The VR industry will need to keep evolving in the years to come. For now, there is a mediocre interest in this technology, which isn’t exactly promising when looking at the bigger picture. Facial tracking may make VR a lot more appealing, assuming this technology comes to market in an affordable manner. With the current generation of headsets still being clunky and expensive, something will need to change sooner rather than later.
Facial Tracking is Coming to VR Soon
No one will deny the current top-of-the-line VR headsets are both expensive and bulky to use. Especially when wearing them for a few hours, your neck and eyes will fatigue very quickly. For a technology advertised as room-scale virtual freedom, there are still plenty of improvements to be made. So far, we have seen some interesting developments in this regard. Higher resolutions, wireless headsets, and a bigger field of view are some of the positive trends to keep an eye on.
In the future, we may see other features, including facial tracking. The concept may sound a bit strange, but it makes sense to integrate such a feature into a VR headset. After all, our faces are pretty expressive, yet our VR avatar is incapable of mimicking anything but the basic emotions right now. More specifically even talking in VR seems off-key and feels unnatural more often than not. It is a bit bothersome, but we may see some big improvements in the near future.
Especially when more and more people flocking to social VR experiences, facial tracking will be a welcome addition. None of the current headsets is effectively capable of replicating this technology, though. Instead, consumers will need to invest in additional headsets or wait for future generations until facial tracking can even become commonplace. It will be interesting to see how consumers respond to this change moving forward.
As is always the case, one shouldn’t expect too much from the first integration of facial tracking either. Technology is always evolving and changing. Implementing this technology into a headset is not easy either, as it requires an IR camera. Another option is to put additional sensors in the HDM itself, but that will cause some friction against the skin. Finding the golden path will not be easy whatsoever. There is no wrong way to go in this regard, though, as long as the concept works. Only time will tell if that is the case.
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