| > Those would be the gamers. But I am targeting students. And not many students can afford high-end devices. I am more interested in devices such as Google Cardboard, Zapbox and AR4E. High cost of devices should not become a roadblock for educational content distribution. > Some applications that I have in mind will require interaction and collaboration I think this would be a much easier decision if there weren't the fundamental UI differences between the two categories. As I'm sure you know already, the lowest-end devices lack positional tracking for both the headset and the controllers, putting them in basically a different category experience and software-design wise than the $300 Quest and all the more expensive systems. As far as I know the most successful product of that type was the Oculus Go which has been discontinued. The similar GearVR phone-based system people often bought but didn't use despite owning, which itself was a huge jump in quality over what Cardboard offers. So as far as I can tell the category seems like a dead-end at this point, it doesn't seem to be receiving substantial software or hardware investment and will likely disappear altogether as positional tracking gets cheaper. In contrast FB is launching a $150M fund specifically for VR educational content - I expect basically none of that will go towards pre-positional-tracking systems and software. So I guess it depends on what your time horizon is - I'd just be aware that any investments into designing software for 3DOF systems are likely to depreciate pretty quickly. > BTW, what are you working on? I added a link to it in my profile, it's a little out of date but there's a video there (and a sign up to get a free copy when the beta launches!). |
That is the reason I am excited about ZapBox and AR4E headsets. Both promise support for interaction using controllers.
> So as far as I can tell the category seems like a dead-end at this point, it doesn't seem to be receiving substantial software or hardware investment and will likely disappear altogether as positional tracking gets cheaper.
If that happens, then it will be a shame. We need lot of low-cost headsets for XR to proliferate. Otherwise it will remain a niche market.
> In contrast FB is launching a $150M fund specifically for VR educational content
One of the things I am trying to avoid is vendor-lockin.
> So I guess it depends on what your time horizon is - I'd just be aware that any investments into designing software for 3DOF systems are likely to depreciate pretty quickly.
Hence planning to use open source software and standard APIs as much as possible e.g. Godot engine, Vulkan Scene Graph, Monado, OpenXR complaint API etc.
> there's a video there (and a sign up to get a free copy when the beta launches!).
I am not able to see video. I am using Firefox 93 x86_64 on Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS.
Are you a designer or a software engineer?