The future of Virtual Reality

Many knowledgeable people still see Virtual Reality as a fad, destined to go the same way as laserdiscs and 3D TV.

These people believe that the consumer in the future will eventually drop all interest, causing VR agencies to abandon app development and maintenance.

After a year with the three strongest Virtual Reality proposals in the market (HTC Vive, Oculus and PlayStation VR), the future of this type of technology looks promising.

It’s not about which system has the best drivers, the clearest display or the best operating system.

It’s not even about which has the best games or apps, but a technological constant:

our own transition to a shared digital realm, eroding the wall between us and the digital world.

Every year, we surround ourselves more and more with technology.

Our phones, watches, glasses and other devices put screens displaying information closer and closer to us.

We talk to virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri and Cortana, who help us manage our lives,

all this while the layer that separates our reality from the network becomes thinner.

With Virtual Reality we superimpose ourselves on these digital worlds in a new way,

looking, pushing or touching with an intuition that not even the most advanced display technology could match.

Thanks to Augmented Reality, something similar is achieved by incorporating the digital world into our own by using cameras,

screens and lenses.

Both approaches trace two vectors that ultimately lead to the same end point,

the ability to freely explore an unlimited virtual world.

Knowing this, it makes sense that gamers would be the first to embrace VR,

because they could finally explore the worlds of their favorite video games and be a kind of tourist in these places.

At last we can have experiences in a digital world in a way that was previously only possible in amusement parks or science fiction.

This year VR was made real by the different headsets and motion controllers that made a difference in being able to handle more aspects of this new way of seeing the world.

Now it just needs to be really good enough to keep people immersed in it.

Below, we will give you a list of Virtual Reality headsets coming out for 2017.

Microsoft VR headsets

The Windows operating system company revealed in October this year a new range of VR headsets that would arrive alongside the new OS update known as “Redstone” scheduled for the future 2017.

This new hardware would be manufactured by Acer, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo and HP, with whom Microsoft formed a partnership.

The devices would not only be cheaper than the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive by having a starting price of $299,

but would also have a system of internal sensors that would allow greater freedom than the other two options mentioned above, allowing the user to operate the helmets in other rooms without the need for very complicated configurations.

HTC VR 2.0

This new headset will be an improved version of the Vive.

One of its new features is expected to be the inclusion of two 4K displays,

giving a resolution of 3840x2160p, an improvement over the current version which has 2160x1200p (1080x1200p for each eye).

It is also expected to feature improved Lighthouse technology,

which consists of flooding the room with a non-visible light that allows the positioning of 3D objects and figures in the surroundings.

Samsung Gear VR

The next generation Gear VR could be more advanced than its predecessor as the company filed a patent that would use a new eye and face tracking technology,

which would add new infrared sensors that could map the user’s face completely.

Virtual reality platform OSVR (Open-Source Virtual Reality)

This new software platform will allow different types of VR technologies to reside in the same ecosystem, meaning greater compatibility between different brands and devices.

It is currently still under development and it is not known when a consumer version will be ready.