Where VR actually is, in 2018.

It's two years since the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive launched. Every year since then has been called 'the year VR breaks through'. So far, no year has been that year. We've built VR pieces for clients across all of them, and we keep getting asked the same questions, so here's the honest 2018 state of play.

The hardware story

• 01Oculus Rift CV1 — $399 now (down from $599 launch), needs a $1000+ PC, external sensors for tracking.
• 02HTC Vive — $499, room-scale lighthouse tracking, considered the premium PC headset for now.
• 03Sony PlayStation VR — $299, plugs into a PS4, simpler setup, more units sold than any other consumer headset.
• 04Windows Mixed Reality headsets — cheaper ($300-400), inside-out tracking, less polished software.
• 05Samsung Gear VR / Google Daydream — phone-powered, very limited but cheap. The 'on-ramp' that mostly hasn't converted anyone.

What actually works

• 01Architectural and product visualisation. Clients with real models can put them in VR and customers respond emotionally.
• 02Training simulations — surgery, heavy equipment, soft skills. Real ROI, repeat use.
• 03Location-based experiences in arcades and pop-ups. The Void and similar venues are doing real business.
• 04Games — Beat Saber dropped a few months ago and is genuinely a hit.
• 05360 video as the 'VR-lite' entry — much cheaper to produce, much wider reach.

What doesn't, yet

• 01Brand 'VR experiences' from a print ad. Friction kills them.
• 02Social VR — Facebook Spaces, AltspaceVR. Lovely demos, ghost towns in practice.
• 03Anything where the user is expected to own the hardware. Penetration is too low.
• 04Productivity / 'VR for work'. The displays are too low resolution, the headsets are too heavy.

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Two years after the Oculus Rift shipped, VR is real, niche, and quietly useful for the narrow set of use cases it was always going to be useful for. The 'mass-market breakthrough' keeps being one more product cycle away.

What we tell clients in 2018

• 01If you have a real spatial use case (a building, a product, a training scenario), VR is worth budget.
• 02If you want 'a VR experience' for press, the press is bored of VR. Spend the money elsewhere.
• 03360 video is the sensible entry point — cheaper to produce, runs on YouTube and Facebook, reaches everyone.
• 04Standalone headsets (Oculus Go shipped last week, Quest is announced for next year) are where the next chapter starts. The PC-tethered era is the prologue.

VR is real. It's not yet mass-market. The interesting question for 2019 isn't 'will VR break through this year?' — it's 'will standalone wireless headsets at $299 finally change the math?'. We think probably yes. Worth budgeting for one in the next plan.