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[Eddie-Griffin]

https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-p...ustry-needs-to-grow-beyond-its-walled-gardens

Despite recent waves of Big Tech layoffs, billions of dollars have been sunk into virtual reality (VR) hardware and software over the past few years.
For this investment to be worthwhile, the VR industry needs to achieve sustainability and growth. To do this, it will have to explore many different applications of VR technology, including manufacturing and social VR. Social VR is a type of virtual reality experience where users can meet and interact with one another in a virtual world.
Walled gardens

At the present moment, our cultural imagination of the metaverse surpasses the real thing. In books about the metaverse, you can speed across the world on a motorcycle with katana in-hand, or slip in and out of cyberspace on a mission for artificial intelligences.

In films and television shows about it, you can leave behind your everyday life to embark on a scavenger hunt through ’80s nostalgia or save the world while bending your body around the trajectory of bullets. Or you can walk through a door in your workplace and find yourself in Sherlock Holmes’s London or the wild west. In all these versions of the metaverse, we imagine leaving the physical world and entering a new, fully formed digital universe.

However, this is not the current state of VR technologies. Rather, we seem to be stuck in the walled garden phase of this potentially revolutionary interactive technology. Until the VR industry figures out how to move beyond these walled gardens, the metaverse may never live up to the hype.

A walled garden is a mediated environment that restricts users to specific content within a website or social media platform. This is how the early internet worked — providers like AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy kept users on affiliated sites.

This later changed when the true potential of the internet was realized and users began freely traversing sites and platforms. Users connected and drew on information from many different sources.

Today, information, memes, images, celebrity gossip and cultural moments all diffuse across the internet and are accessible from many different hardware devices, including cellphones, tablets and computers.

Today’s VR more closely resembles a walled garden environment than the interconnected internet. There are only a handful of social software programs that are accessible from different headsets.

Software developers may find it difficult to program for multiple headsets at once, in part due to a lack of a standard software development kit across VR hardware devices. This leaves the current virtual reality market, despite the potential for immersive, interactive, social experiences, more similar to the gaming console market than a communication channel.

For VR to become the next widely adopted communication channel, the industry needs to move beyond the walled garden phase. To do this, VR needs to increase its interoperability — the ability for programs and applications to be able to integrate and for software to run across VR hardware.

Interoperability raises important questions about the data infrastructure of VR hardware and software, the sharing of consumer and corporate data and our ability to traverse to different parts of the metaverse.

The tipping point

Virtual reality adoption is often talked about as if it’s just about to take off. In 1992, VR visionary Jaron Lanier predicted the possibility of home VR by the turn of the century.

Researchers Tony Liao and Andrew Iliadis found something similar in their research on the augmented reality industry. Augmented reality was consistently talked about as if widespread adoption was just another five to 10 years out.

Yet, as author and researcher Dave Karpf succinctly lays out in WIRED, while both augmented and virtual reality technologies keep advancing, they have yet to reach the tipping point necessary for widespread social adoption.

The technology, Karpf argues, is always “about to turn a corner, about to be more than just a gaming device, about to revolutionize other fields.” Yet, the primary use case of virtual reality remains as a gaming device.

Leaning into VR as a gaming platform could work for the industry — the usage of VR as a gaming device is increasing and gamers are used to buying consoles that can only run specific titles created for that console — but it misses the potential of virtual reality. VR has the ability to bring communicators together into shared spaces to engage, interact and share human social experiences.

The creation of these shared VR spaces will likely require movement towards interoperable social spaces where users can move easily and freely from one social VR space to another.

Interoperability, in turn, requires open software standards and data sharing between entities that have traditionally kept a close hold on their data collection and analysis processes. Consumers deserve to have confidence in the safety and protection of the data generated by their social interactions.

The future of VR

If the VR industry is to experience the kind of growth that will make it worthy of the billions of dollars that have been invested in it, we need to view the metaverse as public infrastructure, much like the internet is.

The article makes some interesting points. The argument is VR needs to be thought of as the extension of Internet, gaming, and phone tech and should be interconnected with universal standards for headsets, for connectivity, and software development for VR to become mainstream, which is the opposite direction of how most participating in making VR headsets see it as well as partners and analysts.

There are some good points here but the problem is a universal standard for headsets and software can't really work because every company involved with VR for analytics, to software, hardware, and other relevant pieces all want to "control" a segment as if this is capitalist competition between corporations to sell product to a consumer.

Because well, it is, and that's how this 2nd generation of VR got started proper 7-8 years ago.

The idea of making "controlling" a standard in VR and being the number one is basically why these companies are having layoffs and losing billions from Pico, to Sony, to Apple, and Zuckerberg. Their approaches are different but the idea is to lap everyone else and become the leading standard in VR to spearhead the market. To many egos, opportunists, and proprietary ideology involved for an open-standard approach to VR right now and the foreseeable future.

VR headsets all sharing SKD', formats, logistics, access, similar specs, and tons of tech standards to operate them is indeed something that could make VR mainstream assuming price accessibility is also improved, along with content, but that would also completely destroy the VR market as it currently is, and would remove the same incentives that companies are currently given to compete with each other, which is why VR has been developing as fast as it as.

What will imo, make VR mainstream is a company, possibly too companies, getting the content, features, and unified ecosystems under their brand right, that will be accessible to the general consumer, and will then set the standards that may EVENTUALLY lead to the unified vision that they spek of, where it's basically another internet.

Although it's most likely we will be into immersive holographic technology by then replacing VR, but either way I don't see anyway anytime soon this interconnected open-standard is going to happen with how the VR market is currently being run. Wall Gardens is why we are we have developed to the current point even though it has gotten in the way of growth in many areas, it's also the foundation of the current gen of VR.

 

[nowhat]

Why you still have thread posting privileges is beyond me.

 

[GhostOfTsu]

Enough with the VR threads Eddie, go pregnant a panda.

 

[poppabk]

There are open vr standards. Even Meta, probably to their detriment (because why would I buy a game on their store instead of steam) accepts them.

 

[Eddie-Griffin]

Why you still have thread posting privileges is beyond me.

Enough with the VR threads Eddie, go pregnant a panda.

There is nothing wrong with this thread, it's an interesting article for discussion and I doubt either of you read the OP or the article. (especially the first poster based on their reply speed)

You guys seem to be selective on which threads you WANT to see so you can fake outrage if there's any VR thread discussing the market, but don't complain about any other VR thread which you skip over.

 

[Topher]

Enough with the VR threads Eddie, go pregnant a panda.

 

[Talkin Hawkin]

Another negative VR thread? What a shock

I guess the timing is just a coincidence that Sony have recently launched a VR headset, right?

 

[Eddie-Griffin]

Another negative VR thread? What a shock

I guess the timing is just a coincidence that Sony have recently launched a VR headset, right?

Sony isn't involved in this article in anyway and you are well aware of that. Again it's the same people skipping most VR threads focusing on a select few out of context to fake outrage and mislead as if there is a negative VR crusade against Sony, who isn't involved in most VR articles mentioned. This article is about VR in general.

Notice people aren't falling for it.

 

[nowhat]

You guys seem to be selective on which threads you WANT to see so you can fake outrage if there's any thread discussing the market, but don't complain about any other VR thread which you skip over to fake outrage.

No, I'm just tired of the latest "Farmer's Weekly says VR sucks" thread, and also, your analysis sucks balls. Not in a pleasant way.

 

[Talkin Hawkin]

Sony isn't involved in this article in anyway. Again it's the same people skipping most VR threads focusing on a few out of context to fake outrage and mislead as if there is a negative VR crusade against Sony, who isn't involved in most VR articles mentioned, because your selective.

Why the sudden negative focus on VR then? It's been around for nigh-on 30 years. just a coincidence

Notice people aren't falling for it.

The only thing people aren't falling for is your thinly veiled shilling attempts and boring bullshit. Posting articles from mother's magazine about their weekly hot take on vr isn't interesting. Get over it, people like Vr.

 

[Eddie-Griffin]

No, I'm just tired of the latest "Farmer's Weekly says VR sucks" thread, and also, your analysis sucks balls. Not in a pleasant way.

Good thing that's not what the article says, or the thread title, and considering you responded immediately based on a poor interpretation of the title way to fast to have read the OP or the article initially, it's safe to say you just made this whole thing up.

There is nothing about "vr sucking" and the fact you even think that's been happening only hsows you're being sleective in what threads you want to see, and respond too. Just so you can pretend a thread like this one says it sucks when it doesn't and truth is that's a flat out lie.

This article has academia involved talking about whether VR should be like the internet, an open-standard, not what you imagined it said.

 

[bentanchorbolt]

Why you still have thread posting privileges is beyond me.

He brings good content tho.

 

[Eddie-Griffin]

Why the sudden negative focus on VR then?

You guys deciding to lie and pretend that there's negative VR threads while ignoring the other 99% of threads is your fault. What you're accusing isn't actually happening.

There's been very few "negative" threads.

What you did here was not read this one and say it was negative without reading it, because it's not. It's academics discussing the open-standard approach to VR. It's a relevant and good take on the subject which you didn't read so you could pretend it's negative news.

Why? Because you decided to misinterpret the thread title to pretend the article was negative intentionally. The first reply by the first user was made before he even looked at anything.

 

[Talkin Hawkin]

You guys deciding to lie and pretend that there's negative VR threads while ignoring the other 99% of threads is your fault. What you're accusing isn't actually happening.

There's been very few "negative" threads.

What you did here was not read this one and say it was negative without reading it, because it's not. It's academics discussing the open-standard approach to VR. It's a relevant and good take on the subject which you didn't read so you could pretend it's negative news.

Why? Because you decided to misinterpret the thread title to pretend the article was negative.

And yet, everyone in this thread has called you out on your bullshit. So you must have a pattern, no?

Why not discuss the billions pumped into Ouya or Stadia?

and you're right, I didn't read it. I'm a quick learner and I learned quickly that your VR threads are arse. Be consistent at making better threads.

 

[nowhat]

He brings good content tho.

I mean, from an "outsider art" perspective I guess. But ehh, there should be a limit for submissions per day. Unless we're talking about IbizaPocholo - he gets a free pass.

Just look at the front page, the amount of threads is ridiculous.

 

[Eddie-Griffin]

And yet, everyone in this thread has called you out on your bullshit.

A small group of people pushing accusations that are verrifiable made up just by looking at the other 99% of VR threads and you guys are clearly being selective to make up this lie there's negative news.

This thread RIGHT HERE isn't even negative, there's no "shilling" either because this is an academic article about an open-standard not a company specifically.

Derailing the thread for no legit reason is what's BS.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Christ the Sony force is out again. Enough GAF mods, fucking hell, we're all pretty bloody tired of this shit.

This thread, and many Eddie-Griffin posts, has interest for me. The second I was done reading it I was thinking about my reply regarding Meta, Apple's upcoming VR/AR debut and Sony's just released PSVR2 e.g. open platforms and standards are best for consumers and devs, just not corporations. Instead we're taking time out to rebut the usual posters shitting up threads.

I'd hate to see Meta/Apple storm to success in VR just for another walled garden mobile market segment to be derived. Given the flexibility of applications in the VR/AR space pushing for openness is nothing but a good thing.

 

[Eddie-Griffin]

Christ the Sony force is out again. Enough GAF mods, fucking hell, we're all pretty bloody tired of this shit.

This thread, and many Eddie-Griffin posts, has interest for me. The second I was done reading it I was thinking about my reply regarding Apple's upcoming VR/AR debut and Sony's just released PSVR2 e.g. open platforms and standards are best for consumers and devs, just not corporations. Instead we're taking time out to rebut the usual posters shitting up threads.

I'd hate to see Apple storm to success in VR just for another mobile market segment to be derived. Given the flexibility of applications in the VR/AR space pushing for openness is nothing but a good thing.

Thank you.

Yes, i actually do think open standards is a good idea.

But the corporate competition to laps one another, first past the post as you will, has been the driving force of VR right now. But really they are correct VR should be an extension of social interaction, through games or otherwise. Just look at the last two years, Quest 2's success was basically at the expense of everyone else, and because of the mistakes and limits of Zuckers vision and execution, we are seeing more attempts at walled gardens.

 

[Cert.in.Death]

I also have opinions!

But I charge for them

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Thank you.

Yes, i actually do think open standards is a good idea.

But the corporate competition to laps one another, first past the post as you will, has been the driving force of VR right now. But really they are correct VR should be an extension of social interaction, through games or otherwise. Just look at the last two years, Quest 2's success was basically at the expense of everyone else, and because of the mistakes and limits of Zuckers vision and execution, we are seeing more attempts at walled gardens.

There are good examples of open standards in the tech industries e.g. ISO, Chromium, SQL, AWS/Azure, literally what the internet runs on e.g. protocols (TCP/IP) and web standards, (HTML/XML) etc. It would be a refreshing change to see tech giants spending 10s of billions sharing the golden eggs somewhat. I understand the need for IP rights, profits and all that but the modern tech game shows plenty of overhead surplus exists for open standards and commercialisation of such. The VR industry would benefit from heavy adoption and enforcement of such standards.

EDIT: For a moment, imagine if open standards existed early on for console gaming and what that would mean for cross play development or adoption in the current generation? VR is at that early point in time now, it's a good time to push for open standards. Given the investment in metaverse, hardware, software, studios, talent and rise of competitors having some common ground would be ideal early on. It's also going to help hasten the creation, development, releases and support for VR games and applications.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

There are good examples of open standards in the tech industries e.g. ISO, Chromium, SQL, AWS/Azure, literally what the internet runs on e.g. protocols (TCP/IP) and web standards, (HTML/XML) etc. It would be a refreshing change to see tech giants spending 10s of billions sharing the golden eggs somewhat. I understand the need for IP rights, profits and all that but the modern tech game shows plenty of overhead surplus exists for open standards and commercialisation of such. The VR industry would benefit from heavy adoption and enforcement of such standards.

It all comes down to if companies want to battle it out for platform winners, or they join hands and go with the flow like how media like VHS, CD, BR have a standard and everyone follows. The big companies all make their own hardware (some better than others), but as a whole they all compatible work together and the content works on any brand.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

It all comes down to if companies want to battle it out for platform winners, or they join hands and go with the flow like how media like VHS, CD, BR have a standard and everyone follows. The big companies all make their own hardware (some better than others), but as a whole they all compatible work together and the content works on any brand.

Pretty typical flow of an emerging market I suppose. My optimism hopes for better cooperation from the tech giants up front. The realist in me knows better, they're going to fight tooth and nail to be the winning standard at the end of the day.

 

[Henry Panic]

The link doesn't mention PSVR at all, and the OP said in both threads about the devices controller and blur issues, that he has one and didn't experience any problems. Not sure what the motive is to go after OP.

 

[bentanchorbolt]

I mean, from an "outsider art" perspective I guess. But ehh, there should be a limit for submissions per day. Unless we're talking about IbizaPocholo - he gets a free pass.

Just look at the front page, the amount of threads is ridiculous.

Ignore him then. The world doesn’t work the way we think it should. It works the way it does.

 

[OuterLimits]

Why you still have thread posting privileges is beyond me.

Some of the threads he posts though are pretty interesting. Also easy to ignore threads that you aren't interested in.

 

[brian0057]

There is nothing wrong with this thread, it's an interesting article for discussion and I doubt either of you read the OP or the article. (especially the first poster based on their reply speed)

You guys seem to be selective on which threads you WANT to see so you can fake outrage if there's any VR thread discussing the market, but don't complain about any other VR thread which you skip over.

They just can't stop inhaling massive amounts of copium by the fact that the monetary black hole that is VR is a monetary black hole.
And people unironically wonder why neither Microsoft nor Nintendo jumped on that sinking ship.

 

[OverHeat]

They just can't stop inhaling massive amounts of copium by the fact that the monetary black hole that is VR is a monetary black hole.
And people unironically wonder why neither Microsoft nor Nintendo jumped on that sinking ship.

Nintendo did…virtual boy

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Kinda hard not to have walled gardens when the hardware spans everything from a mobile phone gpu to a high end gaming rig

I do agree though that “low end” / indie VR has no business being walled off

 

[Deerock71]

VR. The people's matrix.

 

[SportsFan581]

It all comes down to if companies want to battle it out for platform winners, or they join hands and go with the flow like how media like VHS, CD, BR have a standard and everyone follows. The big companies all make their own hardware (some better than others), but as a whole they all compatible work together and the content works on any brand.

It would depend how separate the headset makers are from the content. With VHS, CD, BR most of the hardware vendors (outside of the companies that created the formats and collect the royalties) are completely divorced from all the content sold and sell their units for a profit. With pre-recorded media being its own separate industry.

I'm not sure how that works out in VR, because ultimately you make the hardware more expensive since it all has to be sold for profit including the R&D costs. Where with the Quest, FB is subsidizing it with the hope of making it up on the back-end, which drives the need to try and convince users to buy the Quest over the other competing systems in order to secure the back-end return.

Maybe it could work, but there is also that possibility that you lower the funds invested in the software itself which would hurt long term. So far, Steam VR is the closest thing to a shared ecosystem with almost all the headsets released being compatible there.

 

[Three]

Nintendo did…virtual boy

And Labo

 

[Crayon]

This is another shower thoughts article. It reads like a blog post.

At the present moment, our cultural imagination of the metaverse surpasses the real thing. In books about the metaverse, you can speed across the world on a motorcycle with katana in-hand, or slip in and out of cyberspace on a mission for artificial intelligences.

So that really gets your gears turning huh?

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

SUMMARIZE VERSION:

The virtual reality (VR) industry needs to move beyond its current "walled garden" phase and achieve interoperability to achieve sustainability and growth. This means developing open software standards and data sharing to create shared VR spaces that users can move freely between. Until this happens, VR may never reach its potential as a widely adopted communication channel.

 

[Three]

The article makes some interesting points. The argument is VR needs to be thought of as the extension of Internet, gaming, and phone tech and should be interconnected with universal standards for headsets, for connectivity, and software development for VR to become mainstream, which is the opposite direction of how most participating in making VR headsets see it as well as partners and analysts.

There are some good points here but the problem is a universal standard for headsets and software can't really work because every company involved with VR for analytics, to software, hardware, and other relevant pieces all want to "control" a segment as if this is capitalist competition between corporations to sell product to a consumer.

I think the article isn't interesting at all. It doesn't go into any details about what specific walled gardens it's trying to break and how it would benefit VR. It seems to ramble on about the metaverse but fails to mention what stops a universal and interoperable metaverse today. The answer is nothing does. If a third party wanted to create a metaverse that released on all headsets and devices they could, and they could all connect together.

The walled gardens that exist are the stores and device platforms. Breaking that walled garden would mean VR headsets would no longer be subsidised or low margin. That would mean more expensive headsets, which would mean lower adoption of VR. Nobody at the moment is thinking they wish they could have Facebooks version of the metaverse on PSVR or Valve index. They are thinking these damn VR headsets are expensive for me to just give them a try and engage with them.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

one word:

Porn.

 

[Kataploom]

I don't see what's the problem with the thread honestly, those tired of OP dividing on negative VR threads should just ignore them... Or maybe comment why you think it's not the way OP makes it seem to be because, you all know... This is a discussion board.

BTW, the only thing I'll lament if VR dies is that it will before Nintendo released it's long due "Nintendo ON" headset, we're still a legion of dreamers

 

[Three]

I don't see what's the problem with the thread honestly, those tired of OP dividing on negative VR threads should just ignore them... Or maybe comment why you think it's not the way OP makes it seem to be because, you all know... This is a discussion board.

BTW, the only thing I'll lament if VR dies is that it will before Nintendo released it's long due "Nintendo ON" headset, we're still a legion of dreamers

Nothing wrong with the thread existing and people discussing the content. I just think the articles that he goes out of his way to find and posts are scrapping the bottom of the barrel in terms of actual interesting content. The massive flaw being a unrepairable wire which is removable, an article saying eye tracking shouldn't have been added, and now this weird one. They don't really have any interesting information.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I just want Neogaf to make a hardware section and Dump all the peripherals, add ons, handhelds, graphics cards, cpu and good ole VR anything into its own section so I can read about GAMES.
I put all hardware posts on ignore and I’m left with Hogwarts and Atomic Heart as the only games anyone is talking about on the front page.

 

[Raonak]

Disagree with the article entirely.

VR needs great content. Not focus on platform agnostic social spaces