I don't think this is actually true; being close to some deep learning research groups, it's really surprising how powerful GPUs have gotten. Improvements over the last few years have been very nonlinear; it's kind of astonishing. And, internet latency has also gotten very good. I bet it's totally possible to make something like this now, though most people don't realize it yet!

Do you see a lot of games that run well in 4k@120hz? VR is much more demanding. Maybe if you spend $20k on a box with 8 GPUs it will be able to run it. But it’s not just GPUs, you also need much better headsets (much higher refresh rates, 8k+ resolution, wide FOV, very good eye tracking for the foveated rendering, much higher dynamic range). Most importantly, creating all that photorealistic content is a huge effort, and you need a lot of it for VR. How much are you willing to pay for it?

Gameplay >> Graphics

Tell that to the people who get nauseous from VR. There are some people that will get nauseous from VR no matter what, and then there are people of varying sensitivity. The higher refresh rate, lower latency, improved FOV, and improved optics will all help more people be able to experience VR at all. And it will allow everybody to experience it for longer periods of time more comfortably.

I would have put that under "gameplay" (see "teleportation" vs "regular FPS" movement types), but I guess it's a bit of both...

Your parent post is true. This isn't about PC GPUs where the cooling hardware alone weighs almost as much as the entire standalone headset. These headsets are based on mobile phone hardware and need to deliver stereo rendering at 75 to 90Hz to make the user comfortable. Also, heat dissipation is a lot harder for a box strapped to a face that can't reach 50 to 60 degrees. You need to make lots of compromises for that.

Well, it certainly is technically possible.

> it's really surprising how powerful GPUs have gotten. Improvements over the last few years have been very nonlinear

These improvements did not come at fixed cost, though. Prices for top-of-the-line GPUs have been increasing (as well as die sizes, power consumption, and manufacturer margin). Together with Moore's law, that already brings nonlinear improvements, the available computation power has increased a lot.

However, those GPUs are very expensive. Most people just can't afford them. And if few people can afford them, it's hard to justify paying a whole army of developers (like AAA game studios) to bring that kind of experiences.

Run the game in the cloud, stream to the VR. The more you pay for cloud computing, the better your graphics. Why no company is doing that already?

Google is, with Stadia

Latency

I had that exact coffee break argument some years ago and have a slack reminder "play some VR" at 9:00 Sunday, December 7th, 2025. I might have to revise that.

6 years from now? Maybe. It depends on Apple - if they release a VR headset by then, it might become an iPhone moment for VR. However it seems like they are focusing on AR, rather than VR, so who knows.