Virtual Reality is Here... Again

Written By Brian Hicks

Posted May 1, 2014

Some of you may recall the first time the term “virtual reality” entered the popular vernacular.

It happened sometime in the early 1990s, and this technological revolution — which wasn’t really technological or revolutionary — spread its tentacles through the public consciousness as fast as popular culture could carry it.

The idea was simple: Virtual reality, or VR, was an alternative world people could enter and inhabit using either a headset or an entire body suit. Through sight, sound, and even touch, their minds and bodies would experience the artificial world of their choice.

We learned about this magical technology through movies like Johnny Mnemonic, Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity, and even the Michael Douglas drama Disclosure, which used the technology not as a centerpiece of the storyline but as a minor plot device, making us, the audience, think this was no longer the stuff of science fiction but a glance at the very, very near future.

However, the reality of VR was far less impressive.

In fact, the closest thing we ever got to virtual reality at home came in the form of early ’90s consumer bombs like the Nintendo Virtual Boy and the Sega Virtual Reality headset.

nintendo%2C sega virtual realityBoth products came in attractive, high-tech looking packaging, but they failed to deliver anything close to actual virtual reality, settling instead on providing a basic, two-dimensional image on a small, low-resolution screen that just happened to be mounted within a headset instead of sitting comfortably halfway across the room.

It wasn’t so much virtual reality as virtual virtual reality… An image of an image, and one that quickly dissolved the initial excitement.

The idea, as far as consumer tech goes, was shelved for years and largely forgotten as high-resolution flat screen technology and dynamic surround sound satiated our collective appetites for new and exciting ways to experience computer-generated environments.

New Beginnings

Today, however, this idea that grew old before it was even properly invented is starting to make a comeback… Or — more precisely — after a false start, it’s finally about to arrive.

In 2012, Oculus VR Inc., then a privately held company, invented — or should I say reinvented — the concept of the personal VR headset when it built its first prototype of the Rift headset.

I would explain what this thing does, but I really don’t have to — you probably already know.

The Rift, plainly put, does everything the virtual reality headsets of 1990s did — and everything the “virtual reality” pretenders of that same era failed to do.

Oculus RiftIt has stereoscopic 3D, meaning it beams a slightly varying image to each of your eyes to very closely simulate a three-dimensional environment.

It also has active field-of-vision tracking, so if you turn or tilt your head, the image you see changes just as it would if you turned your head in real life.

The result of these two innovations, combined with an advanced sound package that also takes advantage of the stereoscopic effect to simulate the directionality of noises, is essentially everything we were promised almost 20 years ago in a small, tight, functional package that’s light enough for your average consumer to wear and use.

Before you click into your Amazon account, however, I would like to mention that this device is not yet available to the public.

Much like the Google Glass, Oculus chose to release the Rift only to developers and industry pros in an early launch to help iron out the kinks and problems and test the device on some of the first-person perspective games.

Because games must be specially designed to work with the Rift, Oculus also created a software development kit that software engineers can use to integrate the headset to the new applications.

According to Oculus, game integration will begin with PCs and smartphones and be followed by consoles at a later date.

But don’t let that wording get you down, as the real deal is fairly close to becoming available on the open market.

The Pros Are Already Playing… You’ll Have to Wait

As of this moment, games with full or partial Rift support include Left 4 Dead, Skyrim, Portal 2, Half-Life 2, and Bioshock, with many more titles set to join that list before the systems go on sale.

Although exact dates and pricing for commercial release are not certain as of this moment, the general consensus is that the mass-release device will cost less than $350 and go on sale either later this year or in early 2015.

My personal prediction is that unless something goes seriously wrong with rollout, the Rift will likely be the cause of more than a few zombie apocalypse-style rushes come 12:01 a.m. next Black Friday.

These potential problems, whatever they might be, became far less likely on March 25, 2014, when Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) had decided to acquire Oculus for about $2 billion — with $300 million of that going to financing future development of the device.

But is this enough to fuel the VR’s second coming into a bona fide revolution?

The question itself is wrong; Oculus is not alone in pursuing this one-time dream of sci-fi writers.

Not Just a Fad

Just a week before Facebook announced it had acquired Oculus, Sony Computer Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Inc. (NYSE: SNE), released news of its own when it publicized Project Morpheus — its answer to the Rift.

Project Morpheus“At SCE we view innovation as an opportunity to build on our mission to push the boundaries of play,” said Shuhei Yoshida, President of SCE Worldwide Studios. “Project Morpheus is the latest example of innovation from SCE, and we’re looking forward to its continued development and the games that will be created as development kits get into the hands of content creators.”

Targeting the exact same market as the Rift, Sony’s offering promises to have much of the same functionality and be tailored to work with the iconic Sony PlayStation platform.

So what’s the bottom line here?

Well, for one thing, this isn’t going to be another false start… With directional tracking and stereoscopic video technology both proven and perfected through at least two generations of gaming systems and high-resolution flat-panel televisions, all of the foundations for modern virtual reality — true virtual reality — to succeed this time around have been laid.

20 years ago, it was just a novelty with a highly misleading name.

Today, we’re looking at the next step not just in gaming but in a wide spectrum of full-immersion computing.

As if today’s kids needed any more reason to stay indoors…

To your wealth,

Brian Hicks Signature

Brian Hicks

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Brian is a founding member and President of Angel Publishing. He writes about general investment strategies for Wealth Daily and Energy & Capital. For more on Brian, take a look at his editor’s page.

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