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Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

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Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#91

Post by duxup »

SeanDav wrote: post #8

It could just be that VR at Gooogle scale is not ready. There may still be a huge part for VR to play in "niche" markets like games, training simulators, data visualization etc.

Yeah perhaps there's just not that much room for large companies who want to throw gobs of money and resources at it.

Smaller players, even capable hobbyists, who iterate and find what works and what doesn't and keep rolling on / don't shutdown if they don't hit a goal in X time, might just be the folks who find what works.

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#92

Post by miketuritzin »

andybak wrote: post #30
melling wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t everyone see more in AR, at least in the near term. Even conservative Apple is was working on AR. The ability to augment the real world has lots of useful benefits.

They are complementary and overlapping. You don't want AR if you're aiming for a sense of immersion. The real world just gets in the way. You don't want VR if you also need to engage with your environment. Taking a headset on and off is a productivity killer. But VR can approximate AR with pass-through cameras. And AR will at some point approximate VR if it's overlaying enough of it's own stuff that the real environm…

Exactly. AR and VR are different sides of the same coin and will converge. I am certain that Facebook is investing so much into VR because of the ultimate promise of AR as a platform, not because of a belief in VR "over" AR.

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#93

Post by T-A »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #79
pmoriarty wrote: post #5

How's the market for VR doing in general? Is it growing or shrinking? Around the time the first Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Microsoft's HoloLens were released some years back seemed to be high water mark of media stories about VR. Since then it seems to be pretty quiet. Is VR dying on the vine?

It's still a niche, but growing steadily. Here's a spreadsheet I'm maintaining with statistics from Steam's monthly hardware survey: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12GKZ3qsTZ7WuC_lj1-04... As you can see, over the past 2 years we've gone from 0.36% of Steam users having a PC VR headset, to 0.89%. We're also nearing the launch of the next generation of VR headsets. Both Vive and Oculus have products in develop…

Nice resource! One thing worth keeping in mind: the Steam survey only sees a VR headset if the VR software stack is running while the survey is taken, and that requires the headset to be plugged in and powered up. So those figures likely underestimate the number of VR-equipped systems by some significant factor. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's 2 or 3.

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#94

Post by miketuritzin »

tallanvor wrote: post #9
pmoriarty wrote: post #5

How's the market for VR doing in general? Is it growing or shrinking? Around the time the first Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Microsoft's HoloLens were released some years back seemed to be high water mark of media stories about VR. Since then it seems to be pretty quiet. Is VR dying on the vine?

It seems that with VR the technology isn't really there yet, especially at the price needed for mass adoption. It's not clear to me that any company is really ready to put in more money to move it forward right now. But at the speed things are moving, it wouldn't surprise me to see another push in 2-5 years. AR is the more interesting space right now. On the consumer side, Pokemon, Ingress, and the new Harry Potter g…

The same could be said even moreso about (wearable) AR - that the technology isn't there yet, especially at a price needed for mass adoption. I see VR and AR as different sides of the same coin, and I believe that Facebook does as well from various comments they have made. Many of the technological problems are similar (with VR being "easier" to solve). It seems pretty clear to me that Facebook is investing heavily in VR because they see AR as being a big future platform. (And FB is still putting a lot of resources into VR, with the imminent release of Oculus Quest and continued heavy R&D.)

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#95

Post by oliveshell »

moron4hire wrote: post #88
michaelscott wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hawking" can also refer to the sale of goods, usually in a kind of bazaar-like fashion

No, that's "hocking".

Actually, it’s “hawking”!

To hock something is to pawn it, i.e. sell it because you need the money (and possibly plan to buy it back later):

https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/19/hock-hawk/

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#96

Post by victords »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #79
pmoriarty wrote: post #5

How's the market for VR doing in general? Is it growing or shrinking? Around the time the first Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Microsoft's HoloLens were released some years back seemed to be high water mark of media stories about VR. Since then it seems to be pretty quiet. Is VR dying on the vine?

It's still a niche, but growing steadily. Here's a spreadsheet I'm maintaining with statistics from Steam's monthly hardware survey: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12GKZ3qsTZ7WuC_lj1-04... As you can see, over the past 2 years we've gone from 0.36% of Steam users having a PC VR headset, to 0.89%. We're also nearing the launch of the next generation of VR headsets. Both Vive and Oculus have products in develop…

It's not dying, but 0.89% seems awfully low tho...

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#97

Post by Ajedi32 »

T-A wrote: post #93
Ajedi32 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a niche, but growing steadily. Here's a spreadsheet I'm maintaining with statistics from Steam's monthly hardware survey: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12GKZ3qsTZ7WuC_lj1-04... As you can see, over the past 2 years we've gone from 0.36% of Steam users having a PC VR headset, to 0.89%. We're also nearing the launch of the next generation of VR headsets. Both Vive and Oculus have products in develop…

Nice resource! One thing worth keeping in mind: the Steam survey only sees a VR headset if the VR software stack is running while the survey is taken, and that requires the headset to be plugged in and powered up. So those figures likely underestimate the number of VR-equipped systems by some significant factor. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's 2 or 3.

Yeah, that little quirk is both a blessing and a curse, because while it does make it harder to judge the actual number of VR-equipped systems, it also makes the numbers more representative of _active_ VR users rather than just users who _have_ a headset but don't often use it.

If you're trying to judge the size of the market in absolute numbers, you also have to account for the fact that this survey only measures _Steam_ users. So Rift users who don't use Steam, and owners of non-PC VR headsets like PSVR aren't included.

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#98

Post by Ajedi32 »

victords wrote: post #96
Ajedi32 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a niche, but growing steadily. Here's a spreadsheet I'm maintaining with statistics from Steam's monthly hardware survey: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12GKZ3qsTZ7WuC_lj1-04... As you can see, over the past 2 years we've gone from 0.36% of Steam users having a PC VR headset, to 0.89%. We're also nearing the launch of the next generation of VR headsets. Both Vive and Oculus have products in develop…

It's not dying, but 0.89% seems awfully low tho...

Like I said; still a niche, but growing. Though to put that in perspective, that's still higher than the number of Steam users who run Linux (0.77%).

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#99

Post by drharby »

coldtea wrote: post #89
brandnewlow wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Mobile” was the same until it was just everywhere.

Not really, mobile exploded immediately (in the early nineties), and kept expanding (with the smartphone boom).

Early 90s isnt an explosion by a long shot.

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#100

Post by reaperducer »

coldtea wrote: post #89
brandnewlow wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Mobile” was the same until it was just everywhere.

Not really, mobile exploded immediately (in the early nineties), and kept expanding (with the smartphone boom).

As someone who developed WAP sites for mobile phones, I remember it differently.

Also, in the "Early 90's," state of the art was an AMPS Motorola bag phone on Cellular One.

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