How real is Reality?
VR is all about story telling and immerse the viewer of the story in the environment. There are many ways of telling stories since time immemorial, some of them are may be:
There are people, who can tell the story in such a wonderful way that listeners feel themselves part of the story.
Live play, is another medium.
Movies in theatre try to recreate the same thing.
3D cinema one direction ahead, where they make you feel part of the story.
4D cinema try to bring in other environmental factors in the hall.
So since ages, story teller are trying to immerse the audience in their stories, they wants everyone to become part of it, that’s the success for them.
Virtual Reality takes this to next level. It gives you and HMD (Head Mounted Device), once you wear and start the topic, you are completely into it, cut off from the external world. Now there are many factors and one of them is good design of interaction points with the user, details in graphics design etc. matters a lot. If good design is not done, user will feel nausea, dizziness, heavy head etc.
Let’s look at how a good design helps user to enjoy in VR:
https://youtu.be/spzE3PoL9aw https://youtu.be/Fa2ir_dk7gI
There are external trackers are also coming, again these are additives to the VR world.
What are users doing in VR? Are they playing Games only or something else?
Games is definitely one of the most popular thing to do in VR but it’s being used in many different domains, from architecture visualization, real estate, training, military training, marriage, marketing, medical, education etc.
https://youtu.be/V34gCw4fyLs
Range of different types of HMD’s are available or about to enter the market, on top end HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Gear VR from Samsung is the most popular phone based VR headset in the market (more than 5 million user base). There are many standalone HMD’s are entering in the market with the claims of 6DoF by them so time will be interesting with these new devices.
Is 360* imagery and video is still the most popular thing in VR?
Yes, this is one of the most popular category and 1 reason could be availability of content in 360*. You can use rendered images or use a camera (like Ricoh Theta) to take photos, videos, stitch them and create interesting stories, this is one of the fastest medium and cost effective too.
I think it’s just the beginning so get ready to immerse!