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VR's Tough Demand: Your Undivided Attention (axios.com)

Posted by msmash on from the one-perspective dept.

Ina Fried, writing for Axios: If you want to know why virtual reality hasn't taken off, you might want to blame our addiction to smartphones. Why? While the power of VR is to be transported into an immersive experience, consumers will demand a lot out of something that makes them give up Twitter and Facebook, even for a few minutes. One perspective: "It has to be a really compelling reason to get you to give up all that," Shauna Heller, a former Oculus worker who now consults on VR projects, said Thursday at the Mobile Future Forward conference near Seattle. "There aren't just a ton of those reasons just yet."

4 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. The explanation is bullshit. by klingens · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apologies for the real reason: the games suck. No one wants to buy them, so no one buys a headset for this one awesome game one can't live without.
    People play games all the time, in fullscreen, no twitter.
    Even if there were a twitter addiction: one could easily integrate it, it's simply a monitor like any other, it doesn't matter if I display twitter on it or a game. Even the input could be managed: every Windows Version has speech recognition for years. A microphone isn't really new tech when you have a VR headset.

    1. Re:The explanation is bullshit. by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Informative

      I would argue there's a different and fundamental reason VR hasn't taken off - for most people, it's interesting for a grand total of maybe 10-15 minutes. After that, the novelty factor is gone and they don't see a reason to try it again.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  2. Oh, please by JohnFen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Smartphones have nothing to do with it. I see three things impeding the mass acceptance of VR:

    1) It's expensive
    2) You have to wear it
    3) There's no use case compelling enough to overcome 1 and 2 (unless, perhaps, you're a hardcore gamer)

  3. VR is undeniably the future. by SensitiveMale · · Score: 3, Interesting

    After playing my oculus rift for 5 minutes, VR is here and it is going to be everything and everywhere. Don't worry about social feeds, games will figure out a way to shoehorn feeds in. Was it the Populous game that would have one of the little people run up to you with a sign when you got an email? Games will figure out a way for people to get their social drugs mainlined while in the rift.

    VR is the future and nothing will stop that. Eventually, and I'm guessing within 8 years, VR will not only be with the huge isolation googles, but will be also be possible with the Oakley style glasses as well.