Where VR They Now? A Look at Virtual Reality in 2015
Virtual reality: The future is now! soon! coming later this year, maybe?
Spearheaded by Oculus and a handful of hopefuls, the VR renaissance sure is taking its sweet time. Big promises, fancy demos, and an avalanche of articles breathlessly touting the virtues of virtual reality have gamers, cinephiles, and gadget geeks eager to strap these things to their faces but unsure of when they’ll get a chance to do so.
VR was expected to make some noise at CES 2015, and there was certainly no shortage of clunky, also-ran headsets at the show. Here’s a look at some of the most notable VR goodies expected to show up — for real, we hope — later this year.
Oculus Rift
The 800-pound gorilla in the VR space is inching closer to some sort of consumer release, but Oculus still refuses to actually nail down a date or price for the Rift headset. The flipside? The device just keeps getting cooler.
The latest iteration of the technology, dubbed “Crescent Bay,” put on a great show at CES 2015. Newly added headphones now deliver 3D spatialized audio, a sort of enhanced VR version of surround sound. An external camera tracks positional movement, letting wearers walk a few steps, duck, crawl, and turn around 360 degrees to better explore the virtual space. It’s limited by the cord connecting the Rift to a high-end PC, and it’s obviously problematic — one wrong move and it’s goodbye, houseplant — but the effect is far more convincing than simply noodging an analog stick.
The CES demo was stunning. A 20-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex thundered toward me, his toothy roar spraying dino-spittle on my feet. Instinctively, I ducked. He stepped over me. I looked up and stared at his belly. I inched to the edge of a futuristic skyscraper and peered down a hundred stories. I dodged slo-mo bullets as a squad of soldiers tried to take down an imposing mech. It’s hard to explain exactly why and how these kinds of experiences are so compelling in VR compared with, say, an Xbox One game, but they are, and the Rift is light-years ahead of the competition in terms of smoothness, comfort, and the all-important illusion of immersion.
Company reps are still toeing the line when it comes to more info, however. We know it should cost somewhere between $200 and $400 when it comes out, which, according to product VP Nate Mitchell, coyly remains a “possibility” for 2015.
Sulon Cortex
Before Oculus ushered in the virtual reality resurgence, AR, or augmented reality, was all the rage. By simply adding interactive elements to real-world visuals, AR is cheaper, safer, and less intimidating than VR’s blackout immersion.
But what if you could somehow combine the two? That’s the goal of startup Sulon Technologies, which pulled a chocolate-and-peanut-butter trick at CES by showing off what company founder Dhan Balachand calls the “Augmented Virtual Reality” of its Cortex headset.
The difference between the Cortex and other VR headsets is a spatial scanner, which essentially fuses the real world with the virtual one by mapping out your room and rendering it as a virtual space.
That leads to some killer tricks. Imagine staring at your normal, boring living room when a portal suddenly appears on your rug. You hop in and it goes full VR, tossing you into an alien world teeming with beasts. You gun a few down, the portal reappears, and you step through it back into your normal, boring living room. No burn marks on the walls.
The Cortex’s other standout feature is that it can be used either plugged into a PC or — and this is crucial — completely untethered. That frees you from the annoying cords and bulky hardware that force most VR users to sit close to a PC. Better still, since it’s spatially aware of your surroundings, the headset can theoretically keep you from, say, walking into the fireplace by fading back and forth from VR to AR when you get close to objects or people.
It’s ambitious, that’s for sure, but don’t expect to experience it yourself anytime soon. The Cortex developer kits will be available this year for $499, but no commercial launch date has been announced.
Samsung Gear VR
A VR headset you can buy and use, right now? Ha! You’d have better luck lassoing a unicorn.
Or you could just go out and grab a Samsung Gear VR.
The first newfangled VR headset out of the gate, Samsung’s gadget was created as a collaboration between the electronics giant and Oculus, so it’s got good guts. It’s available, and it works.
Several studios showed off immersive, 360-degree films running on the Gear VR at CES 2015, and while it can be a bit disorienting, it can also be breathtaking. A clip of Fox’s Wild plunks you smack in the middle of a serene forest conversation between Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern. Look left and it’s Reese; look right and it’s Laura. It’s a little voyeuristic — you’re basically a lurker — but it’s also really cool.
Samsung is also doing its part to help introduce more content with its Milk VR service, a curated pool of cool VR experiences like skydives, rock shows, and even a space shuttle ride.
The trouble with the Gear VR? It’s not a standalone headset. The Gear VR is powered by the Galaxy Note 4 phone, turning its attractive $200 price tag into a much scarier $500 (with a two-year mobile contract) and an absolutely bananas $1,000 if you buy the phone with no contract. But if you already own a Note 4 or are considering picking one up, the Gear VR should be on your wish list.
Avegant Glyph
If we’re doling out points for style, Avegant’s Glyph headset scores, I don’t know, like 1,000 points. Don’t call it VR, though, because technically the Glyph is a personal theater headset.
Imagine a pair of headphones with two little viewing windows crammed into the headband, and you’ve got the idea. Unlike the full immersion of other VR headsets, the Glyph doesn’t shut you out from the rest of the world. It’s more akin to wearing a big pair of sunglasses, with the real world just a peripheral glance away. The Glyph is packed with head-tracking tech, however, so it can certainly simulate the VR-like immersion of 360-degree viewing.
A sort of VR baby step, then? Indeed, the Glyph seems more conscious of its real-world use case: travelers tired of staring at iPhone and iPad screens with a separate pair of headphones. Via HDMI input (and very likely an adapter depending on the platform), the Glyph works with pretty much any phone or laptop. Movies, YouTube videos, pretty much anything you can watch on your device can be beamed to your eyeballs through the Glyph, effectively replacing your tiny phone with what feels like an 80-inch screen.
That doesn’t come cheap, though. The Glyph will run $599 when it launches in fall 2015 ($499 for preorderers), making it more of a luxury item than a game-changing travel essential.
Razer OSVR
Game hardware maker Razer is diving into VR with a curious plan: Give the world better VR creation tools, and worry about selling headsets later.
Enter Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR), a new initiative intended to give developers “a huge playground” for designing VR experiences. The open-source part means the software is free, though developers will need the $200 headset to use it. The point here isn’t to make money (yet), it’s to give the slow VR development ecosystem a shot in the arm by letting VR content creators make better stuff at a faster clip.
At least that’s the point now. Razer is best known for gorgeous, high-end gaming laptops and peripherals. It’s a safe bet that this headset, which is currently not planned for retail release, is merely Razer jamming its foot in the VR door. Expect the company to become a serious player in the future.
A Rift, an Omni, a fake gun, a real geek. (Ben Silverman/Yahoo Tech)
Virtuix Omni
What good is virtual reality if you’re still thumbing gamepads to meander around these awesome new environments? That’s the problem Virtuix hopes to solve with its Omni treadmill.
It looks ridiculous. Tipping the scales at a hefty 140 pounds, the Omni lets VR junkies ditch gamepads and instead wander through VR worlds the old-fashioned way: hoofing it on their own two feet. Slip on a pair of comfy (and slippery) Omni shoes, strap yourself into the bulky frame, don a headset, and your real-world footsteps will power your in-game character’s movements.
The headset-agnostic Omni (it connects via Bluetooth or USB to any VR headset or PC) delivers a convincing and totally exhausting effect, though like just about everything with the letters “VR” attached to it, it ain’t cheap: Early adopters can get one for $499, but after February that price shoots up to $699. Add the cost of a chiropractor, and this one’s for wealthy (and healthy) VR die-hards only.
Sony Morpheus
Sony’s PS4-connected headset was a surprising no-show at CES 2015, but don’t read too deeply into that. The company made waves at last year’s E3 trade show with a variety of cool VR demos, and it’s sure to come out with more over the course of 2015. With rumors swirling that Microsoft is entering the VR game as well, Sony doesn’t want to lose its head(set) start. Expect more Morpheus news from the company during the Game Developers Conference in early March.
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