Oculus, HTC, Google, Acer, Samsung and Sony announced the creation of a BP-association

The main players of the virtual reality market in the face of Oculus, HTC, Google, Samsung, Sony, as well as Acer, announced the creation of a global association for the development of virtual reality technology (Global virtual Reality Association). The association has already acquired the official website gvra.com , on which a mini-manifesto of the organization was posted in the form of a press release.

The goal of the World Association for Virtual Reality is to promote the development and adoption of BP around the world. Members of the association will develop and share best practices, conduct research, and keep the international community abreast of the progress of BP technologies. This group will serve as the basis for consumers, developers and industry interested in virtual reality technology.

Creating an association will benefit the industry. Combining the efforts of large companies and corporations will unify the technology and come to common standards. It is likely that the problem when games for Oculus are not supported by Vive or PS VR will be a thing of the past in a few years.
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At the same time, for the sophisticated observer of the industry and its development, the fact that Valve and Microsoft were not invited to the BP-Club would be hidden. The first were the software and reseller partner of HTC in the development of the HTC Vive helmet. The latter occupy a leading and, in fact, a monopoly position in the market of related technology - in augmented reality with their HoloLens product.

Lack of Valve can be explained by several reasons. In the first place, the company could not have sufficient influence on the development of Vive, limited to partnerships with HTC and providing advertising and gaming loyalty to the product. In the light of the opportunities that have opened up on HTC, they could have calculated that they would now do without the help of Gabe Newell’s company. At the same time, Valve is famous for its closeness and low flexibility and was probably not ready to join the established organization for a number of reasons. In addition, the “weight categories” of Valve and the rest of the association’s members are simply not comparable.

Microsoft is not directly related to BP technology. HoloLens is a unique product, and based on the text of the initial press release, it becomes clear that if MS joined the association, it would have to share its best practices in this direction. So, it is likely that they were called, but Microsoft farsightedly refused, preferring to engage in the development of their own. Fortunately, the company has enough resources for this, and problems with the unification and standardization of augmented reality technology do not exist. At the same time, entry into the already fairly densely occupied market by MS could be called a controversial decision.

The only thing Microsoft is definitely losing in the current situation is the lack of a proprietary VR headset for xBox, whereas a similar one already exists for the PlayStation 4. In the case of the total spread of virtual reality technology for gamers, Microsoft will have to agree on the use of third-party development and adapt to other people's requirements .

Now all the developers are facing the same tasks: increasing mobility and reducing the load on computing power without losing image quality. In addition to the above-mentioned unification and standardization, it is very likely that the companies included in the GVRA will deal with this.

If their cooperation turns out to be fruitful, then everyone will benefit: the business will get a new viable market, and the consumer will get an affordable universal technology.