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Comment by pradn | Hacker News Reader

It seems like consumers just don't want VR/AR. We've had compelling experiences for a decade. But it seems like only a subset of console gamers, already a small population, care to buy a VR headset.

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Part of it is that the cost to play VR - which is primarily the time cost - is too high for the experience you get out of it. For example, the only games that provides a true VR-only experience you can boot up on a dime are Beat Saber and VR Chat - other VR titles tend to follow the pattern of "<existing genre> but in VR". To add, you need 2x the processing power since you need to render the game twice, so you are going to take a hit in visual fidelity, AND you typically want 90fps or higher to avoid motion blur, which raises the bar for playing any high-fidelity VR game (at least until generalized foveated rendering APIs become available and headsets implement it).

This is a very uncharitable take. What about games like Holopoint or Pistol Whip?

Besides, in some genres, "X but in VR" can make for a very big difference. Space and flight sims - even very arcade ones - are a prominent example. The ability to actually look around and track enemy craft easily is huge - I wouldn't even consider playing something like Project Wingman without VR anymore, even though it is available.

There hasn't been any compelling reason that makes it necessary for me to use VR/AR. It's still at the "fun" category, which make it hard to justify spending much money for "fun". Especially when the low-end headsets is about the price of a phone or a (low-end) GPU, which undoubtedly can have more uses And play more games.

Consumers don't want VR/AR that requires wearing a deeply uncomfortable bulky headset, that means facing a significant chance of framerate- and tracking-induced nausea, and that isn't good enough resolution to use for even basic stuff like web surfing.

I would be very surprised if Apple releases a device that has those problems.

It's just not good enough yet.

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