Gadgetory

and then there were three vr headsets I'm Brian Cooley from cnet always insert to the next big thing we're on the cusp of the payoff of years of VR hype thanks to three head-mounted displays oculus rift HTC vive and sony playstation vr they've been coming forever it seems now they're priced and locked for release and on their shoulders we will get a chance to end mass sample a completely new medium oculus rift is going to be about six hundred dollars not including some motion controllers you're going to want pricing on those is still TBD and it has to hook up to a pretty powerful Windows PC HTC vive also tethers to a personal computer it might go beyond windows to mac and linux as well price is higher at 799 us but does include the motion tracking that would be optional with oculus and the inexpensive one if you can call it that is the sony playstation vr at just four hundred dollars us plus a PlayStation camera you probably have that goes with the PlayStation game console that you also need to power it all three of these as you can tell are tethered by wires to these powerful basis of computers or game consoles now once you get any of these rigs almost certainly the reason you will do so and the first thing you'll do with it will be gaming I don't just mean gaming I mean immersing yourself in gaming you're in the game you're moving through the game you are using your hands and arms to pick up things and manipulate the environment of the game like I said earlier this is not just an increase in the quality of video it's a break to a new medium now as important market as gaming is there's one that's even more delicious to consider and that is VR for sports that's the kind of content where the immersive nature of this technology makes total sense and that content justifies long usage or where times but that long usage could be anything from fatiguing to nauseating we just don't know yet and it depends on the yet untested prospect of live streaming VR the other major in-depth use case for VR would likely be movies and television shows again long-form content appeals to a huge number of people but the problem there is it's a completely new storytelling an envisioning process when you put someone into a VR environment it has to be worth it it can't just be VR of what is basically one place to look the whole scene has to make sense that you are going there and that of course also means you're going to have your viewers looking all different places they will in a sense follow their own storyline that's a very new world for the writers producers and editors of Hollywood and everywhere else that creates long-form high budget content in some we just don't know yet the highs or the lows the top or the bottom of the size of the VR market one Specter does lurk over its shoulder no consumer technology has ever gone to mass scale that required you to wear something on your face this will either be the latest one not two or the first one to know what's next at cnet com / next big thing I'm Brian Cooley