It could take a decade before virtual reality headsets become cheap and portable enough to replace smartphones as the tech industry’s dominant computing platform, the founder of Oculus VR has warned.
Virtual reality is tipped to be one of the biggest themes of this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, with Sony, HTC and Facebook-owned Oculus all set to release their headsets in the first half of 2016.
However, Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus from his parents’ garage in 2012, has told the FT that the technology required many years of further development before it could “replace smartphones” for mainstream users.
“I think until you have really high-end computing power and until you have really slim form factors, you’re not going to see glasses that people wear every day as part of their everyday lives,” Mr Luckey said. “The only way we’re going to get to billions of users is if VR becomes something that everybody wants to use. And I think to do that, you’re going to [need to] get the cost way down and the quality way up.”
Asked how long that might take, Mr Luckey said: “It could be five years — it’s more likely to be 10 years. But I also don’t think that virtual reality has to get to a slim pair of glasses to be successful.”
In part, more development is necessary to reduce the risk of a social backlash akin to that suffered by Google Glass, Mr Luckey admitted.
“I’m not going to pretend that there won’t be an issue, there will always be people who are against these types of things,” he said, acknowledging that the current headset design is “obviously not the ideal form factor”. “As it goes from a bulky pair of goggles to a slim pair of glasses, you’re going to have a much different reaction to this type of thing.”