San Francisco Virtual Reality Conference Takes Look Into Future
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- The city of San Francisco becomes the portal to the future this week with the sold-out Virtual Reality Developers Conference kicking off Wednesday.
Of course there are the video games, like Eve Valkyrie, an immersive new game made for the PS 4 and Xbox.
This is one of the first games designed from the ground up for virtual reality.
"Playing this, flying around and shooting airplanes, it's very good," said conference attendee Cristiano Shares. "Very immersive, it looks like I was definitely inside a ship. Very, very good."
"Virtual reality absolutely is a new frontier for video gaming," said Adam Kahn with the company CCP. "Like, nobody knows the rules, really."
Then there is Fove, maker of the only headset with cameras built into the goggles to track your eyes.
The system knows where you're looking and only renders the sharp graphics within your field of view that is seen inside a green circle.
It's called Foviated rendering and it saves energy and improves performance by leaving everything else that you're not looking at unrendered and blurry.
When you have to draw fewer pixels, it's actually less heat, and it saves on battery as well, said Foves Jim Preston. So eye tracking is going to be an enormous benefit both to tethered VR experiences that we have here, but also the mobile and all-in-one experiences that are coming next year.)
KPIX 5 also got to try out Idealens, which is basically VR on steroids: 21 separate 8K cameras record a 360 degree picture to let you relive life moments.
"So let's say you want to go back and view your wedding. It's one thing to let you and spouse was doing. But what about the reaction of the crowd? Your friends and family that were there, to look and see 'Hey, she was crying!'" explained Brent Jentzsch of Idealens. "And it makes you cry again and it makes you remember maybe your grandma passed away and you want to remember her, and you see her reaction at your wedding."
And speaking of 360 degree views, the company My Dream Interactive had a virtual room simulator on display. Their virtual desktop allows you to have up to 36 monitors, change the background and even add furniture.
Want an executive office with a view? You got it.
"It really is a virtual corner office for everyone," said My Dream Interactive CEO Allison Huynh. "We're democratizing the corner office."
Yes, the headsets are still bulky and most are still tethered with wires. Despite the recent major advances, VR is still in its infancy.
But conference organizers say VR will go mainstream soon.
"We're looking minimally 5 to 10 years, probably. It's an investment and the technology is there," said Maggan Scavio with the Virtual Reality Developers Conference. "There are still a lot of obstacle for VR, but it's pretty darn cool."
