"Through some quirk of evolution, we have a natural compulsion to share stories, even if we have to create imaginary tales that never happened. But even in our imaginary tales, realism is something we place tremendous value on." -Scott Lehane

When I was starting up VRNation.tv, several trusted friends in the traditional media industry warned me that it might just be a fad, and that I could get burned in the end. They compared it to 3DTV, which had a lot of hype, but ultimately went nowhere. They cited Jaunt and Google Spotlight Stories and some of the other “bleeding edge” early pioneers that had gone bust in the VR business, suggesting there was no viable business model.

I always take advice to heart, and I spent many hours agonizing about it, following the news, reading research analyst reports and checking out some of the stuff that’s already out there in VR.

In the end, I am completely convinced that VR, and its cousins AR and MR, will be very different from 3DTV, partly because the various technologies required to make it viable have evolved and coalesced to the point where it's now quite feasible, including high-resolution displays with high frame rates, as well as advances in bandwidth, processing power, GPS tracking, 360 degree cameras and computers capable of processing that much data. All of the component technologies are now commonplace, and well within the budget of the average person.

I see 3DTV as a stepping stone that got us to VR, just as quadrophonic sound was a stepping stone to Surround Sound, and LaserDisc was a stepping stone to CD and DVD.

But also, there's a much bigger picture here.

Through some quirk of evolution, we have a natural compulsion to share stories, even if we have to create imaginary tales that never happened. But even in our imaginary tales, realism is something we place tremendous value on. We’ve been pursuing and perfecting it for a very long time. It helps sell the story to the audience and make it more believable.

Roughly 17,000 years ago, a group of cavemen (and women) in Southwestern France started painting murals on the walls of their caves. Over the course of many generations, they painted over 600 cave paintings. These paintings told the stories of some of their most epic hunting expeditions and some of their greatest heroes. They were almost certainly accompanied by stories, passed down orally, that have long been lost, but the viewer can still grasp what they were trying to portray.

We can read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and imagine what it was like in the Pharaoh's court, but the pictures aren’t very realistic. We understand that an image represents a person, but it has no depth or detail. In fact, it wasn’t until the Renaissance that we discovered the idea of a “vanishing point” which enabled us to paint images with an early type of 3D realism.

Meanwhile, from the ancient Greek amphitheaters to the Shakespearean Globe Theatre, we’ve always had to “suspend our disbelief” and use our imagination to fill in the blanks. (Ok, that’s supposed to be a Minotaur… Ok, I’m in a castle in Denmark and that Hamlet guy is the prince...)

We’ve even gone to the extremes of the Roman Colosseum where real people fought and died for the entertainment of the masses.

When film came along, early filmmakers tried putting a static camera in front of a traditional stage and acting out Shakespearean plays in one long take. But it wasn’t long before they learned how to move the camera – pan, tilt, zoom, truck, dolly, etc. – and, more importantly, cut the footage. People loved it because it required less suspension of disbelief and came closer to reality. Then came color film and color TV which brought us a good bit closer. Then came high-definition TV with its crystal-clear picture and surround sound, which brought us even closer, each step requiring less and less suspension of disbelief.

While we love to use our imagination, suspension of disbelief is something we’ve just had to tolerate all along, just like a 1990s’ internet user had to tolerate dial-up Internet speeds, knowing that it wouldn’t always be this way. But now, with VR we don’t have to do that anymore. Now we can be fully immersed and actually trick our senses into believing it’s all real.

If we ever met an alien species without this same compulsion to invent stories, it would very difficult to explain why we place such value on entertainment, but we do. If you look at film, television, music and video games, you have to admit that these aren’t things we need; They’re things we want and crave. There’s just something deep in our psyche that wants to create more and more realistic stories to the point where someday, we could conceivably play God in our own AI-driven, VR creations. And that future is now within grasp.

Therefore, I believe virtual reality is inevitable.

Scott Lehane is a Toronto-based journalist and editor who has been covering the film, TV and media industry for almost 30 years. Over the years, he has written thousands of articles for dozens of publications. Earlier this summer, he launchedwww.VRNation.tv– an online resource for VR, AR and MR enthusiasts that offers 23 channels of curated VR content along with a guide for upcoming live VR broadcasts, as well as news, a social community and a special section for 360-degree still photographers to share their work.

Las Vegas – International CES -- The 3D-TV market was a dud in part because many sets required pesky and expensive glasses and because there was a relative dearth of content available in the format. 

One company that aims to reverse 3D-TV's fortunes is Stream TV Networks, a Philadelphia-based firm founded in 2009 that has developed a proprietary glasses-free 3D platform that has progressed to the point that it can fit on Qualcomm-made Snapdragon chips that can be embedded into televisions.  

Stream TV Networks touted its progress here on Monday, announcing the completion of its systems-on-chip (SoC) and an array of technology partners, including a handful of TV makers. Combined, those elements that make its platform, dubbed “Ultra-D,” ready for commercial rollout, Mathu Rajan, Stream TV’s CEO, said.

Stream TV Networks, which has previously demonstrated its technology running on separate conversion boxes, said its glasses-free approach can work on high-definition sets, but notes that the extra pixels that 4K brings to the table allows it to create more depth and separation of the images and render more impressive 3D effects. The company claims that its Ultra-D conversion process allows consumers to watch 3D images at different viewing angles, rather than a small “sweet spot,” and isn’t saddled with the headaches and motion sickness that some consumers get when viewing 3DTV with glasses.

On the partnership front, Stream TV Networks has agreements in place with companies such as Hisense, PDC (a joint venture of Panasonic, NTT Docomo and Mitsubishi), Skyworth, Konka, and Cello Electronics, a TV maker that currently focuses on the European market but is looking to expand into North America.

The Stream TV Networks platform can convert 2D to 3D, but it is also starting to urge content owners and distributors to develop native content – including live TV and post-produced video  -- for the glasses-free platform. It’s starting discussion with unnamed content owners and content creators, sports leagues, cable channels, and pay-TV providers, according to Bud Robertson, the company’s vice president of business development.

IZON, a company that has handled 2D-to-3D conversions of movie titles such as Gulliver’s Travels, Hoodwinked Too!, and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, signed on last year to release Ultra-D-enabled products in collaboration with Stream TV.

Stream TV Networks will also be looking to work with cable operators and other pay-TV distributors. While delivering content in Stream TV’s glasses-free format does cost some extra bandwidth (the company estimates that it requires an extra 8% to 10% in bandwidth headroom), cable operators won’t be required to carve out bandwidth for separate 3D channels in order to take advantage of the company’s technology, Rajan said. 

Still, cable operators and other pay-TV distributors will likely want to see a market with TVs outfitted with Stream TV’s technology develop before they justify freeing up the relatively small bandwidth headroom required for the new glasses-free format.

Other target markets for Stream TV Networks’ approach include digital signage and games. Stream TV has already developed a software development kit for games.