5 New Technologies That Are Revolutionising Computer Gaming

The gaming landscape has transformed massively in the last ten years alone and computer gaming in particular is seeing some pretty big changes. New tech that is storming over the horizon is carving the path to an incredible gaming experience in the future that we can’t wait to experience:

VR

It seems like virtual reality is all that anyone can talk about these days. The oculus rift, Sony’s Project Morpheus and recently such developments as the VR Touch, a simple haptic feedback motor which attaches to your fingers and is able to simulate the sensation of touching things in virtual reality as well as eliminate the need for handheld controllers. The race is on to create the ultimate VR experience, but the finish line is still a ways away. Still, the world is already preparing for VR to become a typical aspect of the gaming experience and VR games like Farpoint – which are epic in their scale, size and beauty – have given us a glimpse into what may lie in store in the future.

Live Streaming

While live streaming has been around for some time, the way the industry is utilising the trend could change the way we buy and play games. Twitch, the live-streaming video platform owned by Amazon, recently launched its online game store to capitalize on the incredible fan base that visits and creates content for the site on a daily basis. Live streaming has always been a pivotal component of esports and the online gaming community, spawning the ‘Let’s Play’ community which has created careers for many people and influenced the popularity of certain games. Live streaming and gaming go so well together that it’s in fact leaking over into live sports. Facebook recently signed a deal with Major League Baseball to live stream the games and the online casino industry are live streaming dealers to make the games more fun. Already we’ve seen tons more apps and tech dedicated to live streaming come out in the past couple of years and since VR has started to take off so much it only makes sense that more live streaming capabilities are going to be explored in the tech that’s yet to come.

Cloud Gaming

Cloud gaming hasn’t reached its prime yet, but most people are very excited to see where it is going to go. Over the years, Steam has generated more and more of a following, with many gamers playing exclusively on Steam. It allows you to maintain an endless library of games that you can access at any time with low prices for the games and there is no risk of having the games damaged or lost when they are all stored online. Cloud gaming is turning into something very similar, but with a few more benefits.

The high configuration requirements of PC games are one of the biggest frustrations for modern gamers and not everyone can afford to continuously update their equipment just to get the game to perform normally. With Cloud gaming, however, the game will be stored on a company’s server rather than on your system, which means that you don’t have to continuously update the games and you don’t have to worry about the system requirements of the games you want to play. While the cloud services we have available aren’t bad – G-cluster and StreamMyGame are two decent examples – there is still a lot to be done to make these services more accessible and affordable, which is what we’re hoping for in the near future.

Augmented reality

The polar opposite of virtual reality, this kind of tech sees the digital world in to the real world. While it hasn’t managed to gain quite as much popularity as its counterpart, games like Pokémon Go opened a door for the gaming industry. While this style of gaming tech has become more popular for phones than computers, we are seeing it on the computer gaming screen through the use of webcams and holograms.

Hands-free gaming

Hands free controlling has been a bit wonky in its first stages and not always has it improved a gaming experience. But it’s getting better all the time and the improvements over the last few years have looked rather promising. The team up Tobii and SteelSeries saw the creation of the Sentry Eye Tracker in 2014 – a system that allows you to control the movements of your in-game character with only eye motions. The VR gloves we are seeing to accompany the helmets allow players to control the game with hand motions and developments in motion tracking technology have seen the creation of is omni-directional gaming treadmills that allow players to control their characters entirely and accurately with their own physical motions.

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