Want to Know the Real Future of AR/VR? Ask Their Devs

An article featured on Wired.com by Peter Rubin, suggests that developers would give the most realistic answers to what’s happening in the AR and VR industries.

It starts “if you want to get a rosy view of the future of virtual and augmented reality, ask a company that works in the space. If you want to get a pessimistic view, ask an investor. But if you want a realistic view, one shaped by experience instead of conjecture and wishful thinking, ask the folks who are actually making the stuff.”

From their perspective, according to a new report from the organizers of the annual conference XRDC, things aren’t looking bad at all.  XRDC’s “AR/VR Innovation Report” was generated from an online survey of more than 900 developers.

“Our main goal is to get a sense of the temperature of the industry, which spans from hobbyists and students to professionals working on big-budget projects,” says Alex Wawro, an editor at XRDC and Gamasutra who has been involved with the annual survey since it began in 2016.

Games are still the primary driver of the industry, however, the survey saw pronounced growth in a number of other fields, particularly education (33 percent) and training (27 percent). That growth dovetails with another interesting shift: when developers expect to turn a profit.

In past years, Wawro says, most have expected their VR/AR work to be profitable in the medium term, but this year saw a two-fold jump in people who said their projects aren’t tied to profitability at all.  Government agencies, nonprofits, and businesses creating internally focused experiences aren’t making VR and AR for consumers at all, which skews their priorities away from profit.

Read more in the original article here.

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