No one wants VR because in its current state it simply sucks and is quite expensive for general adoption.
In the early days no one wanted computers either.
In the early days no one wanted computers either.
I think there will be a market for VR. However, I'm not entirely convinced games and entertainment are it. Certainly I think there will be a market for those, as well; but I can't shake the feeling that it doesn't actually add too terribly much to them.
The social aspect of entertainment is completely missed with VR. We want to do things /with people/ when we are being social. Is why people watch sports games in parties. Most of the folks at the party are marginally interested in the sport, but in the people they are there with.
For games, 3d shooter is certainly a genre. But it isn't the only one. And the casual market that they hope to capture is largely not the 3d market.
Once we're there then we can see what sort of future VR has.
Think about it, even the amazing open world games like Zelda will be nigh inaccessible in a VR world where you have to actually climb. Yes, you can get some sweeping visuals where you can turn your head to see the landscape, but a large TV already goes a long way to getting that, with much much better controls for the movement. So, you can get enhanced "you can turn your head to look around," but at the tremendous cost of "everything else about moving and interacting is completely broken. You will still need obviously untenable item management. Want to have many weapons? It will be hilariously off looking compared to everything else in the world.
Can it help with some desktop management and such for work? I mean, maybe? It will definitely be a good aide. I'd wager the high level workers are already "retreating into their brain" for a lot of their work, such that I don't expect miracles out of AR assistance.
Robotics and control do have a lot of promise, of course. But, again, I'm more questioning gaming and entertainment.
Even if climbing is an challenge insurmountable then you'd just make games with out it. Elevation changes could be handled by predefined paths.
>Yes, you can get some sweeping visuals where you can turn your head to see the landscape, but a large TV already goes a long way to getting that, with much much better controls for the movement
I think you're way underselling the impact of VR. It's a massive upgrade and a different level of immersion. You don't see people face planting trying to jump off a building when it's a TV.
Plus those stationary treadmill things look cool as shit. If you get that working plus the headset it's really something. Even just taking an evening walk through Paris/Tokyo/the Himalayas would be bonkers if all the technology comes together.
And then think of transferring that to "we want you to feel like you are in a vast world.... that you can physically traverse in less than a day. Probably less than an hour."
But to get to that stage you need to at the very least integrate all that functionality into a set of glasses (more than 60% of all people already wear glasses daily anyway), and you also need direct brain interfacing control to make it practically usable at all.
Way beyond anything we can currently do these days unfortunately.
And, as I said elsewhere, also not gaming/entertainment focused. Arguably anti-social.
Indeed, for many folks that like the idea of online socializing, we like it /because/ it is not necessarily visual.
The Occulus Rift came out six years ago. We are well into the phase of VR where improvements are incremental each generation.
If that's the end of it, VR is doomed to remain a curious niche. It struggles to deliver compelling results for thousands of dollars (headset plus powerful enough PC), and if all we ever get from now on are tiny incremental updates, we'll never reach a steady state where perceived quality, relative to contemporary 2D offerings, can keep up.