I’m somewhat with you, Bill. I’ve seen the VR fad come and go at least twice before since I was a yoot. This third time, it does seem to be gaining more momentum, but… we’ll see.
My own reading of the tea leaves is this: it will probably be here to stay now, but only for hardcore gamers. The sort of folks who currently drop $1500 on a custom high-end PC to play games will drop another $800 on a VR headset, and clear a space big enough to play in. Casual gamers, on the other hand, will react somewhere between “yawn” and “what nerds” and not buy in.
Augmented reality, on the other hand, I believe is going to be huge. Enormous. Life-changing. There will be a second layer on the real world — or more like, many second layers — and those without the magic glasses will be missing out on a major part of the fabric of society. And while it will have many non-game uses, games will of course turn out to be a massive market (just as with cell phones, which are by far the most popular kind of gaming machine today).
I’ve gotten to play with a Microsoft Hololens for a few days, and it really is that cool. You can walk around your house, adding a giant-screen TV here, a virtual aquarium there, a Monet painting on that wall over there, etc., and they are all stable and still there when you come back the next day. There are many other uses, but just this basic function — creating virtual “stuff” that stays put and adds to your world — is itself tremendously compelling.
But the Hololens is also bulky, limited, and way too expensive. Microsoft knows this, and that’s why they haven’t tried to commercialize it yet.
I think it’s going to take Apple to really make this AR market take off. There are lots of indications that they’re working on it, including ARKit, which makes very little sense if they’re only thinking of it on cell phones. They’re not going to release anything until they have glasses that are lightweight, stylish, and powerful. But when they do, it’s going to revolutionize the world very suddenly. (We’ve seen this story before: they did the same thing with MP3 players (iPod) and cell phones (iPhone).)
All of which means what, for us as Unity developers? Well, fortunately Unity makes it pretty darn easy to adapt to any of these technologies. There really isn’t very much to learn. But you could get started by playing around with ARKit (if you’re fortunate enough to have a new-enough iPhone and Mac), or with some Google Cardboard style headset (which will only set you back a few bucks). The ARKit will get you experience talking the language of AR, and a Cardboard headset will let you try out VR.
Then when the real thing comes along, you’ll be ready to jump into this new world with both feet.
Cheers,