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Virtual Reality Predictions For 2016 and Beyond (medium.com)
An anonymous reader writes: 2015 was an undeniably huge year in Virtual Reality, breaking down the doors and setting the stage for an all-out 2016 consumer VR frenzy. The adoption of VR is not simply like ‘just another’ new device, not like a new aspect ratio for display panels, not like just an upgraded generation of gaming console, but a fundamentally new kind of technology that enables a new kinds of experiences that haven’t before been possible or comparable to anything else we’ve had (in the consumer market at least). Here is an article of some of my predictions for the coming years. What are your predictions?
There...I said it.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I wonder if VR stuff will wind up like quadrophonic sound, the Virtual Boy, Smellovision, or 3D TVs
No, VR is better than that, and the entry price ($20) is really low. My son got a Google Cardboard for Christmas, and it is pretty cool. I has been a week, and he is still playing with it. It will be even better when more apps are available. Rule 34 will also help: My wife will definitely want some VR goggles if they can make me look like Chris Hemsworth while we are having sex.
It seems to come and go in waves, and just seems like a solution in search of a problem. Even back in the mid 1990s, there were 3D headsets which worked with Duke Nukem 3D, but other than at Egghead, I never saw one purchased and "in the wild."
Eventually we will get past the VR stage of the goggles and the PowerGlove, but until we get to where equipment worn is light to none and we have something similar to a holodeck, VR will be in the fringes with cool stuff happening here and there, but tending to be too expensive and specialized for mainstream use. However, things can change. The same thing was said about MP3 players (expensive/specialized/only for a few people) until Apple got into that market, so I could be proven completely and utterly wrong about this in the coming year.
the same year as the "year of the Linux desktop". ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
When Mario VR comes out everyone will go "Oh yeah, that's how to do it". Nintendo's real strength is gameplay. Stories and graphics were never their focus. But they showed the world how to control a character in 3rd person, how to z-lock, and about every other thing that makes gaming work.
They are never the first. But there is just something about them that makes games respond how you think they should. VR will be no different.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Really amazing, utterly astounding VR will arrive in all its glory when it's powered by nuclear fusion. ;-)
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
So they connected 2 small monitors with lever, after that they told everyone that's MUST HAVE product so they can make some money of it. And message is spreading like a virus. Really it's getting worse every year with this hype about everything.
3D TV and Google Glass together are the tea leaves for VR's fate. VR combines all the hassle and baggage of both, but offers little the average consumer will remain hungry for in the long term.
It's so easy to identify the people who haven't actually tried out a headset.
I can see how this time might be different.
Something like Google Cardbox is really cheap, so a lot of people end up having it, being able to use it and if they like it and see the possibilities they want more.
This will become easier with more and more content becoming available.
If it's any good, I think there are certain applications which can get adopted quickly when they are available:
- trying on clothes in online shops.
- if the emergence is good and better than video, online meetings might be adopted more - less travelling.
Both probably depends on having an avatar.
So all together, maybe still a couple of years to go for large scale adoption.
New things are always on the horizon
It's even easier to identify the people who don't actually have to wear eyeglasses.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I predict that in 2016:
I'll continue to enjoy my Linux desktop, just I as have for the last decade.
I'll continue to enjoy having sex with my wife 3-4 nights a week, just as I have for the last decade.
I'll continue to poke fun at the VR-nutters, just as I have for the last de--er, twenty years. :)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'm one of these that will grab the consumer model of Occulus Rift and build a brand new spanking rig to fit it. I figure Intel, nVidia, AMD and PC hardware vendors will be happy as it will drive hardware sales of new PC gear like crazy. VR will put good use of latest stuff like AVX-512, DDR4, etc.
Flying a drone with VR headset would be awesome, should feel like being superman flying around the city. Better get one of these gas powered ones running on ethanol RC engine that can stay up in the air for hours.
Horror games that will scare the shit out of you. Almost real LSD trips to wreck your brain. ;-) ;-)
Lots of uses in education, medical and mechanical engineering, etc. Social VR applications will be huge, app that allow one to hang out with your friends at a bar or nightclub. Watching 2D movies and TV series would rock, like going to a big screen teater but even better, should provide for a good movie experience as it shields the viewer from distractions. One can watch porn on the airplane, no one would ever know.
You lose credibility by referencing Virtual Boy, which was not any kind of VR device. The only link it had to VR was the word "virtual" in its name. (Which itself was a turnoff, at least to me, because it seemed like Nintendo was trying to insult our intelligence.)
I can't wait for Trump to win, I'm definitely joining the Homeland Deportation Agency.
Virtual Boy wasn't VR. Virtual Boy had no connection with VR aside from the word "virtual". Nintendo: "Hey, let's slap the word virtual on this turkey, and these idiot kids will think it has actually something to do with virtual reality, and they'll buy it! Hahaha!" Yeah, how did that work out? Turns out the kids aren't so dumb.
I'm with you. I am having a room remodeled to become my virtual game room, specifically with the HTC Vive's lighthouse tracking system in mind.
The article presents the most optimistic possible scenario, in which VR catches on like wildfire (or like smartphones did!), followed by massive investment and rapid technological progress. It's a scenario at one end of the spectrum of possible outcomes -- but it's not implausible, it's not crazy. We've seen this kind of shift before.
At the other end of the spectrum, it's possible that the awkwardness and expense of VR headsets (especially the high-spec ones for PCs) may hold things back, and VR may not explode into the mainstream. Even if this happens, though, I can't see it flopping completely. VR technology is simply too useful, and useful for too many things (beyond games), to just go away.
Interesting mention in TFA of Second Life. . . QUOTE: "In 2017 a clear leader will emerge in the field of social VR platforms, and it will look something like Secondlife but in VR. If it’s not facebook itself as the platform, then facebook will try to acquire whoever makes such a platform stably with good adoption during the 2017 year."
Of course, Linden Labs are still running Second Life (after all these years!) and are making steady money from it. They are adapting it to work with VR headsets, and they are also developing a successor world, called Project Sansar, which is designed with a focus on VR. I am very eager to see how this turns out.
The comparison with 3D is interesting. On the one hand, both technologies have been tried before and failed. But where 3D TV has failed despite it being offered for free on most modern sets, 3D cinema has succeeded. For movies that are available in 3D, the 3D screenings are vastly more popular than the ones in 2D. And cinematographers are learning how to properly use 3D to enhance immersion. The reason for 3D TV failing is a simple one: optics. 3D just doesn't work well on small screens with smaller view distances. But for VR to work well you won't need a large room or expensive equipment: it'll work just as well at home.
On the other hand, making great VR content might not be all that easy. Even 3D has proven to be more difficult than just shooting with stereoscopic cameras and adding a few stuff-flies/pokes-into-your-face gimmicks. The art is improving, though, and I'd love to see what someone like Cameron does with VR. But another problem might be cost: shooting VR seems to be a lot more expensive, and the result is something that is as suitable for home viewing as for the cinemas, perhaps even more so. That requires a different business model. But when it comes to content, VR has one huge advantage: games. Adapting games to VR isn't all that difficult, and using VR to play games adds a lot of immersion and possibilities to enhance gameplay, whereas 3D for games was just some visual meh.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
But it's not just Oculus Rift. If FB manages to screw it all up, there will still be Playstation VR and HTC Vive and Razer OSVR and even (heaven help us!) Vrvana Totem. Personally, I'm holding out for the Vive. It has better tracking, it has Valve+Steam, and it's not FB. Seems like an easy choice.
And as for people wanting to get their hands dirty. . . I would direct your attention to Linden Labs and Project Sansar.
Linden Labs have been running Second Life for well over 10 years already. It didn't set the world on fire the way some people predicted (hyped) in the beginning, but it's still chugging along and making money. One of my friends who studies a lot of this stuff concluded that SL only appeals to a certain type of personality: those who can entertain themselves. Give them a great toy box and sandbox where they can tinker and create things, and show them off, and trade or sell them, and they're happy. On the other hand, people who come into SL expecting to play a game or be led through a story soon lose interest.
Linden Labs are making a successor to SL called Project Sansar, and compatibility with VR headsets is a design goal. They claim it will have the most accessible content creation tools ever. This is the number one thing on my wish list.
The comparison of 3D TV and VR is indeed interesting. . .but complicated. (Or maybe interesting *because* it's complicated.)
The biggest factor in 3D TV's decline seems to be lack of content -- very few movies were actually shot in 3D, but instead we were given a lot of cheap conversions and no easy way to identify them as such before watching. Hollywood really dropped the ball on this. Also. . . Movies have been pretty well developed as an art form in 2D for many decades, and this seems a bit like an effort to fix what wasn't broken. Furthermore, a 2D motion picture, especially when there's any sort of camera movement (panning, especially), already provides a lot of unconscious depth information.
BTW, 3D TVs are still selling. Most of the higher-spec TVs on the market still include the 3D feature. I find it useful for viewing stereo photos taken with my Fujifilm REAL 3D W3 camera. Stereo photography has a history of huge, mass-market success -- now mostly forgotten. In the 1800s, before automobiles and consumer-ready box cameras caught on, professional photographers went around the country and around the world shooting 3D images and printing them on Holmes stereo cards. Peddlers would then go house-to-house selling bundles of stereo cards, and that was how you got to see the world. A virtual vacation!
The Fuji isn't a great camera in 2D terms, but the stereo images really are striking and beautiful when shown on my TV set. And stereo photos are especially well suited to some kinds of subject matter -- like plants and trees, which often seem to turn into a camouflage-like jumble in mere 2D images.
Getting back to VR. . . I am very skeptical of watching movies in VR. It doesn't make sense to me. You can't move around freely. You can't interact with your surroundings. It's not "VR" in a conventional sense of the term. It's just. . . 3D TV, with poor resolution, plus head tracking. And the head tracking seems like more of a problem than a benefit, since you may be looking the wrong direction when the action starts. I won't be surprised if VR cinema is a flop, but so what? That's not what VR was really about anyhow.
VR is best, and makes more sense, when putting you into a dynamic simulation. Many games are dynamic simulations, so that's a natural fit. And the game industry is huge. It's bigger than the music industry, and it's bigger than the movie industry. All this hand-wringing in the blogosphere about the need for VR to "reach beyond games to find a mainstream audience" is bunk. Games are mainstream.
Anything old enough becomes new again!
FWIW, I remember playing Dactyl Nightmare in the arcade. I thought it was fun. I would have played more if I'd known it was going to be 20+ years before I'd have the opportunity to put on a VR headset again.
... photogrammetry (aka conversion of 2d images to 3d data). That would allow any recorded imagery (photos, film, etc) to be experienced in VR from any angle as well as the easy digitization of any object. There exists photogrammetry software today, of course, but it's weak sauce - some variants fundamentally require knowledge of positioning and/or orientation, all have trouble with reflection (including specular reflection), translucency/transparency, shadows, any form of movement, etc, and even in perfect circumstances often do a poor job.
That's not to say that point matching, as is used today, is useless; it's good to help establish initial conditions, particularly if the source data is missing any sort of GPS/dead reckoning positioning/orientation data, and to get an initial rough layout of the geometry and texturing. But it's just not enough on its own - it's only a first step. There's far more to how things look in 3d than just positioning flat static matte opaque surfaces in flat lighting. You have to next proceed to actual renderings and optimize these other properties from there.
What we really need is subsequent steps built around a fast, physically-based raytracer, with each image being treated as an object with optimizeable properties (geometry, maps for color, roughness, reflectiveness, transparency, etc). Discontinuities (say, where a foreground object ends and a background object begins) turn out to not be an actual problem because such an optimization problem would turn the discontinuities transparent (so that they don't interfere with the scene as viewed from other angles) and they'd effectively go away. Similar areas (geometry, location, surface properties) get automatically grouped into new objects. Everything in the scene is a parameter that can be tweaked, from camera positions/imager properties all the way to the light pattern from the (unseen) sky sphere - and the effects of the tweaks evaluated by quickly re-rendering the scene from the point of view of a number of nearby (temporally and geographically) camera positions. Areas where tweaks provide significant benefits are the focus of further tweaks and tesselation (both in terms of geometry and surface properties). Areas providing little benefit become deemphasized and potentially collapsed.
Optimization problems require error minimization. The error is minimized where every part of every image maps has as much mutual mapping as possible with other images, with as little error in the resultant images rendered from each viewpoint, with as few objects as possible and as simple of geometry/surface maps as possible.
There should in theory be two sources of error remaining between the renderings and the real-world images: unseen objects that have an influence on the world (shadow-casters, lights, reflections, etc), and objects whose parameters shift with time. So all error remaining after the previous details are optimizing can be attributed to these things. The possibility of unseen objects can be trialed by treating patches of surfaces with high error as new camera positions and creating the error as a new heightmap-image object to be optimized, just like any other picture. It can either be in front of it (reflection) or behind it (transparency), the latter which also gives the potential need for optimizing refraction parameters (the default scenario should assume no refraction).
Time-related errors can be handled by experimentally tweaking any object's parameters over short periods of time and seeing if the overall errors converge or diverge. The more that transforming an object tends to minimize error, the more likely that further optimization attempts should try transforming it again in different timeperiods. Transformations at a minimum can include translation, rotation, creation, deletion, and surface property changes, but depending on the object model may include things as complex as armature generation/rotation and deformation.
It's a huge task. But I think some day we'll get there. And then a
Shiny New Australia.
Maybe we'll eventually see tracking, framerates and latency good enough to avoid motion sickness. For many of us, 15 minutes in today's best VR gear is a quick ticket to a day's worth of virtual stomach flu (no fever, no contagion, just the sensations). It sucks, but it's physiological reality.
So, until that magical day, VR for me is a really unpleasant weight-loss tool, and not much else.
As someone who has played with them a bit, they are still good even if you are sitting still using it as a monitor. Especially for movies.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw
I agree with the other negative posters, recall Google Glass et. al. to "see" through the hype. This already died once in the late 1990s. At that time, my friend commented, 'Virtual reality is just video games really close to your face.'
You cannot try on a pair of shoes just using a VR headset to feel how they fit" Same with shirt collars (maybe too tight?), bras (shoulder straps cutting in, uncomfortable underwiring), underwear (chafing?), bathing suits (both sexes), etc. Fashion is about looks, clothing is about feel.
We already have so many ways to do group meetings at a distance in real time - phone, chat, skype - and none of these require you to look like a dork.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Or the people who got suckered into buying the last big fad and are still in denial - 3D TVs.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Product lookup? Just ask your phone and it will speak the answer. Mapping? Not much - most people just want directions. No need to look like a dork with either of those.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Isn't posting speculation about VR kind of second level VR and therefore redundant?
It's only second level virtual reality if you're raving about it. If you're saying how dorky it is, it's just plain old reality :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Got me a cheap plastic Archos VR viewer with headband (â26 tax&shipping included), loaded some apps on my 2-year old Note3 and came away pretty impressed. There definitely is some nice stuff floating around on Cardboard (Lanterns, Seaworld VR2, Titans of Space, Deep Space VR and so on) . Then Samsung launched their consumer Gear VR for a measely â100 at about the same time my company phone came up for renewal. My interests having been raised, I immediately opted for the Samsung S6 even though the LG G4 seemed a better phone. So now I'm a blown away Gear VR user. I never was a real Gamer. Todays games just take too long for me so the type of games on the Gear (small, short and simple) being closer to mobile games really got to me. Marine Rift, Bravo Six, Gunjack are just awsome, even without positional tracking. And that is just on a memory constrained, mobile device! So yes, the moment Oculus Rift comes out, I'll be getting one. (Ok, I just might wait to see what the Vive brings to the table...) Luckily I should already have a suitable PC (i7, Nvidia 980) So there, one happy and impressed VR user right here. (we seem to be in the minority...) As for the future of VR, with everything that is coming out in the near future (like the Gear look-alike from China which will take any phone, not just Samsung), I have a pretty optimistical view for VR as an entirely new gaming/experience/documentary environment (although the article's one year prognosis should better be spread out over 5 years...)
VR has been around over 30 years since Jared Lanier coined the term. The early stuff was basically 3D line drawings with noticeable delays to head movement. That gave some people nausea.
Flash to 2015 SIGGRAPH. I tried tried models from Oculus and Sony. They were so fast and good that they made nauseous in another way. When I tried the Sony tightrope walk demo I was scared of falling because it seemed so real. Another company's demo put me on a skateboard at 50 mph and I was scared too.
Hello, article author here. What a lot of commenters here seem to missing is the fact that almost every technology I'm predicting here for the coming years **already exists**, and the reactions among anyone who has used these new things is unanimously impressed, amazed, awe-inspired, and wanting more. Check the youtube clips within the article. As another commentor here pointed out, it's very easy to identify whom among us has not yet tried a current headset.
Ah...
We had a half ounce of weed, an 8-track of "A Child's Garden of Grass." quadraphonic stereo, and a Dodge Dart.
And it was awesome.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Two fairly prominent traits around here that I do not understand:
1. I am unable to see a use for it and it is not a perfect match for my needs, it is useless.
2. I do like/want/have it and there's no reason for anyone to have a different opinion than mine.
I am not a psychologist. I do not understand.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Slashdot thought the iPod was a bad idea. Slashdot is terrible at predicting consumer tech trends.
You have a *very* valid point. Sometime within the past month, I was following someone's signature link. It took me to an old thread - one from back when I had my first account, I kinda, sorta, even remembered the thread.
It was about this new company called VMware. I'd say that maybe 1:20 comments actually understood the implications and thought it, "might catch on." The vast majority were certain that virtualization wouldn't catch on, that the price was too high, and that it was too complicated so it would never work. Most of the comments seemed to think that rebooting was better. The rest were going to stick with Windows 95 or switch to Linux and couldn't see any use for virtualization at all.
Some groups overlapped. Oh, and there were a few off-topic and plain trolling comments. I was, shall we say, greatly amused and I found it unfortunate that it was before the day of the big database burp so all the comments were unclaimed as "anonymous coward." I'd liked to have been able to read some of those names and see if they're still active today.
I don't think I'd commented in that thread but I seem to recall that, around that time, we were using things like clustered servers and even looking into things like a distributed file system. The idea was compelling to us and we ended up looking at some virtualization tech not long after and were willing to take the plunge. I dare say, it came in handy. This was before containers, docker, a hypervisor, and things of that nature.
So, yes... Slashdot is absolutely horrible at predicting booms and busts. 2016 is going to be the year of Linux on the Desktop - because I use it and that means everyone should! Also, anyone who doesn't is mentally retarded and a poopy head.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I predict that most of these predictions will not come true. Possibly including this prediction.
So how's that whole 3D TV thing working out for you? I don't know anyone who has one who uses the 3D feature. And those minority-report-like displays? Still useless except for glamming up TV shows. And then there's the fiasco of Ruby - a "hot", then "not" language which many of us said was garbage from the get-go.
Maybe we're like broken clocks, gotta be right at least twice a day, but the only "every day" use I can see for this is military/police being given a virtual view of what's in front of them instead of having to depend on IR goggles. Would sure make piloting at low level at night a bit easier.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I don't even have a 3-D television. I don't even like 'em in the movies, for the most part. I not only don't keep up, I don't really watch much in the way of television.
I also am not sure that my post was clear, in reflection, and should make an attempt remedy that. Also, I could be misinterpreting your reply - that tone thing would come in handy at times. At any rate, this is probably going to end up longer than it should. Obviously, you needn't read or reply but I'll try to make it legible.
That post was not directed towards you but was an attempt to converse with you and to add to your post with citing my observations. It was not, shall we say, an attempt to argue, debate, or even try to demonstrate some superiority. It was mentioned to add to your salient point and to see if you had any feedback or, perhaps, some insight as to the motivations of those who display such behavioral characteristics.
If I meant you, you in particular, demonstrated or exhibited those traits then I'd have mentioned that or, more likely, not have bothered expressing the thought.
Let me be clear here: This is not a failing on your part. This is due to *my* failings. I am not the most articulate (but I'm quite verbose) and sometimes operate under the assumption that you're privy to the many thoughts that are in my head. I'm not sure why I do that - probably because my posts are already novellas and the added information would make them more difficult to digest. So, I apologize for not having been clear enough in my post and for you (from what I see) believing that such was directed at you - it was not. novella warning. I'm pretty sure that this is going to be a fairly long post - bear with me, if you wish, and I think this is an interesting tangent that you may be amused by or interested in. I suspect you can skip the part between the "---" and still get the gist of it. It's mostly going to be just a bit of an experience that gives background into why and how I've decided to believe the things I do. It necessitates some history if it's to be as clear as it could be.
---
That said, there have been lots of fads that have come and gone. Someone replied to my reply to you to point out that we, as a whole, aren't really good at predicting tech trends. I suspect that's because we're at a different level than most, where tech is concerned, so what is valuable to us is not necessarily of value to the majority. We're no longer in a position where we're driving the trends and so we're a bit subjected to the whims of the masses, as unfortunate as that is.
I almost typed this out to another one of your comments in this thread... I'll share it now. I hope you don't mind the digression and, honestly, I value your feedback.
I was driving along the Skyway in Buffalo, New York. I stopped there while I was engaging in my wanderlust. It was in that area that, by happenstance, I bumped into a very young and very beautiful female. In bumping into each other (the velcro that you mentioned in our journal conversation) and her sticking, I ended up with some added complexity which meant that I remained in the area for a while.
So, I was on that Skyway and heading to Niagara Falls and it occurred to me that I could see the city and had a pretty good view of some interesting landmarks, features, and buildings. First, I wanted to know the history of the Skyway. I wanted to know who made it, who designed it, when it was built, it's designed throughput, what the greatest height was, how many exits it had, what the safety record was, what happened during construction, and many other things.
That moment, that moment in time, was an epiphany for me. It's when it finally clicked for me (some things take a while and then something clicks and I "get it") and I looked out on the expanse and was displeased. I was greatly displeased. Even the gods, if not my girlfriend, were aware of my unhappiness and frustration.
See, it would be awesome to have that kind of information available on command. I admit, I s
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It was more for the benefit of others who are all in on the whole VR thing. Maybe great minds think alike :-) I can see practical uses - especially in teaching medicine - but for the general public, it will probably be a niche thing, same as (trigger warning - I'm about to speak heresy now) how video gaming or going to the movies are things that are more attractive to certain groups than others. And how others cannot seem to put their phones down even while eating with others, but other people don't have that problem.
Besides, maybe I AM like a broken clock ... why should I deprive myself (and others) of the fun of poking fun at myself?
Now, I get what you're saying about not being able to pull up all the info about something that catches your interest at the time; I think that's a very common experience because many tech people got to be tech people because are super-curious by nature. Now, I just tend to file those questions in the back of my mind to check out at a time when I've not much else to do - and if I forget to do so, then it probably wasn't that important, and will just pop up one day as a random "let me check that out now." I've been taught how to live more "in the moment" as part of my PTSD therapy, and it's a new experience (though I still spend much of my dog walks thinking about all sorts of stuff - but nowhere near all of it anymore). Sometimes I just look at them and enjoy their presence, and the surroundings, and the opportunity and ability to just take it all in and appreciate it for what it is without overthinking it. (the meds probably help reduce the anxiety that is part of why people over-think things). Or most likely (according to a couple of my sisters) I'm just nuts ... but I'm finding it much easier to accept, for example, people who reject what I am, and empathize with the predicament they're in - I doubt anyone would choose to be the way they are, same as I didn't choose to be they way I am. I have no right to ask that they change unless they are intentionally trying to harm me. And now we're getting pretty darned far off-topic, but it's always interesting. Happy new year and all the best. TTYL.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
In the linked article Steven Colbert looks like Bender from Futurama. It must feel rather odd to run around with a game console strapped to your face.
Linden Labs are making a successor to SL called Project Sansar, and compatibility with VR headsets is a design goal. They claim it will have the most accessible content creation tools ever. This is the number one thing on my wish list.
About time, hopefully they do it better this time. The current rendering engine is very old and outdated compared to what is the cutting edge in the gaming industry year 2015/2016. It's also built on DirectX so no Apple OSX or Linux support. Also lacking a physics engine that can render water, wind, grass, gravity, etc in real time.
Uhhh... I'm not sure what you mean about "no Apple OSX or Linux support". You're not talking about SL, are you? The viewers have run on Mac and Linux for well over ten years already. (It is partly responsible for my loyalty to SL, since many of the other virtual worlds -- such as There and Blue Mars -- never came out with Mac support, and I sure wasn't going to buy a new computer just to try them!)
Actually, now I find myself contemplating the purchase of a Windows PC for the first time in many years. It has become clear that a lot of games simply perform better on Windows (presumably because those games target DirectX), and VR headset support is going to be strongest on Windows, and I'm just tired of riding against the wind all the time. But the PC will be strictly for games and VR. I'll be sticking with my Mac for everything else.
As for SL being very outdated. . . It has been upgraded and improved many times over the years. We got voice chat, we got mesh object import, avatars look 100% better now, etc. But yes, SL is still haunted by architectural decisions made long ago, in another era. I think the intent with Project Sansar is to make a clean break somewhat like Apple did when going from Mac System 8/9 to Mac OS X.