A Look Back at VR’s Presence at CES: Why 2017 could be the Watershed Year for VR
By Dr. Changyin (CY) Zhou
I have been attending CES for several years and it has been interesting to see how it’s evolved. In the past few years, we have seen the up’s and down’s of smart wearables, IoT, 3D printing, drones, and virtual reality (VR).
VR started to appear at CES in 2013. But it wasn’t until CES 2015 when people started to pay serious attention to VR as it was the first CES after Facebook acquired Oculus.
At CES 2015, there were only a few VR prototypes or even mock-up demos of technologies including Oculus Rift, Leap Motion’s motion input camera, and a few 360 degree cameras. At this point, almost nothing was market-ready or generally available for purchase, which interestingly led to a lot of hype and high expectations for what VR was capable of. Unfortunately, few of them were able to deliver in 2015. A few products that were available in 2015 include Google Cardboard, Ricoh Theta S camera, 360 camera rigs using GoPro cameras, and Samsung Gear VR joining at the end of the year.
At CES 2016, Oculus Rift and Gear VR had a big show, while many other VR headsets, and even more concept demos of various VR ideas, such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, were on display. This was the time when people started to label 2016 as the year of VR; the year in which technology concepts would become reality and prove there was a viable market. Slightly better than 2015, a few more companies were able to deliver on their vision in 2016, including HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PSVR. But the majority of those concepts previewed at last year’s CES didn’t come to market in 2016, including a few long-standing kickstarter projects.
At CES 2017 earlier this month, we saw a significant difference from 2016. While there might have been fewer big VR booths, many of those exhibiting had products ready to purchase, pre-order, or at least promise to ship soon. Some core technologies are now more realistic, like inside-out tracking, wireless headsets, foveated streaming, spatial audio, hand-tracking, 4K or 8K VR cameras, real-time VR video stitching, etc, even to a level of production. Opposite to some other reviews, I found this year’s CES extremely encouraging. It demonstrated that the VR industry is continuing to make sturdy progress and that more and more technologies are becoming less conceptual and more realistic.
Why 2017 could be the Watershed of VR
In 2017, I expect to see more VR startups to pivot or even shutdown. After all, the VR market is still immature and I anticipate some consolidation in the space. We have already seen this start to occur with the shutdown of Vrideo and EnvelopVR at the end of 2016. I also expect to see more tech acquisitions, which were also starting to happen in the second half of 2016.
Beyond market consolidation, I also expect to see a number of cool “products” (not demos) come to market. For example, 4K or even 8K VR cameras will become available on the market, and the price will drop dramatically by even an order of magnitude; more 4K+ VR content will be delivered to end users; all-in-one VR HMDs will start to sell, which will be remarkable for the whole market; inside-out tracking and mobile hand-tracking should be ready for at least developers; and more killer applications will appear.
The survivors of 2017, who either nailed down a key VR problem or found a killer application, will likely have great advantages and opportunities to thrive in 2018, possibly even growing into unicorns. Those killer applications will ignite the growth of VR industries. For that, I foresee 2017 to be the watershed of VR.
References:
36Kr Audio interview of CY Zhou at CES http://36kr.com/p/5061326.html
