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VR Sports? It Can Be a Billion Dollar Business, Says Intel CEO (axios.com)

Posted by msmash on from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.

Ina Fried, reporting for Axios: Intel CEO Brian Krzanich told Axios on Thursday that he sees virtual reality not only changing the face of sports, but also potentially being a multi-billion-dollar business for the chip giant. "I think it can be a couple billion dollar business" he said in an interview after his appearance at Code Conference. "And the reason is this is a whole new feed... things like advertising, the ability to take that data and sell it... we're the only ones who we believe can produce this stuff."

43 comments

  1. oh god.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The industry's really grasping at straws.. All people seem to want nowadays is bullshit mobile apps.

  2. It'll be as huge as 3D TV! by JoeyRox · · Score: 2

    If it's lucky.

    1. Re: It'll be as huge as 3D TV! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can't put TV in your pocket

  3. VR is a flop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    VR is a flop. It makes people physically ill due to the disconnect between what the eye sees and the inner ear senses. You cannot fix that problem. AR might have a future, but VR doesn't. Of course it doesn't affect the special snowflakes in Slashdot, I mean other people of course.

    1. Re:VR is a flop by turkeydance · · Score: 1

      VR is a Billion for Doctors handling motion sickness, etc.

    2. Re:VR is a flop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It makes people physically ill due to the disconnect between what the eye sees and the inner ear senses. You cannot fix that problem.

      Yea you can. Don't be old.
      You don't see old people on roller coasters either. Are roller coasters a flop?

    3. Re:VR is a flop by Spy+Handler · · Score: 1

      You don't see old people on roller coasters either. Are roller coasters a flop?

      But roller coaster manufacturing isn't a billion dollar business either.

    4. Re: VR is a flop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny watching idiots saying something is impossible. How can someone be so short-sighted? I can think of about 50 paths to fix what you think is impossible.

      Idiots like you told people like Robert Goddard rockets would never work in space or the Wright brothers that airplanes would never work.

    5. Re:VR is a flop by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      VR is a Billion for Doctors handling motion sickness, etc.

      You don't need to go to a doctor for motion sickness. You just turn off the computer, and five minutes later you're fine.

      I get motion sickness with on screen VR, when the turning and acceleration don't match what my inner ears sense. But helmeted VR is okay, because my head physically turns with the display. Also, motion sickness goes away as your body adjusts to it, just like sea sickness. When I was at sea, I felt nauseous for the first week, and then I was fine.

    6. Re: VR is a flop by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      OK name one path. I'll wait.

    7. Re: VR is a flop by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Not the OP.

      One path: Kids play with VR from a young age and get used to it.

      Second path: Content developers learn to keep up mostly up and down mostly down.

      Third path: Fucking with the users inner ear using something new.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    8. Re: VR is a flop by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Airplanes cannot work, it's basic physics. Airplanes are heavier than air so they cannot fly, it's a scientific fact! /MoransWithoutAnyPhysicsKnowledge

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    9. Re: VR is a flop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also people don't get sick with VR that has 6dof tracking and high frame rate. You might feel funny when vection is going on but not sick like you get with pos 3dof VR like cardboard

    10. Re:VR is a flop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "VR is a flop..." said the guy who's never tried VR porn.

      Here, it's simple and cheap: first get a Google Cardboard for like 10 or 12 bucks somewhere:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cardboard

      Then go to www.youporn.com, on your smartphone. click on the category "Virtual Reality". these videos are free to stream.

      play a video, and click the Cardboard logo in the lower right. you will be immersed in a stereoscopic pr0n wonderland with head tracking and 180 degree vision.

      YOU MAY NEVER WATCH 2-D PR0N AGAIN. OR AT LEAST, YOU WILL WANT TO BUY AN REAL VR HEADSET! :)

    11. Re: VR is a flop by Desler · · Score: 2

      So you have 50 paths but instead of selling these ideas to a bigger companies or making your own product incorporating these ideas you're just posting to Slashdot? Yeah, seems totally legit.

    12. Re:VR is a flop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Porn is definitely a good niche for VR. Movies might be too if it made economic sense (which it wont until the headsets come down in price about an order of magnitude and you don't need $1000+ in hardware upgrades on the average non-gamer PC to use it in the first place).

      Games though? Nope. Controls need to improve dramatically and a mechanism for realistic tactile feedback needs to be invented (and THIS doesn't fucking count).

      The best selling VR game of all time is named 'Job Simulator' for fucks' sake.

    13. Re: VR is a flop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True.
      You just have to account for some people too slow to adapt.
      On the other hand, VR needs to evolve.

    14. Re: VR is a flop by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re 'You just have to account for some people too slow to adapt. On the other hand, VR needs to evolve."
      Different airforces tried that idea with the people who wanted to become pilots. They would educated for a while them only to find out later they could not cope with what was expected of them.
      Smarter nations just tested people first entering and would never accepted people who could not cope. No course work was wasted on people who would fail.
      VR is great for some people. For others it just will not work.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    15. Re: VR is a flop by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Yeah. It doesn't work that way. You just don't "get used to" the inner ear making you sick. Only the third path is possible, but it would require some sort of invasive surgery.

    16. Re: VR is a flop by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Oh look. Another fool who thinks since there are airplanes, EVERYTHING must be possible! Let me guess: your computer is SO MUCH faster than the ones 40 years ago too. Therefore computers will be INFINITELY faster 50 years from now!

    17. Re: VR is a flop by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Exactly! Finally someone who understands!

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    18. Re: VR is a flop by GrahamJ · · Score: 1

      Some VR does this for some people. Roomscale VR without artificial locomotion does not.

      Try things before commenting on them.

    19. Re: VR is a flop by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      You do develop resistance to VR sickness. But what do I know, I've only been playing with/coding for them for 20 years.

      Just as many 3d shooters will make old folks queasy, but we don't notice. Inner ear is unsynced there too.

      The second path already works, just most VR devs are clueless.

      You could put ultrasonics into the inner ear. Have them constructively interfere on the parts of the organ you want to be 'sending'. No I'm not going to let them test the prototype on me. But cats are INXS in my neighborhood.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  4. If these trends continue by dlleigh · · Score: 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    Gotta love prediction, especially when it's consistent with your worldview.

  5. VR "Final Table" Texas Hold'em by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You'll be able to pan the table when Phil Helmuth stands up wearing his pitch-black shades and glares at the guy who just went all-in.

  6. VR Going Nowhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How long has this tech been around? When it came out, it was supposed to be the "next big thing" - yet for some reason, it's just stuck in the mud. Could it be something as simple, like no one wants to wear those dorky headsets?

    1. Re:VR Going Nowhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "when it came out", I was a grad student at UF in Gainesville. I'll describe the VR experiments on the top floors of the CISE building. VR was done entirely with computer graphics, and the headset was only the viewer. there were complicated tracking devices that filled the room practically. it was something nobody could have in their living room. plus the headset was heavy and expensive and had extremely low resolution compared to a modern smartphone.

      Then the smartphone revolution fueled development of accelerometers, which then were placed IN the headset, removing the requirement for motion tracking hardware to be placed around you. Now the entire technology can be placed in the headset.

      Along the way, the digital camera revolution provided us with 3D stereoscopic cameras that could (eventually) see 180 degrees or even 360 degrees simultaneously.

      combine those two things (headset with accelerometers, and watching a video filmed with stereo head-tracking camera), and you have today's VR revolution.

      if you haven't tried watching a VR movie (regular or pr0n) with an Oculus Rift, or playing a game with it, you don't know what you're missing!

      For a cheap introduction, get a Google Cardboard and watch a free movie in the VR category at www.youporn.com. you'll thank me.

    2. Re:VR Going Nowhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if you haven't tried watching a VR movie (regular or pr0n) with an Oculus Rift, or playing a game with it, you don't know what you're missing!

      I'm missing nothing, nerdlinger.

  7. "The ability to take that data and sell it" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Remind me to take a soldering iron to everything Intel I own in the future.

  8. VR sports, nope. But VR pron can be by Spy+Handler · · Score: 2

    a billion dollar business

    1. Re:VR sports, nope. But VR pron can be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you guessed the name of Billy's Planet?

      It was Earth!

      Don't date robots. Brought to you by the Space Pope.

  9. Only Intel can do this stuff!! by bobm · · Score: 1

    From the headline:

    we're the only ones who we believe can produce this stuff.

    I doubt it, I think Intel can make some OK processors but they really aren't great at innovating.

    They actually think that people buy their stuff because it says "Intel Inside".

    What really irks me though is when they show concepts and then wait for someone else to actually implement. I do give them credit with the Intel NUC though, that's one nice, cheap headless server for the home.

    1. Re:Only Intel can do this stuff!! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      They actually think that people buy their stuff because it says "Intel Inside".

      Various sources put intel somewhere between the 6th and 14th most powerful brand... I think they're right.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re: Only Intel can do this stuff!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, nothing to do with the merits of thei processors.

    3. Re: Only Intel can do this stuff!! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Yeah, nothing to do with the merits of thei processors.

      We could argue all day about why the brand is valuable, but the average schmoe knows intel inside but doesn't know jack diddly squat about a cpu.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  10. Good grief.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Someone take the drugs away from the Intel CEO. What next? Puppets! Puppets are the actors of the future. Brought to you by Intel.

    1. Re:Good grief.... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Hatsune Miku.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
  11. Wii by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because wii sports was so successful.

  12. Gamers don't want to *actually* play sports. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If people wanted to play real baseball, they'd sign up for a league. If they wanted to play real golf, they'd drive to the nearest course and play. etc. It may be more hassle and expense, but the controls and graphics of the IRL versions are so infinitely better that it wouldn't matter...IF that's what they really wanted.

    Video game sports and real sports are incredibly different experiences, and there's no reason to believe there is any significant overlap in the potential audiences. Furthermore the people who want to play the real thing aren't going to settle for godawful VR (or wiimote) controls with zero tactile feedback.

    If immersive, realistic simulation is what people wanted then there would be more than one football game in the entire history of football games to offer a first person camera angle.

  13. Cart before the horse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sometimes companies get so big that no idea is a good idea unless it has the potential to generate billions of $ in revenue. Its sad really to see people oversell the potential of interesting technology because no one will listen to them until their greed button gets pushed furiously.

    1. Re:Cart before the horse by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Need a fast CPU, a fast network card, need fast storage, need more fast RAM and a new GPU.
      Pushing VR is all about pushing a new CPU and the needed upgrades.
      4K ready and VR ready.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  14. Take that data and sell it.. by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    the ability to take that data and sell it..

    Now if I am Intel's product instead of being Intel's customer, I hope they are going to give me their chips for free.

  15. Bleah by GrahamJ · · Score: 1

    "And the reason is this is a whole new feed... things like advertising, the ability to take that data and sell it... we're the only ones who we believe can produce this stuff."

    Advertising is the worst part of sports. I hope Intel has nothing to do with VR if their only interest is selling eyeballs. Way to cheapen it.

    VR is created by artists to be consumed at internet scale, no gatekeepers required.