VR

[Michaël Samyn]

[moved from http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?topic=826.0]

So you don't think VR is narrow?

[lophiaspis]

No, do you? Why??

It's much less narrow in itself than all the consoles put together. Tens if not hundreds of millions of non gamers will buy one of these sets. That's before you even consider mass marketization of immersive videogames.

VR is the essence of the medium. A videogame is not something that happens on a screen, it's a virtual world. Until now we've been looking at these worlds through the window. The whole evolution of the medium has been about improving the simulation to build presence, or if we follow Abrash's definition, proto-presence. But now with genuine VR presence you can literally trick the lizard brain into thinking you're there.

IMO, immersive 3D videogames played on a screen are obsolete.

You've tried it right? What do you think?

http://www.businessinsider.co.id/oculus-rift-crystal-cove-2014-1/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAC5SeNH8jw

[lophiaspis]

Apparently Zuckerberg doesn't think so either...

[lophiaspis]

Very interesting, the reaction to the news of the Facebook buyout.

The game nerds are sputtering. The rage is rather incoherent as usual. Their one possible good point is that Facebook will turn Oculus into a closed platform. But that's highly unlikely at least for several years. The number one effect is unlimited funds and instant global brand recognition. VR is a household term now.

And I'm pretty sure that's precisely the real main reason they're so angry. Simply because facebook is associated with non-nerd ("casual") games and gamers. And of course a host of uses apart from gaming that appeal to normal people more than nerds. Look at the number one complaint: "They will put Candy Crush on VR".

So the game nerds hate it. On the other hand, it seems like everybody's talking about it now.

Facebook VR right as of this instant appears to command a higher mindshare than gaming as a whole.

Compare this with the console launch which was a complete non-event even among semicasual gamers, let alone the masses.

Still think VR is narrow?

[lophiaspis]

http://time.com/39577/facebook-oculus-vr-inside-story/

It had been dawning on Luckey and Iribe and their colleagues for some time that they might not be as clear as they thought they were on what virtual reality is actually for. It began as a gaming technology, but it turned out first-person shooters weren’t the killer app they expected. “Pretty quickly we realized, ‘O.K., maybe running down hallways at 40 m.p.h. isn’t exactly the most comfortable thing to do in VR when you’re sitting in a chair,’” Iribe says. “As we started to build these made-for-VR experiences, we started to realize that intense gaming, where there are bullets flying at your head, can be actually a little too intense.”

So they started thinking more broadly about what exactly it was they were building. Iribe mentions virtual vacations and a 3-D VR encyclopedia as future possibilities. Mitchell describes a “magic school bus” that could take a bunch of kids on an instant field trip to Florence to look at Michelangelo’s David. But the really big opportunity, the mainstream, billion-user opportunity, was in virtual reality as a next-next-generation communications medium. “When you add other people to it,” Iribe says, “and you can actually see somebody in that place and you can make eye contact, and you can look at them and they can look around, you can now have this shared sense of presence in this new gaming experience, entertainment experience or just social experience that really starts to define what virtual reality is all about.”

Must say I'm surprised (if) you guys aren't all over this.

[Michaël Samyn]

I have always been more interested in software than hardware.
(And in imagination than representation.)