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.