If anyone knows whatâs going to happen to virtual reality itâs Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR and inventor of the Oculus Rift. So I asked him.
[This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK.]
Looking way, way into the future Palmer sees a very different kind of Rift to the current set up full of wires and straps. âIn the long run these headsets arenât even going to be plugging into PCs, theyâre going to have dedicated chip sets on the headset itself that are able to render a lot of different experiences. So when you can do that and you can make an easy user experience, you can make content that the average person is interested in, not a first-person shooterâ.
For the time being however thereâs a reason behind the game heavy content driving the tech: âthe games industry is the only industry with the tools and the talent to build immersive 3D real time environments,â explains Palmer, something that will change, but not how you might expect. âAs time goes on itâs not so much that VR is going to expand to other industries, itâs that the games industry is going to expand to do things in other industries. Whether itâs architecture or virtual holidays or film, the people that are making games, or making VR games today, are going to be doing these types of thing in the futureâ.
As this future approaches he sees a near technological stablemate joining forces. âVirtual reality and augmented reality are going to end up using a lot of the same technologies and probably converge into the same hardware. And it will probably get to a point where itâs something you can wear all day everyday. Thatâs going to take a long time thoughâ.
To give you some idea of how long before weâre all wandering around with augmented VR headsets like a terminator with Skype you only have to look at the key interface for the Oculus Rift: the human eye. âWe need to be about 10-15 times higher resolution before weâre maxing out the capacity of the human eye,â Palmer points out. The screens required to achieve this virtual reality holy grail are years away. âThere are limits but weâre not even close to them,â he says. âWe have a long time to goâ.
âThere are limits but weâre not even close to them. We have a long time to goâ
Another popular idea often mentioned in the same breath as VR is the idea of motion control or body tracking, but as far as Palmerâs concerned âno one has created a good solution yetâ. Although that doesnât mean he and Oculus VR arenât looking into the idea. The issue is that âitâs not as fast or precise as it needs to be for virtual realityâ he explains. âItâs going to take some time but weâve been putting a lot of research and development into virtual reality, and with body tracking, hand tracking, finger tracking. All these things that you need to actually make it feel like your body has been transported into to the virtual world and to be able to interact with it in a natural wayâ.
So while that sci-fi future is a while off, what are Palmerâs immediate plans? âKeep shipping DK2s to the developers and continue working on the consumer product and try to get it out the door as fast as possibleâ. When that illusive consumer unit is going to be out is still unannounced but Palmer does confirm a previous interview quote where he said he would be disappointed if it wasnât out before the end of 2015. âI did say that,â he agrees. âWeâve got a vague ideaâ. He also mentions that the current DK2 is the final dev kit Oculus plans to release before the consumer version.
While thereâs no date to talk about yet, the final form of the consumer device is something Palmerâs sure of, stating the final device is âhigher frame rate, higher resolution, smaller, lighter, cheaperâ. One thing it wonât be just yet though it âin the shopsâ. âWeâll definitely be selling it on our website but I donât know about retail,â he states. âRetailâs kind of pointless for certain products, especially ones that are targeting hardcore gamers used to buying things onlineâ.
Thatâs not to say the Rift wonât end up as a ubiquitous product eventually. âWe see one in every home,â thinks Palmer, âjust at launch we need to be realistic. The people who are going to be buying this initially are going to be gamers, probably hardcore gamers, and theyâre going to be the ones with PCs most capable of running it. As time goes on itâll become more and more mainstream, but at launch weâre going to be targeting that core. Basically letâs target it to the people whom we know are going to be buying and then letâs go for the people who are going to take some convincingâ.
