It just seems like a silly thing to steelman. Tethering is almost certainly going to be an optional feature as headset power catches up. FOV and hires screens will continue to be developed regardless of whether or not the headset is tethered, and as-is I think my Quest is perfectly usable for both cases. It doesn't have 120 degrees of FOV, but I guess it doesn't irk me that much.
Put another way, in 10 years I think most consumers will wonder why we even bothered with tethering in the first place. Watching movies and playing games wirelessly is well worth the marginal drop in bitrate, in my experience.
I only mentioned tethering because the processing power in the headsets is limited. They use cell phone microprocessors. I want an advanced high speed chip to run the graphics with more resolution and field of vision with less jankiness. That's going to take an off-board processor for the foreseeable future until they can put an M1 chip or similar into the headsets. A second issue is that I'm not satisfied with the resolution of the current screens. I am bullish on VR, but it's going to take more advances to get what I want. The good news is that it's coming, maybe soon. I am not knocking the current tech, just that I don't find it pleasant to use. That's on me.
Put another way, in 10 years I think most consumers will wonder why we even bothered with tethering in the first place. Watching movies and playing games wirelessly is well worth the marginal drop in bitrate, in my experience.