[wpietri]

I think it's theoretically possible that one day VR might really be as good. But I also expect to be comfortably dead before that happens.

I'll note that TV was seen as the future of education for quite a while. And that videoconferencing has been the future of interaction since the early 1980s. The first never worked out. And although the jury's still out on the latter, it's undeniable that a) it's not as good, and b) it's taken a very long time for the technology to be reasonably useful.

Historically, people seem to confuse "we don't know what X can't do" with "there's nothing X can't do". Technoutopianism can be useful, in that optimistic people will try things out and discover where the limits are. The current wave of VR is interesting, but it's perfectly possible that it will end up in the same place as 1990s VR: a historically interesting wave of hype that turned out not to deliver much value that couldn't be gotten more easily with other approaches.

[shafyy]

Yeah it's easy to point at tech that never worked out. But it's also impressive to look at the tech that did work out and no one 50 years ago would have been able to predict where society is now.

It's just more exciting to me to envision a future where VR will work out, and I will keep working on it under that assumption.

[wpietri]

I think that's very dangerous. A lot of the tech that worked out only did so because the people working on it put users first, not technology first.

A classic example here is Apple. They did not make the first personal computer, the first MP3 player, or the first smartphone. Those were made by people focused on the tech. Instead, Apple took mostly-existing tech and really focused on delivering value to users.

I think a user-first attitude is important even when making consumer gadgets. But a student-first focus is vital for education. There are a zillion examples of educational tools and methods inflicted upon kids not because they were better for students, but because somebody wanted to prove something.

[shafyy]

Yes sure I agree. But if you've spent time with some VR headsets (especially Oculus Go) you know that it feels like magic. And it enables things that without this tech weren't possible before. Sure, it has a long way to go, but I believe that there's path.

I'm sure the engineers at Apple also looked at the tech and were like "holy shit, this enables us to do crazy stuff".

[wpietri]

I do know that it feels like magic. But then, so did the 90s wave of VR. I also agree that it in theory enables new things.

But in practice, nobody has demonstrated that those new things deliver more value. Again, consider 90s VR. Or how people were sure that home computers were the coming thing starting in 1970 (and probably earlier). But they didn't really become particularly useful or common until the arrival of the web browser. [1]

The engineers at jetpack and flying car and humaniform robot companies also said "Holy shit, imagine what we can do." We could look at the plans for manned space travel of 1940-1980, none of which panned out. Heck, we could look at 3D movies and TV, which have flopped repeatedly. And even at Apple there were plenty of times that they said that and were wrong. [2]

I'm really not trying to rain on your parade here. I'm happy to admit that this could really be the time VR takes off. But I'd love it if more VR proponents could accept that "feels like magic" is a novelty effect; that the history of 3D "feels like magic" products turning into giant flops goes back at least 150 years; and that this could be just another one of those things that ends up like 3D TV or Smellovision.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_computer#Reception_and_so...

[2] https://blog.musicmagpie.co.uk/2017/09/06/7-apple-products-t...