64NOMIS
06-03-2013, 11:18 AM
THE VIRTUAL REALITY SCOREBOARD
40 Years after the Holodeck was conceived, the Virtual Reality game has begun and I am keeping score.
Technology flows, forks and grows branches and we are right in the middle of major fork. It happened when Oculus announced it would crowdsource a virtual reality headset. PC Gaming was drifting to sleep when it got the news and the PC gaming world is starting to reconfigure around virtual reality. And if we believe the vision of virtual reality painted by Ernest Cline and others before, then the fork we are on will grow into a massive branch that will become immersive virtual reality.
In Ready Player One, Ernest Cline tells the story of James Halliday, an 80?s obsessed programmer who founds a gaming company that ultimately creates the open world that monopolizes virtual reality and sucks everyone in. When he dies he creates a game to win his fortune and control of his company. The book, building on the foundation of its predecessors, does a better job of describing the future, pragmatic state of technology required to put this solution together than any before.
Yet the early evolution of this technology is not being backed by megacorp. The future of virtual reality is being crowdsourced. Not just the hardware for the branch to grow to its potential, systems are being created to harness the work and social contributions of millions. It appears that only tools that players can use together will achieve the scale necessary to build and sustain the massive, open online worlds that will make VR a completely new and compelling experience.
Ready Player One painted the future state of virtual reality technology and mostly got it right. So here's a scoreboard with color commentary right out of Ready Player One for the emerging Virtual Reality Ecosystem. The Game is on.
Points are awarded for demonstrating the functional consumer solution earning the key (10,000) and subsequently for passing the gate of shipping the product (200,000). While the RIFT is technically a development kit, it is shipping in volume and therefore passes the gate. Subsequent entrants will be awarded 1,000 points less for demonstrating a consumer-ready solution, which means ideally everything fits into the cash roll that a high school student can put together on a Summer job income.
VR Head Mounted Display
Affordable immersive display was required to capture the imaginations of science fiction fans and fill our visual cortex. When the RIFT came to Kickstarter it was like opening Pandora?s box for virtual reality.
VR Haptic Suit
The haptic suit provides bio input and feedback. It must provide two way feedback while providing comfort for long immersive sessions. Touch, temperature, motion resistance, localized impact are the most commonly associated outputs.
VR Haptic Gloves
Today there are Haptic Gloves that span a range of capability for industrial and research applications. The good ones cost a small fortune.
Open VR World
An extensible, open world which can be explored in virtual reality. Large scale eliciting the contributions of players who build and extend the world through time. Sustainable with advances in underlying hardware, software, user tastes, and cultural trends.
VR World Builder
If we want massive virtual worlds we need to be able to construct them, and users must be able to fully customize them while immersed. New worlds and virtual goods that users want need to make their way into the open world and the only way this experience can scale is for it to be crowd sourced.
VR Controller
Even wearing gloves there is one thing that virtually every game demands in virtual reality absolute position, motion control, and buttons. It is really boring to play in virtual reality without the ability to grab, shoot, and operate the virtual world.
Omnidirectional VR Treadmill
The Omnidirectional treadmill permits standing and free motion while immersed permitting free and real movement ? walking, running, jumping. It also holds the user prone making it possible to use fully immersive displays without crashing into walls or falling over.
[COMING SOON - SCOREBOARD]
40 Years after the Holodeck was conceived, the Virtual Reality game has begun and I am keeping score.
Technology flows, forks and grows branches and we are right in the middle of major fork. It happened when Oculus announced it would crowdsource a virtual reality headset. PC Gaming was drifting to sleep when it got the news and the PC gaming world is starting to reconfigure around virtual reality. And if we believe the vision of virtual reality painted by Ernest Cline and others before, then the fork we are on will grow into a massive branch that will become immersive virtual reality.
In Ready Player One, Ernest Cline tells the story of James Halliday, an 80?s obsessed programmer who founds a gaming company that ultimately creates the open world that monopolizes virtual reality and sucks everyone in. When he dies he creates a game to win his fortune and control of his company. The book, building on the foundation of its predecessors, does a better job of describing the future, pragmatic state of technology required to put this solution together than any before.
Yet the early evolution of this technology is not being backed by megacorp. The future of virtual reality is being crowdsourced. Not just the hardware for the branch to grow to its potential, systems are being created to harness the work and social contributions of millions. It appears that only tools that players can use together will achieve the scale necessary to build and sustain the massive, open online worlds that will make VR a completely new and compelling experience.
Ready Player One painted the future state of virtual reality technology and mostly got it right. So here's a scoreboard with color commentary right out of Ready Player One for the emerging Virtual Reality Ecosystem. The Game is on.
Points are awarded for demonstrating the functional consumer solution earning the key (10,000) and subsequently for passing the gate of shipping the product (200,000). While the RIFT is technically a development kit, it is shipping in volume and therefore passes the gate. Subsequent entrants will be awarded 1,000 points less for demonstrating a consumer-ready solution, which means ideally everything fits into the cash roll that a high school student can put together on a Summer job income.
VR Head Mounted Display
Affordable immersive display was required to capture the imaginations of science fiction fans and fill our visual cortex. When the RIFT came to Kickstarter it was like opening Pandora?s box for virtual reality.
VR Haptic Suit
The haptic suit provides bio input and feedback. It must provide two way feedback while providing comfort for long immersive sessions. Touch, temperature, motion resistance, localized impact are the most commonly associated outputs.
VR Haptic Gloves
Today there are Haptic Gloves that span a range of capability for industrial and research applications. The good ones cost a small fortune.
Open VR World
An extensible, open world which can be explored in virtual reality. Large scale eliciting the contributions of players who build and extend the world through time. Sustainable with advances in underlying hardware, software, user tastes, and cultural trends.
VR World Builder
If we want massive virtual worlds we need to be able to construct them, and users must be able to fully customize them while immersed. New worlds and virtual goods that users want need to make their way into the open world and the only way this experience can scale is for it to be crowd sourced.
VR Controller
Even wearing gloves there is one thing that virtually every game demands in virtual reality absolute position, motion control, and buttons. It is really boring to play in virtual reality without the ability to grab, shoot, and operate the virtual world.
Omnidirectional VR Treadmill
The Omnidirectional treadmill permits standing and free motion while immersed permitting free and real movement ? walking, running, jumping. It also holds the user prone making it possible to use fully immersive displays without crashing into walls or falling over.
[COMING SOON - SCOREBOARD]