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The VR Predictions Thread of 2018

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
There have been a plethora of predictions tossed around from 2016 thru 2017. Many of those predictions fall short, but we rarely get to take that in, which is a bit of a loss. The ratio is something like: 98% effort put towards making multiple predictions, 2% effort put towards fact-checking to see which predictions turned out true or false.

This thread will attempt to resolve that for all the 2018 predictions that are enroute thanks to:
  • The current ambiguity surrounding Facebook's Rift CV2 plans
  • The general implications of Facebook's stand-alone low-end headset, Oculus GO
  • The bigger implications of Facebooks stand-alone mid-range headset, Santa Cruz

Feel free to post your predictions here. If you catch someone else making a prediction, drop it here as well on their behalf.

I'll begin with predictions for 2018 of my own:

Zenbane's Predictions
  1. Oculus GO will sell over 2 million units by the end of 2018.
  2. Santa Cruz will win a “VR Unit of the Year” Award for 2018.
  3. The Rift CV2 will be announced at the 2018 Facebook Developer Conference with a predicted released date of 2020.
  4. The Pimax 8K HMD from Kickstarter will turn out to be a flop. Either it won’t ship to the general public in 2018 or it will ship but prove so faulty and defective that the industry will determine the product unfit for practical use.
203 REPLIES 203

Anonymous
Not applicable

snowdog said:

Valve will HAVE to announce something soon otherwise we'll see the Pimax Knuckles controllers launching before the Valve Knuckles controllers lol 😮 😄 😄 😄

Or maybe they are both crapping their pants after seeing talk of the gloves Oculus is working on for perhaps in CV2.
Knuckles ( what a name ) may not see the light of day.
😉

Anonymous
Not applicable
The Knuckles controllers will probably get released eventually but the important question is will developers use tracking for those extra two fingers? We hardly ever use those fingers individually in real life so I can't see that many developers using them in games and apps. We generally use them to make a fist or grip and the Touch controllers have that covered. Drinking tea posh and doing the Heavy Metal sign are the only two uses I can think of in real life tbh.

This is why I believe that Oculus didn't add tracking for those two fingers, there isn't any real point in having it.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Atmos73 said:

There’s no point having real weather in Skyrim either, you can’t feel the rain.



Well that's a completely nonsensical reply lol 😮 😄

Anonymous
Not applicable

Atmos73 said:


snowdog said:


Atmos73 said:

There’s no point having real weather in Skyrim either, you can’t feel the rain.



Well that's a completely nonsensical reply lol 😮 😄



Weather gives you an added sense of immersion as does being able to wiggle all five fingers. You don’t really need them but it’s nice when they’re there. If you don’t understand immersion you shouldn’t be in VR. Haha.



And my point still stands. What developer is going to add the option of being able to wiggle your fingers just for the sake of being able to wiggle all of your fingers. If the use of those two fingers was crucial to gameplay then you could understand it but unless you're working on a Posh Tea Drinking Simulator or a Heavy Metal Simulator you won't bother with it.

Manus VR and Noitom Hi5 gloves are dev kits aren't they?

And both cost $1,000 plus extras last time i checked.

They look great but are, ironically, out of reach.
Big PC, all the headsets, now using Quest 3

LZoltowski
Champion
I predict there will be more VR stuff. All shapes and sizes, something for everyone, all ages, al budgets ... no need to argue who's is best or who's is here first 🙂
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Be kind to one another 🙂


Atmos73 said:



Manus VR and Noitom Hi5 gloves are dev kits aren't they?

And both cost $1,000 plus extras last time i checked.

They look great but are, ironically, out of reach.


But they are a reality like Tobii Vive eye trackers. Oculus gloves aren’t even close.

My point is people are dreaming about Oculus tech in the future while Vive tech is here now.



True.
Big PC, all the headsets, now using Quest 3

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
There is a Vive forum for people who want to dream about Vive tech. So far there are no Knuckles and we're already seeing progress on Oculus Gloves which are 100 times better than the terribly over-sized Knuckles.

The original predictions about Knuckles failed. Once a prediction fails please don't repeatedly bump this thread with spam about that exact same prediction.

And it's great if someone prefers Vive over Rift, there's a community for that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

Yes, my CV2/F8 predictions turned out wrong. While Facebook did demo the Half Dome which has the entire Internet talking about a Rift CV2, Facebook did not specifically present it as a Rift CV2.

And my 2020 release prediction for CV2 will probably end up wrong as well, since most people (including myself), now believe that 2019 is more realistic thanks to what we saw at F8.

I need to update the thread with all the latest and greatest prediction results.

I don't mind being wrong about my predictions, which is why you don't see me spamming the thread with attempts to correct them. Unlike "some" people. *cough**cough*

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

Something important to point out about the reason Oculus consumers would be more interested in waiting for Oculus Gloves as opposed to wasting money on the competition is because Facebook-Oculus have a proven track-record of releasing a suite of software to accompany their hardware innovations.

When Touch was released, we had several free games at our disposal: The Unspoken, VR Sports Challenge, Dead & Buried, Oculus Medium, Quill. Facebook-Oculus even goes as far as to combine software innovations, such as combining Oculus Medium sculptures with the new Oculus Home.

Even if Valve's Knuckles manage to come out before the Oculus gloves (which at present day seems as much a dream as believing that Pimax is going to actually release a consumer-ready 8K headset), it won't matter because neither Valve nor HTC have a real history of backing up their hardware with quality software. Look at how long it took to release Fallout 4 and Skyrim for VR, and look at how many updates, fixes, and mods are needed to make them worthwhile. Not to mention that the success of Revive - allowing Vive owners to play Oculus titles - as further evidence of the success model Facebook-Oculus maintains by releasing software to accompany hardware.

The excitement Oculus consumers show is not the result of "dreaming," it is the result of first-hand knowledge of the quality that ends up in our possession, with both hardware and software.

Today's discussion is 2016 all over again, when HTC launched with room-scale and hand-controllers first. This community was told the same thing: We're dreaming about future tech when the competition has it now. But the counter-argument is the same: The competition has an implementation that isn't worth the investment, we'd rather wait for something more sophisticated and innovative.

Now it's 2018 and the dialogue hasn't changed; yet it very much should.