The Future of VR Casinos
If you haven’t hopped aboard the virtual reality train yet, you’re missing out.
VR has been a reality for well over 5 years now, and things have progressed significantly in that time. Long gone are the days of grainy, block-like graphics. VR is now a much more refined world, and casinos are a huge part of it.
Yet, just as the VR casinos of today are different, the casinos of 5 years, 10 years, and 20 years from now will be totally different, too.
How will things evolve? How will they change and grow? Ultimately, nobody knows for sure, but we can make some predictions, and, well, speculation is fun, isn’t it? That’s why we gamble to begin with!
The Current State of Virtual Reality Casinos
VR is constantly evolving, but it has come a pretty long way already. We knew when Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook, bought Oculus, that VR was going to start developing at break-neck speed.
We weren’t wrong. Virtual reality is transforming the online casino industry day by day, with more and more casinos flipping the VR switch.
Before you can understand where something is headed, it helps to have an accurate picture of where it is today. Currently, VR casinos are as follows:
- You can play a wide range of games, including slots, roulette, and card games. Most VR casinos offer a complete gaming experience, but you won’t be able to do things like cash in and withdraw your chips. That still has to be done from the main website.
- The dealer is a digital avatar and so are the other players at the table. You’ll be able to choose your avatar and will be able to interact with others. This is becoming increasingly sophisticated, with the option at some VR casinos to flirt, buy each other drinks, and interact in lots of ways.
- You can move around in VR casinos as if you were in a brick-and-mortar venue. As you move, the scenery will change around you, just as if you were walking. You can even see the scenery changing outside the windows. In one well-known VR online casino, there’s a city skyline and the weather changes constantly.
- The virtual world is not indistinguishable from the real world. There are definite limits and while the experience has come on leaps and bounds towards looking real, it’s still very much a virtual reality world. Someday it will probably begin to closely mimic reality, like the video console games of today, but VR isn’t quite there yet.
So, VR is developing quickly, but it’s still very much separate from the real world. Could that change in the future, though? Let’s turn our attention to that now.
What the Future Likely Holds
Technology is a pretty exciting enterprise, and VR is right at the razor’s edge of technology as a whole. Don’t underestimate this. The architects of VR are building a digital world, and some pretty exciting things are on the horizon.
Nobody has a crystal ball, of course. We can only predict, based on current trends and ideas, what the future of VR will be like.
Here are some of those ideas.
VR Casinos Will Allow You to Do an Increasing Number of Activities Within the Casino
What does a casino want most? To keep you as a player entertained and satisfied, so that you stay in the casino, right?
This is the main force behind much of the development in VR casinos. It won’t be long before you’re able to hang out, watch concerts, attend Vegas-style stage shows, and enjoy all manner of VR casino entertainment.
There are already bars and social areas in most VR casinos. This is going to get more in-depth, though, and the range of experiences you can have will increase greatly.
The Games Will Become More Immersive and Realistic
As of now, it’s still pretty easy to tell you’re in a VR casino, although the experience is becoming more real-to-life every day.
As things develop in VR as a whole, that will increasingly change. There’s going to come a point when VR is almost indistinguishable from reality, although it won’t likely happen within the next 10 years.
Could we someday take on different roles within a VR casino, and get paid, such as by providing entertainment to other players? Will we be able to simply pick the angle we view the games from with the click of a button, a gesture, or a voice command? Will we be able to turn and give another player a high five and actually feel it through our data gloves?
This is just a little glimpse of how VR casinos will become more immersive and realistic.
VR Casinos Will Become Part of Larger VR Experiences
As the rest of the VR world develops and evolves, casinos will integrate into larger experiences. For example, there will likely someday be a VR tourist trip around Las Vegas, and you can bet there are virtual reality casinos along the VR Vegas Strip.
This might sound crazy, but think back to the early computer consoles and the games they offered. Compare an Atari experience to the latest gaming experiences. Suddenly, such insane advancements in VR don’t seem so unrealistic, do they?
Could you someday win a jackpot in a VR experience and use the cash to unlock other experiences within the VR world? We don’t see why not.
VR and Cryptocurrency Will Merge
This one is actually the easiest and most likely of all the predictions about the future of VR and is likely to happen quite soon. While virtual worlds are being built online, new forms of money are also being created.
Eventually, there will be VR casinos which accept Bitcoin and altcoins. It will be strange to be playing in a purely digital casino, with purely digital money, which you can cash out and use in the real world, but that’s the way it’s going to go.
VR and AI Merge, too
AI terrifies some people and enthralls others. Whichever camp you are in, you’d better be ready because AI is already here, and there’s no stopping it.
This prediction is probably the furthest off, but it could happen faster than we think. We could have entire VR casinos run by highly intelligent machines, without a single human being needed to run it. The customer service, banking, and security could all be run by AI.
A supercomputer which can predict and fix issues before they even arise is not outside the realms of possibility. It will certainly enhance the player experience, if it does come to fruition.
VR Casinos Will Become Customizable
Just as you can change skins and buy upgrades in many video games, it’s highly likely that you’ll be able to personalize your VR casino avatar in many ways, and perhaps even the casino itself.
Could we see the day when you enter a VR casino, are greeted by your own personal guide who knows what you like, in a casino that looks exactly how you want it, to play games with a dealer who looks how you have designed and is possibly artificially intelligent, to music you enjoy?
Why not? If VR can get this far, why not farther?
VR Casinos Will Simply Take Over
This is more of a comment on the future of the online casino industry as a whole, of which VR casinos play a significant role.
As VR headset prices drop, along with the accessories like data gloves, more and more people are going to try virtual reality casinos. The vast majority of players will prefer it and will never look back. This will create major problems for those casinos which don’t adapt quickly, and eventually, VR casinos will rule the roost.
You can liken VR casinos to cars and everyday online casinos to horses. A few horses will remain, but the cars will ultimately make them obsolete for many purposes.
Nobody can put an exact time frame on when these changes will occur. They will probably happen gradually, but they will all almost certainly happen on a long enough timeline.
How to Play at a VR Casino Today
As you can see from above, the future of VR casinos is exciting indeed. We’ll have to wait for some of those developments, though. For now, VR casinos are still worth checking out. If you start now, you’ll be able to say you were one of the early adopters and watch the VR casino industry evolve in real-time.
Here’s how you get started:
- First, you will need to either buy and/or set up your VR headset. If you’ve already used it for other purposes, don’t worry about this step.
- Second, register a new account at a trustworthy VR casino. You can refer to our table above for ideas on which sites are the best. They each come with an individual review if you want to know more.
- Third, you’ll need to load your new casino account with credit. Most casinos offer a variety of payment methods to do this, such as bank cards and web wallets like Neteller or Skrill.
And that’s it! Plug in your headset, slip it on, and enjoy casino gaming. It’s as easy to use VR casinos as it is to use standard online or mobile casinos.
Some General Questions About VR Casinos
We get a lot of questions from readers about virtual reality in general and VR casinos specifically. We’ve decided to answer some of them here.
Is VR Really Going to Be the Next Big Thing?
It’s very close to already being so. It will definitely take a while before virtual reality is adopted en masse but try getting a headset for someone at Christmas and you’ll soon see just how many people are already into it.
Tech pioneers such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook are going all in on VR. Since they have the power to shape the internet in their image, we’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that VR is destined for big things.
Casinos will actually be one of the first industries to embrace it, as it’s one of the most fiercely competitive industries on the planet and operators will be trying to get an edge over each other to attract new players.
Some of the Future Scenarios Talked About Above Seem like Sci-Fi. Will They Actually Come to Pass?
Ask your eldest family member about the world when they were young. Technology is a force of its own, and we’re no longer in the driving seat.
Amazing things are going to happen in the future, and VR is going to revolutionize many industries. The predictions above are actually quite realistic.
What Are Some of the Obstacles to VR Reaching Its Full Potential?
If the sort of future imagined above is going to become reality, the price of VR headsets will definitely have to come down significantly. That will likely happen with time, just as it did with computers and eventually mobiles.
Combine this with the fact that entire new sets of laws and regulations will have to be written to govern the VR world, and there are a couple of obstacles to be overcome before VR blossoms into what it could become.
Is Gambling in VR Casinos More or Less Addictive Than Gambling in Standard Online Casinos?
There are no actual studies on this yet, but we’d say it could possibly be more addictive. The VR experience is enjoyable in and of itself, and when combined with the enjoyment of playing at the casino, this can be a potent cocktail of pleasure. Rather than become addicted, however, you’re just more likely to lose track of time while playing at VR casinos.
Are VR Casinos Purely Visual or Are Other Senses Engaged?
Depending on your setup, you can have a full sensory experience. If you have a top of the range headset and a data glove, you can see, hear, and even feel things in a VR casino. The best way to find out is to have a go for yourself!