Virtual Reality is Set to Boom in 2018

Here are 3 market-leading indications of the future’s different reality:

1. Google

If the world’s most widely used search engine shipped 96% of the world’s 100 million VR units in circulation during 2016, that statistic itself should be a highlight of Virtual Reality’s industry potential. Most of them were Google Cardboards: which are simple, mostly free to obtain and at the bottom-end of the VR enabled headsets, but offer an unprecedented experience of 360 degree media consumption to the masses. YouTube even released a dedicated Google Cardboard-compatible channel of videos to introduce users. Ever wondered what it felt like to ski down the slopes of Thredbo? To explore the decadent art galleries of Europe? The feeling of being in the ‘thick of the action’ is there as soon as you slide your phone into the cardboard holder.

2. Facebook

1.32 billion people treat this as their day-to-day means of connecting to friends, colleagues and family. Facebook Messenger offers one way of communication, but with the increasingly instant and a ‘picture says a thousand words’ form of picture or video messaging, one might wonder when word messaging will become antiquated. Heck, Facebook’s already incorporated of the GIF messaging button as a shortcut to express emotions. But those remembering Mark Zuckerberg’s $2 billion purchase of Oculus VR in March 2014 will have avidly followed Facebook’s development of their native social virtual reality app called Spaces, allowing multiple users to hang out as avatars with each other in a transported space (In a park? At the beach? At a café?). This vision of the future, though Zuckerberg predicts will require more than $3 billion investment over the next decade to widely popularise, will most-likely override any need for word-type (a.k.a Messenger-like) communication.

3. Microsoft

The PC gargantuan recognises the threshold of computing revolution with its launch of the Microsoft Reactor as a hub of Mixed Reality development and showcasing. In community hubs and studios, developers can record holographic videos to create virtual holograms of humans in performances, which in turn interact with audiences. This continues Microsoft’s trend of investment which was highlighted from the initial introduction of HoloLens in 2015, allowing audiences including doctors and engineers to engage with animate and inanimate objects projected onto their real-life surroundings.