Just three years ago, in 2016 at the MWC or “Mobile World Congress,” thousands of the world's most influential tech journalists wore Samsung's Gear VR goggles for a visual presentation that astonished the attendees. It was expected that this technology would spread widely and be fully supported by smartphones. Why did we not see any progress mentioned in this technology, as if it were fighting for its survival?


After journalists finished watching the video wearing virtual reality glasses, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on stage and began promoting this technology and its presence on smartphones. And it seemed to us after this conference that we would see everyone walking around the streets wearing virtual reality glasses powered by their phones.

But in fact, within the past three years most of us have forgotten that technology and it seemed to be dying and starting to fade before it even existed.


There is no doubt that virtual reality technology has many advantages, especially when it is supported by serious developers who provide impressive experiences. Such as in the HTC Vive devices that were revealed during the World Conference on Phones in 2015, and this device since its announcement has won 22 awards at the Consumer Electronics Show.

So is PlayStation VR.

And these devices people actually enjoy using in real life. Games based on virtual reality also have a place. Comparing these devices with the Samsung Gear VR for augmented reality on phones, it turns out that the Samsung device is almost actually dead.

The reason for this is not to provide good content that may attract the attention of users, but the opposite happened, as users turned their appearance to those devices and therefore poor content.


So why did virtual reality for phones fail in the first place?

With the spread of the Samsung Gear VRs due to its affordable price in the first place, Google and Facebook were also present with "Oculus devices from Facebook and many Google devices", but in the end, the matter lacked something important, which is applications and games strong enough to attract users.


What about AR games?

Like it or not, games are the most lucrative category. This is what drives the majority of users to enter and roam the application stores, and as a result, developers offer constantly evolving games. And no augmented reality games have gotten such attention. Only my game appeared in this regard Fortnite Or Pokemon Go The stars of those games have eluded. We have no longer seen real AR games that capture user interest. Even if there are some good games available, they do not match the games that are played without movement. This is other than the difficulty of playing these games in public places or on transportation.


Does Apple have a different opinion?

Apple has greatly supported the augmented reality technology in iOS, and has developed the ARKit library for that technology. But recently Apple has been accused of not offering anything new about this technology yet. However, Apple is believed to be planning something big in the field of augmented reality technology. The news has reported that Apple has secretly met with glass makers for augmented reality glasses during the CES 2019 conference between January 8 and 11, and at the head of those companies DigiLens, Vuzix and Lumus are among the biggest names in this field. This changed hints over the past years that Apple was working on a product that fits that description, from registering multiple patents related to that technology. And last year, Apple bought Arkonia Holographics, a startup that is developing headphone lenses for AR.

As usual, there has been no official information available about Apple's AR glasses, given the complexity of the project, it is unlikely that we will see its appearance in the next two years.

Do you think virtual reality technology for smartphones is already over? Are you interested in this technology? Let us know in the comments.

Sources:

Phonearena | phonearen j a

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