The Virtual Reality Battle For Standards Is Coming

There’s a lot of excitement around about the future of Virtual Reality (VR from now on). There are a lot of gadgets, devices and potential. However there’s also going to be the inevitable battle to win the war on standards and protocols.

We’ve been here before in many ways, Blu-Ray v HD-DVD. Those of us who are a bit longer in the tooth can remember VHS v Betamax. There will be lots of other examples. Arguments will always rage about which format was the better one and why the better one doesn’t always win, but generally one format wins and the same surely has to be true for VR.

Initially we’ll probably find experiences optimised for the Oculus Rift, or optimised for a rival headset. Eventually, for the sake of consumers, that optimisation for a brand will need to be replaced by optimisation for a standard. For example consumers won’t want a headset for Second Life, a headset for Linden Lab’s next gen Virtual World, a headset for OpenSim, a headset for a game or MMO and so forth. Consumers will want a choice of headsets that work pretty much across the board. Obviously some headsets will be better than others but they should all work to a set of standards and protocols that mean software developers optimise their product for those standards and protocols.

At CES 2014 the BBC reported that Valve were making steps in this direction :

Valve designer Brian Coomer says the company is “days away” from releasing a VR software development kit that will give game makers a standard way to provide an interface for VR controllers.

I’m not quite sure what happened there because I haven’t heard much about this since. However at CES2015 noises are being made in this direction by Razer with their Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) Hacker Dev Kit.

Adi Robertson at The Verge have been talking about this : Razer introduces OSVR, the ‘Android of virtual reality’ :

For a year or more after the Oculus Rift got people talking about virtual reality, the two were nearly synonymous. In 2015, that space is filling out. You’ve got Samsung and Oculus’ mobile Gear VR, experimental headsets like the Avegant Glyph, and a huge number of motion controllers and other peripherals. So at CES, gaming company Razer and professional VR company Sensics are heading an effort to standardize virtual reality development: the Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) platform.

OSVR is a development system meant to get VR on all kinds of hardware. It’s not an operating system, but Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan refers to it as the “Android of virtual reality,” an open-source software platform that encompasses multiple game engines, head-mounted displays, and control schemes. While you might be able to make a game in Unity and port it to multiple devices, VROS does the work of optimizing it for each device. Around two dozen companies and organizations, including Leap Motion, Virtuix, and the International Game Developers Association, are listed as supporters, and plugins are in the works for Unreal Engine 4 and the Unity 3D Engine.

Whereas a lot of talk is about games, these sort of standards will also apply to Virtual Worlds and other VR experiences. Razer, in true Open Source style state on their website :

In line with the OSVR vision, the entire hardware design is open source, so if you’re a techie and want to build your own, just download the 3D-Files and create your own set of VR-Glasses.

Razer have also produced a headset that is compatible with their software and The Verge took a look at that too : What it’s like to use OSVR, the ‘Android of Virtual Reality’. The headset is cheaper than The Oculus Rift, but it’s also early in the development process. This is reflected in the article by Chris Plante who summarises :

I don’t know if I would want an OSVR, but I do like the idea of a more affordable tool for people in their bedroom or garage that want to experience VR. You get this sense, looking at the VR community, that every company is aware of two things: they are onto something truly spectacular, and if they don’t work together to get a critical mass interested, they’ll all be in one giant pickle.

That last line really hits the nail on the head. As consumers we’ll want choice, we’ll want affordable and expensive options, what we most certainly won’t want is to have to buy different hardware for different experiences. That giant pickle Chris Plante talks about needs to be avoided. The sooner this battle for standards and protocols is done and dusted the better for all of us.

Of course many people remain unconvinced about the future of VR and think this is all hype. They may well be right but for the time being I remain in camp excited.

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