Lily Snyder

The problem with virtual reality is that no one outside of the VR enthusiasts and VR evangelists talk about it.

When I told people I worked at a VR startup they say, “that’s cool” or “What is that”. It’s awkward to explain and the conversation dies pretty quickly. I’m used to not talking about what I do at work. Computers are confusing to people but VR shouldn’t be. A lot of us looked to the release of Ready Player One to bring the masses to our rumii, Big Screen, and Facebook Spaces Facebook Horizon but that didn’t happen. At least not on the scale we hoped.

Within the virtual reality community we shared how Ready Player One type experiences are happening in VR today but outside of those circles, I didn’t hear anything about it. The movie was too much 1980’s nostalgia and not enough techno possibility.

At least my mom has caught on to VR. She sent me a text of a Sharper Image mobile-based VR headset and said, “that’s the ‘app enabled’ smartphone VR system.’” Did she buy it? No. And thank goodness because it would probably make her sick.

A good VR experience requires investment. The Oculus Go is only $199 but that’s still a decent chunk of change. The more you want to do in VR, the more expensive you have to go. I think standalone headsets are definitely the way to go.

When we step away from VR we should feel like we’re missing something. #VR

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When we step away from VR we should feel like we’re missing something. That’s what social media and mobile games like Candy Crush do. They make us feel part of something or hook us into an experience. We feel like something’s missing when we go without checking our phones for notifications or scrolling through our Facebook feeds even though they show the same old posts.

After having my son, I went a couple months without going into VR. I recently went back in but it felt like nothing had changed. I swear I saw a tumbleweed roll by. I played around with setting up my Vive Home but it was too confusing on how to resize pictures. There weren’t many objects I was particularly thrilled with either. Facebook Spaces crashed but why should I troubleshoot it when I don’t have any friends to meet up with anyways?

How do we address these issues? A group of VR industry leaders is coming together to discuss these various issues.

“Since there’s no real consumer market here to confuse, we’re mainly still talking to ourselves.”

Charlie Fink, Forbes

Mark Zuckerberg hopes to change that with the Oculus Quest and Facebook Horizon. He hopes to have 1 billion people in VR by 2020.

In the meantime, I will sit back at watch the industry evolve and find itself. Do we cater to the hardcore gamers or the average Joes? Are baby boomers the perfect generation for simple VR games like those displayed in Horizon?

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I wanted to update the post with some quotes from an article on Amy Peck giving a talk at Lethbridge College. I became aware of Lethbridge when we hosted their Merging Realities conference in rumii. Since then, I joined the VR Book Club run by Mike McCready.

“Products are already coming down in size and cost and moving up in accessibility. The key piece that is missing, but that is coming…is true everyday purpose.”

Amy Peck

Three pillars of everyday purpose:

1. context (what do I want to see?)
2. utility (why do I need this?)
3. fun (it has to be entertaining).

“According to Peck, educators and stakeholders need to build a framework with standards, ethics, behaviour and empathy.”

Lethbridge Harold

The consensus seems to be among Peck and those in the XR industry, augmented and virtual reality are a computing platform.

Have you been in virtual reality? Do you own a headset, if so, which one? Let me know in the comments below!