The VR Ecosystem and What to Expect in the Years to Come

Abstract

This chapter is a snapshot of the wider virtual reality (VR) industry at the time of the writing of this book. VR innovation is constantly evolving, partly due to the fact that the latest wave of the consumer VR market is still in its early stages; in many aspects, not unlike the early smartphone market, when a large variety of technologies, formats, form factors, and user experience (UX) concepts were competing for consumer attention. Besides the almost daily news on breakthrough research in areas like resolution, eye tracking, and usability, there are stable long-term trends that have proven to be reliable pointers for the roadmap ahead of us. We will look at these established long-term VR trends and evaluate what is relevant in the mobile and standalone VR space.