Last week's class reminded me how far VR has come since Oculus first sent out their developer kits in 2012 (which I was fortunate to demo way back when). To see my peers put on consumer-ready VR hardware (like the GearVR) was surreal. I thoroughly enjoyed watching my classmates' jaws drop and hearing their exclamations.. As someone who considers himself an evangelist for VR, it never ceases to excite me when people have their "aha!" moment with VR and realize that this technology is more than just a cool or gimmicky peripheral (Kinect, 3D TVs come to mind).

What I find most fascinating, however, are Cardboard and the smartphone-based VR experiences currently being churned out by legacy and new media companies. At first, I was worried that these experiences would only further the narrative that "virtual reality" is a gimmick - another way for media companies to sell you something, force you to upgrade your hardware, etc. How can one truly appreciate the immersive power of VR if one's first exposure to it is by sliding one's iPhone into a box?

What I found instead was that these apps and videos are introductory experiences to the VR universe (and simply whet one's appetite for a deeper experience). Just today, a friend at work showed me a popular meme that had been turned into a 360 video. He could not get over how cool it was to spin around and have the video follow his movements - and how funny it was that the video reacted to him looking in certain places. He was so excited.

Having these kinds of videos (and more casual experiences) available will prep users for the more powerful experiences - standing on a ledge in VR and feeling real vertigo, having an authentic feeling of fear walking down a dark hallway in a 3D environment, looking into the eyes of a real refugee and feeling as though they are standing in front of you. Once people realize that they want VR to arrive and that it's not just a gimmick cooked up by tech companies, they'll be willing to spend their money on the beefier VR devices. Which brings me to my final observation:

The HTC Vive. Disclaimer: I have a personal investment in the success of Oculus and their VR headset, the Rift. However, I also see VR as an amazing platform that could revolutionize the way we interact with our world, so my allegiance is to incredible VR experiences and the success of the industry. That being said, the Vive is a cool (and somewhat different) VR experience. The lighthouse devices let the user actually stand and walk around in their environment, while the Rift is a more stationary experience (although not completely). However - the Vive's controllers were not as intuitive as I had hoped, and the fact that the headset is wired and needs to be plugged in the whole time is kind of irritating, especially since its billed as a device that allows for walking around and moving through the space. I do think that the future of VR lies in devices that scan our environments and let us move around in them freely, but until the technology improves, the ability to "walk around" at the expense of a more immersive device (i.e. one that doesn't feel like its there because there's no cable limiting my ability to move) seems like more of a gimmick.