Home » Be Inside The Game: the future is virtual reality

Be Inside The Game: the future is virtual reality

Written By Bob Freking
Published • June 1st, 2013
Gadgets
2 Comments

I’m not a hardcore gamer myself, but I find the gaming industry very interesting. Microsoft already had their Xbox One event following Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Nintendo’s Wii U, and in a couple more years, the gaming console battlefield is already set.

Portable gaming will continue to struggle against smartphones and tablets, and E3 is just around the corner. Most likely, there will be a lot of game reveals – but let’s take that away for a moment. I’d like to talk about the consoles, not the games.

Crysis

True, the PlayStation 4 hasn’t been seen yet, but we already have an idea of what it can do – and it’s almost exactly the same with the Xbox One in terms of the configuration. Both run on 1.6GHz 8-core AMD Jaguar chipsets and 8GB RAM; the only thing where I can find a significant gap is with the 1080p Kinect camera vs the Eye that only supports 720p.

To give you all the insights in a nutshell, we’ll have to say the playing field is no longer about the power – it’s about the experience. The Wii U basically provides an evolution over its predecessor, the Xbox One aims at being the center of your living room and the PlayStation 4 wants to push forward cloud-gaming.

CONSOLES

All of them go different directions, but something tells me they all have one destination. Engineers outside these three companies are also developing tools to further the gaming experience, specifically the ones from Kickstarter. If you have kept track of it, you’ll know that the Oculus Rift has already gone a long way.

The Oculus Rift is a consumer-priced head-mounted display equipped with gyroscopes and is still being continued. This just might be the next big step to finally enter Virtual Reality.

Recently, they’ve also worked with Virtuix to incorporate an omnidirectional treadmill into the system. What that means is, you can now walk in the games using this treadmill in all directions without having to move away from your spot at all.

If you can’t keep up, Chris Pirillo from LockerGnome has an excellent demo of how this system works.

So where are we going with all of this? Hypothetically looking at the future, let’s take something like the Kinect into the Omni & the Rift, since the Xbox One Kinect can now track pressure points & heart rates. Add into that Sony’s idea of the future where connecting with anyone to play games at anytime is within reach through the cloud.

You might be doing this in your living room someday.

That could be the future of how consoles will be, so let’s add back the games. Imagine yourself playing in your own living room, literally inside the game. A decade or two from now, you just might be walking around the streets of GTA 7 with your friends; who knows? We’re just hoping we don’t actually feel those virtual kicks to the nuts.

I guess some movies may be right about the future after all.

Console GaminggamingOculus Riftplaystation 4ps4Virtuix Omniwii uXbox One

Bob Freking

Bob Freking occasionally contributes articles to the website. He is a UST Graduate of Commerce & Business Administration, Major in Marketing Management, and a full-time Sith Lord with three dragons.

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2 Comments

Iyan Sommerset says:

11 years ago

The problem with the gaming industry is that it is becoming increasingly reliant on the gamer having full-access to a first-world-quality, digital (and analog) infrastructure. Not gonna happen for years, maybe a decade in the third world.
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Boybawang says:

11 years ago

If the Porn industry can incorporate this, I’ll forget about games!
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