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Comment by apathy | Hacker News Reader

> two completely different technologies

Which nonetheless have the common side effect of nausea in a non-negligible fraction of the population...

VR was workable 20 years ago; I was working on it at that time. Thing is, it only provides a tangible benefit for certain use cases, and most people don't derive enough value from those use cases to pay extra for it.

Argue all you wish, but both 3D and VR are now on their 3rd or 4th hype cycle, and the evidence from previous cycles is that people just don't value them enough to justify the cost.

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> VR was workable 20 years ago; I was working on it at that time. Thing is, it only provides a tangible benefit for certain use cases, and most people don't derive enough value from those use cases to pay extra for it.

"Workable", as far as I know basically everyone who used VR then and used it now agrees that there is a big difference due to technological advancements.

The argument that people don't pay extra for it is also only relative, because that's a function of the price they have to pay extra. I'm pretty sure if a high-end VR headset would cost 30 Euro many more people would buy it, as I'm sure more people would buy it for the current price point if the tech would be more advanced.

To sum it up with an comparison: Your argument reminds me of all the people who said a file hosting service will never be something people want as others had failed before and it is a useless idea. Dropbox proved the opposite.

In the end no one knows the future, but at least we now have had a fruitful discussion with arguments for both positions.

True, if the marginal cost is tiny, a lot more doors open. But my recent experience with a VR headset we got my daughter for xmas ... did not knock my socks off.

Predictions are difficult when they concern the future. I'm skeptical, but I've certainly been wrong before. We shall see.

VR 20 years ago was hampered by the same reasons that video game and professional graphics were: you couldn't render visually convincing detail in realtime, which greatly limited the "reality" portion of the name. Today, the graphics problem is no longer an issue.

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