I've been trying to make it work but it's not something you can really bootstrap (well, you can, but it's taking me a long time :P ).
Some validation: "When I was asked to see a 360-degree, fully spherical panoramic picture of The Colosseum in virtual reality, I thought, “meh, what’s so special about a picture?” I finished some work, perhaps made a cup of coffee or two, before I made my way over. Well, I was wrong. I’ve never been to The Colosseum, but I was blown away by how much it managed to make me feel like I was there"
Jeff Atwood:
"Adding hands to VR was revelatory, the one bit of VR I've experienced to date that I can honestly say I was blown away by.
Add hands, and suddenly you are there because you can now interact with that VR world in a profoundly human way: by touching it. "
People from the USA are not so used to these problems, but I live it every day - I work remotely, I have family in 4 continents, a lot of what I want to buy is not sold in my country so I have no way of knowing if it's what I actually want, and a long list of etceteras.
Contrast this with a device that pretty much no one wants, and everyone agrees is either humorously nerdy or frighteningly dystopic.
Individual implementations (Tesla/Leaf vs Vive/Rift) aren't the topic here. It's that both Tesla and Leaf were solving a problem nearly everyone agrees was there. What is VR solving?
Also your own linked article talks about how great Tesla is, how serious the need for something like it is, and then says "the only thing is it costs $94,000." So basically reiterating my point.
One can be successful company without solving a concrete problem (that existing products have), but simply producing something people want - in particular in entertainment sector.
And I admit: I would the much more immersive applications that VR offers. I also would love to experiment with building/"playing" completely new kind of applications/experiences that simply first become possible by VR. Unluckily I have much too little time and money. :-(
Wow, "no one wants" "everyone agrees"
You have a serious problem attributing YOUR PERSONAL OPINION to a larger group, this is a really nasty fallacy and it makes your argument look very weak.
You don't have to lie and inflate your opinion by saying "EVERYONE AGREES WITH ME" multiple times.
Just give your opinion and the reasons for it. If everyone agrees, that'll be evident, not something you need to inform us of.
P.S. LITERALLY everyone does not agree with you. LITERALLY more than no one wants VR devices. LITERALLY everyone does not agree that the devices are humorously nerdy / "dystopic"
Edit: Actually no I won't... I can't edit anymore. But yeah, you're right, I'm being a bit rhetorical :)
Mass market adoption is just right around the corner, I'm sure of it. Sarcasm aside, I'm not certain that it will never happen. It just seems like it's getting way more attention than it deserves.
I also think that the big players' involvement (namely Google and especially Facebook) is not doing VR any favors at all. Even the non-techy consumer class doesn't trust Facebook and I think they're right not to be interested in giving them a monopoly over their FOV.
I think the niche applications of VR or AR will be incredible. Things like engineering or medicine or maybe even data science will be forever changed by a successful VR platform. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be anyone's goal.
Clearly you're talking about a VCR, no wait, DVD player, no wait Laptop.
VR is not wildly popular outside of the home, or anywhere else for that matter.
Unless you're implying that Rift solves a distribution problem? It doesn't, obviously.
And in fact, movies were already in the home and had been for a long time. [1] (Of course, by the time VCRs were mass market, there was cable too.) So the question was really only how to watch movies in the home on your own schedule.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Saturday_Night_at_the_Movi...
Oculus plus Vive should breach the half-million unit mark in the holiday season. Sony scaled up production reacting to launch demand, so I'd wager they should move another half million units. This new market should move a million devices in three quarters.
These are impressive numbers for any first generation. For reference, the first generation iPhone sold 5.5 million units. Not that it would ever be expectable for a non-personal device to ever reach iphone levels of adoption.
Long text to say that, if this is something that no one wants, it's a very special something that no one wants.
I really don't get the negative vibe on HN. VR headsets are in the market for six months now. One of them is still incomplete. Both are price-targeted at the very top of the market. Sony's, the first consumer headset, hasn't seen its first holiday season. VR games are still in the exploratory phase. Yet, with all of these signs of current and active hardware, software and market development, there's enough hubris to call the death of the technology.
It's like saying that the electric car concept is crap because the Tesla Roadster has crappy range, no boot and sold only a thousand units.