Global shipments of headsets for virtual and augmented reality in Q2 increased 26 percent from a year earlier to 2.1 million units, IDC reported Tuesday. Volume sequentially declined slightly, “but recent price cuts on existing products and announced plans for new products are expected to lay the groundwork for a successful holiday season,” IDC said. VR market growth “has been rather sluggish,” showing the need for “end user education is extremely high,” the company said.
MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas is partnering with virtual reality entertainment company Zero Latency to create a multiplayer, free-roam VR experience in the hotel’s Level Up gaming lounge that's due to open Sept. 8, they announced Tuesday. In Virtual Reality Powered by Zero Latency, up to eight players will be able to navigate “considerable distances" in a 2,000-square-foot space, they said. Teams will choose from three games for a 30-minute experience. Players will communicate via Razer-integrated headphone/microphone units and fitted with OSVR HDK 2 virtual reality headsets while wearing military-grade backpacks with an Alienware PC gaming computer, they said. Players will carry a custom-made simulated weapon for game sessions requiring firepower, they said. Cost is $50 per person, an MGM Grand spokeswoman emailed us.
HTC slashed the price of the Vive VR system by $200 to $599 to position it for the “mass market,” it said in a Monday announcement. The company is offering a free trial to the Viveport subscription service for VR content. The basic Vive package comes with two base stations, two motion controllers, improved cables and a new headphone design using lighter-weight materials, the company said. More than 3,600 VR titles are available for Vive across Steam and Viveport, HTC said.
Now that Kopin’s “core technology” and products for augmented and virtual reality are "successfully adopted" in the military and enterprise sectors, the company is “actively moving into consumer applications,” said CEO John Fan on an earnings call last week. “We're entering the harvesting and revenue growth phase” for consumer AR and VR, Fan said. “Our timing corresponds well with the emergence of practical AR-VR market opportunities” in consumer electronics. "The next few years will be truly interesting for Kopin and for AR-VR,” he said. Kopin expects to begin drawing revenue from consumer VR displays in 2018, based on volume production that begins first quarter, said Fan. Kopin recently demonstrated an OLED-based prototype VR headset that’s about half the size and weight of previous VR “assets,” and yet provides “much better and lifelike smooth images,” Fan said. Kopin and its partner GoerTek, the Chinese components supplier, “are now busily refining this first prototype,” he said. “We believe even smaller and better-performance prototypes can be demonstrated” in the near future, he said.
Higher resolution will be “critical” to the future success of head-mounted displays (HMDs) for virtual reality, said ABI Research in a Monday report. Nearly two-thirds of HMDs for VR will support 4K resolution in 2022, ABI estimates. Achieving pixel resolutions that are sufficiently high to make VR experiences truly “immersive” is “one of the biggest challenges” in designing HMDs for VR, along with reducing the devices’ power consumption and making them smaller and lighter to use, the report said. “Higher resolution displays are required to solve the screen door effect caused by short distances between the user’s eyes and the VR display,” it said. Though most VR HMDs available today support resolutions of 2K or less, HMDs with higher resolutions “are starting to enter the market,” it said. Those include “tethered” VR devices, which are usually targeted at gaming applications, it said.
Microdisplays supplier eMagin is “very excited” about progress it’s making “in advancing our discussions with a number of potential commercial customers” for consumer applications of its virtual-reality technology, said CEO Andrew Sculley on a Thursday earnings call. “The pace of our discussions has accelerated, which gives me great confidence that we will have an additional agreement by year-end with a major consumer electronics company,” Sculley said. VR needs high brightness to eliminate motion artifacts, he said. That’s why high brightness is one of the “overarching objectives” of eMagin’s R&D road map, he said. Its full-color OLED direct-patterning technology on silicon chips is the only display technology in the market that exceeds 5,000 nits of peak brightness, he said. “Everyone we speak with about the VR market wants above 3,000 nits. Hence, we are the only company that has demonstrated this capability.”
Virtual-reality technology looks poised to gain “widespread adoption” in the next five years, reaching a global installed base of 256 million users and generating revenue of more than $60 billion in 2022, ABI Research said in a Wednesday report. The consumer market is expected to account for most of that revenue, but commercial and enterprise space will expand its share, reaching more than 40 percent of the market by 2022, up from 26 percent in 2015, it said. VR content availability “remains an issue, but healthy strides were made in the past year, particularly in Asia-Pacific and China with location-based VR,” said the company. Though the VR consumer space “often garners the largest share of attention the market potential is much wider and we’ve already seen very promising interest in verticals,” including retail, healthcare, automotive, education and engineering, it said. VR experiences still vary “quite widely,” but further technology advancements “are on the horizon,” including eye-tracking, foveated rendering and increasingly higher-resolution screens, it said.
The BBC’s virtual-reality film Easter Rising: Voice of a Rebel launched for free Friday on the Oculus Store for the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR headsets, the broadcaster said in a Friday announcement. The film takes viewers back to the streets of 1916 Dublin and depicts the memories of 19-year-old Willie McNeive, a rebel who took part in the Easter Rising against the British, BBC said. The film is “a fascinating account of a critical moment in Ireland’s history, told from a unique perspective,” it said. “It shows that virtual reality can be used to give audiences a greater sense of presence, enabling them to better understand a range of issues like important current affairs, news, science and history.”
ESPN for the first time will livestream three events of its X Games in virtual reality to 48 countries on Samsung Gear VR headsets through the Samsung VR app, the sports network said in a Friday announcement. The three featured X Games events will be shot on 360-degree camera systems “to create a fully produced, multi-camera live stream experience that includes real-time graphics, X Games talent and feature segments integrated into Samsung VR,” it said. “X Games has always been a laboratory for innovation and progression, both for the world’s top action sports athletes and for ESPN’s production of events and use of technology,” it said. X Games opens Thursday in Minneapolis for a four-day run.
Dedicated augmented- and virtual-reality headsets as a category are projected to reach 100 million shipments in 2021, for a compound annual growth rate of 58 percent, said a Monday IDC report. Screenless VR viewers powered by a smartphone, the lowest-priced form factor, have led have led the category to date, with Sony’s PlayStation VR, the HTC Vive and Facebook's Oculus Rift leading the pack, said IDC. In the next six to 18 months, PC vendors and Microsoft are expected to introduce tethered headsets and high-end stand-alone VR headsets. Advances in PCs and lower headset prices will make VR more accessible, and the additional motion-tracking and hand-tracking capabilities will help “blur the line between digital and physical reality,” said analyst Jitesh Ubrani. AR continues to lag VR because it's “harder to achieve,” said Ubrani. VR will lead the category over the forecast period, but IDC believes AR will have a much bigger impact overall. “Consumers are very likely to have their first AR experience via a mobile phone or tablet rather than a dedicated headset,” said Ubrani, citing Apple's recent introduction of ARKit as support. The commercial segment offers a large opportunity for AR headsets with investment occurring in vertical markets such as healthcare, manufacturing, field service workers and design, said the research firm. IDC believes many industrial jobs “will fundamentally change because of AR in the next 5-years, and these are much more opportunistic markets for dedicated AR headsets than the consumer market," said analyst Ryan Reith. IDC expects commercial shipments to account for over 80 percent of all AR headsets shipped in the next 5 years.