Last night's presidential debate showdown between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump was an historic event in more ways than one, but one of those ways was the sheer size of the crowd that it drew. Over 100 million people watched this debate, which was an all-time record (Carter vs. Reagan was the previous record-holder), every last one of them wanting to watch history being made... or just waiting for one of the contestants to be humiliated on live TV.
It's the sort of event that many people would have loved to attend, but that very few had the chance to attend... physically. Virtually, though? That was a different story, because NBC News had partnered with VR hangout app Altspace to put you right there in the audience in glorious VR, using the $600+ headset of your choice.
At least, that was the idea. The actual virtual reality, though, was apparently rather less than advertised.
From Kotaku:
The virtual reality “watch party” for the first Trump-Clinton debate was a bust. It was presented by VR hangout app Altspace and NBC News, and just amounted to glorified Second Life, basically. Avatars of people from around the world watching a flat video stream. Not a great experience.
I captured the video above while watching some of the debate through the app. I was using an Oculus Rift headset, though Gear VR and Vive were also both supported. As you’ll see, presenting the debate in VR didn’t add anything useful.
Last year’s Democratic Primary Debate in VR was way better, because they put cameras on stage for that one and let users view the debate from various angles. And even that wasn’t that great, given the lack of viewer control of the experience.Virtually putting people in the audience of live events like this is one of the things that VR is supposed to be good for, and this was one of the highest-profile live events yet to have VR version available. And it sucked. As sales pitches go, that's less than optimal.
NBC aren't the only network to try this; the CBC has also jumped on the VR experience bandwagon, with a VR experience for the Olympics (and, if memory serves, for the Tragically Hip's Kingston concert, which coincided with them), but that VR experience didn't get much attention, either.
This may be due to the limitations inherent in the way live events are structured, too. From Digiday:
AP said one of the big lessons is understanding when VR and 360 video won’t work. For example, a reporter went to New York’s recent fashion week to try to shoot a piece of VR, when they realized it wouldn’t work for the medium because the viewer, positioned as a member in the audience, is focused on one point: straight ahead. When the viewer would turn around, they’d see other cameras towering over them.
“Most events are not designed for VR,” said Marconi. A similar situation occurred at the Oscar’s for which AP did a 360 video. “If you look at the front you see red carpet but if you look back you see cameras and journalists towering over you. You have to ask how do you create an experience to immerse the user,” he said.
[...]
Looking ahead, Cheung said there remain several hurdles in VR, including hiring people who have the technical expertise for example, creating a true “VR experience” where viewers can interact with objects and move through spaces. “We quickly realized while [VR] is interesting, 360 video is a better route because it doesn’t require users to have expensive gear.”
If VR-like presentations work best when they don't require expensive VR gear... well, that's going to be a huge problem for those trying to sell skeptical consumers on the merits of expensive VR gear, isn't it. Live event attendance is supposed to be VR's potential "killer app," the one thing that VR can actually do right out of the box, and that people might be actually willing to pay for, and even the people who are trying to hop on that bandwagon are coming to the conclusion that requiring actual VR headsets to partake in this content simply isn't going to work.
My second post on this blog was all about how VR isn't going to transform the way we do much of anything. I stand by that assessment. Even 360 video feels awfully gimmicky, frankly, but at least it can be experienced with nothing more than the smartphones that we all own. This generation of VR technology simply isn't affordable enough to see mass adoption unless it's massively useful, and it's not useful enough to be adopted in spite of its cost. Unless something changes drastically about the math, there, this generation of VR gizmos will end up being as much of a footnote in the history of technology as Google Glass.