[qingcharles]

Everyone likes to shit on Meta for pouring unfathomable amounts of money into VR and the metaverse, but I still think it was a wise play. Once AI crashes into VR properly it will produce the kind of disruptive changes the article touches on. The reason we're not detecting any alien species is because they gave up on exploration after they all disappeared into their personal Goonspheres and never re-emerged. Heroin has nothing on what the future is bringing.

[com2kid]

Once we have direct neural inputs VR will explode. Or at least the ability to wire directly into the optic nerves.

VR, or at least AR, is obviously the future. But Meta, like so many companies before them, saw the future and tried to jump on board way before it was the right time. See: WebTV, the tablet PCs from the early 1990s (!!), Apple Newton, Palm Pilot, etc. (I call it the first mover disadvantage!)

[ehnto]

I think their headsets were genuinely game changers in cost/value. It was so much easier to use than many previous headsets that cost way more. It felt like it had the makings of a watershed moment, but I think we can all see where they fell short. The ecosystem, the brand pulling it down, and the corporate washed feel of the whole thing. Blade runner cyber dystopia it was not, utopian star trek future it was not. It was the office, but in your home. No one wants that.

I hate that I understand your last point by the way ha.

[stavros]

Turns out nobody wants a closed-down headset controlled by Meta, no matter how slick it is. I do think we'd have seen an explosion of cool apps if it were open.

Here's hoping the Steam one fulfills the dream.

[kennyadam]

well, millions of people bought them

[stavros]

And it wasn't enough for VR to take off.

[kennyadam]

I was just responding to your claim that nobody wants them, when that's demonstrably not true.

VR is like Linux, it will never be used by the masses for the foreseeable future as there's just to much friction in using it. There is an audience for it in its current form though. Having millions of headsets sold, with multiple iterations maintaining the sales figures and multiple companies producing their own models is enough for me to consider it to have "taken off". In the simulator game space, especially cockpit driving and flying games, I think it's fair to say that VR has definitely taken off.

[croes]

I doubt it’s because of the money but because the choose stand alone mobile graphics over PC graphics