Or gaming.

I would think though that if that is the main target use you don't need to strap a computer on your head.

I don't particularly want to be immersed in Slender or Diablo or MTG.

I think you just described something like 95%+ of the US population. TV and movies and games are exceedingly popular.

Same on the plane or train. I can wonder a beach or sail the ocean.

If we go back in time to the mobile phone era, just before the iphone was released, the mobile market was actually flourishing and very solid: companies like nokia, motorola and blackberry managed to make mobile phones something as common as a TV, almost everyone had one.

At the time Apple introduced the iphone with its touchscreen and virtual keyboard, forever game changers to the whole mobile industry. The rest is history.

VR has been in the market for some time now and despite the fact that competitors haven't reached the level of technology that Apple has unveiled, those cheaper alternatives are by no means something that are either underdeveloped or half-way unusable products. I've tried a pair of Occulus few years ago and found them pretty impressive (putting aside all their flaws).

I must assume that since then these got better and prices actually dropped a bit, and if they haven't they are still way way cheaper than what Apple will be selling next year and I'm sure you can have a ton of fun with budget ones as well.

But yet... Why VR goggles can't be found in homes the same way that TVs, mobile phones and other popular electronic products despite that they are already affordable? Why hasn't this technology became mainstream? Is it maybe due to the fact that the VR experience can't be shared the same way that when we turn on a TV, play with friends with a gaming console on the couch or sit down on a desk with a PC and we share its use? Is it because it lacks that mythical killer VR app that could be a gamer changer? Is it because the industry hasn't released as much software for VR as for other more common devices like consoles, PCs, mobile phones?

It feels as if that there's still something inherently missing in VR that won't make you go and buy a pair of goggles no matter how technologically advanced they become. And people spend a lot of money on expensive phones, gadgets and the alike...

Maybe I'm wrong and shortsighted and the answer is actually trivial.

Steve Jobs was making a comparison to headphones https://youtu.be/bQECSInWVPY

That is the way I think of it. A pair of headphones for your eyes.

The thing about Apple is that they iterate in meaningful ways over a long period of time. I'm unlikely to buy this first version of Apple Vision Pro. But in a few years, I expect some later version of it is likely to be as indispensable to me as my noise cancelling headphones.

If we go further back in time, mobile phones were bricks used only by business people and tech enthusiasts. They didn't have mass market appeal because the technology wasn't there yet. Once devices got to be more powerful, compact and capable, everyone wanted one and the market exploded.

I suspect the same is happening with XR. Nobody wants to strap on a giant and clunky headset. But do you really not see the mass appeal in a pair of smart sunglasses that augments computing in a way we haven't experienced before?

The technology has the chance to disrupt computing as we know it, but it's _really_ hard to get right, which is why the experimental stage has lasted for so long. XR is _much_ more complicated than any computer interface we've had so far, and requires advancements in several cutting edge tech to align: screens, battery, computer vision, voice recognition, miniaturization, etc., and, of course, the price to come down.

There's a reason all these companies are pushing so hard for this. We're still a few years away from reaching the iPhone-like boom, but Apple getting into the field is a sign that this is not a fad. This first generation is obviously not a mass market product, but the tech and price will improve until it becomes one.

But they were widely used by business people, and I’m assuming that was an important aspect of permeating into the other demographics.

To me, what happened with cellphones is similar to what happened with personal computers. It first entered households of people that needed them for work, and as the tech evolved, so did their recreational capabilities making them more appealing to the mass market.

AR/VR devices are attempting this the other way around: their current use cases seem to be mostly recreational, and we are hoping they will eventually come up with some productivity use cases. Someone in this thread talked about how they are surprised that tablets have sort of flopped, and I feel it’s because of similar reasons. Sure there are now more and more ways to be productive on a tablet, but it’s still more of a consume-centric experience and I believe that’s the reason they haven’t replaced laptops. Time will tell.

Similarly to how VR headsets are used by gamers and tech enthusiasts today. Just like VR for gaming, not everyone was willing to pay exhorbitant prices to lug around a briefcase of a phone, and use it only for poor quality phone calls.

> AR/VR devices are attempting this the other way around: their current use cases seem to be mostly recreational, and we are hoping they will eventually come up with some productivity use cases.

Sure, but the actual current use case doesn't matter. Once the capabilities, price and user experience improve, it will become more appealing to a mass audience.

Think of the iPhone: there were certainly devices that had the same functionality of "an iPod, a phone, and an internet mobile communicator" before it. But Apple saw the right opportunity when the tech got good and cheap enough to vastly improve the user experience and expand the capabilities beyond just a mobile phone. It's what they're good at.

> Someone in this thread talked about how they are surprised that tablets have sort of flopped

But tablets didn't flop. They got merged into 2-in-1s, foldables, "phablets", etc. They've certainly replaced laptops for many users. The only reason productivity is limited on devices like the iPad is because Apple wants to, for whatever reason (possibly to avoid cannibalizing sales of their other products?). But the iPad is still selling well, AFAIK, and many professionals use it. Google and Android never prioritized the tablet form factor, so it understandably lags behind. So productivity is restricted mostly because of software, and the touch interface makes it more suitable for consuming content. If you need to be productive and the software is not a problem, you add a mouse and keyboard, and there's your 2-in-1.

I'm not the poster you're replying to, but I think you've missed their point here.

Market penetration of mobile phones was (initially) driven by the advantages they provided as a work tool. This growing market that was willing to pay helped drive the cost vs. utility down to the point where non-business use cases became viable.

Goggles with screens in them have had a very different history. There are exceedingly few people/careers who have gotten a good ROI from buying and using a headset, so most sales are driven by entertainment (and a small number of enthusiasts).

Apple (and Meta) can definitely continue to subsidize the development of this technology to bring the price down, but expanding from a niche market for entertainment devices to a market of professional tools is the opposite of what's worked for new technologies in the past.

This is clearly Apple's angle with this product. They understand that this is not a mass market product, but are betting on their brand appeal for it to sell well enough to finance later generations.

For instance, with computers, laptops and cell phones being first and foremost business tools it was common in the early days for those to be provided by the employers. That really played a big role in normalizing their presence around the home before they became mainstream products.

I have a hard time seeing a similar thing happening with these goggles, but I’m far from being an expert in these things.

Mobile phones are something of a special case, if you ask me, because the technology for voice calls and several days of standby time arrived quite a bit before affordable service did.

In 1988 a stockbroker could make calls from his speedboat for $250/month, and by 1998 a teenager could call his parents after soccer practice for $10/month.

You could describe that as "the technology getting there" because of more efficient radio signalling schemes enabling lower prices. But you could also say the user offering was unchanged[1], and the most important difference was the price.

[1] Except for SMS and the snake game

Apple doesn't always go into a flourishing industry though. Tablets were not doing well when Apple launched the iPad. The smart watch industry (and traditional watch industry) were shrinking.

Computing platforms have a tendency to become conversion devices, and have a pricing advantage over individual devices. Phones became car GPS replacements and mid-tier photo/video cameras. iPads became an ebook alternative for many. Apple Watch took on fitness tracking and more 'quantified self' roles.

It wasn't clear at launch what was likely or unlikely to succeed. Fashion-tier Apple Watches pretty much failed. iPads have a difficult time competing with eBook reader screens and portability. Fitness trackers maintain a battery life advantage over the Apple Watch.

> But yet... Why VR goggles can't be found in homes the same way that TVs, mobile phones and other popular electronic products despite that they are already affordable? Why hasn't this technology became mainstream? Is it maybe due to the fact that the VR experience can't be shared the same way that when we turn on a TV, play with friends with a gaming console on the couch or sit down on a desk with a PC and we share its use? Is it because it lacks that mythical killer VR app that could be a gamer changer? Is it because the industry hasn't released as much software for VR as for other more common devices like consoles, PCs, mobile phones?

Possibly all of them? I draw parallels between an Oculus and the Nintendo 3DS. Compared to other game consoles, it isn't an easily 'sharable' experience. Software had to be custom-developed for it to take advantage of its capabilities (two screens, one with touch and one with 3D display).

Some of the adoption was made easier by being software-compatible with the DS platform, meaning it launched with backward compatibility with an established library of games. If you liked the DS, you were mostly guaranteed not to be giving anything critical up with the 3DS.

That said, it was still gimmicky, and was still too expensive for some of their target demographics while also being a bit limited in terms of technology. The price was cut by a third, a model with a larger and higher quality array of screens was unveiled, while cheaper 2D models also shipped which were priced closer to what parents were looking to spend.

It sold about 77 million units over nine years across all models.

Compare that to the Nintendo Switch, which sold over 125 million units (across all models) in its first six years. It is more versatile (being both a personal handheld and tv-attached unit), more easily shared and perceived as less gimmicky. It launched at about $10 more when adjusting for inflation, without game backward compatibility but with a store where you could purchase ported titles.

A big part of the success of the Wii and the Switch are that they are suitable for more casual gameplay, including party play. This is something that VR is not great at, as you need to fit hardware for every player switch and it is rare (and expensive) to have local multiplayer.

I would say the Wii overcame the gimmicky nature of the controller interactions via Wii Sports; yet another outstanding showcase game for the system, on par with Tetris for the Gameboy. The multiplayer physical interaction and open nature of play set a tone for the system in general.

> It feels as if there's still something inherently missing in VR that won't make you go and buy a pair of goggles no matter how technologically advanced they become. And people spend a lot of money on expensive phones, gadgets and the alike...

Games are a hard lead-in - console-like devices such as the Quest are going to have significant limitations for cost, while hardware integrating with higher-end gaming rigs are naturally a low volume market. You can't really have a game like Guitar Hero for it because of how private and difficult-to-adjust it is.

Industrial applications are far easier, but lower volume on high margin hardware. I imagine you are talking about more of a consumer/prosumer adoption.

Workforce is confusing. I kinda enjoy the idea of Apple both mandating the engineers working on VR functionality come into the office. As an employee, it feels like workforce always skimps on per-seat investments, and will only consider hardware like this if an all-in-one headset "spatial computer" is cheaper than their bulk-order laptop.

But that said, the most difficult part is to keep people from trying to reinvent EVERYTHING as if it all has to be a 3D experience. There are certainly 3D tasks which are difficult to do with 2D tools (such as CAD), but there's also 2D tasks like word processing that make little sense to reinvent as 3D tasks.

Apple seems to be targeting it as an alternative to an iPad or MacBook Air, with backward compatibility to run iPad apps as 2D surfaces, and the ability to operate a Mac "screen". They seem to have invested quite a bit in screen quality to make presenting existing apps at existing text sizes feasible.

That approach is also understandable because that is the computing market Apple goes after. I have a hard time thinking this "Pro" headset would launch without a medium-term plan to get something in more of a $1500 price range. Apple Pro products generally exist because Apple thinks they should, and to let the higher BoM let them explore new technologies that aren't yet feasible on their baseline consumer hardware. But in all cases, Apple seems to try to go after gaps in the market where they don't see other companies investing in a particular experience.

Now, the question is, how much worse can it be and still sell well? How good is good enough? How soon will we see the plastic iPhone 3G equivalent at half the price, 70% the weight and 150% the battery life? After listening to the first hand experiences I do think Apple is onto something here, and this could be the beginning of the next step, finally going beyond what Douglas Engelbart has already envisioned in terms of digital augmentation of our lifes (on which we're IMO only now getting to a full realisation, almost 60 years later).

[1] listen to yesterday's Cortex podcast, they go over all the details after first hand experience, and it's quite interesting to say the least.

Phones, laptops, and tablets have all been fighting on weight vs compute power for years, and improvements are incremental year to year. I don't see any reason to imagine it's possible to reduce the size that much in the foreseeable future. Even with compromises like a separate battery, which is already extremely clunky.

Not to mention, the illusion depends highly on having your regular vision blocked out completely and on having the screens at a very fixed position relative to your eyes. So, for the foreseeable future, the screens will have to stay well fixed to your face, even if in a more glasses-like form factor, and completely cover your eyes. Ski goggles are actually a better description of the best that can be done, not glasses.

There's one more doubling of computing power per square centimeter of die, MAXIMUM.

Otherwise GPU prices wouldn't still be climbing.

The killer app for AR is the pair of glasses that pops up information as an overlay on the rest of the world. Directions? You get an arrow and line telling you where to go. Meet someone for lunch? Facial recognition tells you information about them - either recent social media posts if you're already connected or something like a public profile if you don't. Testing out a new recipe? It shows you step by step directions and floating video of the task you need to do right them. Watching a movie? Built in subtitles and tells you who the actors (or voice actors) are. Looking to buy a car? The AR headset gives you pricing information and stats for any car that you look at.

I could keep going. Think combination of Ready Player One, any gadget spy movie, and a video game isekai. Menus that allow you to make notes for when you go to the store, calendar reminders popping up visually

The potential for abuse of privacy is high, but the convenience factor and instant gratification probably mean that people will still adopt it in droves. Add in some kind of AI assistant that does a halfway decent job at anticipating the user's needs and it's a done deal.

The main things holding back that kind of thing are battery tech and miniaturization. 2 hours isn't gonna cut it, and it needs to shrink to a more innocuous level before we get there, but that's the direction I see it going. That's probably also why these companies are working so hard at iterating, to get that first-mover advantage.

If we do get there I pity anyone with photosensitivity issues or epilepsy. They're gonna have a rough time.

The iPhone moment for this space IMO is... the iPhone (sans phone)

Imagine something of google glass form factor tethered to a personal computing device (the size of an iPhone) for external battery and CPU.

Basically Iron Man glasses. IMO glasses that can do everything a phone can, with baked in Google Lens is already a killer feature.

Imagine having everything in focus auto-translated while abroad.

Once you get certain social features like both visualizing the same thing I think that will be the ChatGPT moment for the space.

If you think about it, the product is essentially a MacBook that sits on your face, micronized with massive optimizations.

I would expect the headset to have the same accessibility features for epileptics that phones have.

Do I want to wear big goggles? No. Do I, one day, want a device that can magically project anything I want on to my field of vision, and for it to be as realistic as my actual vision?

Hell yeah I do! And we can’t get there unless we go through the ski goggles phase. So, here we are.

I feel the same way about people complaining that the headphone jack was removed. ‘The phone is thin enough!’, they say. No it isn’t! My god where’s your imagination. The phone is good enough when it’s wafer thin and I can have it protein-printed on my arm or whatever.

Now, if I was someone who works in construction, I'd be happy to have glasses that add the position of eletrical wire in the wall where I'm going to drill a hole :-)

Ok, but you're certainly atypical in this respect.

It is possible that there is a non-linear threshold type thing (Like LLM's requiring billions of parameters before doing a decent imitation of human language) that has prevented (thus far) making this technology really interesting.

[1] http://www.visbox.com/products/cave/

I'm very weirded out to see all of them go with the massive option. A google glass oriented solution with 2023 level of tech and that can be adapted to any/most pair of glasses but offering much more limited functions (pictures/photo, maps/gps, notification, light AR, ...) would have much more appeal to every day life.

Not saying it's easy, not saying it would work, but it feels like it would be an easier challenge to convince people to wear that all the time.

I think there aren't enough people who will want to wear it for games or social media. Not because it's a bad experience, but because it's an expensive and cumbersome experience and it's just not THAT much better than just staring at a small screen. The user base can't motivate spending billions on creating the experiences that would grow the user base significantly.

What I think could be the breakthrough thing is the combination of AI and VR. Interactive agents and possibly also something to cheaply create that holodeck experience for rendering (NeRFs with foveal rendering, whatever - I'm an amateur skimmer of papers and extrapolating research is difficult even for experts). But imagine the difference in development costs between a VR experience where some interior space is modeled by hand in minute detail in Unreal engine, and NPCs are scripted, versus one where a space is merely captured in RFs and the NPCs are GPT bots with some plot instructions. Both of those technologies (NeRFs and GPT NPCs) would have sounded like science fiction even to the creators of the Quest2, yet here we are. I would have said "no one would ever buy/wear this" 5 years ago, but with the idea of a mind blowing photorealistic interactive murder mystery developed on a shoestring budget (Not to mention: porn - never underestimate it) I'm not so sure any more.

I have no doubt this new medium will revolutionize mainstream TV and Movies.

The infinite desk. Infinite whiteboard. Improved conferencing. Are just added bonuses.

One of the most pathetic things I've ever heard. Gushing about immersive cuckoldry.

https://www.thrillist.com/vice/how-porn-influenced-technolog...

The oft repeated "VHS won because Beta didn't have porn" is flat out wrong, you could rent porn on Beta back in the day.

Man, I miss when the web was dominated by counter-cultural weirdos.

If VR porn was that important to people, Google Cardboard would be a household name. Plenty of people have tried VR porn, and most go back to the same stuff they usually do for regular sessions.

Does Google have a VR play? They explored this with Glass 10 years ago, but that's dead and they don't seem interested in developing a successor.

The data point for the discussion is that at some point they did think that this might be an interesting direction.

We can make devices that are fixed in space, where you need to orient your sensory inputs around the device. Or, we can make devices that instead are themselves oriented around your sensory inputs. The latter tends to be better for ergonomics and convenience (at least), since the device is accommodating your senses instead of your senses accommodating the device.

In other words, AR/VR/etc devices are headphones for the eyes. I can see why it seems like an obvious next step to some (if they can get it right).

Headphones are in a sense "additive": they take a channel (auditory) that for a prolonged period of time might be underused while we go on about our lives and utilize it in an unobtrusive way. You can listen to podcasts while doing other stuff. We can optionally upgrade the experience: If you want, you can close your eyes and lose yourself in music.

Goggles are necessarily subtractive. Whatever you do while immersed must justify the fact that you are obstructing your primary contact with the world. It may well be that there are worthwhile pursuits but its a bit odd that they don't advertise themselves.

Imagine using your phone but you don’t have to hold it up to your face, or tilt your head to look at it. You don’t need to sit at a desk, because your work screen is wherever you are.

If you really want the old experience, you could make the contacts emulate a fixed display in space, or on top of a soap bar.

The goggles today are much worse than the theoretically perfect version, but it isn’t clear where the experiential threshold is for “better”.

And that's coming from someone who spends a good amount of time doing studio work. I much prefer the comfort of a good set of speakers as they're far less intrusive, but for some things you just have to have a pair of headphones on hand.

This is why I have doubts that the current form of VR headsets is going to be the new standard for working.

It’s bulky because/in the sense, how much top technology and work has been designed into it to validate and refine even further the vision with more users and developers.

It’s also bulky in an other sense, because how massive it is to wear still; and how social etiquette around it barely exist (but is also taken into account/proposed/embedded in this first public iteration).

It definitely make sense because it opens a really opiniated conceptual door to a different way of interacting with computers.

But for consumers? I mostly agree. It has a few nice gimmick features, but seems rather isolating and disrupting natural human interaction.

I think it's very hard to tell the difference between these things ex ante. Everything that succeeds looks like it was pulled. But many things were pushed before they were pulled. Buying things on the internet, for instance. This was laughed at for quite a while, while a few people and companies were committed to the idea that it was the future. They were right of course, so right that it feels like it was effortless and demanded by the public, but it wasn't. Not at first.

That isn't to say that that will happen with VR either. Just to say that there is a long history of things being pushed hard and finally breaking through and becoming a near universal norm, and there is a long history of things being pushed hard and dying and being completely forgotten.

The promise of VR is to unlock a world free of the constraints of physics. Where physical distance prevents certain styles of communication and interaction - where physical real estate is finite and therefore rivalrous, etc. There are many things that VR, in principle, could solve. Whether or not the tech can deliver those things in a way that partially (or totally?) replaces actual physical reality remains to be seen. It is clear though that if you want to weave tech into the fabric of people's lives in the deepest possible way, something like VR is probably your best bet.

Everyone saw the potential and lashed money into it. It didn't deliver at the time, but that dynamic is totally different to vr headsets.

Think smart phones, they weren't pushed, people wanted them in a serious way

Distance selling regulations helped with it a lot. I can buy a product online and if I'm not happy with it, for any reason, I can send it back for a refund. This just isn't the case with shopping in a store.

I learned this the hard way twice buying in store from Argos in the UK, only to get home and find I had bought a used product which someone else had returned already. Argos refused to refund or replace the items because they are used.

I looked this up at the time and it seemed to be a common occurrence, I can only assume people returned items they bought online and Argos just put them back on the shelves.

Had I bought it online and had it delivered to my house I could have returned it. I buy online wherever possible now.

Interestingly "click-and-collect" services are not covered by distance selling regulations which is how I got burned twice by Argos.

This is why I still buy clothes, shoes and sport gears at stores. Returning products takes time and you still don't have what you wanted to buy.

If I buy a new item of the very same model I bought before, that's OK to buy online. Unfortunately companies keep changing models every year.

Also at this point they don't give a damn about quality controls. E.g. there was a time when you could order shoes online rather reliably. Today? What you get in the mail is barely correlated with the size you specified on the order.

From the last 10 days: we order two pairs for our kids, size X and Y - which we selected by actually following measurement instructions of the shoe company. When the order comes, it it turns out size X is too big for the younger kid, size Y is too small for the older. We return those, and order again, this time sizes (X-1) and (Y+1). What we got is... the (X-1) shoes were identical to X shoes (therefore still too large); the (Y+1) shoes were like Y+3 - way overshooting the target.

This was same models, same company, with no logistical confusion according to labels. Just one of multiple similar events we had (and many more I heard about from others) where the size of shoes received was pretty much random. So this is one category of goods that we're going back to buying in person.

And yes, that means dragging a 1.5 y.o. and a 4 y.o. into a shoe store in a large mall - the very one I mentioned above. Yes, our kids will likely get overwhelmed by lights and wares and ads, and start making all kinds of scenes. I don't care. If the store doesn't want a scene, they should not be routinely fucking up their order sizes.

I have never experienced this buying shoes from both big and small brands. Adidas, Nike, Allbirds, Converse, John Elliott, Beckett Simonon, etc. Maybe kids shoes are a different ballgame?

Also never experienced this with clothes. I buy everything online and it always fits as I would expect from the measurements listed on the website.

I do find shoes sometimes have inconsistent sizing between brands, but they usually say something like "runs 1/2 size small". Worst comes to worst I can compare size charts with a pair that I already own.

It's never a crapshoot where I can't rely on their sizing at all.

That's a distinctly American problem. As is the (over)use of credit cards in general.

Here in Europe, the main worry was simply paying in advance and not getting the item. Early on, the popular choice was just paying to the postman on delivery - it moved some of the risk on to the seller, but it was balanced out by the seller making this option ~50% more expensive. It took some time for people to get used to dispute processes in marketplaces, and then for the laws to be updated with additional safeguards (e.g. 14 days no-questions-asked return policy for online purchases, which I think is an EU directive), and at some point, transferring money in advance of delivery became a normal practice. That was even before payment gateways, or even smartphones, became ubiquitous.

There is no demand for VR outside gaming. Efforts to try and create that demand are failing.

And the first mobile phone was sold to the public in 1949. It took time to catch on. People needed it to be convenient and accessible. VR/AR is neither convenient nor accessible today.

You can use your iPhone camera for an AR experience, but your hands are occupied holding the phone so you can't do much at all when using it.

The whole meta verse thing seems like it was 100% hype building by people with money invested in it and none of the platforms had any users.

If VR was so compelling, people would buy the headset to get the experience. It's not so they don't.

Impossible. My extended circle which leans tech overall is maybe 4%. And many just tried it and aren’t really actively using it.

They’re counting numbers very funny.

Half the population is above 45, and it’s not above 2% for that cohort they barely hear about it on the news and have no idea how to even sign up for it.

Having seen this before, I don't think the numbers are incredible. Everyone I know has signed up for an OpenAI account, and probably 25% are paying for one. Granted I'm in the HN bubble, but this is so 1995.

Most gaming will be casual, in VR just like non-VR.

But there are much better and deeper games in both cases.

VR just isn't that wanted by average people. "Immersion" just isn't a magic panacea that older execs seem to think it is, and being in a "virtual world" while you play most games don't make them better games! Oddly enough, most people don't play videogames to emulate real activities, but rather to play games, with their own made up rules and concepts. FIFA on the Xbox is nothing like actual soccer, but the players prefer it like that, and a FIFA that requires you to kick the ball with your real foot and costs hundreds of dollars is NOT better as a game, or more fun to most people, than "flat" FIFA.

We literally already went over this with the Wii; shoehorning in "realism" into games that don't benefit from it just makes shitty games.

Actually its more like 30 years.

People get too focused on devices and the recent storyline around Google/Oculus/Meta/Apple etc. Any and all devices are and will always be WIP, they get refined once there is strong demand in the direction of that demand. The concept and experierence of immersive / interactive computing is much older and we should not ignore the lessons it may try to teach us.

What we have here is a new round of device refinement in anticipation of strong demand for an alternative computer interface that did not materialize in several decades - even though it could have.

It may be that VR is an exception. Some people are arguing that there is some sort of threshold that needs to be reached. Its possible.

But this is not the usual pattern. People are extremely adept and keen at glossing over grave limitations and filling in the blanks if a technology helps them achieve something relevant to them.

How much money has ChatGPT invested? Billions.

GPT1 is from 2018, but neural networks have more than 70 years now. VR have more than 30 years since the early prototypes.

If I could replace my monitor with a portable device that would grant me huge virtual desktop space I would pay 3500$

Right now I'm waiting to see the feedback and for the early adopter issues to get ironed out.

But I'd say this demand is far greater than gaming. Being able to work from any rental where I can plop a keyboard and laptop without having to deal with bad desk height and non adjustable chair/lack of monitors is huge - it would literally mean I could work from anywhere.

Right now I can't - and I've tried many times. Experience is terrible and after a few days of bad desk/chair combo, even lugging a small 24inch monitor in the car, I get insane cramps/headaches from neck strain or back pain from bad posture.

If VR can solve this I know a lot of people would buy into that.

People keep parroting this line, but have you ever actually tried this? There's way more to discomfort in VR than just pixel density.

But it's been like 7 years at this point ? If Apple has decided to launch it I would assume they worked out the kinks.

I'm not buying it until I see enough evidence it's usable (doubt I'll get to try it for 8 hours without buying one).

But the practicality of not being able to see the people around me gave me the screaming heeby-jeebies. I just wasn't comfortable not knowing who was near me.

I will happily have 3 monitors in realspace just so I can turn my head to see who's near me.

How big was the demand for the first mobile phone?

ChatGPT was the first chatbot to cross the magic threshold, after which point consumers enthusiastically adopted it.

AI has been around since the 50s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intellig...

VR has been around since roughly a decade later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality#History

... AR / VR may have the same promise. But the implementation is sufficiently far away, that most people look at it and think "Wow, really cool toy. I don't have a use for it right now", and walk away. They'll be back if / when that tipping point arrives, but unlike ChatGPT, its not here, not yet.

And like... are you sure about being able to buy stuff online? I remember when being able to buy pizza online was new and there was a TV show in Japan about some crazy guy trying to survive off of stuff he ordered on the Internet, and the entire concept was just not a thing normal people were into... remember: the dot-com "boom" was actually a bubble and a lot of the stuff that came out during it failed.

Additionally they seem to always pick the perishables with the closest expiry date. IE milk from the front of the shelf that is expiring tomorrow rather than the stuff at the back that has 7 days before expiry.

The obsession with perfect produce is so dumb, and has genuinely harmed our shopping.

The grocery store should be pulling terribly produce, but my local one apparently does not.

Yes, it was laughed at and during the early internet days, people were skeptical that online shopping would become mainstream. An example includes the famous prediction from Clifford Stoll from 1995[1] :

>Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure. [...] Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet--which there isn't--the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Clifford was correct in that brick & mortar stores didn't become obsolete. But he was very wrong about the mass consumer adoption of internet shopping. Many agreed with his mispredictions at the time.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv...

It was definitely laughed at by people like travel agents - remember them? I can remember discussing it with people in the travel industry around '94 and '95 and they literally laughed at the idea of people arranging travel online.

I am not - Apple's "Post-PC" vision was clearly not viable to me, despite initially out-selling the entire desktop industry initially. The "What is a computer" ads were cringe.

If I need to do work involving lots of typing, precise clicking or sitting for a long amount of time, I'd rather use a laptop (or desktop). And for less demanding stuff, the smartphone (which I'm already carrying everywhere by default) is enough.

The tablet sits in an awkward middle and I don't really find much use for it.

Which is something important to keep in mind when discussing VR adoption. A few people getting overly excited (or overly dismissive) is not necessarily a good predictor.

As a data point, I do own a tablet. It's mostly a mobile TV screen: a TV Headend client for broadcast TV, NewPipe for YouTube and VLC to a shared disk on a server at Home. Not having to sit in front of a fixed TV set it great. My TV is mostly forgotten in a corner of the living room.

I rarely bring the tablet with me outside home. When I do it's with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Example: I'm on vacation but I need some sort of work connectivity in case nasty things happen. Ssh works better on a 8.4" screen than on a phone. That doesn't happen every year luckily. My laptop is larger, weights more and I'll cry if it breaks or gets stolen. Damage to the tablet will only piss me off a bit.

(I was like you and still am, by the way... I don't find tablets comfortable. I only bought one once, and I think the number of times I actually used it can be counted with both hands).

Many journalists will have their MacBooks prized out of the cold dead hands.

I travel with my laptop and my iPad Pro never leaves the couch.

And how close to most working artists’ realities are those slick Apple keynotes showing sexy young people drawing with their Apple Pencil? I don’t know. Artist is a broad term.

Yes, artists is a broad term, just like developer isn't a UNIX guy doing containers.

By who?

The iPad introduction explicitly presented the iPad as a complementary device situated between the smartphone and the laptop.

But no, iPads did not replace laptops for the majority of people. Phones maybe, but not so much tablets.

Again if unless you are very young or old, and/or your profession significantly benefits from a portable touch devices (artistry, home remodeling, etc.) it’s a niche.

Part of the reason it’s only kids and old people often seen using them.

For VR/AR however? Are we going to get to Black Mirror level of a weightless device that projects a huge AR screen without block your field of vision for the rest, and without making you look like a goof?

Even if that's the case, the benefit over using a phone screen wouldn't not be as big as getting a huge library of movies to be rented in seconds directly from your living room (compared to driving to Blockbuster during opening hours for a much smaller selection).

And the best movies all being rented out! That's a concept that doesn't even exist anymore. A bit tangential, but good technology has that effect, of making scarcity disappear.

See. You just did the exact same thing that Op is talking about. You didn't describe a single actual use case. You just talked about unlocking things or solving problems. You didn't describe any actual problems or any actual things. op's point is that enabling technologies are useless without problems that require the enablement to be solved. And no one is actually demonstrating that any of those exist.

All of those are use cases, and obvious ones.

Your argument is “none of these seem compelling to me” (you’re not pulling) which is fine, but don’t ignore the comment’s point that they could soon be compelling to you (which is why they’re being pushed).

This is especially true for network effect based use cases like Oculus is shooting for - even Facebook was useless until “everybody” was on it

Literally all of those are possible with your cell phone at slightly lower fidelity. We're not talking about zero to one applications here. Cell phone fundamentally unlocked new applications via mobile connected GPS, computer, camera, screen, accelerometer, internet. Fidelity is not worth as much as people think to as many people as they think. 3D TVs were a flop. People still play and watch low res cell shaded games and movies.

On top of that so far VR only offers a bigger screen and can’t actually produce high fidelity images. My 4K TV has more pixels and produces a clearer picture with more detail and resolution. Only offering bigger doesn’t feel like a good selling point or revolutionary change.

I think unique games like Beatsaber (which I fucking love and play regularly) are an example of a completely new use case unlocked as a possibility because of VR but those are only compelling to a small percentage of people. VRs big problem is it hasn’t found a similar completely new experience that’s not just a new way to do existing things moderately better (often only in a some areas while being worse in others) and is actually compelling to a large audience. Until it does the potential audience is going to remain small.

That's what I'm talking about - this is a clear use case. Another example I can think of would be remote surgery.

You're exactly right though - the big problem is that it hasn't found the killer app yet. Something will probably materialize eventually, but it's not clear yet.

Fwiw, I’m a VR bear overall, but the idea that it’s somehow “not new” feels wild to me, like saying ChatGPT isn’t new because we’ve had chatbots for ages. Like, yea man but the preexisting stuff sucked lmao

VR so far only offers experiences that are moderately better in some ways (bigger screen, more immersive experience) while being objectively worse in others (heavy sweaty headset, lower resolution, nausea/headaches, high cost or be locked into a FB run ecosystem).

It won’t explode the way LLMs and other AI has lately until it solves the negative factors it has. I say this as someone who uses VR regularly and figured most of this out from feedback from my normie friends and family.

The cost of using ChatGPT vs older chatbots was... nothing.

Once there are downsides, people weigh them and you lose chunks of your potential adoption base.

Oculus Pro is objectively better in all possible ways than other VR headsets (but has trade offs vs substitutes, like regular screens).

ChatGPT is objectively better in all possible ways than other chatbots (but has trade offs vs substitutes, like google search).

VR headsets provide “large scale 2D experiences” and “immersive 3D experiences”. The resolutions on all VR headsets means for the first it’s objectively worse in a lot of ways, namely fidelity and detail. I agree the second one is a new experience and use case (I really like VR and have two different headsets I use regularly), but the only actual new thing is the “3D” part. People find plenty of other stuff immersive. Heck books provide that for a lot of people. That 3D part just isn’t enough, you can ask all of my friends and family that have tried my Index, said “wow that’s really cool” and then never buy a headset themselves.

ChatGPT provides a bunch of new use cases with regard to chat, text editing/manipulation/analysis, and knowledge recall/generation while also being significantly better and faster than Google with regard to finding answers or information. Meanwhile AI image generation has completely changed art and image creation to a ridiculous degree. I have friends and family asking me how concerned they should be about AI taking their jobs in fields as varied as writing, art/design, law, and medicine.

I do think in the future VR could reach the point where it’s that revolutionary, I just don’t feel like the two compare well now. VR is currently more like those old chatbots mentioned.

The Vision Pro's problem is that it lets you do something you can already do "some percent better."

But "some percent better" isn't what any of the companies pushing this need, because that doesn't translate into the volumes they need to sell.

"Fundamentally different" does, but no one has described any use case like that.

Examples of "fundamentally different" would be "taking the ability to make and receive phone calls with you, wherever you go" or "taking the ability to browse the web with you, wherever you go."

For what it’s worth, the fitness use case is 0 to 1 because a million people are saying “I didn’t exercise; now I do; Oculus is why”

No fitness > fitness is 0 to 1

In what way was the iPhone “fundamentally different,” by your definition? Its functionality all existed in a blackberry / mp3 player. It was just “some percent better” at everything - especially interaction - that unlocked all the apps we have today, no?

The fitness use case is a red herring and a software problem. Instilling motivation in people to do things they know are good but don't want to isn't traditionally a money-maker. You're building a better shame-er: how's Peloton doing these days? https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PTON/financials?p=PTON (and that is "fundamentally different"!)

The iPhone as initially released isn't the iPhone brand success we see today, looking back: that's the iPhone + iTunes + App Store.

Which explains why similarly featured hardware didn't experience iPhone success.

That combination was fundamentally different, because it allowed you to easily do the 3 things most people wanted to on their phones (browse the web, listen to music, get a specific app).

At the time, 2008, there was no competition for that.

It would be until ~2010 that Android even launched rough (very rough) parity: HTC Nexus One/Samsung Galaxy S + Google Music + Android Marketplace

Two. Years.

Like, Peloton is an exercise bike. A cool one! A great brand and experience! But it’s an exercise bike.

And it’s somehow more “fundamentally different” than this device that is trying to materialize sci fi?

I guess I just don’t get it

But if even it's having trouble financially, fitness isn't a great category to win with technology. Branding and advertising, absolutely! (Nike?) But not tech.

The Apple Vision Pro is an impressive improvement. But I'm skeptical its at that tipping point. Making the tech work in a pair of regularly sized glasses, that don't need plugged in or a heavy battery, yet has similar functionality, would push it much closer to reality. No regular person is strapping one of these on to interact with the world as is. IMHO its current stage is: a very impressive toy. Which is totally fine -- with what's at stake and Apple's market position and cash, it makes total sense to try and be the leader here, until it materializes into the next thing or fizzles out. Either position is likely acceptable to Apple.

But, sure, fundamentally different: being able to surround yourself with any environment you want. Being able to navigate that environment with physical movement. Seeing a movie that exists in a sphere around you.

You may not want those things, just like my mom could not understand why anyone would want a smartphone, but that does not mean other people get no value.

What's fundamentally different about AR/VR is that it lets you do that... while being anywhere.

But! The cost of doing it (putting on the goggles) is a direct and serious degradation of your physical experience of wherever you physically are.

So we have a device that's key value proposition is -- it lets you have your nice home media experience, out in the world, at the cost of losing the sensation of the world.

... but then why do I want to do that out in the world, instead of at home, on the couch, like Apple's demos are?

... and if I'm doing it on the couch, it has to compete directly with high fidelity existing solutions.

The mobile component is effectively worthless, until the hardware is capable of augmenting physical reality instead of muffling it. (Read: magic AR eyeglasses)

There does exists one very particular type of user for whom the above is valuable: the business traveler.

But that's not enough volume (especially now) to meaningfully contribute to Apple's revenue.

If I were Apple, I would have taken a page out of Blackberry/Bloomberg's success book and made a flagship launch app a very polished "Vision Pro iMessage, with 3d presence" and worked the social network angle. Call any important person during business hours, with presence, instantly, would be fundamentally different. (Especially with an AI agent if they're unavailable)

Maybe it does to you, maybe a lot of people, but calling it degradation is still a subjective call.

I agree there are some people that want it (I am one of those people, Beatsaber changed my life). The issue is the number of those people isn’t that large yet. I know this because pretty much all of my friends and family that tried my Index have said “wow that’s really cool!” and later none of them go buy a headset. It’s just not compelling enough to buy for most normal people yet.

VR has proven itself pretty much only in VR racing and VR flying, where it provides an impossible to compete with improvement in experience, but at a huge cost and COMMITMENT. It takes effort to put on a headset, set aside some space, and commit to being "away from reality" for a bit

Laptops screens are small not because people want small screens, but that the form factor requires it. What if you could take the 30" display or multimonitor setup you have set up at your home office anywhere in your home? Anywhere in the world? Why bother with an iPad to watch movies on a flight when you can have a full cinema experience?

Because the HMD is heavy, the battery sucks and you look like an idiot when using it. All true, but the one stupid bet to make on computing technology is that it won't get smaller, faster and more efficient over time.

> What if you could take the 30" display or multimonitor setup

The issue is VR doesn’t provide this either. Yes, it can provide screens the same size or larger, but IMAX currently provides 8K or higher resolution, my three monitors are each 4K, and even the screens in the Vision Pro can’t match that level of detail or fidelity regardless of how big the virtual screens are.

It’s the same reason people didn’t buy gigantic TVs back when the resolution was 480p or lower, bigger alone is not better, especially when combined with the problems you documented.

I say this as someone who uses VR regularly and has bought two headsets so far. I do agree that in the future the tech will probably reach a point it’s able to provide image quality that’s good enough and solve all of its negative factors. It’s also possible the Vision Pro reaches the necessary bar, no one has really tried it yet. But for the normies VR just hasn’t reached a compelling level yet.

There were plenty of large format standard definition sets, they were just either way too big (CRTs) or rear projection (worse picture quality, which is saying something for 480i). DVD is SD and was a dominant format for a significant amount of time after the rapid rise of HD flatscreens. TVs got big because the technology allowed for it without requiring TVs to be installed via forklift or crane, not because people didn't want a big picture.

I've used a bunch of headsets too and it baffles me when people with plenty of time wearing these bricks can't extrapolate those experiences out, it doesn't require a whole lot of imagination. The Quest 2/Pro aren't cutting edge and their UI is jank, but even with the shitty passthrough it's pretty clear (to me at least) how virtual screens can be useful based on my experience with them.

See my comment down below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36257804

Yes, think about being able to do it remotely AND still have presence ie imagine being able to still hangout with your college buddies or extended family for game night who live hundreds or thousands of miles away

I've played hundreds of hours of Tabletop Simulator (a game on Steam, if that's not clear) outside VR and it works great.

Tabletop Simulator also supports VR, I tried it a few times but it really didn't add anything. And honestly using a mouse and keyboard to click on board game pieces, select cards, and so on is far more precise and low effort than grabbing things with my hands.

I game regularly in VR and I believe in it, but not for board games or tabletop games.

Instead of staring down at a tiny device or simply wracking your brain in desperation any time you need information about something in the world around you (driving/walking direction, business hours, the history of a sculpture in an art gallery, the name of an acquaintance approaching you down the sidewalk, etc.), imagine that the information is just... there. In the environment with you. That is incredibly useful, and is an incredible way to interact with information. Imagine cooking along to a recipe laid out on the countertop in front of you, with generative AI guiding you through different techniques (or even helping you change a tire on a busy roadside).

Instead of needing bunches of different tiny screens for bunches of different use cases (I wake up and sit at my medium work screen, sometimes scroll my tiny screen, go home and sit on the couch and watch my large screen, maybe over the weekend I'll catch a movie on the extra large screen), you just need a single device that produces exactly the screen and environment you want. That's the promise of VR. I could be on a cramped flight watching a movie on an Imax screen or writing code with 3 separate monitors in front of me.

We could go on and on and on just imagining excited scenarios where AR/VR would provide an incredible way to interact with tech. It all just hinges on how well it can be done.

The hurdle to overcome in my opinion is the form factor. Everyone walking around wearing ski goggles is a deal breaker to me. Glasses, maybe; or even better, contacts. Right now that size technology is more sci-fi than reality, and I suspect it will be a very long time before we reach that (if we ever do).

It’s also important to keep in mind that information availability isn’t the end goal. The purpose of having more information is to improve other aspects of our lives so we can reach our goals more effectively. We want big data so we can optimize for outcomes of our choosing. We want to understand the natural world so we can use it for our benefit.

Connectedness to information does not benefit us if it comes at the cost of having face-to-face interactions with each other, IMO. A lot of people think in-person conversation has gotten worse since the advent of smartphones because they steal peoples’ attentions. Imagine the extent of that dynamic when everyone is always-connected and it is impossible to discern who is paying attention.

Not being flippant -- I really think that's the big question.

Current AR/VR (Vision Pro included) lets us do desk things at not-desk places, but why would I want to do that?

But, for me, for example: to GSD around the house while one needs to be in a Zoom, so that menial chores aren't waiting for me when I'm off work. Even Airpods let me do that somewhat now, but at the expense of missing slides or what's being shared on someone's desktop.

I'm in operational technology and deal with a lot of on-site tech, such as SCADA, factories, even stuff on trains or planes.

We have 3D lidar mapped files of factories that are scaled in such a way that users can throw on VR and "walk" through the facility and figure things out. It's not completely mature but it's pretty good, and there have been talks about putting a camera on a scooter and letting engineers remotely drive though the place in real-time -- not just the static files.

What do you do with it? erognomics engineering, looking at flows of goods, processes, etc.

Still waiting for a Visicalc for AR.

And yet, here we are. iPhone truly revolutionized phone market and was the first real smartphone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19185

Why I Don't Think The iPhone Will Sell Very Well (mattmaroon.com) 8 points by mattmaroon on May 4, 2007 | 11 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16394

Why iPhone Will Win (kedrosky.com) 15 points by far33d on April 24, 2007 | 7 comments

You didn't mention it, but same thing is true for remote surgery applicatons.

Telepresence for subject matter experts is a fundamentally new application that is unlocked by AR/VR tech. To nitpick, its more of an industry application rather than a consumer one(apple/meta releasing consumer-targeted products because the market is bigger) - but you're right that it's a good use case. Particularly in time-sensitive cases where industry would have to wait days to fly someone out when they need help immediately. To be fair though... a cell phone video call can already get you maybe half of the way there I'd say(where VR still might only get you to 80% given you cant smell/touch).

To date, I’ve lost 10-15 lbs

VR is available to the public since the 90's, it's as old as the Internet. Even if you consider that "actually useable VR" started with Occulus it was already 10 years ago.

I'm not saying the turning point for VR will never come, but it's certainly taking its time.

I like the idea in some cases but it's still absurdly komisch to the vast majority of human beings

Pretty much every developer (and reader) I know jumped on the OG amazon to buy books. All through the late '90s I (and pretty much everyone I knew) would buy books that were not immediately available in bookstores (remember those?) or libraries on the internet. Never mind that it sometimes took over a week for your books to be delivered, the point was that we could get something we wanted.

I have played around with a VR headset, and been part of demos that have fallen flat, because there really is nothing that we want in that experience.

This is not to say that it won't be successfull. Advertising and hard sells can be very effective after all.

When, for a couple of months in 1992? There are always a few people who dislike new ideas but that one was popular from the beginning because it was so easy to understand: just like ordering from a catalog but you get your stuff a week earlier and in most cases can see more info about it before buying.

I worked at a web development company in the mid to late 90s and businesses were all over this concept. It saved them money having to pay people to answer the phone or open envelopes, let them do things they couldn’t afford with printed catalogs, and avoided a whole ton of problems around payment.

I think you were in a pretty distinct milieu if you thought this was a popular idea in 1992, or any time before, say, 1998.

> I worked at a web development company in the mid to late 90s and businesses were all over this concept. It saved them money having to pay people to answer the phone or open envelopes, let them do things they couldn’t afford with printed catalogs, and avoided a whole ton of problems around payment.

Yes, I imagine that the companies you interfaced with as an employee of an webdev company in the late 90s were all over this. That is not the same thing as it being generally popular.

It wasn’t mainstream before people could afford computers and connectivity but nobody serious was laughing at the idea for the reasons I mentioned: it was an obvious extension of what businesses had been doing for over a century and there was tons of prior art (services like CompuServ had online shopping in the 80s). By the mid-90s it was obvious that it was going to happen for easily shipped items as soon as people got online - when Amazon launched in 1995 it had customers around the country almost immediately and the book operation was profitable within a couple of years.

> Yes, I imagine that the companies you interfaced with as an employee of an webdev company in the late 90s were all over this. That is not the same thing as it being generally popular.

Our customers weren’t tech companies but brick and mortar retail, banks, manufacturers, etc. They knew that this was an easy way to sell direct to customers - which cut out some hefty margins charged by major stores & catalogs - and try new products. The opportunity was obvious even to people who weren’t in the industry — absolutely nobody was laughing at that, although there were dotcoms of the “lose money on every sale, make it up in volume” persuasion who everyone knew were doomed.

Or generally, anything that's much better experienced directly than through a screen. Think about virtually hiking Mt Everest, diving the Mariana Trench, walking on Mars, etc. The technology certainly isn't there yet, but I can imagine a future where for a majority of the population, especially those with lower income, VR provides the only affordable* escape from reality.

* In a few years obviously, $3500 is far from affordable.

I suppose this means that Apple is aiming for the high end of that market while Meta for the coin-operated booths? :-)

This is correct. With the ability to mimic touch, the VR NSFW avenues are set to explode.

- I’m genuinely curious and surprised by the confidence.

One quick glance at the Reddit hysteria will show that people are particularly bummed about the NSFW changes. Like, really bummed. Same with Pornhub limiting its service in Utah, and people of Utah immediately learning what VPNs are. Additionally, there are human trafficking rings around the world that thrive for a reason (e.g., Epstein). With VR you have sensorimotor gadgets you can sync to your virtual world, and it is completely immersive. As you become desensitized to one fetish, you can purchase a new fetish experience. Porn is a lucrative path.

For me, I like humans, the "in real life" kind to be exact. So it's not a hot selling point, for me. I do like to study how humans "human." And porn is front and center for many people, for all sorts of different reasons.

And that’s happening with the current state of porn - often viewed on small phone screens in less than even HD quality.

I can’t imagine what would happen to young people once porn is viewable in a lifelike virtual reality. I can imagine an entire generation of young men dropping out of society altogether (something that’s already happening)

Yes, some will use it for this. Porn use is never satisfied so the addicts that are always looking for bigger hits will find some here. But they are already in it's grasp. Very few to nobody will start it on this device, and that is where the primary battle is located.

Kids, on phones, far away from the supervision of their parents.

https://youtu.be/eqAcVASDZ3g?t=470

Not computing but 3D TV and 3D movies ?

And 3D TVs are not remotely common.

So 3D TV/cinema seems to be a counter-example - a technology that was pushed hard, but has generally failed to become anywhere close to mainstream, nor to continue moving in that direction.

In reality, 3D would not have made the new ghostbusters a better movie. Nobody watches a movie for "immersion", they watch it for a story.

A far better screen real estate to hardware size ratio than you can get if you dont put something on your head.

Most office workers have been using two or more 22 inch or far larger monitors for a decade now. People buy the largest televisions in their budget and are impressed when their buddy gets a new bigger one. Movie theatres 1) exist when television ownership is common and 2) advertise it when they have particularly big screens.

Laptops make up like half of all computer sales. Plenty of people have been trying to make working on tablets work to shave down a bit more size. Phones are frequently used for media consumption.

If I wasn't a person who existed in the world and used devices, it'd still be perfectly obvious to me that people want to see a lot of stuff at once but they also don't want to lug around the things necessary to do that. I am a person who exists in the world though and therefore have this very problem. I carry a phone everywhere I go and sometimes find myself giving up on tasks, or it not even occurring to me to try them, because I know they'll be a lot easier when I have my laptop. I carry it to less places and find myself doing the same thing, leaving off tasks until I'm at my desk, which I carry nowhere.

I keep seeing people mention an aha moment or killer app needed to make these devices make sense and I honestly dont get it. It doesn't need to satisfy some new want to be incredibly successful. It just needs to be a laptop with far more screen real estate than any actual laptop.

And whilst you do blink less whilst wearing VR glasses it's on par with looking at a computer screen.

>why is no one talking about that?

Because it is not an issue for most people?

In the simulation field, the advances are already major. There is a huge gap in the gaming experience when playing simulation games for instance.

Call of Duty would not be a bigger franchise if it gave you trenchfoot for example.

As a general purpose computer, I see a hint of what it could be, and I am convinced it’s the future. It has to be. It’s too powerful not to be.

Imagine there’s nothing to put on. The computer doctor sprinkles some magic computer dust over you 7 minutes after you are born and you get Apple Vision++++ levels of ability, all of the time. Everything in the world becomes a potential UI. Every action becomes an input. Every surface a display. Look at our total screen time and realize there’s no going back, so we might as well ditch the screens and stop all the squinting.

But I am also convinced this is 30 to 100 years away. There‘s no line of sight on how to build this magic dust and no one is going to wear ski goggles all day.

I am begging you to consider how this is an awful future

You could say I was going the other way - from wearing a contraption (specs/contacts) to not wearing one unlike AR/VR where I have to wear something to experience it - but the effect is the same.

I was naturally one way and then, out of nowhere came LASIK to make life better for me.

It’s the same way everywhere. We couldn’t fly and now we have flying tubes. We couldn’t understand movies in foreign languages and now close captions exist.

Personally, I’d like to give that VR/AR magic dust a chance to see if my now 20-20 eyesight can kick up a notch.

Very different things! Also you're talking wistfully about science fiction, there's no indication that AR technology is going to reach the magic dust level this century.

Nearly every person on the planet has a phone in their pocket. People use these screens for hours a day. Companies and governments track everything you do. Whatever world you are afraid of is already here.

One person only though, not a shareable experience.

Like others, I'm waiting for this to come to a spectacles / sunglasses formfactor. An external box would be fine, I just wouldn't be able to bear wearing what looks like metal ski-goggles for any significant period of time.

Since then my opinion has hardly changed that these are gimmicks, and mostly unusable by people with eye sight issues, where already dealing with natural light is an issue, let alone tiny screens a couple of cms away.

For good measure, this was also the time of the Mosaic browser.

I think three decades is enough to suspect that if there was some unique added value from the VR concept (that goes beyond some very small niches), it would have been adopted more broadly, even with imperfect technologies.

Future developments (~5-10 yr) in other parts of the digital universe may bring use cases that are currently not visible to people with limited imagination. But usually short-termist corporates launching major products here-and-now does feel a bit odd to me.

Who knows, time will certainly tell.

I would be willing to buy this argument if anyone who actually used the device were reporting these issues.

Where as nowadays tablets have become a staple and it's very common to own one, and often not own a computer. I ate my words.

So at the moment there's a few players in the VR/AR landscape, maybe something big will come of it, maybe it won't. But I think it's too early to tell

Little did I know that the iPad would slowly take away my time spent on my iPhone. So now I have a $1000 iPhone that I don't use that much (except when not at home), and I have an additional $750 iPad I spend 4+ hours / day on.

Not sure what happened, but I couldn't go back to just my iPhone anymore.

I took my headset off and it was like he had just left the room. I think that being able to provide the feeling that someone you love is there with you (when they are far away) is why people use a lot of tech.

It was a feeling that 2d FaceTime just cannot give you (and it felt like a bigger advancement than going from a phone call to video calls).

If Vision Pro’s face reconstruction thing works well I can see that being the killer app.

One day I set up the TV with a spare computer and webcam, and used that instead of phone, laptop, or even desktop.

The difference was huge, and exponentially so when the other party was doing the same.

With selfie webcams we got person-centric mugshots, with room webcams we connected places.

It was like having opened a portal to another place, we could move around each one's place very naturally, which only reinforced the connection between people. Just a little bit of care with placement and angle went a long way to drive the illusion. I remember that a couple of times we honest to god unconsciously tried to hand over objects through the screen.

Brains are so easy to trick. As it seems to be currently my cobbled up setup looks better than floating mugshots.

Also not addressed and never shown is how the VR user shows up to these FaceTime users. I mean the wearer doesn't have themselves captured by the device? And it can't take into account other people naturally walking into the room.

And yes the perspective is wrong, things don't line up, objects and textures don't match, but after a few minutes it doesn't matter, basically as long as you get the horizontal plane right the brain just adjusts and still believes you're looking through a window.

The problem so far has simply been that none of the existing headsets work for this. Resolution needs to make it past 30 PPD to be usable for text. All the exiting consumer ones are between 10 and 20 PPD.

You also need the right software. SteamVR has basically nothing by default, you get a blurry view of your desktop if you go the menu and that's it. You can enhance it a little with Steam overlay addons, but it's all a crude "make desktop show up in VR", not a "userinterface build for VR". Oculus is a bit better, but still not great. Microsoft tried with WMR Portal to bring the full Windows desktop into VR and it is about the closest thing to what Apple is doing now, but it was still riddled with problems, lots of bugs and limitations that made it impossible to take full advantage of VR (max window size was restricted to 1920x1080, no way to anchor virtual windows to the real world, no real passthrough mode).

What Apple has shown so far look much better than anything else out there. The resolution is good enough that you can actually read text, the passthrough cameras are good enough that you can actually see and interact with the world around you in proper 3D and color and the software seems to be completely focused on making 2D content in a virtual space work well, something none of the other companies spend much effort on.

There is an alternative reality somewhere where VR went the other direction, focus on making it cheap and accessible and focus and producing proper full VR games, basically the original vision behind Oculus. That could have worked, Oculus delivered a couple of great games in the early days of VR and before Facebook joined them, they were even able to produce $300 headsets. But all that got derailed by Facebook, who raised the price to $600, gave up on PC based VR and forced everything on mobile. They also largely gave up on games and focused instead on "Metaverse", which means that the Quest2 games out know, still look a lot worse than what we had 6 seven years ago on CV1 or even DK1. The insane amount of money Meta has spend so far simply doesn't show in the actual product and especially not in the software.

Anyway, since this alternative reality didn't happen, we are now basically stuck waiting for VR headsets to get enough resolution that 2D content becomes enjoyable in them, as that's the only way VR will get content. Native VR content is still just too rare and the quality is often not great. Apple's VisionPro is the first device that crosses that threshold and has the software to go along with it.

If you dig deep enough, you’ll find that the ubiquitous, always-on, socially acceptable form factor is indeed AR in the shape of glasses. As in Google Glasses but with infinitely more utility. The ability to do anything you can now on your phone and more, powered by a localized and shared augmented experience.

> What would be such indicators?

If you agree on the above as the end goal, one clear indicator of success is “how many times did you not take out your phone?”

Of course any expert in the field will tell you we’re 10+ years away from achieving such technology, due in no small part to the physics of optics and displays. But you can imagine the Apple VisionPro shrinking toward this end state.

That "feature" just isn't that enticing.

I'm not saying this will follow that pattern, just that low adoption of a lower price product that can technically do something isn't necessarily evidence of failure of the idea.

The answer is not only different for different people, but very different for some of them. It's a way for trans people to express their real gender in a way that seriously alleviates their dysphoria, or for people to explore sexuality in a place they are fully equipped to defend themselves in, and discover that their biases or prejudices were weaker than they thought, or outright reaction formations to their real-life environment.

Still others use it as an artistic outlet, a mechanism for connecting to people across the world, a sandbox with which to experiment with and learn certain pieces of technology.

It's been juiced up by Facebook money, sure. It's not purely motivated by that by a long shot. There's a demand and perhaps an oversupply in some respects, but the experiences achievable are legitimately delightful if you know how to look for them. Fantastic escape rooms, beautiful gardens, relaxing rooms, sleepy hideouts, fantasy worlds. This is all happening and has been happening for years.

There are of course serious caveats, such as some people being simply physically unable to tolerate it.

It's a rough piece of technology early in its lifetime and it's got a lot of road to cover, but it's already nailed a level of immersion into an artificial world that nothing else has come even remotely close to - and it's everything else that sucks to some moderate degree and needs to catch up and surpass the norm.

The idea of VR/AR is super exciting, and beat saber is super fun. The reason why beat saber is super fun is because it manages to transcend the visual only aspect of VR. I don't see how this can be done in general. Unless you can go full Holodeck, I don't see the general appeal for most things. Immersive cinema is certainly a nice application, 3D-avatar facetime is not.

If yourself and some others are having awesome experiences already, no one is doubting or downplaying that.

Given that tendency, the arbitrariness of automated processes that decide whether or not you're banned from an account or platform, and the culture wars, I would be suspicious of consequences down the road from trusting big tech with such intimacy.

The sticking point is the tech is several years off the miniaturisation and power needed to enable the comfortable switching of worlds.

VRChat and RecRoom exist today and are available to anyone, anywhere with an internet connection. They do not have millions of players because "meet strangers in a virtual environment that can be ANYTHING" is a novelty, not something you want to do every day.

I say this as someone who literally spent hours every weekend during the pandemic raving (yes really) and socializing in VR chat. Your average person doesn't want to be spammed with half naked Anime Waifu avatars and dinosaurs with boobs

Like anything else in life?

How much it took for the Guthenberg press to be "successful". It took at least 50 years since Guthenberg died bankrupted until there were millions of books being printed and people realised what the printing was by the consequences.

Guthenberg pushed so hard his entire life.

Aviation was not pushed by fanatics that killed themselves for at least 50 years(they were gliders in India thousands of years ago that killed themselves trying to fly) before it became a normal thing.

Read about Otto Lilienthal or the casualty rate of early aviators and then tell me that it was not pushed.

The nuclear bomb was not pushed with project Manhattan, one of the biggest expenditures on earth ever?

Rockets were not pushed? Going to the moon was not pushed? The diode and the transistor were not pushed by the germans and later the Americans?

Lasers were not pushed before we knew what could be done with them? Computers were not pushed?

>I don't think this was the case with any of the major steps in the development of digital computing but would be quite interested if people can think of historical precedent.

The entire Silicon Valley thing was created by the Pentagon at first. It did not went from zero to billions of devices instantly. The military were paying the development of early (ultra expensive)microprocessors in the dozens to power submarines and spaceships, like the hand weaved RAM of the Apollo devices.

The early entire DARPA internet was at first 56Kbits, the entire network!!

Certainly things like Xerox PARC machines were pushed when every single machine did cost a fortune. It was not pulled because Xerox had no idea of what to do with the technology, just like lasers before.

There is a lot of truth in that. Modern consumerist needs have an important push element to them. Creating "wants" is by now very sophisticated social engineering practice with over a century of successful track record.

But the examples you mention mostly bundle other phenomena that I would not include in the typical "consumer push" category. Doggedly pursuing research on various uncertain technologies (typically government founded) is common, but it is not pushing anything onto consumers. Potentially this may happen in the final phases, if/when successful, relevant and mass market commercializable.

Mass market companies typically only enter the game when there is an expected short or (at most) medium term return that will compensate for the investment risk.

Source?

BUT then the excitement faded and I don't find myself wanting to return to VR much. Having something strapped to your face is awkward and tiring.

Tech companies can see the potential because it _is_ breathtaking but are also aware of the drawbacks and hurdles. Zuck decided it was a big enough thing to bet the farm on.

Its a potentially very powerful thing with some big issues that no-one knows how to fix. Hence the buzz and endless talking and companies jostling for position to be the leader without knowing quite where they want to lead us to.

At a basic level of I'd be willing to binge netflix on it rather than a TV. That would be the start.

What if I preferred it to going to the cinema? Already a win.

What if it can make it feel like you're having lunch in a restaurant? Perfect.

It doesn't really do any of these things. More like having wallpaper of a photograph of a restaurant

I'd have to go 10 rounds with Tyson Fury to experience reality like the quest feels.

Just like with VR, the technology wasn't new: I had watched a 3D movie some 30 years ago at a theme park, liked it, threw up and passed out afterwards, for the first and only time in my life - doing it after a rollercoaster was not a great idea. Just like with VR, it required you to put something on your eyes that people found awkward - and ultimately, this was possibly what made them unpopular, if you want to relax, you don't want to focus on your hardware.

A bit like VR, the early glasses were cheap and disposable (just pieces of red/blue plastic); the "pro" versions with active filtering were significantly more expensive and technological. But for all that, they didn't solve the main issue, i.e. they weren't less intrusive, if nothing else more so (heavier, requiring batteries, etc.). In this case, I'm not sure if the Apple vision is a step forward or backward - if I understand correctly it makes the experience "better" than other visors, but it is also bulkier.

A lot of optimism on this technology comes from saying "it is not yet mature, give it time, the first iPhone was very limited, etc.". But the main issues I see seem just too hard to surpass in a few technological iterations: - The experience is limited to the eyes. No matter how magic Apple is, I'm not ready to believe that in 5 years wearing something as simple as a goggle will give me tactile feelings or anything else. Though I'll admit, 3D vision might be enough. - Battery power won't evolve tenfolds. The first iPhone didn't have a shorter battery life than the current ones, and that's because research for better batteries and more efficient CPUs is already cutting-edge - a 2x improvement would be huge already. Everybody just assumes it will get better, but not everything does, or at least not always fast enough. - The main issue everybody notices is lack of apps and, in general, something to do with it. Here, people cite the iPhone as an example of thing that developed a lot of apps, which made all the difference between the first and later versions. This might happen thanks to the Apple Vision Pro, but I'm not ready to believe it without proof. Just a few years ago, Apple pushed hard, very hard, the touch bar on basically all of its users. Certainly more than half the developers (not just mac developers; all developers) had it integrated in their working machine, whether they wanted it or not. Yet, I only saw apps starting integrating functionalities there years later, and it was often half-baked things, and even when they were not I found myself never using them - the old hotkeys, or the F-keys, were easier to memorize, and faster. And Apple did roll back on that, now I have again physical buttons which I very happily use to change screen light or volume.

All in all, maybe this technology will fly, maybe it won't, but if we look at the past we shouldn't forget the large fraction of technologies that didn't make it, or which at most thrived as a niche sector unlikely to ever explode. Not everything that Apple makes needs to be the new iPhone - and why should that be a problem, really?

I went through 2 PCVR headsets and I'd never think: oh this is going to be mainstream (in the present state!).

Those headsets are not comfortable (sweaty); the hardware needed for anything realistic is top tiers; it takes PhD/time to configure (and goes out of sync!); the software ecosystem was(is?) not super stable; the interaction (controllers, tracking) is sometimes awkward (controllers are big, interfere with keyboard and real world). Often it small things like comfortable physical head position vs. position in VR world are not "lined up"

We'd laugh that it takes as much time to get into the VR plane simulator as to drive to the airport to fly real plane!

Compare a VR kit to a monitor pair, or a game controller (imo VR is kind of a cross of the 2) - both are mostly plug an play.

Also only a few simracing games have really good VR support.

I definitely think VR/AR is the next big think, but not via headsets, but via holograms or whatever it takes to get rid of physical screens and mouses (peripherals in general). You tell me I can have a huge 4K "hologram screen" projecting whatever is on my phone by just clicking a button? I'm sold. I mean, why would I read HN on my tiny phone if I can read it in a 13inch hologram display being projected from my wrist while I'm on the bus? Or a 30inch display when I'm on my couch? Same for whatever you do on the internet.

What Apple has showned us in the demo is the future... but not with headsets (if I go to the supermarket to buy milk, I'm not taking my headset, if I go to the bathroom I'm not taking my headset, if I'm taking the public transportation I'm not taking my headset).

You may think "high definition holograms" are just too sci-fi, but I don't think so. In any case, headsets are just too clumsy. Perhaps Apple's v2 for their headsets becomes just some glasses ala Google glass? In that case I don't know, maybe that gets traction if implemented correctly.

I don't think there's been the Avatar equivalent yet, and though it might take a bit longer, I think there will still be a tipping point where enough people realise it's garbage and Zuckerberg is thrown into a long dark well forever. Followed by the peoples' tim cook right to the stomach.

Slightly more seriously, this stuff reminds me of that book Snow Crash (which I love). But it's never going to be like that, and even if it was, the virtual world aspect of that is a bit of a horrible dystopia. It's like a drug.

At a certain point, the real value of realism is in being able to fake it. Which is a little bit of a scary thing I guess when the wrong actors use it for for lying and misleading.

Quick question, have you used the HTC Vive?

I have used tons of VR, and they are all cool for about 2 minutes, except the Vive. The Vive was the game changer. Walking around a room, interacting, etc..

The other versions either look bad, have bad controls, etc... Quality VR isnt accessible for $100 despite companies offering you a box for your cellphone. You do need to spend over $1000 to participate in good VR. It prices out lots of people, and the low cost version pushes people away.

1. The need to live vicariously / voyeuristically: it’s possible for me to at least a two-sense experience of sky diving, bungee jumping, F1 / motor cross racing, and many others, including some darker more voyeuristic experiences like sex with someone out of my league, or unfortunately even extremes like murder / suicide. While the extremes are bad, there’s a lot of market for meeting desires in the middle.

2. Current efforts that have physics limitations: I’d like to make my multi-monitor setup on to a couch or car or plane, or even just have more monitors at my desk than my desk allows. I’d like a bigger TV in my small room. These things I want are big, expensive, and limited by physics and money, and the Vision makes them available to me.

So these two things are the killer apps for me - experiences which I would otherwise not have access to, and the removal of physics burdens in my daily work setup.

For me personally I wanted to jump on board the spacial computing for reasons like being able to work in any location but have my awesome setup. Current systems have terrible resolution or are bulky, but I can see the promise. Current entertainment avenues are not tapped (imagine courtside sports seats anywhere, novel ways to engage users, porn, etc.)

I remember similar thoughts about the first wave of tablets. And the first generation or so weren't great. But, the technology matured and now people can use an iPad instead of a full PC for most home uses.

Most of the FAMAG is concerned about advertising (Apple the least, but still), while life nowadays is all about signal to noise. The bandwidth is there, 24/7 connectivity is there, wrt smartphones. Its the noise which can be reduced further, which would increase productivity. What is noise? Stuff you don't want to see, suggestions, lower priority vs higher priority (ie. what is really important to you vs clickbait), and, yes: advertising.

If I could just block all advertising with a AR/VR glasses I'd easily shell out 1k EUR every 2 years for the hardware (not 3k, but YMMV as I don't earn a Netflix dev wage). In fact, perhaps a good UI on it could replace a smartphone. Except, the smartphone UI is going to be in (comparison) mature, its very unlikely a new hardware interface is going to be great right away. Smartwatch needed time (and cannot replace smartphone full-time at all), smartphone needed time (vs desktop/laptop, see mid '00s before capacitive touch), foldables are going to fill the niche which tablets/phablets provide, and now we got a hardware UI like this released by Apple (yes, I'm aware of predecessors including Meta/Facebook Quest, Magic Leap, and Google Glass). Also, it has the disadvantage of being visually omnipresent to others. A Google Glass is much less obvious. And yeah, walking around in Amsterdam with OSM AR (no, not Google) for all the buildings but without all the advertising would (after transition period) be a massive, massive plus to me. Add Wikipedia on top of it, with TTS and voice input pivoted towards my own voice as a bonus. Heck, I wouldn't even mind if I could just blacklist certain buildings like Nutella bars and red light distract. Yes, I can see it as a future, but not by FAMAG (Musk isn't sane enough; it'd be someone sane with deep pockets who's not into advertising).

> for the pursuit of. . . What exactly?

Experience. Fun. Productivity. Emotion. All of the same things we look at screens for. I’m surprised that’s not clear.

People (homo sapiens) have sought these things in many mediums for as long as we’ve been sapiens. There is nothing categorically different about seeking these things in the kind of immersion that (so far) only headsets can give.

In the future we’ll have glasses and then BCI. I’m excited for both.

But if you’re seeing XR as pushed by waves hands with no consume pull or enthusiast hacking, I think you’re not looking with truly open eyes.

If you connect only with people in same echo chambers, you will invariably have very skewed perspective on real world, and you will not grok similar opinions.

Personal viewpoint - I was VR enthusiast since 90s. Then I sobered up when I grew up, and that seamless trouble-free experience that would make me want to spend time in VR instead of big screen never came. Still waiting for it.

Also people change, and thus markets change. I have much less free time, thus I value it massively. I am not going to spend it (on top of ridiculous amount of cash) on some geeky almost-there-in-next-5-years tech. But who knows, maybe Apple will finally make breakthrough on society and tech level. Maybe in 5 years. Or next 5. Till then, my cashflow will be pointed to matter actually important in life, and mighty useful right now, like new climbing shoes.

Also, where is actual content worthy of such investments?

Yes, the average Joe doesn't care about this stuff. That's why Ready Player One grossed 600 million dollars at the box office[0]. And why we've had movies like Tron since the 80's. And hypothetical tech in movies like Iron Man display AR/VR capabilities we dream about. Clearly the average Joe doesn't concern themselves with AR/VR or care about it becoming a reality. /s

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One_(film)#:~:t....

Immersive is the key here. There are entertainment things where I think that could be killer, maybe seeing a concert from impossible to get vantage points, maybe viewing the nfl game from on the field, maybe some movies and some games. Do I want to be immersed in work? I’ll write code and you know what I do at times? I go outside for a walk, my quality goes up and the problems get solved. Same thing doing data analysis, I’ll find some interesting bits and then I need to think, maybe I could have more ‘screen real estate” in VR but I don’t know if I want it, need it, or could actually use it.

There is something about production to consider too. There are things in the nfl games that you don’t see, maybe some people want to, I’m pretty sure a lot don’t want to. “Taking some football outa guys” is a thing. Someone on another thread mentioned climbing Everest; you never do that for the views, people actually die doing it and then others just sort of pass by their dead bodies because the quest they are on is so so very different than seeing the world from the top of Everest. Maybe that’s the point, but it’s not for everyone.

Been a gamer my entire life.

Ever since getting into VR 4 years ago, I basically haven't played a single "flat" (non-VR) game.

> pursuit of... what exactly

Experiences that you literally cannot get in real life without going to jail or dying. It's the same value proposition that gaming in general provides, but far more immersion and realism.

I have to admit that I don't actually know exactly what a Smart Board is or exactly what its capabilities are, but I get the impression that the replacement cost of such a device is multiple orders of magnitude greater than that of a simpler device, the Overhead Projector, so common in classrooms thirty years ago. And I have to ask the question, is the educational value multiple orders of magnitude greater? Also consider that you don't need a degree in electrical engineering (and other domain/manufacturer specific knowledge) to understand how the mirrors and light bulbs make the older device function, and to repair it.

I fear this attitude comes off as crotchety old man get-off-my-lawn a little bit, but I think if we take a step back and make objective comparisons we might find that we've been had by the marketing department quite a few times in recent years. And I just hate to see public schools (which I think are so desperately important, and don't have the disposable cash) taken advantage of by the marketing departments with budgets larger than the engineering department of their firm.

People wear sunglasses to avoid eye contact, Roddy Pipers character wore one in the movie "They Live" to see the real message - I would love one that blocks irl ads. Perhaps when they're small and hackable enough.

Joking aside, I do think gaming is important to bootstrap VR. Once it's cheap enough and many people have it, it will be much easier to build other things. Personally I think interactive 3D story-telling could be a big one.

The main problem seems to be the execution. Nobody wants to have a huge thing attached to their head for hours. Maybe this will change if headset become as lightweight as regular glasses but we're still very far away from that.

IRL adblock, please. I'd pay up to 5k if it worked decently well.

as for AR, google glass has demonstrated convincing value as a heads up display for factory floors and other places where people need to interact with complex machinery. I am excited about the potential in that.

I remember gaming even like early-mid 2000s was a "geeky/nerdy" thing to do. Now everyone(ish) plays games. Browsing the web was a geeky thing to do & tbh I kind of miss how the Internet was without the masses of the general population; the Internet has changed.

But the same thing will happen to VR, Valve/HTC and Facebook created a burgeoning market that Apple is now trying to capitalise on and "bring to the masses hurr durr".

But VR/AR will be very big eventually, imo. Once prices get down to a mid-flagship phone level, once hardware is lightweight and small like a pair of glasses, easy & convenient to set up and more non-gaming applications that make sense for AR/VR are available it will take off. Maybe not with older gens but that's been true for all of history.

The thing is, although it was downvoted, nobody responded to it. Given that every trend in computing technology is to make it more seamless, more integrated, less downtime; and data was the new oil on which AI is fueled; and that only a handful of Big Tech companies control the way most laypeople do computing; and, that these trends show signs not of stopping but of accelerating, explain how that answer is wrong.

Silicon Valley does not value anything that can't be quantified, because value, by computer logic, must always be represented by a number. And since software will eat the world, therefore it must be a law of the universe (as in, might makes right) that the summation of you is a sum - a number - to be used in a greater calculation, for someone else's profit.

Did that glimpse in the mirror show you a side of yourselves you desperately wish to believe didn't exist?