Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 01:58:51 -0500
From: "Anders Backman" <andersb@cs.umu.se>
Subject: Is VR dead?
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Hi all.

After working a couple of years in the VR community it seems that things
have changed, a lot.

Someone said: - The failure of gloves and goggles.
Refering to that using an HMD and goggles (with trackers) was supposed
to change the way 
Of life. But it has failed. Due to sloppy hardware, latency (sloppy
hardware?)
Cables, high costs etc...

I can see some areas where VR is still alive:

* Visualizations using Powerwall (car industry, research, oil)
Usually in the car industry no trackersystems are used, they just don't
work.

* Driving simulators www.oryx.se is a good example of that.

Ok, there are some applications using HMD:s too, but are they really
making a profit?
How many are they?


I can see some trends:

* A lot of VR companies are struggling to survive. (some are already
gone)
They still try to charge a lot of money for products not delivering what
they should.
People blaim interaction methods, bad hardware, bad software.

* In the latest Medicine meets VR conference a lot of researchers were
using game engines such as Unreal, Quake etc..
They are for free (but beware of the monster warning. Some research
results show that test subjects are afraid that monsters will jump to
them behind the next turn, just because the "feeling" of the
environment.)

* Try to find a decent HMD nowdays, its impossible. None is doing any
development in this area. Nothing really new. (VRT will change the way
of life, anyone heard thatone before?)
It seems that company research in the VR-hardware area has stalled?

* Vrsource website, not much new there compared to gamasutra and all the
other game sites.

* A lot of research institutes have VR websites dated 00 and older.

* More and more research seems to directly be aimed at gaming and
animation (more money?)

So Im looking forward to a discussion here.
(I will probably also publish this onto the Vrsource webforum!)

I really look forward to the VR2002 conference.
I really don't want VR to be dead. So prove me wrong.

Is VR dead?


________________________________________________________________
 Anders Backman               Email:    andersb@cs.umu.se
 HPC2N/VRlab                  Phone:    +46 (0)90-786 9936
 Umea university              Cellular: +46 (0)70-392 64 67
 S-901 87 UMEA SWEDEN         Fax:      +46 90-786 6126
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