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VR needs to be led by creatives, not hardware cycles

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As manufacturers race to make commercially viable VR headsets, what role will cultural institutions play?
Virtual reality is the technology of the moment. Since Oculus first appeared on the scene in 2012, the market has filled with VR headsets and visors on an immense – and perhaps unjustified – wave of hype.
Whether you’re looking to play VR video games, watch 360-degree documentaries, or just watch films really close up (for some reason), there are now a host of hardware options you can buy: the Oculus Go, HTC Vive, Samsung HMD Odyssey, and Google Daydream, to name but a few.
However, sales of headsets and other VR kit have yet to match the initial hype, and there are plenty of reasons for this: the high costs of developing new hardware, and issues around motion sickness and eye strain and the huge number of headsets now competing for space rightly making consumers wary.
But it isn’t just the hardware that’s the issue; audiences themselves simply might not be prepared well enough for widespread adoption. VR is a new medium, and one that both developers and audiences alike are still attempting to figure out and get used to.
One area where it’s hoped VR will be a transformative technology is the culture industry, where it’s being used to engage theater audiences and museum visitors beyond the usual technology circuit. TechRadar sat down with key figures at the UK’s leading art institutions to see what they thought was holding the medium back – and what they’re doing to change things.
When talking about VR hardware, it’s easy to focus on the new specs and processors being touted by its manufacturers, rather than the experiences that users of the tech are – or aren’t – having on the ground.
Relatively few people own their own VR rig, and anyone other than a dedicated tech enthusiast is reliant on experience providers to try out the latest and best technology without stumping up a serious amount of cash. Traditional bars and pubs are cottoning on to this, and VR arcades are becoming an increasingly lucrative way to pull in crowds.
Toby Coffey heads up the Immersive Storytelling Studio with the National Theatre, which is something of a trailblazer when it comes to new virtual and mixed reality technologies, as evidenced by its adoption of AR smart glasses for subtitled theatre performances .
For Coffey, public institutions have a crucial role to play in VR adoption – especially the theatre, where the immersive and spatial nature of the form provides a direct parallel to how users experience virtual reality.
The National Theatre’s latest VR project is Draw Me Close, a joint production with the National Film Board of Canada, which recently had a run of previews at London’s Young Vic Theatre.

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