Which Virtual Reality Trends Will Rise in 2016?

And it’s finally here! The year of virtual reality has officially begun and we can now read about new predictions and trends that will roll out this year. Some of them are already pretty obvious, others can be guessed upon their latest activities, and I guess there'll be those unpredictable ones that will surprise us all the most.

According to Juniper Research, 2016 is a “watershed year for VR” when mass market converts to immersive, and online content becomes physicallyaccessible. Our 3D doppelgängers will get their first real breakthrough in 2016, and will provide us with benefits that will change our lives for good. When I say benefits I do indeed take into account all the possible VR content that we’ll soon experience, including games - as they are a part of entertainment, the groundwork of virtual reality.

I’ve already seen several profound ways of using VR, which I believe will have their daily grind established by the end of 2016. These are some of the most promising:

Immersive Travel - to precisely choose your next travel destinations, travel companies (such as Thomas Cook and Qantas) are already offering immersive ways of testing your holidays before booking it.

Immersive Sports - For the first time ever, NBA fans might just get to have better seats by staying at home than actually going to see their fave match. A week ago, the NBA star LeBron James teamed with Oculus and Samsung to create the first VR experience Striving for Greatness that changes the way sports fan see basketball.

Immersive journalism - The media industry is now on its way to adopt virtual reality as the mainstream, thanks to The New York Times. The newspaper’s step into VR is to set a great example for others, and implement that real experience into our daily news consumption. Likewise, there are other immersive journalism projects, such as Ryot, that have paved their way to 2016s VR trends - and I believe they're going to show us even more stunning things this year.

VR Hardware of 2016

When it comes to VR hardware, 2016 seems bright for these VR headsets:

Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive, Sony Playstation VR, Google Cardboard, Microsoft Hololens, Fove VR, Zeiss VR One, Avegant Glyph, Razer OSVR, Archos VR Headset, Freefly VR.

VR headsets sales prediction by TrendForce points out that 14 million VRdevices will be sold in 2016, which will be a kind of a launching year for the upcoming 20% - 40% growth in the next 5 years. Sounds good to me!

An overall view of the future of VR is smoothly explained by UploadVR recently: 

Virtual reality market is expected to grow by over 13,000% in next 3 years, nearly 5 times faster than the iPhone.

Well, that seems like a good starting point for all us VR entrepreneurs. Shifting from To be to It is is likely happening already. 2016 sounds promising, and above all, highly demanding when it comes to VR. 

Getting Your Next Laptop with thousand of benefits

Our world is becoming ubiquitous with technology. Almost everyone seems to have some sort of way to connect with everyone else, and it doesn't help that most of our productivity finds itself on a computer of some sort. We're consuming information at a rapid rate, and more than likely, you are reading this on a laptop, smartphone, or tablet.

But I'm going to focus on laptops for today, only because in my opinion, they are still king for portability and productivity. (How many of us can do EVERYTHING on just a smartphone or a tablet?)

Most of us go on the market for a new laptop, whether it's because we're going out with the old and in with the new, or we need something portable. And with that need, it seems like most people go to Walmart or Best Buy, see something shiny with lots of cool-sounding hardware specifications, and buy it.

This isn't exactly the wrong way to go... but we can do so much better than that. As with everything else, would you blindly throw hundreds if not thousands of dollars on another high-cost purchase, like a car?

If you want to do it the smart way, I decided to make up a little guide to help you buy something that will fit your needs and wants, future-proof yourself, and that will last you indefinitely, barring any hardware failures, until your next upgrade.1.) What will you be doing with your new laptop?

This will help narrow down thousands of choices to just hundreds or even dozens. Do you travel a lot? Consider a light and small or mid-sized laptop. (Ten pounds might not seem like a lot until you haul that in a backpack all day along with the rest of your gear.) Do you need power to create high-definition movies? Look at CPU and RAM, and depending on the applications that you use, look into a good GPU as well. Are you a casual user that just goes online to surf the web, do e-mail, and word processing? You're not going to need a powerhouse.

(If CPU, RAM, and GPU are acronyms that confuse you already, you might want to take a look at learning the very basics of how your computer works.)

There are a lot of buzzwords that we've come up with to categorize laptops, and here are a few that you may find while doing your shopping:

Ultrabooks - These are aptly named as they tend to be lighter, thinner, but still more powerful than the rest of the competition. They are also more expensive than the rest of the competition. This might be overkill for most for casual use, but they are nice to have when you're not patient or need a laptop for multimedia work (e.g. audio and video editing). They also typically do not come with an optical drive. This sleek design and portable power will cost you though... most ultrabooks will run upwards of $900.After bashing what Apple has to offer, this is what I can say in a more positive light:

• Their laptops have a full-metal chassis. This helps durability and heat dissipation, not to mention that it is a stark contrast to the cheaper feel of a primarily-plastic laptop. Other laptop manufacturers offer metal builds as well, but Apple is known for it.

• Their laptops feature MagSafe, which is a fantastic feature of the power plug. Held in by a magnet, it can easily be disconnected and connected. This reduces wear and tear on the "port" itself (which is a common breaking point on any other laptop), especially when you have animals and children running about or if you yourself trip over your own power cord, possible sending your laptop on your desk to come crashing down.

• Their displays are great and are the epitome of high-definition with super-high resolutions [but other laptop manufacturers are catching up]. This is why they are toted to be better at working with photography and videography, although if you are working with lesser-quality sources, this won't matter at all.

• Apple has a fantastic marketing team. They feel like a premium brand and have placed themselves as a cultural icon. Just look at the success of most if not all of their product lines: the iPod, iPhone, and MacBook.

More is not always better, especially if you are trying to save money.As of this writing, you will not need more than 8GB of RAM for anything. (4GB will suffice for most users and I would recommend 8GB for power users.) An Intel i3 core processor will suffice for casual users, but the Intel i5 may be the best bang for the buck for raw processing power. (Sorry guys, an i7 is overkill for Facebook.)