Has VR and 3D failed again?
So I was searching for a replacement touchscreen for a client's laptop and recalled that I had similarly not seen much from 3d displays or virtual reality companies of late. No new hardware, no games that percolated up into the public awareness (Resident Evil 7 was nearly two years ago at this point, stereoscopic games were never amazingly popular but seemed to fall off a cliff after 2012), no real buzz in any conventions or events, if I look today there are still some gaming focused vendors that list VR fairly prominently but I have to go out of my way to find 3d screens and films and so forth. Both of those technologies have been seen as fads in the past; things that rise up, only for the market, current technology or something similar to smack them back down. In this case 2012 saw a massively successful crowdfunding effort for the Oculus Rift, a couple of years later Facebook of all people purchased the company for some 2 billion, a month or two back though the second iteration of the device was cancelled, and nobody mentioned whatever the big tech company equivalent of creative differences is which leads one to wonder if it is more that it is not seen as a viable project any more. Throughout it all many other big tech firms released hardware and attached industry luminaries to it and have similarly gone somewhat quiet.
Ordinarily for a thread like this we might have a look at possible stats and some reasoning for things, however a discussion of the mindshare the likes of virtual reality and 3d displays occupy at present is what we shall seek to find and contemplate here.
While reasons are not going to be delved too deeply into did the rush to include DRM and proprietary connectors/software/features cause you concern? Did any content find itself massively improved by it? Did you invest into any VR or 3d setups, only for them to gather dust? Did you get the motion sickness some experience or were you spared that (or selectively spared that)? There are all sorts of cool things (6:45 if you want to skip) researchers are doing so is such tech likely to remain that? Is it just that it was an expensive peripheral that not everybody had? If it has failed again do you expect to see it back sooner than the usual 20 year cycle as tech just needs to get that little bit better?
This is part of series on GBAtemp where we have some discussion of aspects of the game industry, game design and related topics. Previously we discussed the last game skill you unlearned.
The game you invested the most money in, times where people said gameplay styles would not work for a platform, the value of online play, emulation vs hardware, a favoured game style that might have become less common in recent times, skills one might have learned or honed because of a game, games on the PS4 and Xbone that will stand the test of time, games that got better after launch, cancelled games and shuttered devs, and story canon in games.
You are then invited to talk some about the current state of VR as well as stereoscopic 3d in games.