Some of the "failures" were unfair IMO, like minitel and Block Buster: It's like saying using wind sails on ships was a failure because it was replaced by steam engines.
It always fails because, once the novelty of the effect wears off, people realize it's basically pointless. The extra information 3D brings is not worth the logistic cost. So they revert to regular 2D cinema, classic virtual worlds like MMORPGs etc. which are much more comfortable to experience and deliver the same basic product.
Gamers might be able to do it all day, and it will probably always have that market. But as a replacement for the flip-open or pull-out-of-your-pocket screen, never gonna happen. Sorry Zuck.
This round we got far enough that there are some industry use cases for AR, which shares 99% of its tech with VR. Maybe that will funnel enough money into development to break out of the hype cycle into something sustainable.
This could change if holographic digital screens become practical, allowing, for example, multiple people in a room to see a real 3D scene, each from a different angle without any head gear.
This is just literally untrue. Your eyes focus "into" the VR scene, not at the screens one inch from your eye.
3D head gear like Oculus have optical systems that move the physical screens virtually to a much greater (and comfortable) distance - most people can't even focus objects closer than about 10 cm.
That's not what I meant. Rather, even that virtual 3D screen is still at a fixed apparent distance from your eyes, unlike a natural scene that contains objects that are father or closer. Such objects scatter light not only at different angles for the two eyes, the bulk of the 3D effect, but also at different internal convergence, requiring the eye's lens to deform and compensate.
This is an effect current tech cannot reproduce, leading to a nauseating and tiring viewing experience - as if the whole immersive virtual world wasn't already.
Couldn't you conceive of a future where the "logistic cost" drops so incredibly low, that the cost is less than the benefit of the extra information?
How cool would it be to have a chat with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, or to make a mad dive to save Mufasa at the last second and see how The Lion King would play out without his death as a motivating factor? If you could do all of that and more in a VR Cineplex it would probably be more entertaining than Disneyland and available at every Mall in America.
Honestly, that's probably a trillion+ dollar idea, but implementing it would need an insane amount of money, time, skill, processing, and resources plus dozens of large egotistical companies working together.
Of course, streaming was a whole different game. (As would be original content.) And it's not like Netflix is looking especially robust at the moment.
I bet it spent a while regretting not making that purchase, but then again, if they had Netflix may have become a passing fad and never branched out into the online streaming market.
https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/netflix-blockbuster-meeting...
Not only that, but their DVD plan is far better then their streaming plan because it includes decent (not Netflix produced) movies.
Ah, an example of the Butterfly Effect: then we'd have a billion references to FAABG on the web instead of FAANG.
https://www.reuters.com/article/industry-blockbuster-dc/bloc...
I'd used them begrudgingly in places that had no independent shops and the various inventory they didn't have were usually rumored to be that their management was christian conservatives, though I think it was more that they avoided a few arbitrary hotspots of potential conservative boycotts that would hurt them in other regions.
I remember that when a friend suggested them, I was quite pleased to be paying $1 more not to help them.
The two variations that might go somewhere are kites to save maybe 10% of fuel [1], or some variation of rotor sails [2] on tankers or bulk carriers that have the unobstructed deck space.
1: https://future.hamburg/index.php/en/artikel/skysails-marine-...