(12 Jun 2014) LEADIN:
If there's any question over what the big hitter is at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), virtual reality is surely the answer.
The Oculus Rift and Morpheus headsets are both drawing huge crowds in Los Angeles - with industry professionals and enthusiasts keen to see their latest prototypes in action.
STORYLINE:
The face of this year's E3 is donned with a virtual reality (VR) headset.
The prospect of VR in the living room probably isn't quite ready for prime time, but that won't stop it from being buzzed about across the LA Convention Centre at this week's event.
At the booth of Oculus Rift, show attendees are taking a three dimensional look at what many call the next stage in computer gaming.
The Oculus headset has been at the forefront of gamer's minds lately, especially since Facebook recently purchased the company for two billion US dollars.
"I think we're all on top of this," says Oculus founder, Palmer Luckey.
"Virtual reality people have been wanting it for a long time. I wanted it, a lot of science-fiction nerds wanted it, a lot of game enthusiasts wanted it. And we finally have the technology to make it happen, and it's really gratifying to be involved in the industry at the right time where we can finally make a big difference."
According to Luckey, they're ready to exploit the potential for VR and the market is ready and waiting.
"What we've got is already better than pretty much everything that's come before and we know what we need to make for the consumer product now," he says.
"We know what virtual-reality needs to be to be a mass-market thing, and we're really cranking to get that into people's hands."
The potential for VR headsets raises questions over where else this new technology can take us, but Luckey says there needs to serious development before it replaces traditional televisions.
"I think eventually virtual reality is going to replace traditional televisions," he says.
"But that's not going to happen in our current incarnation of the headset. It's going to have to get much slimmer, much lighter, closer to what a pair of actual glasses looks like and become a normal part of your everyday life, not be something that you're dedicated to go do."
While the buzz around virtual reality technology here is all about games, Facebook's decision to purchase Oculus suggests there'll be other applications for the devices.
Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities says much more is possible.
"Oculus guys definitely had a vision as a gaming device and I think that they were very ambitious about getting game content for it," he says.
"But they were all games all the time. Facebook clearly thinks that that platform has applications beyond games you know, possibly training, education, surgery."
Software titles for virtual reality are few and far between here at E3, but that doesn't mean other development for the technology isn't happening.
Elsewhere, at Sony PlayStation's booth, they're previewing their own take on VR in the form of this Project Morpheus headset.
"Virtual reality is quite different, it uses a lot of the same type of technology as traditional games but the game play is very different because you are feeling like you're actually present in the place where the experience is created," says Richard Marks, Director of PlayStation Magic Lab.
"It's not like you're controlling a character it really feels like you're there."
According to Marks, what differentiates PlayStation from other VR developers is that their console technology is already able to process the kind of graphics needed for virtual reality.
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