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Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

Virtual Reality.

As someone who has tried HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Playstation VR (I own PSVR) and even Samsung's foray into VR via its flagship Galaxy phones (S7 Edge) I would have to say that at present, it's still overhyped. The technology is so new that most companies are experimenting and finding their feet.

As cool as VR is, the cool factor wears off very quickly when you realise that screen technology hasn't quite reached the point where VR can compete with a 4K monitor on a gaming PC or even the level of immersion of a gaming console on a TV.

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As someone who has changed career to work in VR (http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760 and more to come), I'd disagree with this one.

Is it early days? Damn straight.

Are some of the headsets a bit crap? Yep. TBH I'm only really interested in roomscale on the Vive right now.

Is the potential absolutely enormous? Yes. We're only just starting to scratch the surface of what we can do with this tech.

And honestly, if I was looking at this for making-money potential rather than art and storytelling, I wouldn't even be touching entertainment. Enterprise / large-business applications - conferencing, design, anything where it's helpful for a bunch of people to be able to interact physically, on a whiteboard or a 3D model, without being in the same room. That's where the initial money seems to be for a smaller business at least.

I would say it's neat. But whoever thinks this has any use outside of entertainment, in ecommerce for example, is wrong IMO.

Not even for virtual meetings for companies that have a lot of remote staff?

Edit: or actually, a better use case...how about a quadriplegic that can no longer walk or move around easily?

Considering the state of audio/video conferencing, I have zero hope that virtual conferencing will ever be achievable.

computers where not hyped when it was 320x240. Virtual reality doesn't have to be about gaming. If it can open new ways of thinking, interaction, then it doesn't need 4k. The resolution is more than adequate. It's more about finding utilization.

Interesting point to belabor further. I am not old enough to know/remember what computers were like in the early day. Can anyone shed a light on what it was like when personal computer were in the same stage as VR today? I get a hunch computers were indeed less "hyped", but perhaps that's just the nature of the world we live in now. In 2016 it's no longer enough to have a good product, you have to shove it in the consumer's face or your competitor rips it off and does it first. Maybe hype is just a necessary evil?

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