10 predictions for VR in 2016

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The end of the year is the golden time for the Prophecy Emperor’s activities.

Various predictions from various industries and schools are coming out at this time, including VR. The following 10 predictions about the development of VR in the next year come from an article in the technology community TechRepublic. Whether they are accurate or not is another matter, and the content is for reference only.

VR Popularization Next Year: Public Understanding, Market Education, More Content

Prediction 1: Next year will be an important year for the public to understand VR

Currently, a large number of people do not know about VR, and some have not even heard of it, but next year more people will be exposed to and understand it. Brian Blau, an analyst at market research firm Gartner, said: "One day, everyone will realize the value of VR, and this understanding will be different from the past."

Currently, most people find the value of VR in the consumer market. Although the relevant killer applications have not yet appeared, a certain understanding will gradually form, and people prefer to do what with VR devices.

Prediction 2: VR promotion will intensify

Eric Abbruzzese of market research firm ABI Research said that the media will play a big role in promoting the development of VR. He said: "If the media can be as positive as I think and fully embrace VR, people will think it is more important than they think."

However, the current price of VR devices is not very affordable. Therefore, Abbruzzese compares VR devices to OLED TVs: the market feedback is good, but the popularity is still very limited because it is expensive.

Therefore, the industry will need to increase its publicity efforts next year to expand the consumer base and make the pie bigger. At the same time, the price of equipment will also drop accordingly.

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Prediction 3: VR content will increase

At present, major science fiction films such as "Divergent 2: Return of the Jedi", "Jurassic World", "The Martian", and "Star Wars" have specially created VR experiences as a means of promoting the films. Although it is often just a short film, it means a lot. In this regard, Abbruzzese said that the industry will increase its investment in VR content. He said:

"We may not see big-budget games specifically for VR yet, but there will definitely be games that support VR. Towards the end of 2016 and early 2017, I think we'll start to see a lot of dedicated VR games... We're just starting to see what the hardware needs to do to support this kind of content."

In addition, according to investment bank DigiCapital, the market size of VR content will reach around US$30 billion by 2020.

VR development characteristics next year: pioneers, mobile phones, interaction, and diversification

Prediction 4: Buyers will still be the first to try

Although Blau believes that VR will be widely popularized next year, he predicts that the buyers of VR equipment are not the mass market yet, but mainly those who are interested in VR and willing to spend money. These people may have experienced VR and even have related equipment. But they are curious and like to try new things. This group of people also includes some corporate users. No matter how big the brand is, their subordinate departments - public relations, marketing, market, etc. are likely to boldly try VR.

“It’s a bit like a chicken and egg relationship,” Blau said. “Brands want to be in the mass market, but in order to effectively sell, they allocate more spending to a certain segment of the population. So, in the first few years, we were talking about niche users rather than mass market.”

Prediction 5: In the market education stage, mobile VR helmets are still the vanguard

This year, we have seen many cases of cheap VR entering the homes of ordinary people. For example, The New York Times gave away free Google Cardboard helmets to subscribers. Another example is the recent cooperation between Lucasfilm, US operator Verizon and Google, where users can get a free Star Wars-themed Cardboard in Verizon stores.

Even though many people argue that 360-degree videos do not belong to VR, it is important to allow more people to get the "VR experience" in a low-cost way. Helen Situ, product manager of NextVR, said that Google did a great job in launching the simplest and most feasible VR product in the form of Cardboard, and it gave the public a preliminary understanding of VR.

Samsung's Gear VR is more advanced than Cardboard. Although the main computing center and display screen are still the mobile phone, the helmet has built-in sensors, which provides a better experience than relying solely on the sensors of the mobile phone. Moreover, its price is relatively affordable, only $99.

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Prediction 6: Interactivity becomes increasingly important

With VR, people don’t want to be passive, they want to move around and interact with the VR environment. Although most people would call 360-degree videos VR videos, this is incorrect. True VR videos can feel interactive.

In addition, regarding the issue of interaction, many manufacturers think of controllers. For example, Oculus launched the Touch handle, and HTC Vive also created a manual controller specifically for VR.

Prediction 7: VR content will become more diversified

The video game industry has always had a diversity problem. In essence, VR has something in common with the video game industry, so it also needs to address diversity issues, such as how to attract more women and minorities to participate in content production.

At this year's Silicon Valley VR Conference (SVVR), an audience member asked professionals including Oculus founder Palmer Luckey: How to attract more minorities to develop VR content? In response, Luckey said that most of the talent for VR content development will come from the gaming industry. He admitted that most of them are white men, and this is the current situation.

Karl Krantz, founder of the Silicon Valley VR Alliance, said there has been an increase in the number of women, though not in droves.

“[The gender imbalance] became apparent very quickly as the VR community exploded. I’ve always viewed VR as an opportunity to start over, and hopefully we can learn from past mistakes.”

Challenges VR may encounter: Slowing pace and insufficient production capacity

Prediction 8: VR development may slow down for a while

Although VR seems to be very popular in China at present, people have found that the pace of VR development has slowed down for a period of time.

Abbruzzese said that "people who weren't familiar with VR a month ago now know about it," and their expectations of VR will become high. But when the reality is revealed, they will be disappointed.

“We introduce a new product after a while of hype, and then it dies down and people get tired of it,” said Tom Furness, director of the Human Computer Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington. “We go back to a kind of stagnant state. It’s somewhere between where we were before and where we were in 2016.”

Prediction 9: Insufficient production capacity

When Gear VR was released in November, it was snapped up by crazy consumers and even Amazon was out of stock, which attracted great attention from the media. For Gear VR, being able to make headlines is undoubtedly a good thing, but people began to wonder how many devices Samsung has produced. In response, Krantz told the truth and publicly stated at a conference that Samsung's production capacity is insufficient.

"It looks like they're not producing fast enough," he said.

Oh, by the way, the last prophecy is this:

10. Don't expect anything from Apple or Nintendo.

Just don't.