Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

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The Altair 8080 is considered the first PC and it was released in 1974. The IBM PC was released in 1981 and PCs became widespread only in the 1990's, when they started adding multimedia features. So about 20 years for mass adoption.

The first touchscreen phone was introduced in 1994, the IBM Simon. Yet the first true modern smartphone to get mass adoption was the iPhone, 2007. And truly massive adoption worldwide happened after iOS and especially Android took off, a few years later.

VR has been around as a purely techie idea for 30 years but we haven't really had the tech for something worthwhile until recently. I'd say that we're probably 5-10 years from mass adoption, once we have some lighter high-performance headsets.

Early VR is 1960s ... it's been around longer than personal computers. (oh sure, for military and experimental applications for the most part for a long time - and with a really high price tag - but it existed!)

If we're stretching things to go with the earliest examples of the tech, then computers go back even further with ENIAC in the 1940s. Even earlier if you count electromechanical devices.

With the exception that current VR devices are actually pretty good and much better than the first PC/Touchscreen phone.

It will probably be closer to 5 years than 10 year for the first mass adopted rig.

Well, we're talking about mass market adoption. If they make 1% of people feel sick, that's tens if not hundreds of millions of people who will be actively campaigning against your product. This is definitely into early adopter territory.

Then you need super high graphical fidelity (resolution, refresh rate, field of view, etc.) and super portable equipment.

The current VR devices aren't the first commercially available ones. My first VR experience was in the late 80's and I think it was driven by an Amiga. Thirty years has passed since then and I think that maybe the market is what it's going to be.

AR has a ton of potential though (e.g. windshield HUDs).

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