Virtual Reality: Actual Reality or Virtual Fantasy? - MMOGames.com

The concept of Virtual reality has been in the eye of popular culture since the first panoramic paintings in the early nineteenth century attempted to put the viewer in the middle of battlefields, landscapes, and exotic locations. As time and technology have advanced, the vision became more defined through science fiction writing and film in the 20th century. Concepts like the Holodeck from Star Trek and the Matrix have become synonymous with a future that is as incredible as it is advanced. The concept is just too appealing to pass up: man becomes the progenitor of his own reality, one he can share with others and is limited only by the extent of his imagination. As with most technical advancements, the first major achievements in this field came from the necessity of war when the first flight simulator was used by the US Army to train pilots for World War II without risk to man or machine.

The Link Trainer used by Army Air Corp pilots during WWII

Virtual Reality bounced around as various tinkerers and inventors tried to use it for film and additional military applications before coming to rest in the hands of video game industry in the late 80s and early 90s.

At first, the only place to find virtual reality machines were in arcades since it was too expensive for individuals to own, especially for hardware that only had the ability to play one game at a time.

An example of arcade based VR developed in the 90’s.

Nintendo released their notorious first attempt at in home virtual reality with the Virtual Boy in 1995. Retailing for $180 (about $270 in 2016) the Virtual Boy is considered a failure since it was uncomfortable to play, caused headaches, and only had two colors.

The proper way to use a Virtual Boy and get a life time of chiropractor bills at the same time!

Virtual reality was shelved by developers, but there were innovations that hinted at things to come since a dream as tempting as virtual reality could not be contained for long. Nintendo released the Wii with motion controls that were touted as a form of virtual immersion while Microsoft and Sony released peripherals (the Kinect and Move, respectively) to do the same thing. The Wii met with immense commercial success, but began to be treated as a gimmick as soon as people got tired of playing Wii Sports. The Kinect and Move were developed in response to this success, but by their release they were similarly labeled as gimmicks, and concerns of privacy violations and inconsistent responses made consumers reluctant to use them.

While the history of virtual reality in gaming has been spotty, our desire to make the Holodeck an actuality has remained out of reach due to technical limitations.

Until now.

In 2016, four major developers have set forth to bring the first real generation of virtual reality platforms to market in an attempt to change the face of gaming forever.

Or has it?

Some of the developers have released their prices and requirements for these platforms and to the surprise of most gamers, they are more expensive than initially anticipated.

Perhaps the most publicly developed virtual reality platform has been the Oculus Rift, which was initially funded by an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign in August 2012. The campaign raised $2.5 million and two months later released the first developer’s kit for 300 dollars.

The Oculus Rift

That is probably why it became such a shock when the price of the finished product went up to 600$ for its release on March 28^th of this year. To make matters worse, the graphical requirements to run such a sophisticated piece of hardware are exclusive enough to make it usable by only the upper crust of the PC master race. Specifically, requiring an Intel i5-4590 CPU, a NVIDA GTX 970 or an AMD R9 290 GPU, and 8 GBs of RAM, or else you can purchase one of the premade computers from Alienware, Asus, and Dell for around $1000. Between the components and the Rift itself, this will set you back anywhere from $1175 to $1600; or the price of a used Honda Accord.

And that is the cheap option.

Oculus has one major competitor at the moment: the Vive which has been jointly developed by HTC and Valve. While the Oculus had a very public development cycle, the Vive was developed almost exclusively behind closed doors. Oddly enough the Vive has almost the exact same technical specs, but the price tag is 200 dollars more, putting it at 800 dollars. The only consolation here is the decreased system requirements, though it is not by much.

The HTC Vive and the accessories that come with it.

The Vive allows for a slightly less powerful CPU and only 4 GBs of RAM, but everything else is the exact same as the Rift. Also like the Rift, there are a series of computers from Alienware, MSI, and HP that are already pre-configured to operate with the Vive, also for around 1000 dollars to start; though this is unsurprising since the hardware requirements are almost exactly the same. In reality, these slight downgrades in hardware requirements do not make up for the overall cost raise that comes with the Vive and you will have to spend between 1270 and 1700 dollars to make this viable; or the price of a slightly better used Honda Accord.

Becoming an aristocrat of the PC Master race is not the only way to break into the virtual reality scene though, as both Sony and Microsoft are developing peripherals to enter the virtual reality scene.

Little is known about the Microsoft HoloLens outside of an amazing demo at last year’s E3 which showcased the HoloLens’s gaming applications in Minecraft. A lot of other development seems to be focused around application development including a list that sounds as exciting as reading through the back of a Windows Encarta CD from 1995.

The Microsoft HoloLens

Microsoft is keeping a lot of the information about the HoloLens close to the chest, it is likely they are still gun-shy from their experience with the Kinect. Developer kits are set to go on sale for preorder on the 29^th of February for a launch date of March 30^th, for the price of 3000 dollars. On the plus side, the HoloLens will not need any system to plug into: it is its own computer.

Sony’s VR (code named Project Morpheus) is set to work with the PS4, and has no price tag or release date announced outside of sometime in the first half of 2016. More information should be announced on March 15^th event hosted by Sony in San Francisco specifically to address the developments in Project Morpheus.

PlayStation’s Project Morpheus

So the future is here: we finally have a virtual reality that seems so viable some of the biggest companies in the world are preparing to release their products into the market, developers are setting up content specifically for this medium, and consumers are placing preorders.

In time the price will probably become more acceptable, but if the news coming out of San Francisco are positive, then I might just leave the PC master race and reactivate my PlayStation Network account.

A whole new world is opening up full of artistic and technical experiences…for those who can afford it.