As we speak, the Oculus Rift is nearing production, promising immersive 3D at such a quality and price that was previously unheard of in the consumer market.
Alas, there is one weak point in all of this, that I as but a humble observer dare do point out.
THE PROBLEM WITH VR:
The software support: currently, to add support one must specifically modify your program/game to support the Oculus Rift. Even with the provided tools for Unity3D and Unreal Engines, the following factors give me cause for severe lamentation:
1. To add Oculus Rift support - a single piece of hardware, each game has to be modified.
2. Previous experience seeing how game companies were reluctant to make sure that their games worked well in the (much simpler) Stereoscopic 3D (for 3d monitors - iz3d/tridef/nvidia)
3. The life-cycle of the Oculus or indeed for the entire company
So, say I am an average game company - this means I have a limited budged. Would I devote resources (developer time) on adding a feature that will be seen by an extreme minority that owns a single product? In most cases I would rather spend it on additional testing/ quality assurance or something practical like that
The Solution:
What if, instead of there being proprietary in-built support in each game for a specific piece of VR hardware, we "almost" had the same thing - We'd have a plugin for Unity3D and other engines, but it would be open source/non proprietary! HOW CRAZY IS THAT! One might at first wonder why on earth someone with his VR solution would elect such generosity, but now, say there are 10 different VR solutions with different capibilities/features - instead of each having to be added separately to a game, it can all "Just Work" - the same way we now don't need games to be specifically made for different /graphics adapters/3D displays - but that was not always the case. Game Devs will now see this as a much better reason to spend additional time on VR since the process of adding the aforementioned functionality would not be greatly lengthened.
The Vision
SINGLE OPEN PLUGIN/STANDARD - MULTIPLE VR+HAPTICS SOLUTIONS
A future, where a developer opens Unity3D or another game dev environment, imports a single plugin, adds it to the camera of the thing that the player controls, configures it, and voila!!
Indeed, it must not be limited to just HMD's - A SINGLE plugin, that supports open HMD and Haptics is needed to achieve full immersion.
I want a future where I can import a single thing, and specify that in this particular game, I want the player to be able to look around, and (if the hardware exists for the end user) for the "hand with the gun" to be decoupled from Camera Look (as in, you'd move the gun with Haptics (your actual arm) and your head with your actual head.
Otherwise, small "innovators" will come and go, but support will be far from constant. Indeed, it is only with the help of a centralizing influence, like MTBS, that a true new VR standard (UtopiaVR) can take hold. And thus ends my epistle to the stereoscopers.
