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How to Make VR Take Off

Learn more about 360/VR at Streaming Media's next event.

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

James Payne: The headsets are huge. They can be uncomfortable, they can itch you. People get dizzy, they feel sick. But then also, if you put on a headset and you watch something that's boring, you just take it off after 10 seconds. So I think you have to find that perfect mix of an interesting experience or an awesome story to tell, and have a reason to use 360 or VR. But then you also want to have that hardware that can display it properly, have it look good and give you the experience that the creator is trying to give you.

Jay Nemeth: I guess if Oculus or HTC Vive or any of these companies make an amazing headset that gives you that dynamic range and the color and the field of view, that'll be an amazing thing, but I won't carry that with me all the time. So I understand what the idea was with the mobile device: you have that thing with you, and if you can snap it into some little folding thing and put it on your head, it's available all the time. It just really feels like a niche still, and it's almost like the people that had the early home theaters in their house. Very few people had those, and they bought the laserdisc player, 'cause VHS sucked, and they had this clunky 3:2 projector and they had to calibrate it every morning, but they were willing to make that sacrifice for the experience. And so I think for VR to take off, it can't just be these extreme hobbyists who are willing to plug things into their computers and have all the sensors and all of that. Like James was saying, a lot of times when we stick the phone in the Google Cardboard and you hand it to somebody, they get disoriented and they feel nauseous, and you can't do that. Just like 3D gave people headaches, and a lot of people didn't like that experience, it needs to progress past that.

Scott Gillies: Personally, I picture a Star Trek scene, where you walk into a room like this, and all the walls become displays, and you are in an experience there, right? So I really think down the road with this stuff. The technology is not here right now to have that experience, or it would be very expensive to simulate it, but I think, just again, that the prices of bandwidth and computer processing power just continue to go down. That just keeps driving what is possible, and ultimately, it's not up to us. I mean, I really can't say that more firmly. It's really up to what's frictionless for the consumer, what do they want, demand, and the second they see it and they love it, they understand it in a second, that's the end of it. I don't think they've seen that yet, and I do think it's coming. So I think it's one of those things where at least I consider my endeavor is to keep pushing on the technologists to make sure that we end up with all the possibilities and let the consumers decide.

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