Soon to become a $150 billion industry, virtual reality and augmented reality ar here to stay.
Over the last year, new models of mobile friendly VR headsets have made $861 million in revenue
and now the market has spoken, experts are wondering what tomorrow may bring.
Today, we ask what is the future of virtual reality?
And how will it shape our world?
I’m Zachary Maslanik, lead video producer at cybrink.com and I will be bringing you
up to date with all the latest developments in science, technology and business.
Cybrink will be your window into the future, so subscribe now for more content.
There have been many experiments with virtual reality and augmented graphics in every decade
since the 1960s.
Even though tech developers have tried their hand, VR technology didn’t enter the consumer
space until 1995, when Nintendo released the ​Virtual Boy​ , a console that bombed
for many reasons but mainly because of the physical strain it caused.
It wouldn’t be until 2012 that real progress was seen.
Invented by an American teenager named Palmer Luckey, The Oculus Rift offered a new experience
with a motion tracked headset and promised to deliver deeper immersion.
Even though the Oculus Rift is currently struggling to turn a profit for Facebook, Oculus has
paved the way for VR in gaming and the consensus among fans is that the new generation of VR
headsets are highly immersive.
Over the last couple of years, the technology has become more affordable with the release
of numerous Oculus inspired products such as the Samsung Gamegear and the cardboard
range by Google, all of which are designed to be used with phones.
In the present, interesting uses of VR are emerging.
In the military, VR is being tested as a way to treat PTSD, the idea being that soldiers
can re-experience and confront their trauma in a controlled space...And in the medical
sector, hospitals have found that they can save money by distracting patients with VR.
Apparently, distracting people helps them to ignore their pain and this means less medicine
is required.
It’s obvious this technology has many uses so what can we expect as VR and augmentation
continue to develop?
PopCap Games cofounder John Vechey believes that VR will help to shrink the world and
will change our working lives for the better.
No longer will a businessman have to travel to Japan to make a deal.
Instead, he will place a headset on and negotiate in a convenient virtual space.
When it comes to schools, game industry professional Phil Kauffold believes VR could improve education.
Kauffold says that lessons using VR immersion could be more engaging, rid the classroom
of distractions and give teachers further control of their students.
All of this sounds ideal but considering we use VR and augmented reality mainly for entertainment,
we only have to look at the use of current technologies to see how the future may look.
Ten years ago, social media wasn’t so accessible.
If you step onto a bus today and look around, you’ll see that where outwards facing people
were once involved with their surroundings, there is now a collection of tilted heads.
Smartphones are ironically connecting us at the same time as ruining our presence in the
moment.
Our awareness of others isn’t the only thing that’s changed.
Ten years back, how you look in a photograph couldn’t be instantly edited on a phone
and many people now prefer to post filtered versions of themselves.
How long will it be before each of us chooses to present ourselves with an avatar rather
than our true selves?
Perhaps augmented reality will make it possible to edit ourselves like a character in a game
and re-skin our environment with something brighter.
It sounds insane to suggest this but none of us can deny the potential when Samsung
are already at work on a prototype for augmented contact lenses.
Until then, I guess we should try to just relax and enjoy some gaming.
Even though the future of VR and augmentation could be both dark and bright, all we can
do is hope that we don’t end up as the lead role in an our own personal episode of Black Mirror
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thoughts in the comments section.
What do you think the future of virtual reality will be?
We’ll catch you next time with more interesting insights into the future from cybrink.com.