Bad news ahead?

[Morbad]

I agree. Up to this point the future for VR looks promising but it is still fragile, at any moment people could think of it as a simple fad and forget about it or something else can appear and catch the attention and investments.

It's happened before, almost 25 years ago.

I remember Virtual I/O iGlasses and the Forte VFX1 getting a bit of hype/traction right after games started going 3D/first-person...consumer market wasn't really ready for VR though and gaming wasn't quite mainstream. Got to demo the iGlasses in Mechwarrior 2 and desperately wanted a set myself, but I was still a kid and couldn't afford them.

Not sure if the last few years of VR resurgence will prove to be another fad or not. A lot of the same fundamental problems still exist, but the market is so much larger now that it might find a niche long enough to really take off.

The current and greatest problem for VR is we need a new, second gen device.

But to do that we need better hardware, or software to fully exploit the hardware we have.
Having thousand new users on even upper medium range hardware NVidia 1060's- 1070's are bare up to the task of handling a current gen rift, give them anything more and the experience will literally make people puke.

So the industry is holding back a little, and I think that is wise.
Sadly people these days think an industry is dead if there isn't a new model war annually.

That said I think we will be in an area of hardware in about 4-5 years where mid range cards could run something akin to the Pimax.

I don't think the technical specifications are the main hurdle at this point, rather the inconvenience and narrow support is. HMDs are still large and bulky. They still have relatively complex setup and just aren't very convenient.

Better resolutions and wider FOVs will help, but HMDs need to shed the majority of their mass while becoming wireless, and be more more plug-and-play, configuration wise. Full inside-out tracking (of both environment and the wearer's limbs/digits), with no need for calibration or configuration, would go a long way as well.

 

[Vithigar]

The state of VR during the final Beyond beta phase and shortly after 3.3's release was a pretty solid indication to me that VR development is now very much a "back burner" concern. Between UIs that are very obviously made for flat screens, mismatches of imagery between eyes (some of which are still not fixed in game), and many visuals being straight up broken the lack of attention to VR during the initial development of the update seems pretty obvious.

On the upside, Frontier did listen to player feedback and fix most​ of the issues that popped up.

 

[CylonSurfer]

The state of VR during the final Beyond beta phase and shortly after 3.3's release was a pretty solid indication to me that VR development is now very much a "back burner" concern. Between UIs that are very obviously made for flat screens, mismatches of imagery between eyes (some of which are still not fixed in game), and many visuals being straight up broken the lack of attention to VR during the initial development of the update seems pretty obvious.

On the upside, Frontier did listen to player feedback and fix most​ of the issues that popped up.

There were as many if not more issues with base game to be honest. They were pretty quick it fix up the VR bugs for most part too. I'd say that what you see if pretty indicative of any title with a both a primary focus on 2D gamers and a playerbase comprised of mostly 2D players spread over 3 major platforms.

 

[Sweet&Dandy]

There were as many if not more issues with base game to be honest. They were pretty quick it fix up the VR bugs for most part too. I'd say that what you see if pretty indicative of any title with a both a primary focus on 2D gamers and a playerbase comprised of mostly 2D players spread over 3 major platforms.

I also seem to recall some issues were headset specific...