One area of technology that I am very interested in is VR (Virtual Reality). It allows users to experience things in the most immersive way that we can achieve with our current technology (at least until we get something like a real life Matrix or Holo-deck). It’s benefits and potential are seemingly endless. It’s immersive nature is excellent for content consumption as the view is no longer looking at a flat screen, but seemingly exists in the environment and world. Pairing it’s immersivness with how interactive it is should create the perfect gaming experience. And the ability to interact with things freely in a 3D environment should also be very useful to productivity and creative workflows. No longer are users constrained to a single screen but instead should be able to place UI elements anywhere in their environment, while creative individuals such as sculptors and modelers are able to look around their model as if it physically existed in their space.

We are at the point where users can buy a complete all-in-one VR headset for about the price of a smartphone, allowing this technology to become more accessible to new users who would be driven away by its cost. However adoption for this sort of experience is still seen as more niche as it still has a few hurdles to overcome. VR has become a lot easier to use thanks to these all-in-one systems, which means less tech savvy users are able to try it out with minimal assistance, though you’ll still hear complaints that many of these headsets are uncomfortable for being very big and heavy on your face, low resolution or visual clarity, low field of view, etc. There are options such as the Bigscreen Beyond which make wearing a VR headset almost like wearing swimming goggles with increased immersion, however this leads into the next big issue with VR: the cost. VR often showcases many cutting edge pieces of technology which can drive up it’s cost seemingly exponentially! The Bigscreen Beyond 2, for example, features micro-OLED displays in order to achieve its high resolution and refresh rate for the best immersion, leading it to cost over 1000$. On top of that, the Bigscreen Beyond still needs controllers in order to interact with the world, trackers to track the headset and controllers, and (most importantly) a powerful PC to create these realistic graphics. Not only do each of these components add additional cost, but it also increases the technical skill needed to setup and properly enjoy these setups, which severely hurts its chances of anyone but enthusiasts from adopting into this ecosystem. In the third corner, the Apple Vision Pro tries to reduce this complexity significantly, offering an easy experience similar to that of Meta and Pico. It also offers some of the bleeding edge technology that makes the experience much more comfortable and immersive, though at a price point that starts at ~3500$!

One of the cool aspects of VR is that as it’s a community full of enthusiasts, we have plenty of projects from small teams, large companies, and even just random strangers as part of a community, all experimenting to see what features stick and what unique experiences can be created from the growing technology. One project I had a keen interest in was SlimeVR, an open-source project to create motion capturing trackers which allows you to track your real-world body movement so your limbs move accurately in virtual space. Motion trackers have existed for a while and are even popular in other industries such as film (A cool example is how Avatar uses trackers to map human movement to the CGI models for the Na’vi aliens) though could cost anywhere from 300$ per tracker or even a couple thousand dollars for a full motion capture suit. However thanks to community efforts for SlimeVR, an average user could get a full body tracking setup for what was the price of 1 tracker, or a more tech savvy user could even make their own sometimes under 100$!