Sunday Debate: Unified or Fragmented Virtual Reality?

Advertising is hard We do it all day. Let us teach you what we've learned. Learn how the experts market their startups. Grab the free ebook. From our sponsors

 

 

xda-developers

Android and Windows Phone Development Community

Sunday Debate: Unified or Fragmented Virtual Reality?
3/8/2015 11:31:38 AM

Join us in a fun Sunday Debate on Unified VR. Come with your opinions and feel free to read some of our thoughts, then pick your side or play devil's advocate to get your voice heard and engage in friendly discussion. You can read our food-for-thought or jump straight into the fray below!

 

 

Virtual Reality is coming, and it seems like there’s no stopping it. What started as 90’s kids’ childhood dreams is now materializing with the Oculus Rift and its promises of immersive VR gaming and media. Now it seems like every OEM wants a slice of the pie, and in just a few months we’ve seen a new iteration of Gear VR, Google Cardboard and some of its forks, HTC Vive, and rumors of Android VR, just to name a few. But the thing we see here is that with this boom came too many options, just like the very first smartwatch boom even had Martian and Cookoo putting out products that nowadays we wouldn’t begin considering proper smartwatches. VR sees a lot of manufacturers jumping in and we expect many more to show us what they are working on behind the scenes.

But just like with the early smartwatch game (and in some ways, the current one too), all these manufacturers are misaligned, as each wants to show their vision of the concept with their own software and hardware platforms. This is reminiscent of the fragmentation we find on many other areas of the mobile world, be it software or hardware, and it can be troublesome for any mobile enthusiast but also the average consumer alike. This is why Android VR was such a nice bit of news: a common, unified and popular platform could make developers and users thrive with a common path for progress. Does this mean that this unified path would be better for the future of VR? Did it work in the past? What are the pros and cons?

With this being said, do you think a unified VR solution would be better for future developments? Let's look at a couple of sides of the debate.

Degree of freedom

Something very important to discuss beforehand is that both models could allow for varying degrees of freedom. A unified solution can offer a lot of accessible openness (like Android) or not (like iOS). In the same way, the fragmented variants in themselves could offer great freedom in customization, development and forking, or be very locked down. I’d argue that an open unified system is worlds better than a fragmented model with locked down offerings, but you might think otherwise.

Unified

Now this is a word we mostly hate around these circles; Android suffers greatly from fragmentation, and every year we see endless rants about the latest distribution numbers. On huge updates like Lollipop, this is a big deal: the new features, frameworks and version-specific API mean that those that are running older software are left out of the vanguard in Android apps and services. The distribution numbers of Lollipop’s first few months, in particular, showed how badly this hurt the platform: It took a couple of months for Lollipop to even show up in the graph, meaning that just a handful of users could experience the new features. As a result, development was stalled in some ways, and even today the reach of Material Design and Lollipop implementations is not what we would want it to be. Google tries its best with adding ways to make Lollipop features (mostly Material Design assets) run on older versions, but that only gets them so far.

Another big problem is the fact that these vastly different solutions mostly differ in both hardware and software. Take for example Oculus rift: by primarily being a PC solution the hardware that the software has to be coded for varies greatly from what we find on mobile-centric platforms. While most phones run on ARM processors, personal computers have architectures like x86 which make the porting process a hassle, particularly from PC-to-Android due to the much more limited power of mobile handsets. On the software side, without a unified software solution, apps and games would also have to be programmed differently to adjust to not just the kernels and drivers but also the operating systems of each platform. Then there’s proprietary software and exclusive features: the fragmentation would make choosing between VR solutions significantly harder, as some could feature great exclusive content. With the previously mentioned differences in software and hardware, porting them to other devices wouldn’t be an easy task either. With a heavily connected world, locking people into disjointed or very exclusive services could be detrimental for VR as a whole.

In this sense, Android VR or another unified solution that would bring a common framework and popular mainstream appeal would mitigate these shortcomings. Much like Android Wear did with smartwatches, manufacturers and developers could center around hardware and application development. Depending on the reach of the unification, however, things could go differently: if a platform allows developers to fork it for exclusive functionality, a unified solution would look a lot like Android – which would bring a set of shortcomings. If it didn’t it would be reminiscent of Android Wear, however, which would bring a lot of issues as well. Both models have their good and bad things. Regardless, a unified environment for VR would mean easy access for users and an easier work for developers who want to get their product out there to the widest audiences.

Fragmentation

While fragmentation is inherently associated with a negative connotation, it doesn’t have to be. I personally was one of the ones who vocalized their concern over fragmentation in Android, until I found Android Wear. The latest in Google-software smartwatches are not that much better compared to the earliest of Google-software smartwatches. This is because the platform has evolved terribly slow due to a lack of innovative drive and constricted modifications from OEMs. With Android Wear, manufacturers couldn’t really modify much in the software, and the experience is virtually identical on every device. On smartwatches, this works as the main appeal of the different options is aesthetic and not functional. A VR headset’s aesthetics matters very little, so if the unified platform is locked to a point where no modifications can be made by those who make the headsets, the progress of the platform would suffer. If OEMs brought to Android a lot of little things that eventually made it to AOSP, the same freedom in VR could bring experience-changing modifications as well as a tighter control in hardware and software for OEMs.

Fragmentation could also bring competition and drive up the market in this space. If mobile VR solutions have a head-to-head, like OEMs do with mobile phones, they would be pushed towards bringing out the best with each iteration. With Wear, for example, I just don’t grasp the competition: it seems like OEMs are mostly going on their way, minding their own business. A unified platform could lead towards stagnation from the OEMs part, unless they invest into application development. This is concerning because, at the end of the day, manufacturers like Samsung or HTC have millions that they could dump into pushing their products forward, either through researching new innovate implementations or simply putting out fun games or interesting applications. Finally, with a greater control of both software and hardware, new sensor technology and new methodologies could be explored. When it comes to VR, these could significantly expand or improve the experience and possible capabilities of the platform.

 

Debating

On one hand, a unified platform would bring easy access to consumers and easier transitions to developers. It would also allow for easier access to software and lift some of the barriers imposed through proprietary development or exclusivity deals, further enriching the experience of users. But at the same time, many different options could have their own strengths and weaknesses, and these would allow OEMs to introduce the innovations that they would be restricted from integrating on a tightly unified platform. Both options are models that have worked in the past, but they both saw failures too. Virtual Reality touches new territory on many fronts, so the prediction is harder to make despite the history of technology and what it teaches us. So the answer to these matters is up for grabs. We will, however, discuss this situation further in the future with a comprehensive feature, but until then feel free to explore the conundrum with us.

 

• Do you think VR should be unified, or fragmented?
• Do you think the options should be locked down, or open?
• Where do you see VR heading with each model?

Tell us your opinion below!

The post Sunday Debate: Unified or Fragmented Virtual Reality? appeared first on xda-developers.

 

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at feedmyinbox.com

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions