I can ??? by strapping an enormous headset to my face, flailing my arms around, and getting sick to my stomach and lightening my wallet by $500-$1500 with VR headsets. What do I gain by doing this?
VR headsets are far more bulky and intrusive. They don’t allow for easy context switching between cyberspace and the real world, and they’re not portable enough to be used on the go like a smartphone.
Have you compared headsets lately? Because just recently I have, and this shit is changing. A 2017 Vive is very different from a 2021 Oculus from that friction POV. With nm chip architectures and battery tech improving, it really doesn’t take that much imagination to predict where they will be in 2025 or 2030.
Personally, I think one of the killer features for this category will be matured inside-out hand-tracking. Not having to do anything but put the headset on your head makes a huge difference.
When? When is this magic moment where it stops sucking? We've been told oh just wait for better hand tracking... oh wait for better screens... oh wait for portable/wireless headsets... oh wait...
Shit or get off the pot VR. You've had 10 years.
I am not a VR believer by any stretch, but this is such myopic thinking.
And all those inventions piggy backed off a very rapid pace of hardware getting faster, smaller, more power efficient and cheaper at the same time.
Moore's law meanwhile is dead, the rate at which CPUs/GPUs get faster is slowing down considerably, and VR needs a lot faster and cheaper and more power efficient hardware just to become affordable at reasonable quality.
That's not a good starting point, especially when you're a publicly traded company and your future depends on reaching that inflexion point soon™.
And then you still run into practicality problems:
• User input is still fairly clunky. Touchscreens just removed most of the friction of computer input devices, VR puts it back in. That won't make it particularly popular. Granted, future advances in hand/finger tracking might solve this, but this adds another set of sensors and hardware to make sense of them, when VR headsets are already struggling to reduce the bill of materials to become affordable.
• VR needs lots and lots of space. Digital cameras, MP3 players, smartphones, laptops, … for the most part reduced the amount of space a family needs to do things, compared to what came before, which made them a no-brainer for all demographics. No amount of technology improvement can really reduce VR's space demand without compromising on user experience. Not a problem for US tech bros, but ask an European or Asian family what they feel about doubling their rent so one family member gets enough space to use VR. Not gonna happen.
What a strange anthropomorphization of technology/product. Is this somehow hurting you personally? Is there some other technology being developed by someone that is somehow not “getting it’s turn”?
VR though... it's really hard to imagine use cases that will cause a billion people to buy a headset and wear it for a number of hours a day.
Or that excessive use of the device will probably have long-term consequences for your eyes. As a long-time user of smartphones, I am beginning to wonder if staring at a small screen has accelerated aging in my eyes. I can only imagine the damage from poorly calibrated VR glasses.
You gain nothing - not right now, not today. Nobody is holding a gun to your head. Nobody is saying this stuff works today.
And you can get into VR for much less than $500. Have been able to for years now.
Speakers are, with few exceptions, inconsiderate of folks around you.
Which isn't good then, it's so cheap yet barely adopted?