During these days in the Oculus Connect 2 there have been major announcements for the future of what is known as mobile VR, that portable systems that let you enjoy RV experiences without take with you expensive and heavy equipment.
However, in my opinion, the focus of mobile VR is too limited by the fact that it wants to develop the product with the same vision as that of mobile phones. During all these years we have been seeing how mobile phones have been engulfing other common devices in our lives, such as alarm clocks, cameras, camcorders, portable music players, or GPS for the car. All these devices required before a specific product for them, and today, unless we have large specific needs, their functions are largely covered by a mobile phone.
This huge binder goodness of mobile phones has been one of the determining factors in the success of smartphones. And Oculus and other manufacturers seem to want to continue in that line with mobile VR. Which I think is a mistake.
Virtual Reality can not be put inside a mobile phone. It’s like pretending that the mobile phone also serves as a refrigerator. There are things that can be put into a phone, and things that do not. Here is an important obstacle, which many refuse to see. An alarm clock, a camera, or GPS make much sense on a mobile phone because the format is similar or identical. But virtual reality is not simply a viewer placed on the head. We need positioning, need autonomy, and above all, we need a good input system. All this involve the use of some additional technology to the headset that needs to lay outside the headset. And this is where mobile phones are an inappropriate format.
The first limitation the use of a mobile phone for VR involves is the screen. A phone has only one screen. But human beings we have two eyes, and it is becoming clear in recent desktop VR devices will bring all dual displays. A mobile phone with two slightly separate displays has no sense. In addition, VR requires a completely useless screen formats for a phone. It has no sense a 5 inch mobile phone with 4K no matter how much mobile manufacturers insist saying the contrary. From 3K+, at the distance displaying a mobile, no more clarity is gained and no more pixels are seen. However, 4K makes all the sense in the world when it comes to a VR headset.
The second limitation is absolute positioning. The inside-out systems, ie, a pair of cameras pointing from the headset towards the outside world, still do not work very well, and it is to be seen if they will work correctly in any possible scenario or if they will work well only if they are indoors and surrounded by identifiable objects to calculate depth. This persistent search for using an inside-out system is not necessary for good mobile VR. It is possible to develop a mobile VR system using external sensors that work outside-in. Having to place a camera or a emitter near us is not uncomfortable as long as it can later be fold and store. The insistence on inside-out systems are imposed by manufacturers like Oculus because they want mobile VR to involve only a phone and a case. But why not consider other mobile solutions even at the expense of adding a second external device?
The third major limitation is heating. Mobile phones are designed to be very small devices. Users are not willing to carry large heavy devices, and also it must be able to be used in the ear to talk and user must be able to grasp them with one hand. This implies very compact components, the absence of cooling systems, and very rapid overheating when CPUs are stressed to the usual intensive VR tasks. However, there is no need for having to place a phone in a case to be mobile VR. A possible alternative would be to put all components internally in the case without having to click a smartphone. And thus, placing the components in a less compact form, the better the cooling of the device.
A fourth limitation also critical is input. Oculus GearVR has a touch pad on the side, which I think is extremely uncomfortable to use because it requires having the arm permanently lifted. The alternative, a traditional gamepad, it’s a very poor alternative for what VR allows. Input requires us to see our virtual hands, which are the essential element of our body for tasks such as communication and social interaction with real world objects. Today, the issue of input using cameras to detect our hands is at a very early stage, and it is very difficult to solve using only cameras placed in the phone. When our hands out of sight, they are lost in the virtual world, even though you may be gesturing or moving objects, like we do in the real world. VR input would always require some sort of external device apart from the headset, and a pad in the headset or a gamepad will never be enough.
There are many other limitations imposed by the fictional need to use a mobile for mobile RV: available memory space too small for the requirements of VR apps, which is usually high, as in the case of video 3D-360; high weight of almost half kilo in the Gear, which is annoying in the head; not being able to connect to both power and the headset, because that would imply two connectors that today’s phones do not have; not being able to download the apps connecting to a PC while using, avoiding Wifi speeds; annoying phone notifications or noises while using VR; lack of compatibility between different phones (what about for those with iPhones and Nexus, aren’t those phones enough powerful ones?); difficulty developing and testing applications, which have to be transferred to the phone whenever a change occurs, and so on.
In the end, to have a good experience of mobile VR is necessary to go to a system of several interconnected devices (display + positioning + input). So why insist in mobile VR always using a mobile phone?
These limitations wouldn’t exist if mobile VR be designed forgetting phones.
In the novel Ready Player One a mobile VR system called Oasis consists of three minimum elements: the headset, the console and the haptic gloves. These three elements form a portable, lightweight, wearable system. And you can expand it connecting other elements and turning the portable system into a full VR system, using for example a system for full body motion capture or a haptic suit.
Ready Player One is science fiction, but we are seeing is not so crazy sci-fi. It is the vision of a writer for whom VR doesn’t arise from the perspective of a phone industry, but from the perspective of what is best for a new industry, the VR itself. What if instead of a mobile phone we had a very light console with enough power of a good PC, in which we remove unneeded elements of a mobile phone as the screen, the cameras, and other sensors? A console that you could carry in your pocket, like a phone, but connected by a cable to the headset, which would have inside the screen to avoid dirtiness on top of it. Furthermore, the system could be supplemented by an external outside-in positioning device as the efficient Lighthouse Valve system, which allows positioning the sensors in the headset and in controllers, avoiding the need for a cable from the emitters to the headset (very different aproach than Oculus cameras). It would be like the console of Read Player One, a portable system, mobile, for taking VR everywhere with us but without the constraints of a phone.
A concept of a more advanced mobile VR system than current ones. A) Headset that do not require buying a phone; B) micro-console (phone size) in the pocket to alleviate weight in the head; C) wireless gloves with tracking sensors; D) Tracker system like Valve Lighthouse, that do not require cables.
However, it seems that the entire VR industry is being conditioned by the mobile industry. Oculus has reached an agreement with Samsung, and its VR mobile systems, the Gear, require now exclusively the purchase of some specific models of Samsung mobile phones. Valve, which has refused to enter the mobile VR ecosystem, however is entering the desktop VR with HTC, another manufacturer of phones. Sony, maker of the future Playstation VR is in turn another phone giant, and has already announced a 4K Xperia Z5 oriented to VR. Google, another great mobile phone giant, has created Cardboard, a low-cost headset only oriented to be used with mobile phones. Finally Apple, no less great than previous in sales of mobile phones, is known to be secretly preparing some kind of VR-oriented product.
This leaves mobile RV in the hands of the most important manufacturers of phones, conditioning all mobile VR industry, and largely also to the desktop VR industry.
The mobile industry is providing many beneficial things to Virtual Reality, but remember that none of these companies such as Samsung, HTC, Google and Apple have never been interested in Virtual Reality. For years there has already been enough technology to create these commercial devices, and none of those companies has never made any effort to create a real commercial product, relegating VR to a task of making patents.
In the hands of these companies, mobile VR never reach its best, that is when someone create a similar product to the Oasis system from Ready Player One novel. These companies are only interested today in selling mobile phones, a business that handles billions each year. Mobile VR, for them, is nothing more than a peripheral, an accessory for their main product range, which is mobile phones. It is not the disruptive tech that will change human communication. It is simply a more fashionable technology, such as 3D TVs or smartwatches. They come here just to put a similar competitive product in its catalog, but they don’t want to explore the immense possibilities that VR offers in general and in particular mobile VR.
It has been a profound disappointment for me to see that in a year of development in two companies filled with geniuses such as Samsung and Oculus there hasn’t been an attempt to develop a novel product for mobile VR. I bought the first GearVR to see first hand what it could deliver. I firmly believe that mobile VR will be a revolutionary technology. But the first GearVR was a disappointment for me when announced and when I had it in my hands. The third GearVR that has been presented in Oculus Connect 2 follows the same line as versions 1 and 2, and will be the first commercial product from Oculus that I won’t buy. Meanwhile, I’ll continue looking forward to a good and true mobile Virtual Reality.
Reflector of the Past 