CES 2016 smells like the future, or at least like motion sickness. Virtual reality owns the show. Oculus opens preorders for the consumer Rift, headsets are on every other face, and for a few minutes in a demo booth you can almost believe this is the next computing platform.
Drones, EVs, and a Batmobile
Drones are the other obsession, buzzing over half the booths. A Chinese streaming company called LeEco makes a splashy, slightly baffling debut, and its partner Faraday Future rolls out the FFZERO1, a thousand-horsepower concept that looks like the Batmobile and exists mostly to make a statement. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 anchors the year’s flagships. The EV startups have clearly decided CES, not the traditional auto show, is where the future of cars gets unveiled.
The trend for the year ahead
VR is convinced it is about to go mainstream, and I am hopeful but skeptical, because the price and the cables are real problems. Meanwhile a wave of ambitious, cash-hungry EV startups is betting everything on a software-defined car.
The Rift is magic in short bursts. Whether anyone wants to strap a computer to their face for two hours is the question nobody at this show wants to answer. The Faraday concept is ridiculous, but I respect the swing.
Part of 20 Years of CES Through My Lens, my year-by-year diary of the show.