Will VR ever miss the mainstream as soon as Apple headsets reach Europe?

To get a sense of society’s interest within the visual professional, what better place to find Apple’s very high-tech, very expensive digital reality (VR) headset – finally introduced in the United Kingdom and Europe on Friday – than one of its private shops?

Within the month, the nation camped outside Apple branches overnight, they were so determined to get their hands on the tech giant’s untouched product.

However, when I was in its section in central London on a Friday morning, there was only a small team, made up basically of men, waiting for the viewable door.

Partly, this is because countries nowadays prioritize the ease of pre-ordering.

But it probably also tells us something about the question that continues to dominate the VR headset market: will it ever leave the realm of tech geeks and truly move into the mainstream?

Apple’s plan to divest its product is to position it as a product that does what you already do – only better. Home movies become 3-D-like, with panoramic images spanning 360 degrees around you, from floor to ceiling. Apple helps remind me that it screams about this “spatial content”. No one else does. However, there is a significant amount of pressure on the price of visual professionals – A whopping £3,499.

Facebook boss Meta is watching Apple’s approach carefully. It’s been a long day in the VR game. In a contemporary demo of Meta Quest 3, which is available in the United Kingdom from 2023, the staff were very keen to talk to me about “multi-tasking” – having more than one monitor on without delay. In one of the demos, I had the Internet browser, YouTube, and Messenger in that order. “We always did it, we just didn’t really talk about it,” a Metra worker told me.

And In your most recent advertisement, a person wears the Quest 3 to watch video instructions while building a crib. Probably not the most exciting concept, but it shows how Meta wants the country to view its technology.

Oh – and this Prices not up to £500,

Apple and Meta are two important players, although VR is a crowded market – there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different headsets already available on the market.

However what unites them all is that none of them have left any stone unturned to break into the mainstream.

So far, Visual Professional has only been on sale in the United States – analysis company IDC estimates it will move fewer than 500,000 devices in the future.

The Meta, which has been available in the market for a longer period of time, no longer crunches gross sales figures for the Quest, but it is believed to have sold around 20 million worldwide.

VR headsets are nowhere near as ubiquitous as drugs, let alone the unloved cellphones.

And it will get worse – many of the units offered are isolated, said George Dziziashvili, an analyst at marketplace analysis company Omdia.

“This is largely due to the limited flow of compelling content to maintain engagement,” he said.

However, all the rarity of the content results in diminished passion – and a discounted incentive for developers to get that content out into the playground first.

“It’s a chicken-and-egg situation,” Mr Dziyashvili told the BBC.

Alan Boyce, founder of mixed truth studio Dragonfire, warned that early adopters of Visual Professional should “be patient” before additional content arrives.

This is where the Quest 3 wins for him – it already has a “robust library” of video games, and can perform the same digital desktop functions as the Visual Professional.

And IDC analyst Francisco Geronimo says we shouldn’t rush into Apple’s gradual rollout of its new product.

“There’s always this expectation that Apple will sell millions of each product, the comparison is always to the iPhone,” he said.

Although the truth is that the iPhone also took a day to find its toes – and a larger selection of consumers.

According to Melissa Otto from S&P World Marketplace Perception, the iPhone only became mainstream when the app bind “began to explode with apps that added value to our lives”.

“When people start to feel like their lives are getting better and more convenient, that’s when they’re ready to take the leap,” he said.

However there’s also another point to be reckoned with: the physical experience of using the headset.

Each Apple and Meta use so-called “passthrough” generation, which is called mixed truth – a mix of the real and computer-generated worlds.

Using the camera on the outside of the headset, customers are given a live, high-definition video feed of their setting – meaning they can take it while doing things like walking or exercising.

However, strapping something weighing a kilogram to your face isn’t something that feels particularly natural. In general, headsets are lighter now than they used to be, but I still can’t trust myself to wear one for hours at a time – although a colleague says he often does.

A large section of the country, including myself, has a skilled VR weakness, which is when being in VR makes you feel uneasy. This has come a long way as the technology has become complex and has far fewer weaknesses – although any experience in which you’re walking around with a controller in lieu of your toes will still take some aging. .

Maximum VR reports now come with all kinds of settings to avoid this, like a feature to “teleport” between locations. Sony’s VR game Horizon: Name of the Mountain solved the weakness by allowing you to get out of the way by moving your fingers up and down – it sounds silly, but it’s a way to trick the brain and avoid nausea.

No matter what the professionals say, the companies themselves seem enthusiastic about their products and their strengths.

What is disagreeable is that the long-term ambition of the tech giants is for mixed, or augmented truth, to become the common truth. Facebook owner Meta renamed itself according to its grand plan for us all to live in a digital world called the Metaverse – running around, relaxing and enjoying ourselves there, and seeing ourselves as virtual avatars of our habitual selves. to present or to show. It turns out that everyone’s peace has disappeared somewhat during the week.

But in that one generation they’re all right, something will replace our phones and maybe that thing is a way to VR headsets. Sooner or later, I hope these things start looking like goggles and not like giant ski goggles… if they’re not brain implants (I’m not kidding).

“What these devices look like today — I think we know it’s not a mass-market device. It’s very heavy, it’s very awkward,” Mr. Dziyashvili said.

This is a segment where rivals have focused their efforts, with Vischer and Xreal producing sunglasses with high-fidelity monitors.

Melissa Brown, head of construction family at Meta, told us that she “definitely” thinks the Quest 3 could just turn a generation of smartphones. However, the PR staff for the later generation Meta was contacted with an additional stoic response from Mark Zuckerberg, in which he stated that “the last generation of computing doesn’t end… it’s not when we get phones , then people stopped using computers “.

Based on what I saw at the Apple package in London’s Regent Street, the United Kingdom isn’t going to be a country full of Visual Professionals or someone walking around in Quest 3s.

The first actual buyer I mentioned actually came in for a charger and was somewhat taken aback by the applause from the Apple employees when he came in.

However, within the few hours we were there, several countries walked out smiling with heavy white Apple bags. The question remains: how many more people might be determined to do so.