Oculus is certainly not new in any way. But although some of my colleagues from Mobile Nations had fun, until this last week in Taipei I had my first experience. And it completely changed the way I thought about it.
For the better.
So here’s the thing. I’ve always thought of VR in general as something useless, a little flashy, a little, well, pointless. Although Microsoft promoted the real-world usability of their augmented reality HoloLens project, I’ve never seen the appeal of VR products like Oculus.
Thanks to NVIDIA, who used the latest Oculus dev kits to showcase the capabilities of their new GTX 980 Ti graphics card, I’m happy to report that I’ve changed my mind about it. Personally, I still see HoloLens as the way forward in the «real world.» But I would like to play games with Oculus.
The demo we saw was some kind of futuristic setting filled with bullets, explosions, flying cars and giant robotic monsters. The details and the level of immersion really blew me away, but it also highlights how important the hardware is.
Compared to the Oculus-supported Samsung Gear VR, for example, a much more affordable consumer headset or Google Cardboard, the difference is day and night. With VR, you need pixels, you need raw power to make the experience fucking go.
So I’m not going to write lyrics on it, but I’m very impressed that I always assumed I wouldn’t. Instead, I’m thinking about where technology for gamers will go. A completely immersive battlefield where are you actually in action? Perhaps a future version of FIFA, where are you actually on the pitch?