I've spent the last two years yelling to tell the world that it wasn't ready for virtual reality, so it's somewhat embarrassing to now admit that I might've been wrong.
That said, there's a caveat in there that I was also completely right about everything to do with VR. I mean, in all the articles I've written slating the technology, I have always at least said that the best chance it had of breaking through to the mainstream was with PlayStation VR.
By all accounts, we're seeing the first signs of that happening. A report in Venturebeat suggests that by the end of 2016, 6% of Americans will own VR technology. That sounds quite a lot, when you consider how many Americans there are, but less impressive for the top end of the market, once you look deeper into the figures.
You see, 93% of American VR headset owners will merely have a cheap and cheerful smartphone model, while only 1% will have either an absurdly overpriced Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. The remaining 6% of the market share is being smeared across the stomach of Sony's PlayStation VR.
That figure is set to rise over the next couple of years, with Strategy Analytics predicting that one in four Americans will own some sort of headset by 2018. However, the market will remain throttled by budget smartphone options - aka "Not Proper VR".
Nevertheless, Sony is already declaring the PlayStation VR a success, gesticulating vaguely towards launch sales in the "many hundreds of thousands", while interest is ramping up as word-of-mouth spreads like a male stripper.
That said, there's a caveat in there that I was also completely right about everything to do with VR. I mean, in all the articles I've written slating the technology, I have always at least said that the best chance it had of breaking through to the mainstream was with PlayStation VR.
By all accounts, we're seeing the first signs of that happening. A report in Venturebeat suggests that by the end of 2016, 6% of Americans will own VR technology. That sounds quite a lot, when you consider how many Americans there are, but less impressive for the top end of the market, once you look deeper into the figures.
You see, 93% of American VR headset owners will merely have a cheap and cheerful smartphone model, while only 1% will have either an absurdly overpriced Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. The remaining 6% of the market share is being smeared across the stomach of Sony's PlayStation VR.
That figure is set to rise over the next couple of years, with Strategy Analytics predicting that one in four Americans will own some sort of headset by 2018. However, the market will remain throttled by budget smartphone options - aka "Not Proper VR".
Nevertheless, Sony is already declaring the PlayStation VR a success, gesticulating vaguely towards launch sales in the "many hundreds of thousands", while interest is ramping up as word-of-mouth spreads like a male stripper.
In some respects I shouldn't be worried that I was wrong, because - as already stated - the figures indicate I was also completely right.
And also wrong: VR's mainstream success will be dominated not by PSVR (the cheaper end of the higher end), but by the cheap end of the scrag end: smartphones.
And there's one other thing I was massively wrong about: just how utterly seductive virtual reality can be. And it's terrifying.
STONE'S THROW
Lob a stone over your shoulder, and you'll hit a sci-fi parable about the dangers of virtual reality.
Steven Spielberg's next movie Ready Player One - based upon the book by Ernest Cline - portrays a world so utterly wretched, that everyone spends the majority of their lives plugged into a massive, multiplayer, virtual fantasy universe, where they can be whomever and whatever they want.
We're now a hair's breadth away from that being our actual reality.
Being alive is hard. Being who we are - each of us as individuals - can be a daily challenge. We're denied, controlled, herded, and programmed to conform. That process, that restrictive structure, is called society, and for the most part it pulls against our natural instincts. It's why orcas get depressed when stuck in a tank in Sea World, or gorillas smash the glass of their enclosure to try and escape, or dogs get prescribed antidepressants. They, like we, are not the wild animals we were created by Charles Darwin to be.
How many of us have anxiety, or fight to work within the confines of our lives, or miss the freedom of childhood? If it feels like a struggle, the issue doesn't rest with you, but the society into which you were born.
You only have to look around at the ways so many of us try to escape; before you even get to drink, drugs, or sex, you have more benign escapist pursuits. TV, video games, even books - they all lift us out of our lives, so that we can have respite from the struggle.
You mark my words: virtual reality is going to be the ultimate escape, and people are going to get lost in it.
And also wrong: VR's mainstream success will be dominated not by PSVR (the cheaper end of the higher end), but by the cheap end of the scrag end: smartphones.
And there's one other thing I was massively wrong about: just how utterly seductive virtual reality can be. And it's terrifying.
STONE'S THROW
Lob a stone over your shoulder, and you'll hit a sci-fi parable about the dangers of virtual reality.
Steven Spielberg's next movie Ready Player One - based upon the book by Ernest Cline - portrays a world so utterly wretched, that everyone spends the majority of their lives plugged into a massive, multiplayer, virtual fantasy universe, where they can be whomever and whatever they want.
We're now a hair's breadth away from that being our actual reality.
Being alive is hard. Being who we are - each of us as individuals - can be a daily challenge. We're denied, controlled, herded, and programmed to conform. That process, that restrictive structure, is called society, and for the most part it pulls against our natural instincts. It's why orcas get depressed when stuck in a tank in Sea World, or gorillas smash the glass of their enclosure to try and escape, or dogs get prescribed antidepressants. They, like we, are not the wild animals we were created by Charles Darwin to be.
How many of us have anxiety, or fight to work within the confines of our lives, or miss the freedom of childhood? If it feels like a struggle, the issue doesn't rest with you, but the society into which you were born.
You only have to look around at the ways so many of us try to escape; before you even get to drink, drugs, or sex, you have more benign escapist pursuits. TV, video games, even books - they all lift us out of our lives, so that we can have respite from the struggle.
You mark my words: virtual reality is going to be the ultimate escape, and people are going to get lost in it.
MY BRIEFS
In my brief experiences with PlayStation VR, it's evident how all-consuming it's going to become.
If you look at how far graphics technology has progressed in the last 20 years, from those early Virtuality machines, it's not hard to guess that in 20 years time game graphics are going to be almost indistinguishable from the real world.
Except that virtual reality isn't restricted to recreations of reality: you can be anything or anyone in VR, live out those escape fantasies of flying over rooftops, or shooting fireballs out of your hands. It promises to empower the user who typically feels powerless in their own life.
I've been reading a book called Homo Deus - the follow-up to Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. In it, Noah - "Noah! Noah! You were the first one. Noah! Noah! You were the last one!" - details where humanity might be heading, and discusses how the pursuit of happiness will be as much of a focus for our species as, say, trying to achieve immortality.
He writes about how creating a world where we are always happy pulls against our evolutionary needs. Basically, without the low points we have nothing to strive towards. If we're constantly happy and content, and never low or miserable, we have little reason to yearn for something more, or to drag ourselves out of the ditch.
When we reach that point, humanity might cease to evolve or develop. Attaining happiness could, potentially - and somewhat ironically - be the end of us. Which is, in itself, a depressing realisation, that we're probably genetically programmed to have down days.
Still, the same goes for being stuck in such a miserable place that you don't even have the power or energy to pull yourself out, so society finds us a happy balance between making us miserable and making us happy. We're all trapped on an emotional rollercoaster.
Nevertheless, it got me speculating whether the key to that stagnation of our species could come from VR. Instead of consuming chemicals externally, as Harari speculates, could it come from the constant dopamine hit which we'd derive from virtual power, gratification, and pleasure that's impossible to differentiate from the real thing?
In my brief experiences with PlayStation VR, it's evident how all-consuming it's going to become.
If you look at how far graphics technology has progressed in the last 20 years, from those early Virtuality machines, it's not hard to guess that in 20 years time game graphics are going to be almost indistinguishable from the real world.
Except that virtual reality isn't restricted to recreations of reality: you can be anything or anyone in VR, live out those escape fantasies of flying over rooftops, or shooting fireballs out of your hands. It promises to empower the user who typically feels powerless in their own life.
I've been reading a book called Homo Deus - the follow-up to Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. In it, Noah - "Noah! Noah! You were the first one. Noah! Noah! You were the last one!" - details where humanity might be heading, and discusses how the pursuit of happiness will be as much of a focus for our species as, say, trying to achieve immortality.
He writes about how creating a world where we are always happy pulls against our evolutionary needs. Basically, without the low points we have nothing to strive towards. If we're constantly happy and content, and never low or miserable, we have little reason to yearn for something more, or to drag ourselves out of the ditch.
When we reach that point, humanity might cease to evolve or develop. Attaining happiness could, potentially - and somewhat ironically - be the end of us. Which is, in itself, a depressing realisation, that we're probably genetically programmed to have down days.
Still, the same goes for being stuck in such a miserable place that you don't even have the power or energy to pull yourself out, so society finds us a happy balance between making us miserable and making us happy. We're all trapped on an emotional rollercoaster.
Nevertheless, it got me speculating whether the key to that stagnation of our species could come from VR. Instead of consuming chemicals externally, as Harari speculates, could it come from the constant dopamine hit which we'd derive from virtual power, gratification, and pleasure that's impossible to differentiate from the real thing?
THE END?
I know this probably sounds a bit extreme and mental, like some sci-fi nonsense dreamed up by a low-rent author.
Thing is, if you'd asked me about it even a month ago I'd have argued that people, as a general rule, would always prefer to live in the real world.
Unfortunately, with our real world seemingly becoming more miserable by the hour, and all of us feeling our own personal power slipping away, where's the incentive to remain in the real world, when virtual worlds become more and more real?
Until I properly experienced VR, and had my own, brief, moments of not really wanting to remove the headset and return to a world of responsibility and tax bills and work, I would've believed that I'd always choose the real over the virtual.
Yet as VR technology gets more powerful, and cheaper, and the experiences become more connecting and more convincing, our planet risks becoming one where we've all got buckets on our heads, pretending to be spacemen or wizards. And not in the way we did as children, playing in the back garden.
Virtual reality is incredible. It's Star Trek technology made real. I didn't believe them when they said it was going to change the world. Unfortunately, I hadn't realised that virtual reality is more than just consumer hardware. It's more than simply a new way to play games.
All those sci-fi stories were right: VR has the potential to be the most powerful drug ever created, and it risks blinding us all.
I know this probably sounds a bit extreme and mental, like some sci-fi nonsense dreamed up by a low-rent author.
Thing is, if you'd asked me about it even a month ago I'd have argued that people, as a general rule, would always prefer to live in the real world.
Unfortunately, with our real world seemingly becoming more miserable by the hour, and all of us feeling our own personal power slipping away, where's the incentive to remain in the real world, when virtual worlds become more and more real?
Until I properly experienced VR, and had my own, brief, moments of not really wanting to remove the headset and return to a world of responsibility and tax bills and work, I would've believed that I'd always choose the real over the virtual.
Yet as VR technology gets more powerful, and cheaper, and the experiences become more connecting and more convincing, our planet risks becoming one where we've all got buckets on our heads, pretending to be spacemen or wizards. And not in the way we did as children, playing in the back garden.
Virtual reality is incredible. It's Star Trek technology made real. I didn't believe them when they said it was going to change the world. Unfortunately, I hadn't realised that virtual reality is more than just consumer hardware. It's more than simply a new way to play games.
All those sci-fi stories were right: VR has the potential to be the most powerful drug ever created, and it risks blinding us all.
FROM THE WORLD:
REVIEW: PLAYSTATION VR
WELCOME TO THE CROWD OF FUND - BY MR BIFFO
PLEASE SUPPORT MR BIFFO'S FOUND FOOTAGE!
REVIEW: PLAYSTATION VR
WELCOME TO THE CROWD OF FUND - BY MR BIFFO
PLEASE SUPPORT MR BIFFO'S FOUND FOOTAGE!
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