The future of virtual reality is mobile. Not a typical view, as far as I know, but even more surprising considering the source: Jack McCauley, one of the co-founders of Oculus Rift, a leading – and definitely not mobile – VR headset maker.
Enjoy the not-future with the best VR games on PC.
McCauley was speaking with TechRadarat CES 2017 last weekend.
Asked about what Oculus needs to do to improve, McCauley says: “It’s heavy and it’s costly. They need to reduce the cost of it, and if that means sacrificing a few features which are incremental improvements, then that’s what they need to do.”
McCauley has different priorities than many when it comes to VR systems, having previously said “high refresh rates and high render rates do not relieve motion sickness, they only add unnecessary cost to VR systems.”
McCauley went on to discuss Samsung’s recent success with its mobile VR system. “The thing that’s sold, they announced their sales figures on Wednesday, and they sold 5,000,000 Gear VR [units]. That’s very impressive. That’s a smash hit in the game world, that’s knocking it out of the park… So it’s kind of looking like it’s mobile. It’s selling. The PC side is too expensive.”
McCauley designed the guitars and drums for the Guitar Hero games. He was one of the original founders of Oculus VR in July 2012, and served as its chief engineer until shortly after its $2 billion acquisition by Facebook in March 2014.