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Google, HTC, Oculus, Samsung, Sony Join Forces To Create Global VR Association (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the big-dogs dept.

Google, HTC, Oculus, Samsung, Sony and Acer have teamed up to form the Global Virtual Reality Association (GVRA) in an effort to reduce fragmentation and failure in the industry. GVRA aims to "unlock and maximize VR's potential," but there are little details as to what this may mean for consumers. TechCrunch reports: What many in the VR community have been thirsting for is some unification of standards in terms of software and hardware. Games bought in the Oculus store don't play on the Vive or PS VR. Sensors for the Vive don't work on Oculus. Sony doesn't play nice with anyone else's standards etc. etc. Valve, which makes the Steam store and SteamVR platform for the HTC Vive and others, is notably not a member of this collective so any hopes of a unified standard (like its OpenVR platform) emerging from this collective is likely not in the cards. From the GVRA press release: "The goal of the Global Virtual Reality Association is to promote responsible development and adoption of VR globally. The association's members will develop and share best practices, conduct research, and bring the international VR community together as the technology progresses. The group will also serve a resource for consumers, policymakers, and industry interested in VR."

29 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. any bets? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Want to bet whether said standard will include a patent from each?

    Am I just paranoid when i hear these guys get together for this project or that?

    1. Re:any bets? by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      Am I just paranoid when i hear these guys get together for this project or that?

      No. Nothing good for consumers has ever come from anything these guys can all agree on without stabbing each other in the back.

  2. What a joke by 110010001000 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    VR is a joke. You cannot solve the problem of motion sickness caused by the disconnect between what the eyes see and the inner ear senses. VR is a dead end, but AR has promise.

    1. Re:What a joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, you can get rid of the disconnect by mapping everything 1:1, that works fine. If you only have vection in small bursts, they're imperceptible and don't cause sickness.

      AR is just VR except you can see through the lenses. Basically, it's VR with an alpha channel, the fundamentals are identical.

    2. Re:What a joke by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      VR is fine, so long as the content keeps up more or less up and doesn't deliberately make the user sick...Making Descent work will be a huge challenge. Descent 2 was the most puky VR game ever.

      VR also has it's killer app. Porn. Though, how anybody making any type of porn expects to get paid these days is beyond me. VR porn recording glasses will put the pros out of business, no professional porn starlet can compete with an equally hot exhibitionist. I digress.

      Let's hope nobody makes AR porn.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re: What a joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If you have to put something on your head, it's going nowhere.
      I'm making some space on my shelf for this VR, right between my furby and tickle me elmo.

    4. Re: What a joke by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      I was fine until my brain/body expected a sudden deceleration (I smacked a wall in a driving sim) and there was none... I'd been doing fine (oculus) until then but that suddenly made me want to hurl...

    5. Re:What a joke by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Well, it beats putting lipstick on the pig.... or a paper bag over her head.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    6. Re:What a joke by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      I don't know yet, I have seen a few very intelligent attempts at it and I would say we're still way too early in the game to tell whether there is a solution.

      Yes, there are VR games that make even me sick (and I'm a roller coaster junkie, with dark rides being very much on top of my "wannahave" list), but these are invariably games that don't take the specific needs of that new medium into account. Other games had better ideas, and yes, there are ways to move about without making the player feel like he is about to hurl.

      Developing something like this takes time. There is a good reason why you see a fair lot of low/no cost games right now, people and companies are pretty much trying to find out what's going to work and what isn't.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    7. Re:What a joke by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      Any kind of solution to the eye-ear problem that you could come up with for AR would also work in VR.

      Overlaying things in real life that you interact with physically can be applied to VR?

      I don't know, I see a big issue trying to apply someone running up and down stairs, through corridors of a house to hit buttons that are rendered in AR. To even do something similar in VR, you'd have to render the house entirely as a 3d model and some how perfectly align it with the real world house which... would essentially just be another form of AR, so, no.. I don't see your point as to how this solution can be applied to VR.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    8. Re:What a joke by Wargames · · Score: 1

      I think you could cure motion sickness with VR. For example, one of the remedies for sea sickness is to go out on deck and see the horizon. Oftentimes during foul weather when seas are most rough passengers are restricted from going outside for safety. If they could jack into a VR view of a horizon corresponding to what their inner ears are sensing, they could be cured.

      --
      -- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
    9. Re:What a joke by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      VR is a joke. You cannot solve the problem of motion sickness caused by the disconnect between what the eyes see and the inner ear senses. VR is a dead end, but AR has promise.

      The joke is on everyone who hasn't tried it. I'll pray for your misguided souls while I'm piloting my own space ship across the galaxy and drifting like a feign in my SRV on distant worlds thousands of light years away.

    10. Re:What a joke by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      What's your plan for dealing with stankpuss?

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    11. Re:What a joke by JThundley · · Score: 1

      I bought the Vive a couple weeks ago and don't get motion sickness at all. There isn't a lot of walking or unnatural moving. I even played a virtual body tour where I was moving on a rail and didn't get sick. Not everyone is as delicate as you.

    12. Re:What a joke by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      VR is fine, so long as the content keeps up more or less up and doesn't deliberately make the user sick...Making Descent work will be a huge challenge. Descent 2 was the most puky VR game ever.

      Descent is currently being developed: http://playoverload.com./ Early alpha builds I've played in VR have so far been a lot of fun no sickness at all except some areas with piss poor frame rates. Not what I expected going in.

      After this experience it is very hard to take VR makes you sick crowd seriously.

  3. Let me help translate here. by Narcocide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "reduce fragmentation and failure in the industry" means "make sure Linux never gets any of our shit"

    1. Re:Let me help translate here. by janoc · · Score: 2

      HTC Vive actually has (some) Linux support already, thanks to Valve.

      Content is another story, but that won't be changed by an alliance like this

    2. Re:Let me help translate here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Valve are heavily pushing Vulkan and have working prototype SteamVR software for Linux using that API.

      OpenGL is kinda broken on Linux at this point as NVIDIA drivers are binary blobs and virtually impossible to debug and AMD's performance is cripplingly poor. Vulkan isn't quite mature yet and is effectively necessary due to the high performance required, which is why it's taking so long.

    3. Re:Let me help translate here. by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Because, well, what's in it for them? They can now create facts and take the market if they so please. They are the only ones that have a huge software library behind them that is heavily loaded with indie developers (i.e. the only ones that are willing and able to take a risk with a rather tiny market).

      Yes Sony has the Playstation and its market share behind it, but the PS market depends heavily on large studios, and so far they have been wary to invest into the VR market because it is still very small, no play ground for AAA titles.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. The Matrix by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    Has a beginning

    1. Re:The Matrix by Noishkel · · Score: 1

      Well are we talking the Wachowski kind of Matrix, or are we talking a ShadowRun kind of Matrix? I'm pretty down for the later.

  5. VR comes down to earth by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

    Got to hand it to Carmack and friends, separating Zuck from a huge bag of windfall riches was a really slick move, but face it, VR remains a boutique niche and that isn't changing in the foreseeable future. This is the business: selling expensive hardware to early adopters willing to spend hours a day standing up waving their arms around while wearing a heavy, sweaty headset. With the hype died down, that is exactly what percent of the market? Worse thing is, everybody wants a piece of that nonexistent market. Reality: your hundreds of dollars of VR gear is going to end up gathering dust in the closet right next to your Guitar Hero controller and you will be back to couch potato status with your PS4 controller or keyboard and mouse if you are in that segment that can afford a sufficiently powerful laptop or gaming PC. It's about that standing up thing. After the initial thrill, it just isn't going to happen for more than a few minutes a day.

    So Zuck got the idea that everybody would be reading their fake Facebook news on a VR headset next year? I wonder why.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    1. Re:VR comes down to earth by ddtmm · · Score: 2

      That is exactly the situation. Well spoken

    2. Re:VR comes down to earth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's about that standing up thing. After the initial thrill, it just isn't going to happen for more than a few minutes a day.

      Also the weight of the headset, which is why I see the HTC Vive as a joke. At least the Oculus Rift is light enough to not notice wearing it for long periods of time, and the base-model only comes with a single sensor, which is all you need while sitting at a desk. Using an Oculus while sitting at a desk seems like a viable computer monitor replacement.

      As an anecdote, try playing this game for longer than 5 minutes with an HTC Vive. You have to hold your head down at an angle, causing almost all Vive players neck strain. However, I have been able to play it comfortably with an Oculus Rift for over an hour while sitting at my desk.

    3. Re:VR comes down to earth by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      Also the weight of the headset, which is why I see the HTC Vive as a joke.

      Speak for yourself puny human. I've never had a problem with wearing things other people complain are 'heavy' (headsets, helmets, visors) etc. This will be no different for me.

      As an anecdote, try playing this game for longer than 5 minutes

      I can't, it looks boring as crap.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  6. Oblig xkcd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    https://xkcd.com/927/

    So - we now have SteamVR, Oculus, HTC, OSVR, and whatever the hell this is.

  7. Whatever... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Until these guys agree on specific standards and protocols, this all means shit.

    When will they learn that the battle for control is always everyone's loss, including theirs.

  8. Re:IMO this is the first hint by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    There's another possibility, They actually agree on some common standards - and make it so every piece of VR software runs on every device, and you compete by making your device run it better.
    So sticking my phone in a cardboard will run it weakly, but spending on one of the big boys it runs very well - but they all run the same stuff.

    That is what the market needs right now. As it stands the fragmented gaming market hurts consumers, you have 3 major console makers none of whom are compatible with each other - so only AAA titles appear on more than one, you got PC which is not compatible with any of them - and you got valve trying to create PC-compatible consoles at three times the price of a PC or a console. You got linux gaming growing rapidly but you still get AAA-titles that can't run on wine - even ones that used to work (the new SkyrimSpecialEdition is entirely impossible to run on wine - at least if you got it via steam because steam is a 32-bit only app and the new skyrim is 64-bit only and wine doesn't support running 32-bit and 64-bit programs in the same engine).

    But that sort of works because everybody who wants to game buys *something*.

    VR is trying to build on top of that market - but it's new, the tech is expensive and the content supply much smaller. It isn't likely to work. The best thing they can do is to maximize the content by agreeing on a common standard so every device runs every piece of content- preferably on every platform.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  9. Sony and "unification of standards"? by jenningsthecat · · Score: 1

    As Techcrunch mentions, "Sony doesn't play nice with anyone else's standards". They never met a standard they couldn't ignore in favour of their own proprietary approaches unless said standard was already too well entrenched to ignore. Sony was doing the 'all your interface are belong to us' thing long before Apple adopted it, and I find it hard to believe that they can ever be a viable member of a standards organization.

    --
    'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.