The really big lies of Virtual Reality (VR)

Is Virtual Reality (VR) is more hype than "reality"? This is as valid a question now as ever.

Over the years I have met with VC's and tech people I have often been astounded by how little investors understood the underlying technologies they were investing in. No greater example of this divide exists than in Virtual Reality.

Six years ago I made the rounds to finance a VR camera system and a larger VR screen network on college campuses. Both proposals met with lots of interest but nobody could really understand the appeal of VR. We were a bit early in the game. A short while later Facebook did its massive over payment for Oculus Rift, and cobbled together hardware hack with dubious IP at the time, and well the rest is history.

However the thing that emerged was that nobody really understood the hardware and issues of VR. Having built a full on 3D camera system a few years earlier the challenges of VR were quite apparent to all the 3D manufacturers but the VR people were mostly from the computer design side of hardware and almost all of them had zero real optical-mechanical experience. So while VC's were throwing millions into systems that could not work -- such as strings of Gopro's in a ring and calling it a "VR system" the people who already had lived through the hell of synchronization and white balance matching with Stereoscopic 3D were for the most part not tapped. Worse many of these systems on the capture side infringed on already existing patents, yet the money flowed!

Let me point out many of the obvious failures of Virtual Reality that apparently most laypeople and press just ignore:

1) People mostly like the 3D aspect of VR not the VR itself: What Cardboard and Oculus did was make a very efficient 3D delivery system to the masses. If you took the time to look up Google searches you would still find VR Porn, virtual reality porn, VR sex, etc. to be in the top 3. But most of this VR porn is actually just 3D porn converted, and guess what people like it just fine. Why? Because when you are screwing you do not look at the ceiling or the floor, or behind you, you look at the object of desire before you and if its in 3D you don't care. Before you blow this off remember that this is still one of the top searches and one of the top potential monetization streams. Personalized 3D is powerful, and more powerful I would argue than 2D VR.

2) Inter pupilary distance? Why should I care!: This is critical tech here. If you want to make VR there is an optical path between the display and your eyeball unless you are painting the eye with the system. What this means is that you have to center the optic over the eye. Easy? Nope. This is why when you get a pair of prescription glasses the doctor measures your eyes with a little ruler because everyone is different. In VR when you put on the system its like putting on a mismatched prescription = headache. This is a huge issue. This is why most VR is short as until you can essentially figure out the viewers optical issues and adjust the system to them you are straining their eyes and their brain. 3D increases the strain, which is why most of the longer programs are 2D. This is a major colossal issue. If you can solve this problem then you will also most likely be able to write prescription glasses, do away with eye exams, create a simple path to online eyeglasses from scratch and bring corrected vision to everyone on earth, all of which means its a larger financial payout than VR (or VR is not really as important as the other biz opportunities you have to solve to make good VR)

3) VR is a not going to replace traditional story telling ever: VR is a gimmick. Remember 3D? Remember all that hype? Remember the billions spent there? How is your 3D TV coming along? Same cycle, overlapping tech, many of the same issues different product. Also VR creates a desire to interact, you "search" for visual info and in the process often miss the story. Well crafted VR has more in common with magic shows and careful misdirection then it does with traditional story. It is the difference between playing a game and watching a movie. Different and people often like to just be a spectator not a participant and this seems to be lost on many of the VR promoters. Back in 2008 we made an IMAX format film called Cosmic Journey 3D, and sold it to CCTV China. It was then converted to VR format and loaded onto youtube and within 2 weeks hit a respectable 160k views, and by the time we took down all of them it was about 500k views. This was at a time when the content offered by Oculus was typically getting 1/5th that many views. Point being that content is still more important than delivery system. People liked that it was cool 3D, it really was not VR, yet it out performed 99% of VR titles without an audio track I should add.

4) You do not need VR: There will become a time when you will need AR as there are more uses (and more tech hurdles) there. I worked on a project that would recognize and tag faces of people approaching you and tell you their names. I would buy that because I need it. VR skiing, VR horror, VR meeting rooms, I can live without. I do like VR for visualizing products and spaces like real estate, or in the medical profession - places where VR has been active for decades before there ever was a company called Oculus. However, it is still not an indispensable technology and may never ever be one.

5) VR is a great platform for advertising-NOT: Yes there is VR advertising. Yes, there are people who watch it, but in the end there is not significant market penetration and more importantly the amount spent on VR could probably be better spent elsewhere. In the end agencies have budgets and they call themselves "creatives" so they spend their clients money on VR in order to say they did. Call me callous but that is the "reality" of VR advertising spend. The people who point to VR successes which often involve VR storytelling might have been just as good (and less costly) as just regular stories.

Final disclaimer is that I left VR about two years ago to pursue animation because I believe the next big changes to the way we create, deliver, and consume content will be there not on a funky headache creating headset on your head. Enough for now, I have to get back to the reality of my day.

Jonathan