Should VR Headsets be Agnostic?

We had the same kind of thing in the graphics card market. Nvidia, 3DFX, ATI, S3, PowerVR, etc, all tried to compete with features and exclusives, making life hard for early consumers.

It wasn't until Microsoft pushed Direct3D that things got under control. MS wasn't a competitor, they just set the standard for features and compatibility that everybody had to follow. OpenGL was too flexible, meaning dealing with heaps of custom extensions for each card.

We need the same for VR. This time MS can't do it, because they have their own competing products (Hololens and mixed reality devices). Maybe Khronos has enough authority that OpenXR can bring Oculus, Valve and MS to the table.

Sound cards did it too. Sound Blaster, Adlib and Gravis Ultrasound were all incompatible and needed custom code for each one.

Yes, we have been through this with;

-sound cards
-joystick interface
-memory standards 
-graphic cards (2d and 3d)
..... And even keyboards!

That's why we had hoped the lesson had been learned! 

I think in the long run HMD's may become device agnostic.  After all it's just a form-factor for a display.  However, at this point there is a lot to distinguish between devices aside from just their display quality.  Hand controllers, SDK's, audio devices, etc.  Until there is one industry standard for things like the software providing the interface, we're very unlikely to see an agnostic device.  

As long as there's a financial benefit to making users use your proprietary software interface, we're unlikely to see an industry standard.

The problem with this argument is that all TVs take the exact same inputs and produce the exact same output in the exact same way, whereas VR systems are very complex devices with wildly different hardware features, software functions, and tracking systems, that each have to be individually and separately developed for...

It is just not reasonable to expect a company to take the time (and labor) to code support for every VR headset on the market, or for them to require every developer that makes content for their platform to individually support all of those devices if that developer doesn't want to.  It is also not reasonable to expect that company to take responsibility for technical issues with hardware they didn't build and don't make money from the sale of.

Bottom Line:  Oculus is not responsible for the buyer's remorse Vive-owners are suffering.  Expecting them to take responsibility for the Vive's shortcomings is like demanding that Burger King give you a free order of fries because the ones in your McDonalds happy meal were stale... and expecting them to deliver them to you AT the McDonalds.   Or like going to the beach and complaining that the water isn't chlorinated, when you could have just gone to the pool instead.

kevinw729 said:

Yes, we have been through this with;

-sound cards
-joystick interface
-memory standards 
-graphic cards (2d and 3d)
..... And even keyboards!

That's why we had hoped the lesson had been learned! 

But the lesson was learned. Don't rush into forcing a standard before an adequate phase allowing maximum innovation.

All these things were annoying for consumers and developers at the time, but the end result was better for it because it allowed companies to experiment without having to stick to the lowest common denominator.

This happens with most technology, it starts off very proprietary at the start, then becomes more compatible with other brands as the best options become clear and as consumer interest increases.

TVs and monitors did the same thing, they definitely weren't agnostic!
We had SECAM in france, russia and parts of africa. PAL was in europe and australia. NTSC was in america.
If you had an amiga, playing an american game on a PAL tv resulted in slight slow motion (NTSC was 60Hz, PAL was 50Hz, but games didn't use variable frame rate code, they assumed a fixed rate based on vsync). European games would run 20% faster on an NTSC tv, but you'd lose the bottom of the screen (PAL had a vertical resolution of 576, NTSC was 480).
On a TRS-80 Colour Computer 2, American games looked very different on a PAL tv. Due to resolution and artifacts, on NTSC if you did alternating black and white pixels, they would appear solid red or blue, depending on the order (such as BWBWBW looked red while WBWBWB appeared blue). But on PAL they looked like grey. Some american games relied on that, on PAL it was hard to see what was going on.

Then we had RF video, composite video, component video, s-video and SCART (huge socket which potentially had them all). We had multisync and fixed sync monitors. We had CGA, EGA and VGA monitors. Then VGA, DVI, HDMI and DP cables.

Even now we still have differences. Gsync only works with Nvidia gfx cards. Freesync only works with AMD cards. (By "work" I mean do it's actual sync feature thingy. They both work as just a normal monitor if you connect the wrong card). Some monitors are 10 bit per channel (over a billion colours), some are 8 bit per channel (16 million colours), some are pathetic 6 bit with dithering (65,536 colours).

Then we could get into the entire aspect ratio thing. One common resolution on 4:3 monitors was 1280x1024. But that's 5:4 ratio, so pixels weren't square. Movies came as wide screen, letter boxed or pan and scan. Playing a game on a wide screen monitor could be Horizontal+ (you see more horizontally) or Vertical- (you see less vertically). Most 3d games were H+, but Bioshock was V- (and boy did the wide screen monitor owners whine about it!)

There's also HDCP, the DRM that stops shows from running on your TV if they don't like it. That's pretty similar to the VR situation on games not working on unapproved HMDs.


TV is definitely not the role model for VR to follow.


VR HMDs should be agnostic, eventually. But they need time to not be held back from making new discoveries.

Microsoft just registered the OpenReality name. They plan on making it the DirectX of VR. Remember we are the early adopters. There's only 5 games worth playing right now, and our market share is tiny. As mentioned above this period happened with all new computer technologies. Be patient and pat yourself on the back for helping lead this awesome new medium!

I understand and agree, but I was not asking to repeat TV's nasty history, but to be mindful and avoid it by going straight to the agnostic, none manipulation approach.

I also want to avoid the "wait and see", "give it some time" , or "just need time" comments as we obviously all know that they need time, but they need to be mindful from the start of the end game, rather act surprise when the targets change!

lunaticedit said:

There's only 5 games worth playing right now

Really?

What are the 4 other than Mountain Goat Mountain?

I can play anything I want on both VR headsets, it is the PSVR that is keeping stuff for itself.

There are way more then 5 games thats worth it right now.
And yes I agree kevin we need vr titles to be compatable or avalible for both.