Submitted by DarthBuzzard t3_102fzen in gadgets
DarthBuzzard OP t1_j2tcihq wrote
Reply to comment by ShenmeNamaeSollich in Report Reveals Wave of New Features for Apple's Mixed-Reality Headset by DarthBuzzard
VR hasn't failed repeatedly. As someone with a good hook on the history of the tech, consumer VR has only ever failed once in the 1990s, and that wasn't even a serious attempt.
To put it into perspective, the entirety of 1990s consumer VR investment totals at best, one week of VR investment in the modern world. That's how little money and effort was put into VR back then, and it's because no large company actually released anything. It was only small companies like Forte. Nintendo/Sega/Atari released nothing in the end (Virtual Boy isn't VR so it doesn't count).
The market has responded differently this time. The investment is orders of magnitude higher, the sales are orders of magnitude higher, and the market has lasted thrice as long with more competitors jumping into the mix this year. On the technical side, some core problems with 1990s VR were fixed, and while a lot is left to fix, much of that is being worked on in R&D with solid results to show for so far.
> It wasn’t customers who said PCs & smartphones & the internet would fail - it was the entrenched business interests that didn’t get it. That’s not the case here.
It was both businesses falling behind the times and consumers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxcfgfxYJow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVyGb5ID90&t=228s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H07xxyfLySA&t=761s
> They aren’t “visionaries” - they’re dilettantes with huge egos and way too much money to burn.
This is the classic response that even the people you would consider visionaries have to deal with. Though you would consider them visionaries with the benefit of hindsight.
> Everyone told these same “visionaries” that “smart speakers” were stupid & creepy too, and what happened? After billions wasted on marketing hype all the research recently concluded that yup, the market was right & nobody wants them either! They’re useless baubles.
There are hits and misses in tech, but point to me to a digital medium and/or fundamentally new computing platform (these are accurate descriptions of VR/AR) that failed to eventually take off. There are no examples of the latter, and I'm having trouble recalling any of the former, but maybe there's a few rare examples.
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