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riderxc t1_j1a2one wrote

AR will take off in about a decade. VR will be for kids and gamers. Normal adults don’t have time for that. For example if I’m using Facebook, I’m also looking after kids and cooking dinner etc aka multitasking. If I had to amerce myself, I wouldn’t use it.

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DarthBuzzard t1_j1diizx wrote

I mean it's very obvious that VR will take off before AR, and it's pretty obvious that it will be for adults too.

Normal adults have time for gaming/surfing the web/TV, so they will have plenty of time for VR too.

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riderxc t1_j1dkvru wrote

Depends on your definition of “Take off”. I could see VR been as popular as say Sony PlayStation. But it will never be an iPhone. AR one day can be an iPhone.
VR will never take off with parents, and no there isn’t any time for gaming, I can only watchTV or go on my phone but I can’t commit to gaming.

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DarthBuzzard t1_j1dmq7x wrote

There's also PCs and TVs. Those are inbetween the console and smartphone market.

That's likely where VR will end up.

> VR will never take off with parents, and no there isn’t any time for gaming, I can only watchTV or go on my phone but I can’t commit to gaming.

Well consider there are over 3 billion gamers, and a lot of those are adults. So it would seem that a large amount of adults do have time for gaming.

As for parents, it really depends on the point of life they are in. If they are more elderly, then at that point, they probably will want to use it to connect with the rest of the family without being physically present.

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riderxc t1_j1dryk6 wrote

That’s true, could be good for connecting to family. For the record, I own an Oculus and never use it. PlayStation is about 4 billion a year in sales and iPhone is about 150 billion a year. To be “the next big thing” you have to be at iPhone usership, personally I think it will only reach around Playstation user ship. But neither of us are right or wrong, that’s what futurology is all about.

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DarthBuzzard t1_j1dtdy9 wrote

Smartphones are the only form of technology at that level of popularity. Everything else is much less popular, even TVs.

So I don't think 'the next big thing' has to be as popular as smartphones to be honest.

I expect AR will get to that stage, but with VR taking off before AR, I can also see it being 'the next big thing' on the same level as something like PCs.

The reason why is because unlike a console, VR has many more uses. It's effectively a general purpose computing platform.

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riderxc t1_j1dx09s wrote

Just like the article says, what would you do in VR? Amazon shopping-no, banking-no, stocks-no, calendar-no, booking flights-no, looking something up-no. These are the most popular things to do. It isn’t worth putting on headset to do everyday tasks.

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DarthBuzzard t1_j1e03xo wrote

The goal of VR is not to take every single one of these things and to put them into VR, to completely VR-ify them, but instead to provide an eventually better multi-tasking computing interface than a PC allows.

All of those things, you'd do normally, but instead of physical monitors, it would be with virtual monitors. Where you can have 3 or 5 monitors set up how you want in any angle/position without taking up physical space (I can only fit one on my desk), and have different configurations for different needs to instantly switch between. Like one for work, one for media (just one giant IMAX screen), one for casual browsing etc.

Some things may be VR-ified like Amazon shopping, but only as a hybrid experience. Start out with a 2D virtual screen experience like normal, but have the ability to pull out items in 3D to see them in full scale, to try on clothes etc.

Full VR-centric experiences will need to provide a reason to switch the interface entirely into VR. With maturity of the tech, this would satisfy the needs of working from home, online schooling, and all forms of entertainment and many forms of recreation that we don't really think of as entertainment (like socializing, travel, exercise, and health).

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riderxc t1_j1e1ln5 wrote

Personally I don’t think any of those things will take off without AR. I would never go into VR, for a multi monitor experience. No company will require their employees to work in VR. The only way I can see it happening is with AR.

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DarthBuzzard t1_j1ej2ve wrote

AR/VR are quickly converging into the same device so that's easily accounted for. I don't just mean a toggle between the two so you have to choose, but the full blending of the two so you aren't really in one state or another but have a mix of the two.

When I say AR will take off after VR, I specifically mean optical AR through transparent glasses. That's a much harder physical problem to solve.

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