VR Headset Tech: It’s More Affordable and Better than Ever

Virtual Reality For The Masses is Here at Last

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VR Headset Tech
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Published: November 5, 2020

Rebekah Carter

Rebekah Carter

Think of virtual reality headsets, and what pops to mind?

For most people, it’s one of those clunky pieces of hefty plastic that suddenly doubles the weight of your head and pushes down on the bridge of your nose. That has been the reality for VR headsets for a while now – but perhaps not for long.

The VR headset is going through an evolution similar to that of the mobile phone. Initially, your portable phones were huge items that required their own briefcase for transportation. Now, you can fit an entire computer system in your jacket pocket.

In the same way, virtual reality headsets started life as large and uncomfortable – but they’re gradually improving. The Oculus Quest 2 headsets are much more compact (and practical) than their predecessors. Compared with the previous options on the market, this product is much cheaper, more lightweight, and more intelligent. The Quest 2 can even detect the position of your head.

Imagine where we’ll be five years from now?

VR Headset Hardware is Evolving

Vendors in the extended reality landscape are steadily improving the capabilities of their hardware while decreasing weight, price, and complexity. Like the mobile phone or even the laptop, VR headsets are going through a period of careful refinement in engineering and design.

Initially, like any innovative tech, VR was an expensive investment, difficult to set up, and with a high barrier to entry for most consumers. Back in the 1990s, a VR headset would have cost you around £6,500 in the UK. A set of VR gloves would cost another £13,000, and a system that tracked your position would cost around £5,000. That’s over £25,000 for the full experience.

However, the initial experimentations helped engineers and designers experiment with what might be possible. In the past decade, video games, smartphones, and other innovations have made the software and hardware required for virtual reality more available. One particularly crucial moment in VR’s history is when, a couple of years ago, consumer devices became able to create real-time graphics fast enough to provide a truly immersive experience.

Today’s VR devices can take advantage of powerful processors already available to the consumer. There are vivid color screens, sensors, and cameras available from the smartphone industry. Game engines simultaneously make virtual environments easier to build. All the while, the price of the headset is falling. Most consumer headsets range from £300 to £1,5000, with new manufacturers getting involved all the time.

The toolkits available to create systems for virtual reality mean that the market is much less restricted too. Anyone can begin building a VR experience these days, and many younger developers are getting involved – particularly in the game and entertainment space. Free versions of VR experiences are rolling out on the marketplace almost constantly.

The Future of Headsets is Here

It’s not just accessibility to better graphics that are making the VR headset more impressive. True immersion also required reduced latency. You need to feel as though the images on the screen in front of you are responding to your movements in real-time. In the 1990s, the latency in VR devices was high, often around 150 milliseconds. Most consumer headsets today have latency levels less than 20 milliseconds, thanks to better sensor and chip technology.

In this new landscape, it’s not the hardware that’s holding companies back anymore – it’s the software. Companies need to develop experiences that customers can really buy into in these new virtual environments. With successful VR headsets emerging, there’s a lot of room for companies to dive in and start constructing new worlds, but it will take time for the trend to catch on.

All the while, we’re beginning to see new innovations on the horizon that show where the future of VR headsets could be heading. Finnish company, Varjo, creates high-end headsets that have near human-eye resolution. This means that you could have an experience that’s as real as what you see around you every day. Specialist optics will permit designers to show anything up to 3,000 pixels per inch – covering the entire field of view.

Varjo’s founder says that better optical resolution will make it easier to examine fine details in a virtual environment. The headsets also have a gaze tracker, to determine where the wearers are looking to find what they need. This will make it easier to determine where a person’s gaze moves during a virtual reality experience, and therefore create more valuable VR moments.

Elsewhere, business leaders in the AR and VR environment are experimenting with more comfortable and fashionable versions of the standard headset. Magic Leap – a startup from Florida – has introduced a headset to the market that looks more like a cyberpunk set of sunglasses than the original blocks of technology we’re used to. At the same time, the Microsoft HoloLens follows a similar design – akin to a set of skiing goggles. Currently, this is considered to be the most capable AR products on the market.

Getting Ahead with Headsets

As the technology available to today’s vendors continues to change, the opportunities in headset development are limitless. Not only will companies be making headsets that feel better to wear, but they’ll be producing technology that’s far more immersive and impressive too.

Going forward, we can begin to look forward to headsets that feel like a natural accessory in the business and consumer landscape. More importantly, the virtual worlds these headsets introduce us to will be more incredible too. Developments in headsets for virtual reality will also lead to new transformations in tools available for augmented reality.

As we head into a future that’s enriched by things like 5G connections for low-latency streaming, and better 4K quality video, the options are endless. Already, companies like Facebook are experimenting with smart glasses in the form of a pair of enhanced Ray-Bans.

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