It's already taking(taken) off. I don't think any of the 3 points up top are typically valid and linked together.
I use an "old" oculus rift setup that is tethered to my desktop with a 1070ti. The only batteries to speak of are in my hand controls and they last months. The head piece is not heavy, so you might be referring to a wearable pack seen in vr installations mixing vr in a closed set/space?
Quality wise, visuals are pretty amazing. Good enough on mainstream games like Half-Life Alyx, GTA5, Pavlov and Lone Echo to make me think and feel like I'm in the environment. As a private pilot let me tell you that flying in vr in X-Plane 11 is just amazing. 360 views and interactions with knobs/levers in the cockpit. Even more, utilizing more advanced setups in unreal engine and megascans/quixel goes to another level.
It's still not entirely accessible to everyone in terms of cost as it's not cheap. Especially if you want the "best" graphics which requires the headset and a computer with decent gpu. So I do agree with point 4 and being a niche market.
I wonder what "taking off" to most people is? It's definitely not Lawnmower Man/the matrix/ready player one yet. It's cumbersome when using a tethered setup and room scale is amazing but I don't exactly have a dedicated play space to wander within or a specialized endless treadmill.
It does however provide an interesting escape with unique experiences. Something as simple as google maps is mind blowing when traveling around the world. I was recently working on a house project and needed to figure out the remodel. I modeled the house in Maya, imported it into UE, and was able to put on my oculus and "walk" around the space.
For me it's hard to go back to "flat gaming" after vr. I really enjoy it and look forward to seeing how it continues to evolve.
> It's definitely not Lawnmower Man/the matrix/ready player one yet
I think we have surpassed Lawnmower man already. We are only missing the extra hardware, like the full body suits and moving beds/leonardo devices. And even then, not really: Lawnmower man happened at a well funded laboratory, the scientist just had some expensive company hardware at home. We have better quality headsets at home today.
Ready player one was... inconsistent. They handwaved the movement problems.
> if you want the "best" graphics
This will always be true, VR headset or not. If you want the 'best' graphics, you always have to for over a lot of money for specialized GPU hardware. The thing is, it's perfectly fine to use an untethered Quest to play something like Superhot or Beat Saber.
> For me it's hard to go back to "flat gaming" after vr.
This is why I think the market is going to explode. Every single person I've shown it has walked away impressed. Young, old, doesn't matter. Even non-gamers.
Oculus Quest and similar devices are on the right track.
> I modeled the house in Maya, imported it into UE, and was able to put on my oculus and "walk" around the space.
I'll definitely try this!
I wonder when 3d Modeling will be primarily done with a headset. Like, would it be useful to do the initial modelling in Maya itself?
> I wonder when 3d Modeling will be primarily done with a headset. Like, would it be useful to do the initial modelling in Maya itself?
I think the desired goal would help dictate if you use VR. For example, for the Lion King remake the world was entirely cg. To do the rough and final layouts of the environment multiple people (director/art director/modelers/set dressers/dp) all went into vr (sometimes together) and used tools in UE to place/scale/rotate objects. This made a lot of sense b/c they could more accurately place and model the environment within it.
It could be quite useful when modeling but I wonder at what point make sense. I've done a fair bit of modeling which involves a lot of manipulation of points and faces and also involves lots of object tumbling, which might prove tiring in vr. But I think it ultimately makes sense b/c it allows for a 3dimensional view of what you're doing.
> To do the rough and final layouts of the environment multiple people (director/art director/modelers/set dressers/dp) all went into vr (sometimes together) and used tools in UE to place/scale/rotate objects.
I didn't know about that. This is amazing.
> I've done a fair bit of modeling which involves a lot of manipulation of points and faces and also involves lots of object tumbling
I've done some hobbist-level CAD. Very often I had to turn the object slightly in a couple of directions to get a better sense of perspective. That comes for 'free' with VR, and you can also move your head, or yourself, without turning.
Mind you, I'm picturing working while sitting down so as not to be too tiring. Fine vertex manipulation may still be tiring, but I'm thinking organic modelling would benefit. Also specially for CAD, when you want to visualize and "explode" your model. Normally it involves lots of camera moving around.
1- Battery? I use a Rift, it is fine, it takes power from my PC. For the portable Quest, you get 2 to 3 hours of constant usage. That's pretty good
2– Weight issues: headsets are not very lightweight today. They are not ridiculously heavy either. Have you even tried one? My mom has, she's a senior. It's fine. They should be lighter if we are expected to throw away our monitors and use them exclusively on a day job. For normal usage? They are fine. If anything, the heat (and associated sweat, specially with physical activity) is much more of a problem. Again, I doubt you have tried one. For me, the main problem is using with glasses, it is not completely straightforward to put them on.
3– Quality issues, what quality issues? Do you mean QA or resolution? If it is resolution, it's already pretty good unless you are doing lots of reading (and even then YMMV, there are people coding with them already). There are many other things that need to be improved before resolution becomes the main factor. The fresnel lens used in some headsets have some strange aberrations, specially with primarily dark scenes.
4– This objection is straight from the Millennium Bug era. It's mostly(not only) used by a subset of the gaming market, but that in itself is huge. There are entire industries in other fields which are smaller than the current VR market.
Yes, improvements are needed. They are coming, if headsets for professional applications are any indication. VR could be said to be 'niche' when headsets cost multiple thousand dollars. Now? You can get decent ones for the price of a good monitor – and the thing actually has two monitors running at a much higher refresh rate, plus a whole lot of extra hardware.
Unless your life ends in the next 5 years: you couldn't be more wrong. Not going to go into details, the others comments have laid out the arguments pretty well =)
To take a counter view..
I have literally been waiting to get into VR since 1993 and the Lawnmower man.
Why do I not have a system?
It is not cost.
It is not building the system.
I would say the main reason is I don't like video games.
There is just something so lacking with VR if you don't want to play games.
I remember the old MIT media lab mobile computing devices and videos in the 90s. They were nothing like a smart phone. More like the failure of google glass.
I do wonder if the headset is simply a wrong path.
> There is just something so lacking with VR if you don't want to play games.
Yes, it's lacking more apps. Which is rather a Catch-22. There has to be demand for them. Games are just an 'easy' (relatively speaking) medium to get into.
There are a few practical concerns of course. In a work environment, your manager can no longer easily interrupt you. They can't easily keep tabs on what you are doing either. This is enough to kill it at a workplace – maybe an exception for some engineering/medical settings.
1. battery issues. 2. weight issues. 3. quality issues. 4. VR is a niche market.