I want to disclose a bias I have here: I run a video startup, so I'm pretty incentivized to believe VR will become a standard in several work contexts.

That said, when I try my hardest to think objectively about the future of work, I think VR is going to be everywhere.

Workers going into factories will become exceedingly rare. The cost of humans is high both from a safety and headcount perspective, and more and more of manufacturing pipelines are becoming automated end-to-end. Service repairs will likely happen remotely and only require humans to be onsite if absolutely necessary in the future. It's good for business.

There is a ton on "dark factories" to be found online. Also, there are many startups that have significant traction which are bridging these two worlds via AR:

https://www.mirareality.com/

When it comes to knowledge work, I think anywhere where you have to work with visuals will become a predominant VR stomping ground. If you need to be working with 3D models (lots of engineering + manufacturing) or flat UIs (being able to point and pan and modify is more natural with hand gestures), VR will likely win out. I also think VR will create a space for completely new ways of constructing software architecture. This could be a bridge to creating architectures visually for the first time (want to define a service that automagically becomes a kubernetes service and node on the backend? create a box here and give it some parameters!). The interactivity of this kind of build feels very natural, and it's how we actually already do things in a more limited 2d context. My guess is the killer feature here with VR is the immersiveness allowing for better synchronous collboration.

I could be totally wrong about this stuff, but I think a lot of our lives will change with VR. There are some serious hurdles we need to get over, most notably form factor, weight, and nausea. I feel like these are solvable problems, but honestly that's mostly a hunch more than anything. Would love to hear from others who know more than me!

I think I agree, though from a more skeptical standpoint. To be fair I haven't used VR much lately, but at first glance I see a lot of parallels between this and the iPad.

The iPad is a fantastic device, and it definitely changed the way many people use computers. People use them for all sorts of things, because they feature properties that make them more comfortable for plenty of work applications.

I'd argue however they haven't had the significant, "post-PC" impact people used to believe they'd have. I remember the narrative back then was predicting they would change the way most people interacted with computers, and PCs would stick around "like trucks" just for the "heavy" or specific jobs for which they'd the absolutely required.

What I've seen instead is that iPads (and all tablets really) act mostly as a utility or compliment, and when I had one I only casually used it for light tasks when my computer was out of reach or battery.

So in my case, I don't doubt a lot of places will have VR headsets for work, but I still don't think people will consider them indispensable except for very specific applications. I think we'll keep seeing more remote service repairs, for example, but not that workers going into factories will become exceedingly rare— only less extraordinary. I think it's probable VR will become as common for 3D artists as tablets are for 2D artists, but don't necessarily think it'll spill out into software architecture or other keyboard-centric applications like that.

In summary, I think VR will become more commonplace and be a fantastic tool in many contexts, but I don't think at the moment that it will signify a significant paradigm shift in most work contexts.

This feels like a highly probable outcome as well. It feels natural. We shall see! I do wonder if there are patterns we can see in the past of other devices (like the iPad) that ended up being utilities more than main devices.

This was surprisingly persuasive. You're thinking about actual productivity and not just dreaming of avatars sitting at a virtual conference table. (Ick.)

I agree with the other commenter that people are going to keep showing up in factories and repair shops, but there may be a decent sized niche of genuine utility.

Do us a favor: stay independent and stay interesting. Don't get acquired by Zuck. Maybe the MechE's in my family will use your stuff one day.

Yeah I agree. The idea of 1-for-1 bridging avatars around a conference table feels horrible. That's not a world I want to live in.

I do agree it's highly probable that VR becomes a utility until we have another leap in technology (contact-lens form factor?). We shall see!

> Do us a favor: stay independent and stay interesting. Don't get acquired by Zuck. Maybe the MechE's in my family will use your stuff one day.

Thank you I really appreciate this compliment. :) My father is actually a MechE so this comment hits close to home. My background is in materials science as well as computer science. After this company, I think I'll go back to my roots in more physics, chemistry and biology and try to do something within bioengineering. Then again, who knows. I feel, as I get older, the only thing that's certain is that I have no idea what I'll value in 2-3 more years, and I think that's a good thing!

Hope you and your loved ones are doing well internet friend.

Facebook loses about $150 per Quest 2 sold (basing this off of what an engineer who worked on it told me). Either way, they're not making money off the hardware.

They plan on making it up via game sales in the Oculus Rift Store, and services. Same as what Sony did with the PS4 (which was quite successful). I see "Quest Season Passes" in VR's future.

I've tried working in VR and it's... ok. If you're ok with working on a single monitor at < 1440p you'll be fine.

At 1440p and above resolution isn't there yet and pushing multiple monitors through to the headset is still (to my knowledge) not practical. The remote desktop-like apps I've tried only do a single monitor.

I like the bet that Quest 2 made with making the headset do all the processing, but it fails for tasks like this.

I think eventually we'll get a headset where working in VR becomes practical and affordable, but we're not there yet. Maybe apple pulls off a Gear-VR-like setup where you plonk your phone in front of some lenses on your face. But AFAIK anything better than the Quest 2 is substantially more expensive.

My wild guess is that practical work VR is 2-3 years away. Meta's next headset iteration might do it + price drops.

ImmersedVR can do multiple virtual monitors. But I think the real step forward is dropping the desktop metaphor and having windows floating free in VR, like Simula are doing. They whole concept of a monitor is more constricting than useful in VR.

Here’s the thing though. I remember when the iPhone came out. The web browser experience was a horrible low resolution experience; it was slow, clunky, and you had to charge it every day. Yet none of it mattered - almost overnight everyone became glued to their phones. It didn’t need hyping up like “just wait for 4k to come out and then it will really take off” - people wanted it despite all the original flaws. Same with original game consoles. I don’t know, I just don’t see it.

The original iPhone was also better than anything else mobile at the time though. Much better.

As clunky an experience you describe, the rest were far far worse.

VR is a cool niche experience, but the friction is still far too high for me. I wear glasses, and it needs to be only slightly more friction than that. Whether AR or VR, I don't much even care, as software experiences will adapt to the hardware at some point.