During an interview with Fortune, Oculus VR’s chief technology officer, John Carmack, spoke at length about what it’s like to experience the technology behind the Oculus Rift and where virtual reality might head in the future.
In regard to how today’s virtual reality technology compares to what it was in the past, Carmack outlined that previous projects, either by research companies or military projects, never “got it right”. Whilst those projects were making some small improvements to the technology, Carmack believes that the improvements weren’t hitting the mark.
Compared to the technology behind virtual reality today, Carmack touts that experiencing Oculus technology is like “getting religion on contact”; those who try it out apparently “walk out a believer.”
With the introduction of mobile virtual reality, like Samsung’s Gear VR , Carmack is also optimistic that completely portable and wireless virtual reality headsets will be a thrivable platform.
“At its very core, virtual reality is about being freed from the limitations of actual reality. Carrying your virtual reality with you, and being able to jump into it whenever and wherever you want, qualitatively changes the experience for the better,” he told Fortune.
“Experiencing mobile VR is like when you first tried a decent desktop VR experience. There is a sense that you are glimpsing something from the future. This is science fiction made real, and it’s only just the beginning.”
The chief technology officer later went on to say that virtual reality can also help to merge game technology with traditional media, which is what DreamWorks did during Samsung’s Gear VR event in Germany. Whilst there was a traditional movie playing on the device’s screen, there was a game engine element where characters from the movie would wave or respond to what was going on in the movie itself.
With Gear VR, Carmack concluded that the presence of a mobile competitor will be beneficial to the virtual reality ecosystem, and that it would force Oculus VR to work harder to schedule hardware releases.
[ Source(s): Fortune ]
[ Via: PC Gamer ]