary to this picture there is no need to hold a FOVE in place, that is what your head is for.

Prediction: “Bethesda Pulls The Trigger”
Result: VERY True

Pull the trigger? They let of an entire bloody salvo. Fallout 4 VR – Five stars. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR – Five stars. DOOM VFR – Five stars. I don’t know if Bethesda are necessarily happy with how things have been received in the launch period (and that certainly will be interesting to discover) but I don’t think any VR videogame publisher or developer has had a such a golden period.

Additional aside: I’m aware not everyone agreed with the marks on the VRFocus reviews for the Bethesda trinity, so let me just address that momentarily as I don’t think that’s been done to date. People didn’t like that all of them were given five stars to which I’ll point out that the titles were judged on their own merits. Why a reviewer not give a game five stars (despite a slew of them for recent titles, it’s still quite a rare mark for the site in general) to one title because they we’d given a five star rating to another title recently? How would that be fair at all? Likewise, there was talk of the reviews being an earlier version of the title and not the launch version – which is obviously incorrect. The only way it was an ‘earlier’ version was that we received it earlier than the rest of you did, i.e. before release just the same as with a lot of other outlets. Although, in some cases we could’ve done with it a tad earlier(!) The guys played it often through the night to give you their impressions – which considering how poorly Peter’s been, was impressive. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being than suffering a respiratory issue when in VR. We dragged a Vive out to Malta so he could go into VR the moment we got Fallout 4 VR and he practically dragged a review out of his illness-wracked body. (I’ll discuss this in the second half of my Malta story in a future VR vs. later this year.) To be clear if we’re looking at an earlier candidate or demo that’s classified as a preview. Always, always, always. The other aspect to address was that people weren’t happy the reviewers didn’t mark titles down for issues that others found later, this was, if memory serves, particularly true of Fallout 4 VR. To which I will respond that the obvious reason it wasn’t marked down was because beyond any issues mentioned in reviews such issues were not seen by the reviewers. Reviewers can only critique or praise based on their experiences, not those of other people. I can understand if people are still unhappy with those answers but that’s the truth. Right, moving on!

DOOM VFR screenshot
“I’m not cleaning all this crap up…”

Prediction: “China Rises”
Result: True

Where do we begin? We’ll we’d best start with the aforementioned Vive Focus which apart from having a very good name if we do say so ourselves (*gestures with head in the direction of our logo*) is being created directly for the Chinese market. But beyond that a lot’s been going on in China this last year in the field of VR. There’s a lot of money flying about. China is definitely a player. This last year alone VRFocus covered stories on:

I’m only up to June and I’ve skipped a few on the way. There’s lots going on and we’ll be looking at China closely over 2018.

Prediction: SEGA Properly Join The VR Party
Result: False

Yup. They’ve still not thoroughly jumped in. In fact, they barely waggled a naked toe in VR’s direction. Where the hell are all those things I listed in my subsequent Top 10 Most Wanted Titles from last year? I want my The House Of The Dead OVERKILL inspired VR adaption of Virtua Cop, damnit! SEGA. Hurry the heck up, and we’ll even forget the so called AR experience that we were told was coming last year at the San Diego Comic-Con only for it to sort of disappear. Was it the episode of the Sonic Boom television series (which is excellent by the way) shown in the 360 degree dome? Was it that they were using a green screen in the vicinity? We’ll never know I guess.

That said, SEGA’s Joypolis venues are hosting a number of VR experiences now – but I specifically wanted SEGA made (or at least published) videogames. That’s a fail.

Boo.

Aside #3 and the last one I promise. You may remember my little rant about people calling the use of a green screen AR in a previous VR vs.? Well we had an absolute corker of one of those this week come through into our inbox just yesterday (at the time of writing) which was literally ‘use a green screen to put exotic locations behind you – this is AR’. Rebecca passed it on to me with glee. If you see this, please call this crap out for what it is.

After finding joy in human female company in 2006, things have gotten considerably more out of hand for Sonic.

Prediction: “VR Does What Nintendon’t”
Result: A 90 Foot High Neon Sign Of The Word ‘True’

Well, we had to end on this one, didn’t we? Oh Nintendo. You are so predictable when it comes to VR. No, we didn’t get VR on the Switch, and instead as predicted as Nintendo marched through 2017 raking in pots of money with their new hardware and taking home shipping containers rammed full of industry awards. But they also, as predicted, continued to be full of contradictions when it came to immersive technology.

At the same time as the bosses are confirming they’re definitely looking into VR in interviews and continuing to answer questions with similar answers in investor calls. At the same time as Pokémon Go is a technology defining (although whether that’s a good or a bad thing is a matter of contention) title for the whole of AR. Others figures in Nintendo continue to toe the same ‘we’re looking into it’ line in the same tone as a 5 year old being dragged off in a car has when folding their arms crossly and insisting “I don’t wanna go.”  There might well be clues in the source code for the Switch, but ultimately Reggie still doesn’t like it. Miyamoto has not changed his opinion. Yet this is despite a Mario Kart VR experience lighting up the internet, oh wait… Bandai Namco developed that.

Start praying to your Pac-Man gods that they’ll do some more in 2018 for us. And bring them West too!

Reggie Fils-Aime after he lost his smile, and subsequently had to relinquish the WWF title

Finale: So, How Did I Do?

Yikes, this was loads longer than I intended. The final total is eight predictions found to be true and seven false – and I was even generous with a couple of those. Over 50% success rate! I’ll take that I think.

I’ll be back next week to begin this year’s predictions – goodness knows what they’ll be so I’ll see you then.

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VR vs. 2017 (Predictibly) – Part 1

So here we are again everyone. Welcome to 2018 on both VR vs. and on VRFocus. I hope you all had a very good holiday period and new year celebration. I was off playing silly board games and enjoying the company of some friends in what is now something of a tradition. In what is also something of a tradition I came a distant second in Ticket To Ride, expressed interest in a game of Monopoly that everyone ignored because I always win – the last game we played they all actively and openly teamed up against me and I still beat all three of them to much grumbling. I also proceeded to destroy everyone in the one game I’d never played – which was this year Bears vs Babies. A card based game that can be described as ‘from the makers of the far more fun Exploding Kittens. Also we played Pandemic. Pandemic is bloody good.

Perhaps I should do VR vs. Tabletop at some point?

Today however marks my first day back in the saddle, and the last on the VRFocus ‘Christmas Mode’.  So as of tomorrow (Wednesday) it’ll be usual hours for segments, back up to the usual number of stories per day and all hands on deck once again.  Being in the know – well, relatively speaking – I can tell you there’s a lot that’s going on with the website this year. New people, new activities, new responsibilities. It’s going to be a busy ol’ time for us all. Before we get on to the matter at hand and start thinking about 2018 going forward I do have one last needed look back at virtual reality (VR) in 2017 to do.

I know, I know, you’re probably sick of retrospectives at the moment. But this is the one where we look back at my 2017 predictions (or educated guesses) and we see just how badly I stuffed them all up.  In a couple of weeks I can start going through some of my silly little predictions for the year to come.

Prediction: “ZeniMax Becomes VR’s Bad Guy”
Result: False – Through Circumstance

I described this as being “pretty much nailed on” at the time and it certainly looked that way. The ZeniMax situation hasn’t exactly gone away and continues to rear its head, unofficially at least, in a number of ways. For example, the lack of support for Oculus Rift on Bethesda’s recent VR trinity. DOOM VFR only getting support following an update by SteamVR itself, which was described as a “workaround”.

This whole mess is still coming and we are far from done in the battle of ZeniMax vs Oculus/Facebook. Chronologically speaking things escalated this way over the course of 2017: ZeniMax Media acquired Escalation Studios to make VR projects at the same time as ZeniMax was awarded the total of $500 Million (USD). No one was happy with that verdict – Oculus weren’t found guilty of misappropriating trade secrets, so ZeniMax weren’t happy. Oculus still don’t think anything was done wrong at all so they aren’t happy either. John Carmack put ZeniMax’s experts on blast a day later with some very choice words.

ZeniMax then declared that they were going to try and block Oculus from using its VR SDK, Carmack anger turned into a lawsuit of his own against ZeniMax in March, before in May ZeniMax dragged Samsung into things by extending their lawsuit to include the Gear VR.

The ZeniMax situation is still a powder keg.  A ruddy big powder keg that is set to do a lot of damage to VR – but that keg hasn’t gone off yet so I have to mark this prediction as a failure. As we know the role of villain for 2017 ended up being a company I don’t think any of us expected- but the least said about that the better.

ZeniMax MediaPrediction: “Several Trillion Market Research Agencies Will Say VR’s Market Growth Has Slowed/Value Has Reduced”
Result: True

Well this one is true but only really in the sense that everything under the sun seemed to have a market research report on it this year and being such a hot topic in 2016 VR got dragged into a lot of things in 2017, quite a few of which it really had no business being in. Whilst VRFocus reports on a lot of these reports you should see the ones we tossed!  As it turns out more than a few of them did indeed reign in previous predictions a bit for the period to come described in 2016 – but in a lot of cases this reverted to previous levels in the year or two now included after that 2016 prediction period. So, in a sense nothing has really changed. But values were walked back in a lot of them. I’m declaring that one a win.

Prediction: We Would See “The Debut Of Halo-lens”
Result: True.

This prediction starts with “Minecraft this. Minecraft that. Minecraft bloody everything.” and I’m pleased to say that still makes me chuckle. This prediction though was pretty specific. We’d get a Halo title coming to Microsoft’s head mounted display (HMD). At the time I said it was the Hololens. However, what we actually got was Halo: Recruit for the Windows Mixed Reality HMD. Now I wasn’t to know the Windows Mixed Reality series of headsets were coming, but they’re all considered part of the same family of headsets now so we can chalk this one up in the wins column too.

It might not have been what I wanted when I said “a first person Halo experience” in the prediction but it was one. Can we have a proper one next though?

Prediction: “A Big Name Leaves Oculus – And Jumps Ship”
Result: Somewhat True

“Considering last week’s column you may assume I mean Palmer Luckey at this point and it’s entirely possible.” I said at the time and lo and behold Mr. Luckey departed Facebook in March. Though whether or not he fell on his sword, was shown the door to step through it or shown the door to be booted through it is still something of an unknown.

Now whether or not I got this one right is kind of open to interpretation since yes, Luckey left Oculus and he was certainly the biggest name at the company. Even bigger than Carmack. However, he didn’t exactly jump ship.  He did set up his own company, Anduril, later in the year, following a period of self-imposed social media exile. Anduril is working on VR projects so you could count that. Luckey also proceeded to appear with HTC Vive at the Tokyo Game Show, which could also be counted.  Personally, I’m leaning towards a loss on this one but it’s at least 50% right.

Prediction: “Patent Wars: The Family Atmosphere Is Over”
Result: False

This one is quite pleasing. 2016 was full of stories about all and sundry filing patents for immersive technology related matters. In 2017 there was quite a few patent-related news stories as well. Not counting the whole ongoing ZeniMax saga, only a couple of them dissolved into actual legal wrangling: Techno View IP vs Oculus and HoloTouch vs Microsoft.

Other than that, the whole atmosphere between the HMD manufacturers remains both cordial and respectful which is good to see. Of course, the fanbases for each have degenerated into a lot of shouting and one-upmanship as has previously been discussed. Still at least the stakeholders can get along, right?

Prediction: “A VR Only eSports Tournament”
Result: True.

Well, I didn’t quite expect this one to come off but low and behold it did. Whether or not you think that VR is the future of eSports is immaterial. With thanks to Oculus and Intel it came to be in the guise of the VR Challenger League.  The tournament hosted a $200,000 (USD) prize for Echo Arena and The Unspoken – which is a pretty sizeable chunk of change. One more than worthy of qualifying this, particularly with its association with ESL – and a ‘proper’ tournament and the sort that I was hoping to see when I made that prediction.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what comes of things like this in 2018. We know Intel have their plans and I’ve recently gone on record as saying you should watch out for them this year. What have Oculus got up their sleeve though? I do hope we’ll see this become a regular fixture of the VR calendar.

VR Challenger LeagueI’m going leave things there for part one. We do have three weeks’ worth of VR vs. features to actually go through so we’re going to have to split it up a bit out of necessity.  Join me again next week to see if I continue to do surprisingly well with these!

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VR vs. Tinsel

Hello everybody and welcome to the last edition of VR vs. for the year 2017. It’s certainly been quite the 365 days as I write this it’s 11:30pm on Christmas Eve night, so I suspect by the time I get to finish this I’ll be well into Christmas Day morning before, thanks to the scheduling this year, it goes out on Boxing Day afternoon. So what with talking about the New Year as well I think that gives me some sort of holiday bingo.

This edition of VR vs. is going to be a bit of a hodgepodge of things mainly because there’s just so much to get out of the way before we bid adieu to 2017 and it goes and joins 2016 in the “years we really don’t want to talk about” box. Essentially, this makes this a sort of virtual reality (VR) version of The Queen’s speech, only no one knows who the heck I am and her wage is somewhat more comfortable.

“This year one would like to give one’s thoughts on immersive technology.  On the subject of the HTC Vive, I…”

Of course, from a VR point of view there was a great mix of high points, low points and points that made us all wonder just what was going on. There’s the promise of the future there and parts of that future are at least coming together. The road is slow but progress is being made. The more people yell that VR is dead the more silly they look, especially when you’ve got all the good news about releases coming from Sony and others, and although VR’s reputation took a bit of a dent here and there it was, for a lot of it, no fault of its own.

Yes, CCP Games have decided they don’t want to continue with VR at this time, but I suspect they might well be back down the line either to it or augmented reality (AR). Although. that may depend on the fortunes of EVE Online as to how and when. CCP Games seems to me like a company that has got the itch to experiment. I doubt it’ll stop now.

Yes, VR’s image of the technology that wants to treat people equally also got a bit of a bashing, but again, not through the fault of the gatekeepers of the technology. More people who should have damn well known better by all accounts. However, whilst some have been letting the side down, on the other side of the coin we’ve seen an increase in all manner of workshops promoting the technology. There’s been things like the VR Diversity Initiative that VRFocus was a part of, but besides that there’s been all sorts of other programmes all over the world – and those will no doubt continue in some guise.

It’s midnight, Merry Christmas. Where was I?

And yes, there’s lots of good to come next year. VR has survived its difficult third album after its promising debut in 2015, and next year we’ve got the next generation of hardware to start thinking about. No doubt we’ll be discussing there being more in the offing besides the Oculus Go and the Santa Cruz at this time next year. We’ll be looking at what is to come next week when I begin 2018 by looking back at my predictions for 2017 and how badly I stuffed them up before hitting you with my predictions for 2018 a week later. (Yup. There was been a reason I was mentioning that column a lot in the last few editions of VR vs.) Actually, there’s quite a few things that I need to plan out over the course of the next couple of weeks in terms of the column. We’re due to head back to a few topics we’ve touched on over the last couple of months.

When I think about it, I’ve covered quite a few things haven’t I? So, for posterity, here’s the 2017 rundown for VR vs. At least the ones that I’ve written at any rate..

I know what you’re thinking. You’ve never seen the word ‘how’ used so much in so short a time, right?

In any case that’s all for VR vs. for this year. In summary VR in 2017 has been fun, is mostly going in the right direction but still needs effort from all to make sure it doesn’t turn into a turnip.  I’m off to enjoy my Christmas before I’m back on, er, Boxing Day when this goes out. Until next time, have a happy new year.