More than ever , Virtual Reality seems to be the next step in the media industry . Corporate giants are investing immense sums of money into this booming industry . Headsets are getting more and more advanced . It ’ s not only the game industry that is thriving off of it ; we ’ re seeing VR being applied in completely different markets as well . Architects can showcase their new designs to potential clients , and soldiers can be trained in virtual scenarios . What more can we expect in the future ?
Oliver Davies , Master In Media Innovation Lecturer : If I look at it from a game developer ’ s perspective , I think Virtual Reality and especially the HTC Vive offers some really interesting opportunities . Being able to have this space in which we can move and turn around in offers some interesting design possibilities . However , If you look at the Vive and the Oculus Rift , the big problem is wires . Wires get you tangled up . Though I think there ’ s some add-ons coming through this year that enable us to do wireless VR . These options are pretty expensive and will add another two or three hundred dollars on top of the VR and the PC running it . The cost in general is a massive drawback , in terms of its ability to draw a mass market . You could produce a social media platform that ’ s entirely within virtual reality , but you would have a very small user base at the moment .
Technically , the main limitations are in terms of how you interact with that virtual world . There ’ s a lot of people thinking of solutions to that . Like gloves so we can interact with object within the virtual world . The big problem at the moment is that it ’ s a one-way communication : there ’ s no force feedback . Visuals , framerate , going wireless , different ways to interact with our virtual world ; all of those , to an extent , are still relatively limited . Obviously it ’ s a long way from that to the dream of Star Trek ’ s holodeck or the Matrix . For developers and investors , there ’ s a reasonably big market for interesting gaming experiences at the moment . Also , 360 movies up until this point generally have been about a particular immersion or experience . Thinking about much more narrative driven 360 movies is gonna be interesting . I think there ’ s lots of possibilities in terms of stories which require us to view them multiple times in order to understand fully .
In the near future , I also see a lot of opportunities for developing applications that will function in VR . Essentially enabling us to visualise things like the internet in virtual reality . And in the longer term than that , as the technology becomes more advanced , all of these things that we see in traditional smartphones we could see translated into VR versions . A virtual variety of social media , for example . That , again , also offers all sorts of interesting possibilities .
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