If one thing has become clear about virtual reality in the last two years, it’s that it’s going to take time to develop into what we all want it to be. Right off the bat VR was capable of some awfully impressive things, and it has definitely gotten better over the course of roughly two-and-a-half years of public attention. Even now though, in mid-2018, VR can feel vaguely lacking – as if we’re right on the cusp of something truly incredible, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet.
In the coming years, VR is going to wow us through headlines across all walks of life. It’s going to facilitate breakthroughs in healthcare, and it’s going to restructure certain kinds of education and training. It may change how we watch sports, and help us to visit faraway places in a way that feels real. Even so, however, most of us will be focused on the more individual experiences. We’ll care about the things we can do in our homes or nearby VR arcades (which are fast becoming a thing), and the ways in which VR entertains us and occupies us on a day-to-day basis. So, when we think about things this way, we have to ask: What will the best experiences be another five years from now?
Answering that question with perfect accuracy is simply unrealistic at this point. But coming up with some logical guesses is far more reasonable….
Virtual Workouts
This might be the most extraordinary thing about virtual reality that very few people are talking about. But as a write-up in Forbes put it, a few companies are using virtual reality to make fitness addictive, possibly in a way that’s never been done before. We all have ways of making our workouts more tolerable. We try out different playlists or listen to podcasts, work out with partners, try different exercises each day to avoid monotony, etc. But we don’t have too many ways of making them fun, save for those who get a genuine “runner’s high” or something similar. VR could change all that through entirely new machines that allow us to move in strategic, fitness-oriented ways as we look to play games and complete tasks in VR.
Virtual Casinos
Casinos can sometimes be left out of the conversation when we wonder about gaming innovation and the future of video games. Really though, they should always be part of these talks, because they cater to huge player bases, and they’re usually ready to pounce on new mediums or methods of gaming. Evaluating the best casino gaming opportunities today typically means looking into the software platforms they run on and seeing which site offers the most games, the most life-like opportunities, etc. Following this trend, casinos are slowly seeping into VR, and it’s a reasonable expectation that in a few more years full virtual casinos will be awfully impressive, and awfully popular.
Virtual Flight
Here we’re not talking about the idea of flying an airplane or helicopter or any sort of fictional vehicle in VR, though there will definitely be more and more experiences like this. Rather, we’re talking about just flying. A terrific article on how VR will change the future of gaming stated wisely that not possible in reality is possible in virtual reality. The point was that VR helps us to experience things that by all rights should be impossible. And when you think of it that way, does anything come to mind more quickly than flight? Improved VR systems and possibly contraptions not unlike those being used for workouts will allow us to experience the illusion and possibly even the sensation to some degree, of free flight.
Virtual Shooters
Shooters are the most popular console games, among the most popular mobile games, and have fast become some of the most prevalent and interesting VR games as well. As a result, this is probably the easiest prediction there is to be made about where VR is headed. Shooters will be refined, and the future will bring about some incredibly realistic games in the genre.