Virtual & Augmented Reality For Dummies

Chapter 12

Assessing the Future of Virtual Reality

IN THIS CHAPTER

Analyzing near-future changes for virtual reality

Evaluating the potential market

Predicting the impact of future updates

Virtual reality (VR) has been a red-hot industry since the Oculus DK1 Kickstarter in 2013, and many of the advances since then have been powered by the momentum that that initial spark provided. With the release of second-generation hardware, the momentum of the first generation will have fully dissipated and the reality of VR will be setting in.

Will this second generation continue on the same explosive trajectory as the first? Or will the hype begin to cool as early adopters drop out, attracted by some newer tech object to obsess over? Or will reality fall somewhere in between, as VR moves past the hype and settles into the Slope of Enlightenment (see Chapter 1), slowly gaining adoption as more and more use cases for the technology are revealed.

In this chapter, I take a look at some of the changes we can expect in the near future, for better or for worse, for VR. I explore the market and provide some information on what you might expect in that area. I also discuss how you may be able to ...