Research Report - Emerging Technologies and Trends:
VR Technology – Past Present and Future
Virtual reality has given us the ability to create feelings of immersion never before possible, its beneficial properties stretch out to many industries, whether this be in the medical industry to help reverse the effects of memory loss or in the architectural industry to help turn conceptual designs into reality. Alongside these areas in which virtual reality is becoming ever more prominent, virtual reality definitely makes its largest impact upon the gaming industry, with new companies diving head first into the scene to help innovate how we play games with the Oculus line of products and with long running companies too, looking to build stronger experiences around existing consoles such as PlayStation and their PlayStation VR system. For such a young era of technology it has already developed so much and has a huge amount of potential to do a mass amount of things in the future. Like all emerging technological trends, virtual reality had to evolve from somewhere, but from where?
“Virtual reality is considered to have begun in the 1950’s but early elements of it can be traced back to the 1860’s and long before the development of digital technology.” (Virtual Reality Society, n.d.) This quote refers to the first ever form of a virtual reality headset called the Sensorama. This piece of technology was able to emit smells and play sounds to help manipulate the wearer’s senses to believing they were in another place. This concept of immersion would become a direct basis on what future VR technology would be developed to help achieve. By the 1990’s and although it was initially still very popular, “the hype surrounding this technology had an adverse effect and led to a decrease in its popularity.” (Virtual Reality Society, n.d.). This setback happened despite the continuous development of virtual reality up until this point, this particular topic of interest wasn’t very popular again until around 2010, where the quality of immersion was much greater.
In an article highlighting the history of virtual reality, Dom Barnard explains that in 2010, Palmer Lucky created the first prototype for the Oculus Rift headset, this headset was revolutionary because it had a 90-degree field of view which was new for virtual reality technology. Not only did this boost the popularity of virtual reality but it went on to both raise $2.4 million in a Kickstarter campaign and be purchased by Facebook for $2 billion (Barnard 2019). After this series of events virtual reality was finally starting to develop rapid traction, this was further the case after companies like Google and Samsung had started to create their own versions of virtual reality technology. By using users existing smartphone technology, companies were able to reach a much wider audience. Alongside this, creator of the PlayStation line of consoles Sony unveiled ‘Project Morpheus’, which would go on to be PlayStation’s dedicated virtual reality system. Drawing even closer into the present day, more companies have begun to invest in virtual reality, including software giants Amazon and Apple. Over time these headsets started to evolve to create even more immersive experiences through the power of many features which are very well demonstrated on the Oculus Quest. This is a virtual reality headset that heavily improved user experience by using a new form of tracking that was built into the headset itself, allowing for the removal of stress when it came to hanging up potentially heavy equipment just to make a room virtual reality friendly because now the headset would do this all for you. This headset also plans to make controllers obsolete, you can use only your hands to interact with the virtual world in a current Beta feature planned to be implemented into games by 2020.
Leading on from basic virtual reality headsets, live events using location-based virtual reality have allowed players to attend and play with large groups at once through experiences such as ‘Star Wars – Secrets of the Empire’, location based virtual reality allowing for the player to move around in the virtual world to make it more interactive and immersive, whilst moving around a real world area built specifically for the event. The ever growing relevance and popularity of this technology meant that consumers were “expected to spend $299 million on location-based Virtual Reality entertainment in 2018, according to Futuresource. By 2022, that amount is expected to grow to $809 million.” (Roettgers, 2018).
With this area of technology becoming ever more popular, those possibly more unfamiliar with virtual reality are going to become more and more concerned with its negative aspects. Whilst there are negatives there are also the numerous positives that come from virtual reality too. Back to the previous point however, although there are many side-effects to virtual reality, they hardly differentiate themselves from the negative effects of using many other forms of technology such as PC’s or mobile phones. Examples of these negatives effects are eye strain, disorientation and dizziness, these things are all very preventable by taking regular breaks and getting some fresh air. Cody Lewis from Resource also introduces another problem which is the loss of spatial awareness, he says “that once you’ve been in VR for too long (more than 30 minutes), a lot of people tend to forget about these little objects that might cause them to fall over or wack a hand against a ceiling fan. Out of sight, out of mind, sort of thing.” (Lewis, 2018). With these things in mind and to summarise the potential negatives of virtual reality, they are all very avoidable with some level of intuition towards your usage patterns.
This being said, the positives are remarkably more impactful then the negatives and really helps to strengthen the idea that virtual reality is going to be a large part of our future. Virtual reality gives its users the ability to socialise with others online and to feel connected due to its emersion, this is a huge positive because for a lot of people with conditions such as anxiety or mobility disabilities, this might have otherwise been quite difficult for them to do previously. Another huge positive linking to allowing a small first step towards these people becoming more able to talk to others properly is that this will also be a great way to counteract loneliness, all you’d need to do is put on your virtual reality headset, open up a socially interactive experience like “VRChat” (VRChat Inc. 2017) and you’re open to a large community of people to have conversations and play games with etc.
Another positive impact of virtual reality is the ability to provide medical benefits to patients. One example is research that was done by BioMed Research International in 2019, in which they analysed the effects of function within chronic stroke patients using virtual reality technology. Through this research they had done through using concluded that the study had “moderate evidence to support the effect of VR on lower extremity function in patients with chronic stroke. Therefore, VR training would be helpful in improving functional outcomes with chronic stroke patients such as gait (speed, cadence, 10MWT, 6MWT), balance (BBS, TUG, postural sway), lower limb movement (FMA, RMI), lower limb strength, and lower limb muscle tone.” (The Effects of Virtual Reality Training on Function in Chronic Stroke Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, 2019). This part of their conclusion summarises that through virtual reality related training on the patients they were able to find improvements in parts of the body. Based on the fact that this is a fairly recent study there is still a lot of potential to do more tests on perhaps other types of injury and disabilities to help form virtual reality into a more reliable solution to medical problems.
Having provided evidence to the positives of virtual reality, it makes their presence as a technological trend very understandable. Although this is all true they still face great competition within the video game industry specifically due to the still large relevance of consoles such as the current Xbox 1X and PlayStation 4 Pro. With all forms of competition there are always reasons as to why both sides have developed such a large following, as trends come and go companies are confident to try and utilise them as much as possible before iterating a new and improved system into their family of products, offering more potential for development not possible on previous systems. It is becoming clearer that through iterations of consoles, there are becoming less ways for console developers to innovate when compared to the boundless opportunities that virtual reality developers currently have to work with. Factors such as being limited to the television screen on consoles and the need for a controller are examples of contributors to this, as well as virtual reality gaming being a much newer concept.
This however could also be turned on its head to defend consoles because an older form of technology would have had more time to be refined. As previously explained, new forms of tracking such as inside-out tracking on systems like the Oculus Quest are bringing the option of portability to the table, whereas most consoles are once again faced with limitations due to the need for power outlets and cables, not to mention carrying the big and bulky console itself.
Once in their element however, consoles can be very beneficial to the user in that you don’t really need a lot of space to play it in, whereas you need to dedicate an entire room to your virtual reality setup by moving things around to give yourself sufficient space to move around in, even once you have everything organised it lacks the potential to get everyone involved. Families all wanting to enjoy a game together are naturally going to be gravitating to a console due to the fact once wearing a headset, you and you alone are the only one enjoying it whilst the console specialises in multiplayer features and the ability to have everyone watch you play, which for a lot of families can be deemed much better value for money.
Comparing the two from a financial standpoint, buying a home console would be much cheaper now then buying a virtual reality headset, alongside the fact that with some virtual reality systems, users would need an expensive PC to pair alongside it to power it. Virtual reality headsets are the newer and more innovative gaming experiences currently available however so you might get more enjoyment out of your money from these more immersive experiences.
Looking into the future, there is definitely worth to speculating the potential ground virtual reality might stand on. Joseph Nordqvist from Market Business News speculates the potential revenue of virtual reality games by 2023 in which he says “Revenues from virtual reality (VR) specific games are forecast to reach $8.2 billion by 2023, up from an expected $1.2 billion in 2019, according to a new report by Juniper Research.” (Nordqvist, 2019). This speculation leads us to believe that from early 2019 to 2023, the overall popularity of virtual reality is going to start growing quickly. This could potentially be down to the availability of this technology to consumers as the web article also highlights that “Juniper predicts that there will be more than 100 million mobile VR devices by 2023, up from 52 million in 2019. Mobile VR is forecast to account for more than 55% of total VR games revenues by 2023.” (Nordqvist 2019). These speculated figures would be the result of mobile phone orientated virtual reality becoming both more accessible and potentially more affordable too, encouraging a wider audience to engage with the technology, which would in turn widen the developers demographic and allow for larger revenue.
More speculation for the future refers to the technology specifically and how the door between reality and virtual reality can be unhinged to create ultrarealistic experiences. Matthew Lynch from The Tech Advocate suggests that virtual reality technology will become more physical and sensory orientated, explaining that “By introducing better touch controls, virtual reality will become better for all the senses. As Frank Azor of Alienware explains, “Once you begin catering to the rest of the senses, like what we feel body-wise, temperature-wise, and smell, the reality factor of virtual reality [becomes] stronger and the virtual piece begins to fade.”” (Lynch, 2018). If virtual reality technology is ever to progress to such a realistic level it’d be able to cater to a wide range of different things such a training in the medical industry to allow surgeons to practise medical procedures and even the military for strategizing and combat simulations. It could also save schools money on educational trips by being capable of allowing pupils to experience places without needing to go there.
In summary, virtual reality has had a somewhat slow start and really did ultimately fail to popularise itself to begin with. However, the curiosity of those who revolutionised what virtual reality currently is today helped to develop it into an emerging trend and it is now very much a mainstream piece of technology both in and out of gaming. I predict that as long as the bounds of what are possible in virtual reality are stretched upon and tested to create new and exciting concepts then the market will continue to grow, surpassing that of consoles and becoming the primary way to play videogames alongside being a reliable way to teach, train and experience things that might have been difficult to before.
References:
Barnard, D. (2019). History of VR – Timeline of Events and Tech Development. [online] Virtualspeech.com. Available at: https://virtualspeech.com/blog/history-of-vr [Accessed 3 Dec. 2019].
Lewis, C. (2018). The Negative Side Effects Of Virtual Reality – Resource. [online] Resource. Available at: http://resourcemagonline.com/2018/03/the-negative-side-effects-of-virtual-reality/87052/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2019].
Lynch, M. (2018). What is the Future of Virtual Reality?. [online] The Tech Edvocate. Available at: https://www.thetechedvocate.org/what-is-the-future-of-virtual-reality/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2020]
Nordqvist, J. (2019). Revenues from VR specific games forecast to reach $8.2 billion by 2023 – Market Business News. [online] Market Business News. Available at: https://marketbusinessnews.com/revenues-from-vr-specific-games-forecast-to-reach-8-2-billion-by-2023/194678/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2020].
Roettgers, J. (2018). Location-Based VR Predicted to Surpass $800 Million by 2022. [online] Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/location-based-vr-revenue-forecast-1202776212/# [Accessed 4 Dec. 2019].
The Effects of Virtual Reality Training on Function in Chronic Stroke Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. (2019). BioMed Reaearch International, pp.10, 11.
Virtual Reality Society. (n.d.). How did virtual reality begin?. [online] Available at: https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/beginning.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2019].
VRChat Inc. (2017). VRChat, video game, PC, VRChat Inc.
Bibliography:
Barnard, D. (2019). History of VR – Timeline of Events and Tech Development. [online] Virtualspeech.com. Available at: https://virtualspeech.com/blog/history-of-vr [Accessed 3 Dec. 2019].
Lewis, C. (2018). The Negative Side Effects Of Virtual Reality – Resource. [online] Resource. Available at: http://resourcemagonline.com/2018/03/the-negative-side-effects-of-virtual-reality/87052/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2019].
Lynch, M. (2018). What is the Future of Virtual Reality?. [online] The Tech Edvocate. Available at: https://www.thetechedvocate.org/what-is-the-future-of-virtual-reality/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2020]
Nordqvist, J. (2019). Revenues from VR specific games forecast to reach $8.2 billion by 2023 – Market Business News. [online] Market Business News. Available at: https://marketbusinessnews.com/revenues-from-vr-specific-games-forecast-to-reach-8-2-billion-by-2023/194678/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2020].
Roettgers, J. (2018). Location-Based VR Predicted to Surpass $800 Million by 2022. [online] Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/location-based-vr-revenue-forecast-1202776212/# [Accessed 4 Dec. 2019].
The Effects of Virtual Reality Training on Function in Chronic Stroke Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. (2019). BioMed Reaearch International, pp.10, 11.
Virtual Reality Society. (n.d.). How did virtual reality begin?. [online] Available at: https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/beginning.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2019].
VRChat Inc. (2017). VRChat, video game, PC, VRChat Inc.
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