Virtual Reality Home Theater: Whole Lotta Hype - For Now

It’s still early days for what we can safely call the next-gen VR, and 2016 can be seen as the market’s year zero. A wide variety of VR headsets went on sale last year after much hype, speculation and investment. But burying your head in a VR headset won't hide the reports of disappointing sales. In the wake of sunny projections and billions in venture capital, the diagram below shows the difference between VR hardware sales and sales of a popular consumer electronics device that is actually in demand.

Even tech-industry soothsayers like Scott Galloway say VR will be the ruin of many over-investing venture capital funds.

Scott Galloway at DLD 2017 YouTube Video

Venture capital firms and technology evangelists alike have been jumping on the VR hype train, ever since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sank $2-billion to buy what became Oculus Rift in 2014. Attendees at Facebook’s F8 2017 Developer Conference earlier this month got a look inside Facebook’s master plan for a social VR platform called Spaces.

In Spaces, anyone with an Oculus VR headset and a Facebook account can create a dead-eyed cartoon rendition of themselves, and hang out with their Facebook Friends in a cartoon world that lets you “interact” in the same tedious fashion you already interact through Facebook. Maybe I’m old, but the idea of spending time trapped inside insipid virtual spaces populated by cartoon avatars of Facebook Friends fills me with an urge to experience something “real” - like a root canal.

The long-term dream for Zuckerberg is an app store to open revenue streams outside of advertising. Spaces users will be able to buy virtual upgrades for their avatars using real money. Choosing from available clothing and accessories, you’ll be able to customize your avatar to express your faux “individuality”. The same model works smashingly for online video game/communities like recent iterations of Call of Duty, where you can buy skins for your weapons and armor to give your in-game avatar a “unique” look.

Did Zuckerberg learn nothing from Sony PlayStation Home? Home was a mundane cartoon virtual space designed for the PlayStation 3 with the same in-game store for virtual accessories as Spaces. Home and Spaces has a similar animated look and feel, but Home’s 3D space was rendered on your flat screen without VR. Sony never bothered to port it over to PS4, and officially pulled the plug in 2015. If Spaces is Zuckerberg’s vision for Social VR, maybe he should have saved the $2-billion dollars. 

The Exaggerated VR Revolution

Do a quick search of “walk the plank” demo videos on YouTube, and you’ll see just how utterly immersive VR can be. These demos put the VR-user onto a narrow plank that in reality is only set on a floor in a room. But don the VR headset and the plank reaches out between virtual city buildings at some unfathomable height. Each person who experiences the demo walks cautiously, some unable to bring themselves to even take their first step out onto the plank. The surround sound of rushing winds, combined with the high elevation and the long way down, ignites a palpable sense of terror, even though your higher mind knows it’s just a simulation - a virtual reality.

It’s this level of immersion that gives VR the ability to bypass your cerebral cortex and hijack your brain’s reptilian survival instincts. The plank has made for a great demo running over three years now, and someday this level immersion will result in some fantastic gaming experiences. Someday.

But when it comes to the revolutionary promises of virtual reality today, I’m reminded of another exciting period of time in the early 90s, when PC networks offered us our first taste of truly interactive virtual environments using DOS IPX network drivers through the medium of video games. Back then, a few friends and I had desktop computers, clumsily modded with handles so we could pack them easily into a car. I also had a milk crate for the required gaming peripherals like keyboard, mouse, cheap PC speakers and headphones. It was early ‘94 and Doom had just hit the market, bringing us a kind-of VR through 14-inch CRT monitors. We’d meet up at a friend’s place to assemble a coax network and play Doom. As good a game as Doom was single player, the multiplayer experience was a competitive in-your-face game-changer.

Doom elevated network gaming to something that never existed before, and left us hungry for more network game content that just hadn’t been created yet. In a year, we’d have new networkable games like Doom 2, Rise of the Triad and Heretic, and a year after that there would be Duke Nukem 3D. But that summer of ‘94 was dry. Outside of playing Doom again, we had to settle for games designed as single player experiences with local network capabilities tacked on as an afterthought. The results were buggy and incomplete to downright unplayable.

PC gaming in the ‘90s came as a lesson that hardware advances much faster than the software designed for it. And that is pretty much the situation VR finds itself in today. Imperfect consumer VR headsets are hitting the market sorely lacking in content. Most VR games today aren’t much more than demos for breathtaking immersion. But we could still be years away from VR’s Doom moment, when the medium clicks in a richly detailed gameplay experience that is on par with the best games of today - if that moment ever comes at all. The VR experience has great potential, but has a lot to overcome before the reality can match the game-changing hype.

The biggest problem, most often glossed over by VR’s strongest proponents, is that the technology is a wearable one. No two words can conjure clearer images of overhyped disappointment than “wearable tech”. Sure, the immersive experience of VR is amazing, and wearing a chunk of plastic strapped to your face could be seen as a small price to pay for the experience - but only if you’re a computer and technology nerd. The general public has proven far less tolerant of wearables.

VR Home Theater

One of the more sunny evangelists of VR and AR technologies is Rich Green of Rich Green Design. Rich gave a memorable presentation at CEDIA 2017 (skip to the 15 minute mark) claiming that VR spaces in the home will replace home theater.

CEDIA Talk: Virtual and Augmented Reality in the Year 2020 YouTube Video

His statement might be true in an idealized future where VR no longer requires a headset and can be shared with a small group sitting comfortably on a couch. But Jason Lovell, Sr. Product Manager, Samsung VR, gave a more staid prediction when he said: “Virtual reality most definitely has a place in the home cinema arena,” We have to agree that the home media center is exactly where VR belongs for now - but only as a side attraction.

Barriers to Wide Adoption

The biggest barrier to VR is that it requires commitment. It’s an active entertainment device as opposed to the passive experience of kicking back and turning on Netflix while lounging next to your spouse. VR’s active commitment also requires visual and sonic isolation for extended periods. While you’re effectively captive inside the virtual world, you’ll require complete trust in the predictability of the real world environment. You’ll need to develop protocol with anyone living with you for how to break you out of the virtual environment when you’re attention is required in the real world, or in the event of an emergency.

Another drawback is the headset itself, which puts a significant amount of weight on the front of your face. It’s not exactly suitable for hours on end of gaming. Watching a movie shot with 360-degree cameras will require a lot of muscle-fatigue from head swinging, and just wearing a VR headset will likely leave an imprint  that you’ll wear on your face for at least a half-hour after an extended play session.

And a final strike against the new medium is that for VR to become the next must-have gaming peripheral, it needs to display true 4K or better resolutions in each eye. Today’s VR is experienced from behind a noticeable “screen door” effect, reminiscent of early LCD micro-display or LCoS rear projection TVs.

Ultra HD resolutions and the graphics processing power required to push the number of pixels it takes to bring to life full-motion images in an affordable consumer-grade VR device will improve the experience and make VR truly ready for prime time. But even the near-future VR headsets that totally nail it will still likely only be an add-on device for gamers - a wide but niche market, to be sure. As long as VR requires a headset and complete isolation, it can’t replace the passive entertainment experience of looking at a big-screen TV.

Will VR Get its Doom Moment?

Just imagine, if you will, the layers of social awkwardness in a world where VR theater replaces today’s home theater. How will you see the popcorn to get it to your mouth? Not to mention, it will totally negate the concept of “Netflix and chill” as a go-to line in your arsenal for breaking the ice. 3DTV already proved people are reluctant to put on 3D glasses to enhance a visual experience, and VR headsets likely won’t fare much better. Beyond just the physical discomforts, the big lesson learned is that enhancing the visual medium doesn’t enhance storytelling.

We may perfect VR theater with headset-free 360-degree viewing and sound that unfolds around the safety of a comfy loveseat as you embrace your partner during the show. That will be magnificent entertainment to behold. But movies shot on 360-degree cameras bound for future VR theater experiences will need to find a way to make those effects indispensable to the fine art of storytelling… otherwise it’s just a gimmick.

A tube of paint may seem like a quaint technology - a piece of hardware invented in the 1840s that offered painters the convenience of keeping their paint from drying. But it took Claude Monet to elevate the portability of the humble paint tube to its higher purpose, it allowed the Impressionist artist to paint outside where he had immediate 360-degree access to the colors of natural outdoor light. The paint tube became indispensable to the Impressionist movement.

Whether its networked multiplayer video games, 3D, VR or the invention of film itself - any medium requires more than a refined set of hardware and software technology to earn wide consumer adoption. VR will need its Doom or its Claude Monet before we will perceive and accept it as art - and that’s a development that not even billions in venture capital can safely anticipate.