According to Sweeney, virtual reality devices were one of the sleeping technology, which first appeared a couple of decades ago, but have not received wide acceptance in the the existing technological level. And even now, virtual reality devices are far from ideal in the technical part: they borrow many of the components and solutions in mobile phones, and should come out one more generation of products before developers begin to use specially designed hardware.
In general, the head of Epic Games says an ideal device "smart glasses", which would be quite easy, and would be matched with a small hand-held unit, performing basic computing work. Sweeney believes that defined "Moore's Law" pace of microelectronics development will make these devices a reality in about 12 years. Then they will be able to play computer graphics scene visually almost indistinguishable from reality. At the same time, in social interaction-oriented applications interlocutor appearance it will be "digitized" in real time.
Followers owners of virtual reality helmets this year exceeded 500 thousand people, and its ultimate capacity Sweeney estimated at 200 million.
Technology virtual and augmented reality will be actively used for social interaction. For this reason, Sweeney criticized Oculus VR, is betting on a proprietary software platform. HTC adheres to an open platform strategy, therefore, according to the head of Epic Games, HTC Vive helmets twice as popular Oculus Rift. Closed platform does not reach the maximum audience, and in the case of applications with an emphasis on social interaction is generally a dead end road. Epic Games created Robo Recall app for the Oculus Rift, but only through direct financial support of Oculus VR.
While in the field of software for virtual reality devices, there are two opposing trends. The audience of PC owners and game consoles are not so numerous, but it provides higher specific impact in financial terms.