Shankar: Full 6DOF standalone VR headsets will launch within 18 months
Darshan Shankar · a16z Podcast | When Is VR's iPhone Moment? · Jan 2, 2019 · at 6:53
Darshan Shankar (CEO of Bigscreen VR) predicts the commercial timeline for untethered VR headsets equipped with six degrees of freedom tracking.
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“There are going to be dev kits of that next year, and that shows that if you move the price point up, and if you move the timeline of another six to 12 months or 18 months, you do get a fully standalone headset that does have the full capabilities of six degrees of freedom tracking.”
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More from Darshan Shankar
Shankar: The major AR app wave requires headsets, not smartphones
“I don't think you'll have that second wave until it's actually in a headset, until it's on a head mount.”
Shankar: Augmented reality is nowhere near its consumer iPhone moment
“But I think AR is, is nowhere close to its iPhone moment in the sense that the price point is sufficiently far beyond what most people would be able to afford right away.”
Shankar: No major tech player will release consumer AR headsets before 2019
“Not to mention the consumer versions of these devices, whether Apple, Magic Leap, Hollins, none of the major AR players are releasing anything really until 2019 in terms of a consumer usable headset.”
Shankar: VR leveraged mobile supply chains, but AR lacks equivalent components
“The whole VR movement got kickstarted off just mobile devices. The iPhone and the entire mobile ecosystem of hardware allowing cheap gyroscopes and cheap displays, cheap high resolution displays to be used to bootstrap the initial VR headsets.”