Videogames, up until now, have mostly served the role as being strictly for fun and featuring a lot of task-oriented stuff to keep players engaged. Sure, games have also been used for training purposes, but their role in the entertainment spectrum has been rather limited by the rather strict genre confines that they adhere to. Much like films, they need to make money, need to appeal to vast audiences and need to be addicting to keep players engaged and buying more games.
Virtual reality may be able to change all of that, though. The recent releases of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive to the public have finally brought high quality virtual reality to the masses. Sure, it’s kind of expensive, but so was the CD player when it was first released or the DVD player. Both CDs and DVDs went on to become standards which were found in every home for many years to come, so while VR might still be out of reach for most consumers right now, it’s blowing minds and will undoubtedly become cheaper over time.
Like most of us, the dad featured in this video wanted to be an astronaut one day, and just like the rest of us, reality set in. Real life can sometimes really kick you in the teeth and bring you back down to the ground in a hurry, but VR has the ability to change all of that. This dad got a chance to walk on the surface of the moon thanks to his son’s VR headset and is simply so overwhelmed by the experience that he’s brought to tears.
That’s the kind of power that virtual entertainment can and will have in the future, which is incredibly exciting. Now, we just need the entry barrier for virtual reality to become a bit more accessible, then it will be unstoppable.