Virtual Reality – The Platform Du Jour

Though the augmented reality market is forecast to be larger and more mainstream, virtual reality is the main headline grabber, and its anticipation and hype is huge—there is a constant stream of headlines regarding market forecasts, hardware and device news and new VR conferences and summits. Oculus ignited the tech world with its $2.4 million-grossing Kickstarter campaign and helped cement virtual reality as a mainstream concept with its $2 billion acquisition by Facebook. Since then, Google shipped more than a million units of its low-cost mobile VR entrant, Google Cardboard. Samsung’s Gear, a mobile VR headset, is now available for a mainstream-enticing $99 and sold out online at Amazon and Best Buy within 48 hours. Sony’s PlayStation VR and Valve/HTC’s Vive are due in 2016.

Digi-Capital forecasts the virtual reality market will be $30 billion by 2020. Gartner forecasts the number of head-mounted displays (HMDs) to grow from 2 million sold in 2016 to 8 million in 2018, for a total of 25 million HMDs sold globally by 2018. SuperData Research estimates 31% of US console gamers will purchase a PlayStation VR and 18% PC gamers will purchase an Oculus Rift.

There are numerous articles throughout gaming sites discussing the development of virtual reality content. Whether you’re an active VR developer or a publisher entering the virtual reality space, Oculus has created a best practices guide covering aspects such as field of view, rendering, display resolution, latency, tracking and factors contributing to simulator sickness. Though some guidelines are specific to Oculus’ Rift headset, this is a central resource and solid starting point for understanding the breadth of factors in developing VR content and designing the user experience and user interface.