This week HTC unveiled its first new phone in some time, but as a reminder that the company has mostly switched to VR headsets now, the Desire 22 Pro has been unveiled as a partner of the HTC Vive Flow. Meanwhile, we continue to hear rumors about Apple’s revolutionary VR headset, Sony is trying to keep the PSVR 2 on schedule, and Mark Zuckerberg is showing off prototypes for advanced AR / VR headsets.
What do you think: Does virtual reality have a future beyond their current niche? Zuckerberg’s ideas on the Metaverse would have you believe that virtual reality will soon be a viable way to both work and play. But smartphone makers have been trying virtual reality for a while and it shut down almost as quickly as 3D. Remember Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR? For consumers, for now, virtual reality is mostly a niche thing.
It doesn’t help that there are so many types of VR headsets. The early Vive, Oculus, and Sony were head-mounted displays (HMDs) with head tracking showing graphics from a PC or console. These are perfect for AAA games and corporate use, for example some designers and architects use them to showcase their work to clients. State-of-the-art games and highly detailed models require a lot of processing power and a PC / console can provide that, but it’s not a portable setup.
The most popular VR headset right now is the Oculus Quest, a standalone headset that runs its own software on an integrated chipset. Similar to that is Cardboard and Gear VR, which used the phone’s processing power and display as key components for the headset. These are highly portable, and as long as you don’t need industry-leading graphics fidelity, they can be just as capable.
There are simple head-mounted displays like last year’s TCL Nxtwear G – no head sensing here, just a pair of lightweight goggles that create a 140 “virtual display. As simple as they are, they do a great job of letting you watch a film on a plane or get some work done with something like DeX or other desktop modes. In a way they are like foldable phones, a smart way to have a large but portable display.
Then there are Augmented Reality or AR glasses. Boeing technicians used Google Glass to build airplanes, the glasses superimposed important information on the components and displayed instructions on how they should be assembled. Microsoft’s HoloLens tries to render more advanced graphics, but despite several game demos, it’s mostly used as a distraction-free way to have instructions always visible at the factory.
What kind of head-mounted display do you think has the best chance of becoming the next best thing? Could one of these replace smartphones someday? Or will they forever remain niche products for games and corporate uses?
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