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Imax is Shutting Down Its VR Business, Closing Remaining Three VR Centers in Q1 (variety.com)
Imax is making its exit from virtual reality (VR) official: The company notified shareholders with a SEC filing this week that it will close down its remaining three VR centers, and write off "certain VR content investments." From a report: A company spokesperson confirmed the planned closures and shared the following statement with Variety: "With the launch of the IMAX VR centre pilot program our intention was to test a variety of different concepts and locations to determine which approaches work well. After a trial period with VR centres in multiplexes, we have decided to conclude the IMAX VR centre pilot program and close the remaining three locations in Q1 2019."
The company previously closed four of its seven VR centers, including most recently its sole European outpost in Manchester. Imax launched Imax VR in early 2017 with a flagship location adjacent to the Grove mall in Los Angeles. At the time, the expansion into VR was billed as an experiment, and a way for Imax to determine whether VR could be the next big thing for the company. [...] Imax also set up a $50 million VR content fund, and got CAA, China Media Capital, and the Raine Group to co-produce VR experiences. Further reading: The virtual reality dream is dying.
The company previously closed four of its seven VR centers, including most recently its sole European outpost in Manchester. Imax launched Imax VR in early 2017 with a flagship location adjacent to the Grove mall in Los Angeles. At the time, the expansion into VR was billed as an experiment, and a way for Imax to determine whether VR could be the next big thing for the company. [...] Imax also set up a $50 million VR content fund, and got CAA, China Media Capital, and the Raine Group to co-produce VR experiences. Further reading: The virtual reality dream is dying.
4. The vast majority of consumers have zero interest in VR.
wrong
most people hate watching VR in theaters. They try it and don't like it. They go back to superior 2D movies. I don't know anyone who likes it.
VR is like 3DTV. Overhyped shit that no one wants.
BS. I have an Oculus Rift and the experience is amazeballs. The problem is that its too complex and the apps are half-baked.
1. We need a device that doesn't require a $2000 gaming PC to run and an octopus of cables. That's what the companies left are trying to achieve at this point. It's the only way it will get adopted by the majority.
2. On the flip side the software is just crap. Most of the games are half baked and are frankenstein version adapted for VR. VR needs real games written for the platform with the same investments that PC and Console get. That won't happen until the customer base is big enough. Fix #1 and #2 will fix itself.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
I keep wondering if it is marketing that makes these cycles or some new guy gets eureka moment - "VR that is the future!"
VR in movie format is something no one wants. Functional VR everyone wants, it is just very limited in authenticity due to the fact that we still exist in the physical world, and falling down the stairs breaks actual bones.
The space in between is unfortunately mostly limited to simulators and fixed shooters.
We have a device that doesn't need a $2000 PC. It's called Playstation VR (PSVR).
Same problem guy. It's got to be tether-less and cost less. And quite honestly the PSVR experience sucks from a resolution and responsiveness perspective compared to Rift and Vive.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
What this was was yet another stab at the consistently failing Family Entertainment Center. Chuck E Cheese, Showbiz Pizza, Discovery Zone, GameWorks, etc, etc.
This isn't any argument about the merits of VR.
It's notoriously difficult to run an FEC as it requires a substantial investment and does not lend itself well to franchising. People just generally don't care to spend hundreds of dollars to get their family into a place for a few hours that isn't substantial. While Disneyland seems expensive, it's 16 hours of entertainment which works out to $10-20 per hour per person which isn't unreasonable compared to other family entertainment options.
Disney tried the small model FEC and failed as well. You just can't really do it on a small scale. You have to go big out of the gate.
The companies that would be more likely to succeed are the ones that have substantial IP to capitalize on and can keep the place afloat long enough to realize the full profit potential. You just can't half-butt it and that requires substantial cash flow.
The VOID seems to be doing pretty well over at Downtown Disney. It's a Star Wars themed social experience in VR in a prime location. It wouldn't surprise me if Disney eventually found a way to incorporate it directly into an experience in the Star Wars area of the park opening next summer.
In short, there are too many variables to say anything about VR in particular. The tech is vastly improving, opportunities do exist, but you have to get all the factors in place.
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I don't know what the Imax experiences were like, but they were probably standard VR headset kinds of things...
The only VR "experience" I've had that I thought was really magically immersive, was at the Void.
They just sue an oculus headset, but what really makes it work is it's totally contained on you - backpack to power and drive the headset, along with a series of walls around you that mesh nearly perfectly with the VR view you see. You see your own arms and hands, you see your partner next to you. You pick up a real weapon that you feel and hold in your hands with a real trigger, and you see it in VR just as you would if you were looking without the headset.
You go through some small rooms and hallways, all the while being able to see the world projected around you (sometimes as vast open areas). They also do some slight effects like wind or scents that you can feel and smell...
If you are ever anywhere that has one of these setups, you really should try it to see what VR can and should be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
maybe you live in your mom's basement, anon?
my friends, relatives and coworkers are all very aware of VR and tried it. no one liked it.
Functional VR everyone wants,
So you've interviewed every person on earth? I think you meant to say "everyone in my niche bubble wants VR."
And yet TV took off nearly immediately even when TV sets were way more expensive than VR even without accounting for inflation.
Yet of I all the people I know with a PS (there are several), none have the VR set and have no interest in buying it.
I hate fat people.
Not surprising since they've only sold about 3 million units worldwide. Which even with such pathetic sales still makes it more popular than Rift and Vive.
There's a few billion VR headsets being used right now.
Just not on this planet.
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Yep. I tried it multiples even with the highest-end hardware. It was mostly a bore.
is declining middle class. Dave & Buster's is doing great, but they're less like a traditional FEC and more like a kiddy Casino and even they have to pick their locations carefully and use nasty business practices to shift the risk of building their attractions onto the companies that build them (they don't actually buy most of those machines, they have some bizarre deal where the manufacturers pay them for floor space).
FECs need a vibrant middle class with a ton of disposable income, and, well, that ain't America in 2018...
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*Anything* is going to suck compared to $2500+ PC-based VR system (except a $100,000+ industrial VR system). When the PS6 has performance to kick the ass of today's $2000PC, it will still be getting its ass kicked by the $2000 PCs on the market then.
The question isn't how it compares to the top-of-the-line. It's how good the experience is judged on its own merits.
We've got the Oculus Quest probably coming out soon, which will eliminate the need for external hardware, ditch the wires, and greatly simplify (and expand, if you have the room) your playing space with it's "inside-out" room tracking cameras. But it's only going to have Nintendo-class graphics. That's the necessary tradeoff with current technology. And it's not necessarily a problem - realism is largely irrelevant to a compelling experience.
My only complaint is that it's from Facebook - and I'm not big on the idea of giving Facebook that sort of surveillance power over my game-playing, or the inside of my home.
Even resolution isn't necessarily a big problem - the problem is the artifacts of how that resolution is presented. The old micro-mirror array based projection TVs offered incredible picture quality at huge sizes, despite the fact that they were no better resolution than the blocky-looking LCD screens of similar size. Why? Because they smoothly blended adjacent pixels together, treating the color data as point-samples, rather than blocks, and creating a seamless, film-like image. It continues to astound me that none of the VR headset manufacturers include a pixel-blending filter in front of the screen to accomplish a similar result and eliminate the "screen door effect". Actually... I think I heard recently that someone finally is pursuing it, though I forget who.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
VR is special, people are just lazy.
Good-bye
You keep coming up with excuses as to why it won't sell, but maybe you should come to terms with the fact that VR just isn't that special.
Mark my words and make fun of me all you want with your straw man arguments. Apple or some company who has the tech (think A10X line of processors in the iPad) will create a VR experience in a tiny form factor with a purpose built development environment. VR will go ape shit at that point.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
I did the Star Wars experience which was great (something not known to me beforehand, is that K2-SO would be there - a nice bonus). Supposedly the new Wreck-It Ralph experience is even better, which would make sense as it's the latest version... so you might want to look for that if you are in one of the cities it's offered or are traveling.
I sadly never did Ghostbusters while it was in NYC, now it's only in the UAE which means I won't be seeing it anytime soon...
Like you say, the core of the Void was a shooter, but the whole thing was so well done even my wife loved it, who only ever plays puzzle games and wants nothing to do with FPS shooters. So that says a lot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And I can point to billions who don't own anything VR. You could find people saying the same thing about 3DTV yet that's a dead technology. The market has clearly spoken.
Check out this graph for the adoption of the cell phone... LOL. It took decades to happen and then it took off like wildfire.
https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfr...
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Have you ever tried a real VR system? There's a reason Daydream and other phone-based VR experiences suck - the same reason they're so inexpensive: they're a cheap novelty, nothing more. The hardware is totally unsuited to VR. Fundamentally flawed rotation-only approximate head tracking is no substitute for real positional tracking. The frame rate sucks. The resolution probably sucks (depending on your phone). The lag sucks. The controller sucks. And the software mostly sucks - because anyone with resources that's developing for VR is doing it for much higher quality and more capable platforms.
The entire experience is designed to give a teaser-taste of VR to people who can't justify buying something that's worth the price.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Disney tried the small model FEC and failed as well.
I'm not sure if maybe you mean what I am thinking of, but at Downtown Disney in Disneyworld they had a great FEC called DisneyQuest - I thought of it as pretty large, I thought they had a really good variety of very fun attractions, way more than any other FEC I've ever been to... yet even that shut down a few years ago. If even Disney can't make a large really well done FEC work right in the heart of DisneyWorld, who can I wonder?
The most fun there there by a wide margin was a pirate ride where a group of people stood on a shifting platform and fired cannons on all sides. It has visuals projected 360 degrees on the walls around you, so it too was a VR experience...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If it was actually special, some inconvenience wouldn't stop people from buying.
It isn't. It's a lame gimmick that's slightly impressive for about 15 minutes.
The current tech behind VR makes the experience one that most people are not interested in. The headsets are bulky and heavy. The lenses constantly fog up and get dirty. The wires, external cameras, extra processing units are all absurd.
If the industry wants people adopt and enjoy VR they need to refine the tech to a point where it's seamless. A VR headset needs to be no bulkier than a pair of sunglasses with earbuds attached and a small wire down to a walkman sized device or smartphone (if necessary, an external processor can still be allowed as long as it transmits the data wirelessly to the walkman/smartphone with a good range.) I'd lean more to a separate device rather than a smart phone because then it could have a standardized swappable battery. The controller interface should be intuitive and intelligent. A pair of one size fits all thin gloves that go back to a bracelet/watch band sized battery & transmitter perhaps.
Ideally, the VR sunglasses should not be completely opaque. It should be possible to pause the experience and have the shades "turn off" so you can see the environment around you without having to remove them. Cameras also need to be included on them along with a visual feedback system to warn you if something is in the way. Personally, I don't think it's entirely necessary for them to be completely enclosed either (although the option can be allowed for with clip on side shades or something). Not sure if having the peripheral vision exposed will make people more likely to get motion sick or less though. Granted, it might cut down on the immersion level a bit by being able to see things in the periphery, but, given that the current offerings are like peering through a pair of binoculars all the time, I think the experience would be far superior. And given that the future is probably more AR than VR, having the periphery open wouldn't hurt much and it'd significantly cut down on the fogging.
TLDR: Was this stage of VR tech and deployment necessary? Yeah, probably. It revealed new problems that need solving. Was it the stage that was going to bring VR mainstream? Hell, no.
Vive runs well on a 1k-ish PC, and has a wireless adapter if you want to pay for convenience. The problem that remains is the lack of software.
Don't be a douche. Reasonable people would want functional VR if it existed. It does not. What has been released is visually amazing, but not very functional.
You don't want what's out there right now. I get it. Now crawl back in your hole.
Cell phones provided something that consumers didn't have; portable connections. The sudden takeoff in adoption corresponds to the introduction smaller, non-brick style cell phones with better battery life and price tags under $1000.
3D is just an enhancement over the 2D things consumers already have. Most people aren't willing to pay a huge premium for an enhancement to what they already have as long as they feel that what they have works well enough.
I think the hardware is less of a problem than software / media. I tried the Oculus once. First thing they showed me was Google Earth. The fact that you got low quality textures that would then be visibly replaced by higher quality ones destroyed the experience for me. Then I was shown a game which seemed boring and with unimpressive graphics. I thought VR is not for me.
Then I bought a $15 Xiaomi VR headset for my phone for taking cardboard photos since that seemed like a cool application - and indeed it is. With this dirt cheap device I finally came across awe inspiring VR content: the app Within, with my favorite content being the Muse Revolt VR video. Amazing. I guess it would look even better something more serious, but watching it I didn't really feel it was lacking, I was really enjoying it. And other people who try it are similarly impressed.
So I'd say the content is the most important thing. And I don't just mean games.
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TV took off because of content, BE lacks content to drive it into millions of homes.
Cellphones provided wireless communications, and the ability to stay in touch anywhere you were without carrying a roll of quarters for pay phones.
Augmented Reality has found a home in certain industries, Virtual Reality is still looking for purpose.
Ken
If "VR" was a round movie, they'd be right to shut it down.
It might not actually be VR though. But it is a round movie.
BS. I have an Oculus Rift and the experience is amazeballs.
Most people do not want the inconvenience or encumbrance of wearing an uncomfortable, eye straining device on their heads. That's why VR is failing.....
Do me a favor next time and actually read my post before you reply. I said the same fucking thing. Facepalm.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
I am waiting for that technology. No need to wear the annoying goggles. ;)
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