[DoneWithAllThat]

So while I’m general I do think some of the fascination with VR ubiquity is overhyped: this last weekend the Furality VR furry con was held in VRChat. It had over 5000 registered attendees and peak simultaneous players was over 4200, with most of the popular events/times still numbering in the 1000s of players.

And that’s with VR still very much in the gen 1 (maybe gen 2 if you want to be generous) phase of development. Within five or ten years tech like eye and mouth tracking and partial/full body haptics (which are all already a thing, just niche) will be typical offerings.

I don’t know to what extent it’ll displace existing tech. But the popularity of it today (especially in spaces where artists and developers can do whatever they want) is real and growing crazy fast.

[paulryanrogers]

Consider that VR dates back to at least the early nineties. This may be more like the third generation.

[throwaway4aday]

That's a little like tracing computers back to ENIAC, sure it's the same concept and can do some of the same things but there are worlds of difference between it and a personal computer.

[paulryanrogers]

Even if you limit scope to only consumer grade VR there's still examples from the mid-nineties of strap-on headsets. The jump to wireless has also been a generational leap, despite its tradeoffs. So by my count this is the 3rd generation.

[rsynnott]

I'd be cautious of reading too much into that, because furries are also, these days, the main users of SecondLife. When everyone else bailed out of Metaverse 1.0 15 years ago, the furries stayed. It's arguably a community with very different requirements to the mainstream.