In the last three years, virtual reality hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. Even so, 2019 is shaping up to be VR’s best year ever, with new headsets that might have cracked the code on what gamers need.
After all, how many people do you know with a room-scale VR rig in their living room? Probably not many, and according to Statista, fewer than 5 million units were sold in 2018. Clearly, VR isn’t the sweeping success some might have hoped for when Oculus and HTC released their high-end PC-tethered headsets in 2016. But that doesn’t mean the party is over.
Is this the year you should care about VR? Let’s take a look.
It’s Still All About Games
When we looked at VR headsets in 2018, the world was much more binary; there were a few tethered headsets like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, and a slew of mobile headsets that work in conjunction with a smartphone. A lot can change in a year, and the standalone headsets—which don’t require a PC or a phone—that we said were coming have started to arrive.
That said, nothing about the core use case for VR has changed in the last year or two; it’s still mostly about gaming. There have been several furtive attempts to turn VR into more than gaming platforms, such as virtual VR desktops (like the Oculus Desktop and the multi-platform Virtual Desktop) and cinema experiences. But virtual desktops are clumsy, and the video platforms are prima facie inferior to real-world home theaters. Why would you watch a movie in a headset—at an inferior resolution and with the meshlike screen door effect we see with most headsets—when you can watch it in the real world at 4K instead?
That said, HTC is also trying to carve out space in the enterprise, with two products aimed at businesses. The HTC Vive Pro offers a step up from the original Vive’s graphics and is aimed squarely at corporate clients. So too is the forthcoming HTC Vive Focus, a standalone headset that doesn’t need to be tethered to a PC. It’s early days for these products, and it remains to be seen if there are enough industrial, academic, and enterprise applications to let VR gain a foothold in those markets. For now, most of the industry is looking at consumers.
Which means it’s really about games. On this front, VR delivers a payoff that is rarely short of exhilarating. First person games like Arizona Sunshine—a zombie shooter—are heart-pumpingly visceral. In fact, they can be overwhelming for some players; there’s a difference between watching a horror movie and being in one. But other games have broader appeal. Final Assault, for example, elevates the real-time strategy genre to something like what Star Trek’s omnipotent man-child Trelane would choose to do with plastic toy soldiers.
Speaking of Star Trek, there are also simulators, like Star Trek: Bridge Crew, which puts you in command of a starship (and is every bit as geektastically rewarding as it sounds). And then there’s the realistic-enough-to-smell-the-saltwater WW2 sub simulator IronWolf VR. There are rhythm games, lightsaber games, and lightsaber rhythm games. If you have played the 2D version of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, you owe it to yourself to play the VR version, in which one player handles a bomb in VR while surrounded by teammates back in meatspace, helping to disarm it. And it’s hard not love ridiculously charming puzzle games like Waddle Home. Regardless of which game you step into, don’t be surprised if you wear a goofy grin the whole time you are in a VR environment—and the thrill doesn’t wear off with time.
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Source : The State of VR Headsets in 2019: What Should You Buy?
