Month: December 2016

Shopping in VR is one of those things that sounds incredibly obvious: all the convenience of Amazon, without the slightly impersonal feeling of looking at pictures on a screen. But no one seems sure what makes in-store shopping special. Is it looking at real versions of the items you’re going to buy? Is it little extras like fashion show clips? Or is it the literal feeling of being inside the building?

Retale, the deal-finding service that raised $12 million in 2015, could help us figure out the answer. The company has announced that it’s launching an Oculus Rift-based counterpart to its mobile app, set for release when the Rift goes on sale in 2016. It could also theoretically come to other platforms; Retale says the company is starting with the Rift and will “determine where to go next” once it’s launched. While a number of prototypesand concept designs have shown us what VR shopping could look like, this may be the most concrete plan yet for an actual app.

It may also be one of the weirdest, because Retale isn’t exactly a shopping tool. It’s a digital version of the weekly promotional circulars that stores like Walmart or Target hand out, using location data to find nearby stores and display sales from them. Based on the screenshots and video we’ve seen so far, Retale VR directly transplants that deal-browsing experience into the Oculus Rift, then lets users enter what it calls a “virtual showroom” to look more closely at a store’s offerings. The showrooms are officially branded, and Retale says all its major partners will be signed on to the VR app, though it’s only revealed three for now: Target, JCPenney, and Macy’s.

But you’re apparently not making purchases there. Instead, Retale directs you to a nearby retail outlet, sending a phone push notification with directions and your shopping list. Which means that you’re going to a virtual store in order to prepare for going to a real store. It’s not totally clear that this makes any sense at all, unless the showrooms are exciting in their own right or the app adds features that someone couldn’t get in the real world — like the ability to see products in different rooms or situations.

As you may know, Facebook bought Oculus back in 2014 for a cool $2 billion. This deal kick-started a VR revolution and has accelerated the worlds of AR and VR. However, Oculus has had major challenges since being acquired and has struggled to deliver products on time; Oculus delivered its Oculus Rift headset later than expected due to some logistics and production issues. However, the company is looking to reboot its VR platform with the launch of their delayed Oculus Touch controllers which were originally supposed to launch alongside the Rift VR headset.

Competitively, Touch is a must for Oculus and Facebook to increase immersion inside VR. Xbox controllers are a poor tool for VR and don’t engage the user like moving your hands around does. This helps Oculus finally reach somewhat feature parity with HTC…6 months later and for more money, which will not be lost on consumers. The good thing for Oculus is that they have developed a new way of improving VR latency through a technique called ASW (Asynchronous Space Warp) which is different from the previous technique called ATW (Asynchronous Time Warp). This allows Oculus to further reduce the performance requirement of an Oculus Rift.

Oculus teased its standalone Rift headset code, named Santa Cruz, which does not require any of the external hardware that the PC-based Rift requires. That means it doesn’t need a PC, it doesn’t need tracking cameras or any cables. It is fully self-contained and self-powered and self-tracked, much like the VR820 reference design from Qualcomm.

Last but not least, Oculus unveiled a content partnership with Walt Disney Studios to create a series of VR experiences designed to elevate both the Disney brand and the Oculus platform. Additionally, Oculus created its NextGen program which will bring workshops using Unity and hardware from their partners, AMD and Samsung, to universities to help them launch their own content creation programs. Oculus also announced it will contribute another $250 million to its content development fund to help developers create not just more content but more diverse and better quality content. VR will only be successful if there is a killer application that drives the demand towards it. Oculus is just hoping that it is able to help spark the flame of that killer app and that it happens to be on their platform with their headset.

This information from Oculus’ homepage proves once again that the possibilities with virtual reality are – somewhat – limitless. Virtual reality can, and will, explore different industries, such as retail, gaming, and now social media. Can you imagine how the world will look like in just 10 years? … Me neither.