The VR Predictions Thread of 2018

[Zenbane]

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.

[Zenbane]

Completely agree. Now that they got a real taste of those Rift profits, they will be fiending for more!

[snowdog]

They would have had that in the game when it launched but HTC part-funded the development so you can see why they didn't.

[Zenbane]

I guess the market reminded Bethesda of something very important in business: Never throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[DaftnDirect]

snowdog said:

They would have had that in the game when it launched but HTC part-funded the development so you can see why they didn't.

Yep, I can't really complain if that's the case.

I'm wondering how such funding translates to a Rift patch then... I mean it's possible there's a clause to prohibit future native Rift support. I may have to re-evaluate my optimism.

[snowdog]

Probably a timed exclusive I expect. HTC wouldn't have fronted enough cash for a sole platform deal. Same goes for Sony and Skyrim.

After playing Skyrim VR I'd prefer it if Sony had done the same thing with Fallout 4, no problems at all with performance with Skyrim VR due to the lead platform being less powerful.

Although having a different team on Skyrim VR probably helped matters too.

[GeekyGami]

Alright, my predictions:

When OpenXR comes out, it'll become similar to OpenGL, but for VR.

People will start debates on whether SteamVR or OpenXR is better for the industry to be pushed forward.

People will argue that this will lead to the same problem as BetaMax and VHS.

[bigmike20vt]

Steamvr as I understand it only works natively on the viveand is a wrapper which sits on top of the oculus software..... If I understand it correctly openXR will run natively on all hmds which should mean it will be better (for rift and windows MR users ). It may even be better for vivers. Oculus are involved with open xr so hopefully they will share their tricks like spacewarp etc

[kilobulb]

GeekyGami said:

Alright, my predictions:

When OpenXR comes out, it'll become similar to OpenGL, but for VR.

People will start debates on whether SteamVR or OpenXR is better for the industry to be pushed forward.

People will argue that this will lead to the same problem as BetaMax and VHS.

Is the point not to create one standard so there isn't a repeat of betamax/vhs or bluray/hddvd causing confusion and stalling adoption? This seems to be basically everyone. Is anyone developing a competing standard?

“Khronos’ open APIs have been immensely valuable to the industry, balancing the forces of differentiation and innovation against gratuitous vendor incompatibility. As virtual reality matures and the essential capabilities become clear in practice, a cooperatively developed open standard API is a natural and important milestone. Oculus is happy to contribute to this effort,” said John Carmack, CTO, Oculus VR.

 “The number of VR systems on the market is growing rapidly. Most of these require separate API support from the developer, which is causing huge fragmentation for consumers,” said Gabe Newell of Valve. “Khronos’ work on a standard API to enable applications to target a wide variety of VR devices is an important step to counter that trend.”

Format war averted?

source

[snowdog]

bigmike20vt said:

Steamvr as I understand it only works natively on the viveand is a wrapper which sits on top of the oculus software..... If I understand it correctly openXR will run natively on all hmds which should mean it will be better (for rift and windows MR users ). It may even be better for vivers. Oculus are involved with open xr so hopefully they will share their tricks like spacewarp etc

I'm pretty sure that I remember reading somewhere that when it came to voting in features for OpenXR almost all of the features that made the cut were from the Oculus SDK.

[snowdog]

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