What Our Team is Excited About in VR for 2023
2022 has been another banner year for the VR industry — but as a company with an eye to the future, we couldn’t help but start to think about what’s coming next. We recently asked the Resolution Games team about what they were most looking forward to in the year ahead — and some of their answers might surprise you!
Getting Comfortable
We’ve all been there: you’re settled in for an evening of your favorite VR game, you lose yourself in the virtual world — and then, all of a sudden, you start to feel a crick in your neck. VR headsets have long had a struggle with user comfort, and while this has been improved upon with every new iteration of hardware design, the latest generation of devices are easily the most comfortable yet. And with wider fields of view and better resolution, things feel far more natural and comfortable on the eyes, too.
The latest hardware is smaller, weighs less, and has better overall weight distribution than its predecessors. On devices like the Pico 4, PlayStation VR2 and Meta Quest Pro, players can more easily shrug off the “weight” of the real world and lose themselves in their favorite piece of immersive entertainment.
Mixing Realities with Color Passthrough
Resolution Games CEO Tommy Palm has previously covered this topic on our blog, but to quickly recap, color passthrough takes VR headsets and turns them into something new: devices built for mixed reality. What this means is that, instead of escaping the world around you, VR devices can now be used to augment that world, bringing digital components into your own environment to create all new styles of play.
While passthrough play first became possible on the Meta Quest 2 (where Resolution Games was the first third-party developer to utilize it), it was admittedly a bit limited due to its grayscale display and low resolution. The camera on the Quest 2 wasn’t designed to support passthrough play; it just turned out to be a happy accident. But the devices entering the market now like the Quest Pro, paving the way for play in 2023, take advantage of full color and high resolution cameras to help users blend the line between virtual and physical realities.
It’s also conceivable that we’ll start seeing projects that reskin the real world in real-time in the not-too-distant future, with cameras recognizing objects or individuals and providing a digital overlay in a headset to completely reinvent the scene. Maybe you’ll high five your roommate who’s been digitally adjusted to look like Bigfoot, or you could look out your kitchen window and see attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
We’re hard at work on a number of passthrough prototypes, and can’t wait to show you more soon!
Hand Tracking Becoming Standard
Hand tracking – the ability to use your hands instead of controllers in select apps and games – has been around for a few years now and is finally approaching near-flawless results in mapping both movement and intention, including the use of complex gestures thanks to recent advances like Meta’s 2022 release of their Hand Tracking 2.0 API.
We’ve seen incredible consumer experiences over the last year that are built around hand tracking, letting users virtually pick up puzzle pieces, hold a hand of cards, and even play air guitar. At Resolution Games, we’ll be releasing our first hand-tracking project next year as a free update to Demeo, bringing an even greater sense of realism to the tabletop gaming experience. 2023 could very well be the year where hand-tracking moves from “cool feature” to “default expectation.”
Could full body tracking in VR be far behind?
Healthy Competition
2022 saw not only continued investment from existing hardware manufacturers, but a wealth of activity from other companies who are looking to enter the market. As with any industry, competition in VR is good for business. It drives innovation up, costs down, and provides consumers with more options than ever before.
As of this writing alone, the Meta Quest Pro and Pico 4 have entered the market, rumors already abound about the next headsets to come from both companies, and Sony is readying to bring the next generation of console-based VR to consumers with the PSVR2 next year. (And if you like Demeo and Sony devices, do we have some good news for you!)
And that’s to say nothing of the activities and rumors surrounding other major players looking to enter or return to the market:
The list goes on and on. How much of the above actually materializes is anybody’s guess, but one thing’s certain: as both the user base and technological capabilities of VR and MR have grown exponentially, big tech companies have reached the point where sitting on the sidelines just isn’t a viable option.
Beyond Games
Video games are crucial to the early days of nearly every new consumer technology. They provide a playground for experimentation, uncovering new methods and use cases, and creating stunning early products that push the limits of what current hardware can do. Game developers are among the most imaginative and inventive people working in technology today.
But it’s what games pave the way for that’s really impressive.
Tools for training and education, for remote workers, for health and recovery — all of these will find a home in VR and MR technologies, and many are already making incredible progress. More than anything else in 2023, we’re looking forward to seeing how much more these industries can grow in their use of immersive technologies — and how all of the other items that excited us about VR in 2023 will benefit the world outside of games, too.