Have you noticed that virtual reality has been talked about more and more lately? This is not a new technology, but its popularity is increasing. You can even use it to play games at sites like casino Vulkan online! Virtual reality technology can now be used in many different industries. So, why has its popularity started to rise lately, and what exactly does this technology promise? Below, we answer these questions.
What Does Virtual Reality Promise?
Virtual reality is a technology that offers glasses with a very high-resolution screen. When you wear these glasses, you start to see a virtual world. However, this is not just a fixed image because the glasses can reflect your body movements to that world thanks to their sensors. When you turn your head, the image also changes. When you raise your hands, you can see them on the screen. In other words, you can interact with this virtual world.
Despite these impressive features, virtual reality glasses remained a niche product for a long time. Yes, they have been more popular in the last few years, but previously they were used by a very limited group of gamers. So, what was the reason for this, and why did they become more popular?
Cheaper Production Makes It Widespread
There is a good reason why VR devices haven’t become very common until now. They were very expensive! The biggest and most expensive part of these devices are OLED displays, and they caused the prices of glasses to be high too. Moreover, you still had to connect the glasses to a computer because they depended on an external video card. In other words, these were devices that consisted of just an OLED screen and dozens of sensors. They were not cheap, they had to be used with a computer, and that computer had to have a pricey graphics card.
The new generation of glasses has changed almost all these disadvantages. For example, the Oculus Quest 2 lowered its price by doing the following, yet still managed to offer pretty much the same experience:
- It used an LCD screen instead of OLED and reduced the production cost a lot. However, since this is a screen with a resolution of 1832 x 1920, it managed to achieve an OLED-like image quality.
- By placing the hardware of smartphones in glasses, it ended the dependency on computers. You can use Quest 2 independently, that is, without the need to connect it to a graphics card. You can still do this if you wish, but the glasses are designed to work alone.
Simply put, Quest 2 changed everything that made VR glasses expensive and hard to manufacture. As the manufacturing process got cheaper and easier, the glasses themselves became more widespread and used by more people. That’s why VR technology is getting more and more popular! You no longer have to spend a fortune to buy them.
What Does the Future Offer for Virtual Reality?
However, it is too early to tell whether this is temporary or permanent popularity. VR glasses gained similar popularity when they first hit the market, and everyone believed they would change the world. But that didn’t last long, and anyone who thought they were revolutionary devices was disappointed.
This history may repeat itself. Quest 2 is making virtual reality glasses cheaper and more common, that’s true, but there aren’t any other companies that do the same. Companies like Valve, HTC, and Google aren’t following the Quest 2 example, at least for now. Some have completely stopped the production of VR glasses, while others continue to use the traditional design. This is also due to the fact that Quest 2 was originally designed for META virtual reality. When Mark Zuckerberg makes his virtual world a reality, he wants as many users as possible, and he knows that the biggest barrier to this is the prices. That’s why he designed Quest 2 — he wanted to make inexpensive glasses that anyone could buy.
In other words, Quest 2 has made virtual reality glasses cheaper and more common, but it’s doing this for its ecosystem, not to grow the market. (And we don’t even know if this ecosystem will become a reality.) If other companies follow the same model with similar design changes, we can say that the popularity of VR glasses will continue to increase. However, we do not know at this time whether this will happen. The decisions taken by Valve and HTC will be decisive for the future of this technology.
We want to be hopeful because VR glasses have the potential to change even our daily lives. While they’re mostly used for gaming right now, there’s no limit to what you can do with them. Virtual reality can also be used for purposes such as teaching, communicating, and even curing.