2016 has been dubbed as the year of VR.
Fortune – 2016 The Year of Virtual Reality?
CNET – Virtual Reality Set To Takeoff in 2016, researcher says
BBC – 2016: the year when VR goes from virtual to reality
In some ways I agree – I think 2016 is already a year where people all over the world are getting comfortable with the idea of VR. Samsung has done a great job of making an affordable VR experience with the GearVR at $99 but that experience is vastly different in both quality and content than what the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Sony PlayStation are bringing to the table.
![GearVR](/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/image-1.jpeg)
Here’s the catch. To really maximize the VR experience for the Oculus Rift, you need to either buy or build a high-octane PC to power it. Here’s a quick look at the specs you’ll likely want to have to really experience VR:
Intel i5 or i7 processor
8GB – 16GB of RAM
256GB Solid-state drive
1TB+ secondary drive
Killer graphics card (think $500+)
A high-performance motherboard (think overclocking)
![VR PC](/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/image-2.jpeg)
Oh, and after all of this, remember you still need to spend $700 to buy the Oculus Rift itself. In total you’re looking at easily over $2,000 and it’s not hard to get to $3,000 depending on what video card and display you decided to go with. Believe it or not there are video cards that cost over $3,000 alone…and ways to run two together, yes that’s $6,000 just in video cards.
So while Samsung Galaxy phone owners will have the easiest path to a VR experience, it’s pretty well known that the gap between that experience and what you get with a Rift powered by a kick-ass gaming PC is a big one. I think 2016 and 2017 are likely to be more like VR’s Beta years, where early-adopters get a taste of the future, but the average person still isn’t quite prepared to jack into the Matrix.
To close this gap, high-end VR experiences would need to be powered by something different (and cheaper) than a gaming PC. I think 2018 is likely to be the year where this might become a reality, but it’s still too early to tell. For now, I’ll go on record saying that I don’t think 2016 can really be called the year of VR. I think that year isn’t far away, but it will come when VR is as ubiquitous as smart phones, and we’re not going to get there this year.
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