![]() Presence is essentially the sensation of being there, in the game, on the edge of a cliff, rising alongside Game of Thrones’ mighty Wall, even when you’re not. “Most people find it to be kind of magical.” “Presence,” he said at the time, “is an incredibly powerful sensation, and it’s unique to VR there’s no way to create it in any other medium. Oculus VR chief scientist Michael Abrash, a virtual reality expert working on perfecting the tech at Valve Software at the time, delivered a seminal speech on the topic in January, saying that compelling consumer-priced VR hardware is probably coming within two years. It is the closest thing yet to a consumer-bound product that can deliver what virtual reality experts call presence. The latest version, Crescent Bay, amped up the resolution, lowered the weight, added built-in audio and the ability to track 360-degree head movement. Inside the headset, an OLED display and twin lenses show nearly matching images to your eyes, tricking your brain into thinking it is perceiving not a flat image, but reality. The Oculus Rift is a black headset that straps onto a user’s face like a set of oversized, opaque ski goggles and then plugs into a computer. And it still isn’t the virtual reality millions brought up watching the likes of Star Trek and reading books like Snow Crash or Ready Player One, would expect from the technology. And yes, the company behind the technology was purchased by Facebook for billions.īut ultimately the thing that the Oculus Rift delivers to users doesn’t yet overcome the inherent inconvenience and cost of using it. Yes, the Oculus Rift has reignited an interest in virtual reality goggles not seen in decades. Despite the soaring plaudits from professional technophiles, despite the growing support from the video game industry, the latest run at mainstreaming wearable virtual reality is doomed to be a commercial failure. ![]()
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