Even though virtual reality technology is still in the early stages of consumer adoption, people are already showing concern regarding the quality of the content they experience. Some people hope to see photorealistic images and video on their VR lenses in the near future, even though that is nothing more than a utopian dream. The current computer hardware available to consumers simply can’t produce the quality some people are after.
Bad Graphics Were To Be Expected
It is certainly true virtual reality graphics and content seem a bit “off” to a lot of people. Textures are not as crisp and sharp as we would all like them to be, for the time being. Then again, there is no picture-perfect content out there outside of the virtual reality world either. It was to be expected the first generation of graphical content would sacrifice quality over performance.
To put this into perspective, one has to keep in mind that it requires incredibly powerful hardware to experience VR. A gaming console, smartphone, or even a godly multi-thousand Dollar gaming computers can’t output realistic video or image quality by any means. Real-time photorealistic content will take a few more decades to be achievable, and that is looking at things with an overdose of optimism.
Additionally, it all comes down to what people experience as “perfect quality”. To a lot of people, this means an environment that uses atmosphere and looks decent enough to move around in. Others want to experience things in the same was as they would look in real life. While that last option is the ultimate goal for content creators worldwide, it is not realistic right now. Photo realism is not achievable now, nor will be it until 2030. That is, unless we make some major breakthroughs in the graphics department.
Subpar graphics could prove to be a big hurdle for the VR environment, though. Most of the lenses found in headset these days can’t even output full-HD resolution quality. There is a lot of work to be done in this regard. Then again, virtual reality was never designed to be the “fix everything” solution for bad graphical quality. It only highlights these issues even more, as the content is mere inches from one’s eyeballs.
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