Oculus Go Currently Appears To Be Best Chance At Taking Virtual Reality Mainstream In 2019
I’ve been inside for a few days because of the terrible air quality here in California due to the wildfires. I should be using this time to further development of my WebVR projects, but instead I’m thinking about sales of VR Headsets for the holiday seasons. Why? Because I have found out you really need hardware to truly experience quality Virtual Reality.
Quality? Does that mean 3DoF or 6DoF? Tethered or Stand Alone. What about the screen-door effect?
The answer depends on who you are, how much experience you have with Virtual Reality, what you own already, not to mention what you want to do with VR.
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So I can only answer for myself. I currently have a Samsung Gear VR setup using a Android Galaxy S6 smartphone with bluetooth 3DoF controller. My experience has been in SecondLife, Open Simulator, Cardboard and now WebVR using Mozilla’s A-frame. I have minimal AR experience. I don’t consider myself to be a heavy or even lite gamer, although I have a very heavy gamer friend. I also have friends who have worked on Magic Leap and in other new VR companies. I’ve owned a Google Glass and developed mobile apps for the speech impaired on smartphones and tablets in the Apple and Google app stores.
I believe VR will radically change the way computers interface with their users over the next five years far beyond use inside of games, but into all varied aspects of society.
Oculus Go currently appears to be the lowest most medium quality bar for a chance at taking virtual reality into the mainstream, given that it has a lower price point and Facebook backing. So since this is about a month before the December Christmas holidays, how is it selling? Well the answer is it’s hard to tell with no sales numbers available yet!
I do know that not everybody comments or reviews items and there are many more who will simply remain silent.
As you can see the two reviews I do have are 4.1 and 4.5 respectively. I can only assume sales and return numbers might be available in January and February of 2019 to market researchers. Until then we can only hope purchased users will have a decent enough experience to continue using their headsets well into 2019 and be willing to make any future headset purchases, and upgrades. Also that their experiences will be shared with friends and family.
ARTICLE UPDATE: After posting this article, people commented that the break through product for VR was going to be Oculus Quest, sometime spring 2019. My response was that is possible, but I’m talking about a product that exists and I can buy today. Someone even said 3DoF was not real VR, which is ridiculous! Also there has been talk about Apple and VR. Again, there is an API, but no hardware headset until possibly 2020. Meanwhile others are making rapid progress. I stand by my statements and observations.
