There is a lot of speculation about the future of VR. These conversations vary and include which hardware company will dominate in the consumer sales, to the different ways businesses can benefit from VR and how can you monetise VR and measure ROI.

Henry Stuart, CEO & co-founder at Visualise recently wrote an opinion title, The future of VR and the challenges which need to be overcome, for TechRadar. Below is an excerpt from the piece, to read in full head over to Virtual Reality News.

“Virtual reality is not a new medium in itself, it’s actually been around for decades with one of the first uses being the Sensorama by Morten Heilig. This crazy machine not only showed visuals and sound but also scent, a real trailblazer. VR went on to be used by NASA, the US army, in gaming arcades and all over popular culture through the 70s, 80s and 90s, apparently falling into obscurity in early 2000s.

Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, kick started (literally with Kickstarter) what is now known as the second coming of VR. Starting in his parents’ garage he made the first crude headset based on mobile phone components. It’s from this humble start that Oculus was founded and Facebook spotted the golden opportunity to move in 2014.

VR seems to have had the longest beta test in history, with all the big players launching development kits years before a customer could get their hands on a consumer version. There has never been a product in history that has had more build-up and testing before launch, and with good reason. VR is a very powerful experience, you are plugged straight into people’s physical feelings and therefore bad content or slow/glitchy hardware can be very uncomfortable and ultimately off putting to a new market – hence the delay and continuous refinement of the products.

According to new data by research group Ipsos Mori, 59% of men and 46% of women surveyed boast a strong understanding of VR. And now Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift have launched, the consumer market is well underway and VR has cemented its place firmly in technology history. Personally, I’m most excited by the HTC Vive. This incredible device allows you to don a headset and not just look around a space but actually get up, walk around and explore it. This allows you to experience virtual worlds in a completely interactive and natural way, true virtual reality, and has the knack of turning grown adults into giddy children every time.”