You bring up an interesting point, independent of VR. Sounds like the incumbents' days might be numbered. I wonder if and how quickly airlines could shift to Starlink. And if so, how easy it would be to bet against the incumbent providers. Unlike government, industrial, and scientific customers where the incumbents might be able to compete on stronger, minimal service guarantees[1], passenger connectivity on airlines seems to have always been flaky and relatively poor. Switching to Starlink would be a win-win for them--cheaper and better quality.[2]

[1] Not that Starlink wouldn't suffice in practice, but I assume Starlink probably won't want to cater to those customers with fancy, bespoke contract terms.

[2] And perhaps simpler equipment and maintenance in terms of fleet commonality. AFAIU, currently domestic service is via cellular and international service, where it's provided, is via satellite.

This isn’t necessary for VR because worst tolerated motion to photon latency of 20ms means you can’t be more than 6000km/3700mi from GPU physically assuming zero display and various processing latency, which realistically take 1/3rd each of total latency and eats into budgets accordingly

Also assuming you don't do any post processing tricks locally to accommodate recent movement. I don't think we've explored vr thoroughly enough to know what's actually possible.

Edit: An no reason we can't stick GPUs on an airplane, they aren't heavy.

That sounds like fun. I think the very limited per-passenger space would prevent enough useful movement for many VR games, though. Interacting with the stewardess would also be challenging without adding outward facing cameras.

The Quest 2 can deal with most of that (including passthrough), but yes, the movement range would be a challenge. You'd need to rely on close gestures or controls.

I don’t think the regulators would particularly like the idea of people playing VR games on an airplane. Or do you mean something else?