[staticassertion]

Comparing VR today, in a world where portable devices dominate, to VR even a decade ago, in a world where cell phones were only just starting to be commonplace, seems really useless.

The world is an extremely different place. This is, in my opinion, still very early days - by which I mean that we are still in an exploratory phase.

We've never been closer to having the technology necessary for it to take off - resolution was always one huge blocker, portability, weight, 'culture' in terms of computing being something everyone has access to, GPU power, battery, etc.

[wpietri]

I'm not really comparing VR. I'm comparing the hype of VR. Because 20 years ago there were plenty of smart people just as confident that it was on the edge of becoming a giant thing.

As far as taking off, we might be close, and we might be far. It's tautological to argue that VR is coming soon because we're close to the level of technology that means VR is coming soon.

And it may never take off. Maybe we'll get to a particular level of technology where everybody is wowed by the tech but in day-to-day use nobody actually cares. That has happened over and over again with 3D technologies. We are definitely in an exploratory phase, but a great number of explorations don't end up going anywhere interesting.