And thus begins their gamble. They’re going to have to bet the entire biz on virtual. Most public companies can’t do this, but FB has a unique control structure that gives Zuck the ability to bet the farm.
It wasn't VR then and it won't be now. VR has gained a foothold in this wave in its niches of gaming, other "entertainment", and random educational and military applications. General casual use beyond that is a pipe dream.
Strapping on a VR helmet is the opposite of everything most people want to do with their faces, their bodies, their lives. Contact lens form factor AR, if it ever arrives, could change the equation wrt human nature.
I'm happy to be proven wrong but this is my perspective as well. I just cannot imagine us delving so far into VR that is transcends beyond physical space. I mean at what point does that idea become dystopian enough that people decide to go outside and take a breath of fresh air, feel the grass, see and hear the planet?
Imagine meeting someone online, dating or friendship, you put on a lightweight VR headset and get transported to a replicated NYC rooftop bar, where loads of people from around the world are sitting, drinking and chatting. Socializing with a date or a group of people at the comfort of your home, going on outings, inviting your friends to your digital house, work meetings in a digital office instead of Zoom (I already seen companies doing this; VR meetings). People will be able to form romantic relationships and stronger friendships from across the world. Zoom, Skype, Discord will seem like old world relics.
It's like the appeal of World of Warcraft when it was a its peak, but not gaming - not appealing to just gamers. Appealing to everyone who's open to socializing online.
It is absolutely unreal.
> People will be able to form romantic relationships and stronger friendships from across the world.
Romantic relationships without physical proximity sounds totally dystopian to me.
But even if you're not very into socializing online. You'll be able to sit and work at an EMPTY desk, with no monitor and no mouse, put on your lightweight headset, and suddenly have 3 large monitors appear in front of you which you can manipulate with your hands (think Minority Report, Tom Cruise), while working in a more aesthetically pleasing environment.
You'll be able to sit in your empty living room, put on your VR headset, and suddenly have a 100 inch TV in front of you to watch movies -- without having to buy this TV in real life.
Buying a monitor may seem as ridiculous as buying a fax machine.
If this fantasy technology were actually invented (and made comfortable to wear and affordable) then I'd buy it, sure, but I'll believe that when I see it.
You'd have to think Apple could do the trick with their history of building integrated hardware/software experiences and a similar war chest, but it's also far enough away from the core products of most of the giants that some outsider might get there first.
Ultimately (as has always been true) the internet's greatest power has always been its reach. With free ubiquitous reliable video conferencing, you now have the ability to get to know someone anywhere in the world.
From a dating PoV you're basically getting a 2-3 order magnitude bump in potential partners. For many, I can see people giving up on the physical (in the short term) to find an emotional match a worthwhile tradeoff!
YMMV - my own life now sprawls the whole globe, things like WhatsApp made maintaining global family ties so so so much easier in ways people really take for granted now. My parents used to arrange by post a preset time for a 5 minute phonecall when they wanted to call their parents internationally. All trends point to remote connectivity getting more and more high fidelity.
God, if I'm forced to strap on a VR headset just to be social with someone at least put me on one of Saturn's moons, not an NYC rooftop bar.
For me the killer application is the ability to replace the office. There's already VR software that lets you have a virtual workspace with multiple monitors in VR. It would be so much more convenient to be able to have a large virtual office available to you in VR rather than building a large, physical office IRL.
It’s all marketing hype and it’s creating dreams in peoples heads that will come crashing down when they actually use whatever this product is. Because whatever they ship, whenever they ship it, will be a thing that is huge and has little knowledge of what it’s market fit will be.
They aren’t starting small and nimble like a startup. They are betting huge high stakes games with almost no real market testing.
They'd be smarter to keep their head down and just keep buying whatever network get's cool down the line IMO.