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[TheBiggerFish]

PTW.

[TheBiggerFish]

That's a lot of if.

[i2amroy]

Yep. That, and figuring out how to write things to your brain in a way that works.

As for the link, it's just an EEG. I doubt EEGs will be enough to get the accuracy necessary for true VR.

Cheaper ones like that certainly not yet, but some of the more expensive ones out there are already being used for things like moving around in a virtual environment . Here's a video of the University of Michigan using a Emotiv EPOC to move themselves around in a virtual environment (and that's still nowhere near the current research quality EEG's used today).

You are correct in that it is unlikely for VR to solely use EEG's, though. Most likely any real system is going to be taking input form several different types of sensors simultaneously, all of them working together to provide the desired precision on a given piece of information.

[cochramd]

extrapolate the trend out to 2040

25 years from now?

Let's look at 25 year ago:

Flying cars that no one could afford.

Today?

Flying cars that no one can afford.

[miauw62]

I have little faith in VR really becoming a major thing, to be honest. If you could move around realistically it would make development much harder and more expensive, the consumer hardware required for that is ALSO going to be super expensive, and it's not like it would be applicable to any game. Even for an FPS. Can you imagine a movement-based shooter (Mainly Quake and it's  (spiritual) descendants) using mental input?

When referring to past predictions that things which are now commonplace will never happen, it's good to remember that there were also lots of "certain" things that never became a thing.

[TheBiggerFish]

Can you imagine a movement-based shooter using mental input?

Yes.

[mainiac]

This is why I think that current VR is a joke. The only progress made since the 80's was moving the screen closer to your eyeballs, making it HD, and adding gyroscopes and accelerometers.

Seeing as how literally all of those can be accomplished with a cell phone these days, that doesn't say much about actual progress.

You say that as if it doesn't represent overcoming the key technological barriers.

VR, such as it even existed in the 80s was bulky, low res, had bad interface and was of course ridiculously expensive.  Current technology has solved all that stuff in a low price package.  Suppose in the 1985 you invented a haptic glove.  It would be about as useful as a car radio in 1870.  There was no system to use it with, even if you could get the computer hardware to control it with.  The new generation of VR systems are like the model T, they're doing the same thing but doing it in a practical way.  That means a big enough market can exist for sports leagues and concerts to start streaming VR liveviews and of course for porn to switch over to the media.

Well, that's why I sincerely doubt that the current iteration of VR devices will amount to much.

You dont need to mimic the real world to have an interesting experience.  Social media doesn't mimic talking to people face to face but there has been a huge shift in people's lifestyle as a result of facebook, etc.  Even doing a small fraction of what social media does would make VR transformative.

[LordBucket]

extrapolate the trend out to 2040

25 years from now?

Let's look at 25 year ago:

Flying cars that no one could afford.

Today?

Flying cars that no one can afford.

It's difficult to predict which things change. Personally I expected flying cars and space travel, not cellphones and twitter. But the things that do change, may change a lot.

From 1989 to 2000 the percent of US households with computers rose from 15% to 51%. Eleven years. And by 2010 it was 76%. From 1990 to 2010, US cellphone subscriptions went from 5 million to 300 million. Almost nobody to almost everybody in 20 years.

Will VR by like flying care? Or will it be like computers? Or will it be like cellphones? or will adoption be even faster? Personally, I'm expecting that within 5 years just about every cellphone on the market will be VR capable.

25 years? You're talking paradigm shift. Whatever it is that changes, it will be different enough that if you describe it to people today, a lot of people would shrug it off as crazy. Maybe that will be VR. or maybe it won't. But it will be something.

[mainiac]

It's not that they don't provide an interesting experience, but that they're clunky, inefficient, and don't do enough to warrant a purchase by most consumers.

But it's also a proven demonstration of the technology working at a low price point.  I dont expect that in 5 years from now everyone will be shelling out 200 bucks for the google cardboard.  I expect that 5 years from now they'll be shelling out 100 bucks for the new Nintendo gameboy with VR games while ESPN and Google compete for customers.

[cochramd]

You dont need to mimic the real world to have an interesting experience.  Social media doesn't mimic talking to people face to face but there has been a huge shift in people's lifestyle as a result of facebook, etc.

And none of it has been for the better.

[i2amroy]

It's not that they don't provide an interesting experience, but that they're clunky, inefficient, and don't do enough to warrant a purchase by most consumers.

Tell that to the 85,000 people who currently own Oculus Rifts (which still won't officially release until 2016 by the looks of it, so those are all preordered development kits), or the huge number of people clamoring for the Steam VR headset. VR headsets might not be quite mainstream yet, but it's certainly looking like they will be at least taking a good-sized bite out of the computer market sometime soon if we're judging by the numbers.

[mainiac]

And none of it has been for the better.

Sorry gramps, I can't hear you over the rap musics the kids play while they put "skateboarding is not a crime" stickers on your stuff.

[LordBucket]

It's not that they don't provide an interesting experience, but that they're clunky, inefficient, and don't do enough to warrant a purchase by most consumers.

Have you tried google cardboard with your phone that you already have? Have you tried gear vr that you can get for only $99?

Cellphone manufacturers love to add hardware to phones. I don't know about you, but my phone has two video cameras on it...apparently to save me from the terrible inconvenience of having to rotate my hand 180 degrees. In a world where that makes sense, it's a no brainer for cellphone companies to add improved accelerometers to their devices so that you can have fully directional tracking.

It's very probable that in several years nearly everybody will have a "VR headset" whether they specifically go out of their way to buy one, because every phone will be capable of doing everything a headset like the rift does.

If we're going to do this properly, it will have to bypass sensory input and interface with the brain directly

That might be an option within the 25 year timeframe. And when i say "might be an option" I mean, go to the implant kiosk at the mall and pay the $100 for the implant.

[miauw62]

85k really isn't a "good-sized bite". Compared to the market as a whole. That's about 1 percent of the people online on steam right now, and steam is 70% or so of the pc market, which itself is only a small part of the complete gaming's market.

I don't expect VR to be a thing for current gen consoles, either, they hardly have the power to render modern games once...

[Neonivek]

Here is kind of the thing...

Computers existed long before personal computers.

Personal computers jumped to wide use because they took something that was very inconvenient and made them convenient.

Cellphones are the same.

Flying Cars were just a hypothetical imaginary science people thought of with no precedent.

Virtual Reality right now is all technology with none of the convenience (unless we include the Virtua Boy and Oculus Rift) required to pass to the popular consciousness.

It is why 3d movies died out for the longest time (and I desperately want it to die out again)

---

In fact we had "Virtual Reality" for how long? Since the 80s?