Hamlet Au over at New World Notes has posted a link to an excellent article in The Verge : The Rise And Fall And Rise Of Virtual Reality. The tag line for The Verge’s article is : In the wake of Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR, can this revolutionary technology triumph anew?
The premise of the article, as the headline suggests is that Virtual Reality has never really got going yet. They see the internet as an alternative, not a version of virtual reality. This is not a short article, but it does make for fascinating reading. However the more relevant part of the article for people who read blogs such as this and Hamlet’s blog comes with the Facebook QA, which is an interview with Second Life co-founder and now Vp of Engineering at Facebook Cory Ondrejka.
In the interview Cory talks of the advantages of using a headset such as the Oculus Rift and how immersive it can be. People may be wondering how people are going to use these devices and Cory touches upon an area that links in with the Facebook theme but also offers an interesting use case :
So let’s say you have a friend getting married and you can’t be there. Today you’re going to get texts and videos. But what if you could put a 360 video camera in the audience? Then, what you have is an ability to really feel like you’re there, and look around and see what’s going on in a way that’s making an incredible connection. Moviemakers will take advantage of this. You think about what you could do with director’s commentary or additional scenes. What if you could turn around and have these 360-degree views of the set while they’re shooting? Wouldn’t that be the coolest thing ever?
I’ve seen people touch upon similar areas before in terms of a rock concert. Hey you can’t get a ticket to the live event, but how about a ticket for the virtual reality event? There’s potential there. I’m not going to reveal too much of Cory’s interview, it’s well worth reading if you have an interest in virtual reality, as is the whole article but let’s get to the killer app issue because the lack of a killer app has been cited as one of the failures of virtual worlds as we know them :
What’s going to be the killer app? While we don’t know exactly what it’s gonna be, we’re confident there will be a bunch of them. And that killer app is gonna be so much better than anything you can experience on a screen or phone.
However some people have a different view and we may have to rejig how we describe killer apps. In an article in Gamesindusty.biz, unrelated to the excellent Verge article,Cloudhead Games’ Denny Unger warns :We’re very close to having the first death in VR.
Continue reading “Virtual Reality Potentially Taking Killer Apps Too Far”