Valve's Dotty VR System Looks Silly But Likely Awesome

Valve's much-whispered about VR system is starting to get some press coverage, and frankly with all those damn polka dots, it looks sorta silly, but it has those for a very good reason: They "allow a table-top camera to track the device’s location." That should do a lot to help with VR's motion sickness problem (unless it's a fundamentally gendered issue). At the same time, as TechCrunch notes, the core challenge is content content content:

VR is a non-starter without content, as Valve and Sony clearly understand. Technology is only as good as its content: 3D TV died because of lack of content; and 4K TV isn’t doing so well, either. Still, while devs are courted, Oculus, Sony and Valve will likely keep tinkering with its hardware until the software is available.

If Valve and Sony think a trickle of core games is going to solve that problem -- as opposed to a live, dynamic virtual world where most the content comes from the uses itself -- they're going to have a bad time.

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Comments

[melponeme_k]

That contraption looks ridiculous. Why don't they get more freaky with the design?

Why not make them look like Venetian Masks? So then we can all hook in and zone out while looking like extras in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/skina/skina2ews_masks.html

VR and Plague Doctor masks...the only way to go.

[Iggy]

The commuters in Neuromancer wear masks while riding on the Sprawl's Metro trains to conceal them from rapists and organ harvesters.

Seems like we can't wait to build a tuned-out dystopia, at the very moment we need to tune in more than ever.