The battle to dominate the world of virtual reality is well underway with major announcements from Facebook and Samsung this week.
When Facebook bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion last year, a lot of people saw it as a pet project for Mark Zuckerberg. But this week at the f8 developers conference, Facebook showed how virtual reality will be a key strategic platform for the company. F8 attendees can test the latest Crescent Bay Oculus rift prototype, which includes higher-resolution graphics and improved position tracking. But better still, executives promised that commercial Oculus Rift headsets would be shipping "in quantity before long."
In other VR news, you can now buy Samsung's Gear VR headset at Best Buy stores for $199. If that price seems low, it is because the Gear VR doesn't include its own display or processor. You have to use it with a Galaxy Note 4, which must be purchased separately.
At this point, Oculus Rift and Gear VR are designed primarily for developers. There are a lot of VR demos to be be seen, but not a lot of actual content. Hype and hyper-reality aside, virtual reality isn't going to be a breakthrough consumer product this year.
We have tested a bunch of VR systems in PC Labs, and they all have limitations. The headsets are pretty clunky, position tracking is janky, and the screen resolutions still leave a lot to be desired. That said, all of these things will improve exponentially over the next few years. And even in the current state, the experience they deliver is pretty impressive.
Plus, with backers like Facebook and Samsung behind it, some kind of virtual reality will likely become part of our daily lives, and not just as goofy way to teleconference with co-workers.
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