Oculus VR founder on the key to virtual reality's success: 'People are narcissists'

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/07/oculus-vr-virtual-reality-facebook

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Video games may be the first use for the Oculus Rift headset, but they are not its end game, according to the now Facebook-owned company’s founder Palmer Luckey.

“Gaming is just about the only industry that has the set of tools and skills needed for VR. At it’s core, VR is an extension of gaming,” said Luckey in an appearance at the CES show in Las Vegas.

“But it’s the idea of digital parallel worlds, allowing people to communicate and do things in a virtual world. Most don’t spend the majority of their time playing games now, and I can’t see that changing with VR – gaming is not the end game.”

The Oculus Rift headset has re-ignited interest in VR, so much so that Luckey’s company was bought by Facebook for $2bn in 2014. Thus far, its primary focus has been gaming, with 360-degree videos emerging as a second area of interest for some developers.

Facebook’s purchase of the company, which has talent on its books such as Doom creator John Carmack, raised questions about how precisely a VR headset could be of any use to a social network.

Would people be sharing status updates in a 3D VR world, or was it just Mark Zuckerberg’s pet project? “We’re trying to predict where it’s going with the hardware as it is now and it’s very hard,” said Luckey at CES.

“Looking at a larger than life News Feed or someone’s photos in VR isn’t interesting. It needs to be new experience. I don’t think it’s going to be Facebook the social network in VR, but people are narcissists and they want people to see what they think are their amazing lives.”

VR headsets seal the person wearing them off from the outside world, which some critics see as a major downside: while friends and family members in the same room can watch what the VR user is seeing on a TV screen, it’s not a hugely social experience.

Luckey acknowledged the challenge. “I think it’s solvable, but I also think social acceptance changes with society. It’s easy to hate things until you actually need to use them,” he said.

“It’s like trying to predict our telephones. Go back to the 1800s and tell people you will be able to call anyone anywhere and they’d picture a room full of phones and expect everyone to have to stay in that room with 20 telephones lining the wall. But that’s not how it worked out with everyone now carrying their own personal phone.”

Virtual reality has been closely linked with augmented reality (AR), which overlays digital information on the real world. Luckey said that integrating AR into VR isn’t high on Oculus’ priorities for now.

“Once you can simulate a virtual world, there’s nothing to stop you from piping the real world in for AR,” he said. “I’m up for getting VR right first, but at the end of the day they’re going to be the same thing – the same hardware, the same software.”

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