> No matter how good VR gets only a few people would want to grocery shop or go to a bar in VR.

Grocery shop? Sure, but I think there's mass appeal in going to public venues in VR. A bar specifically, I don't know, but think of all the other public venues and combine that with the state of the world being one where most people are frequently not able to meet up with friends because distance is vast, money is tight, and life gets in the way.

VR gets rid of all of that. I mean you still need the device, but once you have it you go to infinite destinations, hopefully within a few handfuls of seconds as headsets get faster/more mature.

And as VR does mature, there will simply be this gut feeling that you are actually in another place, actually with a person face to face, actually having these experiences. It won't feel as physical as the real thing, but it will be so far beyond a videocall or phonecall, that it will sell itself easily on the value of the presence VR brings.

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.

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).

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.

VR is beyond failure. That much is written in stone at this point.

Consumer VR first existed in the 1990s. Anything prior to that existed only in arcades and laboratories or a rare enterprise deal.

I suppose there was hype in the 1980s, but not consumer hype.

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.

Well it doesn't matter either way. Most people use VR for socializing, not for gaming.

Reddit is just an echo chamber. Best to assume that the majority opinion on reddit is the minority opinion in the real world.

It sounds like you would have said the same thing about PCs in the early 1980s.

"Work? Socializing? Shopping? Bah. Just let PCs be used for gaming. It doesn't need to be all these other things."

Yet look at how PCs are used today. Gaming is a huge part, but so are all these other things, and it's going to be no different for VR.

> Yep. Every decade, going back to 1980s.

Let me count. 1980s, no. 1990s, yes. 2000s, no. 2010s yes.

So that's twice. One that failed, and one where it is finally here to stay.

Doesn't seem like 'every decade' to me.

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.

Most people consider chatting on a phone/PC to be not all that fulfilling and certainly not rich. This is why despite a larger barrier/commitment, socializing in VR has many benefits to doing so over regular devices.

> AR wins because you’re still tethered to reality, you can still do all the things you need to in the real world and have the advantages that VR would offer.

Not necessarily. AR glasses will always have field of view limitations and cannot subsume VR's unique usecases, and at least for the next 15 years, will be behind VR in clarity.

I do think AR will be several times bigger overall, but we shouldn't assume that AR is going to do everything VR does but better - it just doesn't work that way.

False. It's objectively decided that VR will become mainstream first.

This is a matter of laws of physics. AR has to come after, because VR gets solved first, and there's no way around that.

> Like how do you do your homework WHILE playing Minecraft and watching a movie if you have a display over your eyes vs a monitor or two?

Pretty simple really: You simulate as many virtual displays as you want in any position/configuration you want. Thus making VR actually superior than even the best PC setup for multi-tasking.

That's not really viable today though. Comfort, resolution, tracking, input - these all need large improvements first, but eventually it will out-PC a PC.

Probably 2030-2040 if I had to guess. Hard to say because things can be deceptive.

ChatGPT for example can be extremely clever and useful while also hallucinating made-up information that seems plausible as first glance.

> “Mark Zuckerberg claims humanity will move into the metaverse in the future, leaving reality behind for a world of our own creation, that we completely control.”

This is just an author interpretation. It's bad journalism, twisting Zuck's words.

Zuck has been very clear in his interviews, saying that the metaverse will not 'take over' people's lives and that people will likely just shift the time they spend on TVs/PCs and 2D screens into immersive platforms like VR/AR.

He thinks that the VR they are working on cannot replace reality and isn't meant for that - but is instead going to be a great way to do things when reality can't provide.

>“Meta plans to spend the next five to 10 years building an immersive virtual world, including scent, touch and sound to allow people to get lost in VR.”

This is also just bad journalism. It's just a random sentence that the author made up.

> cause i’ve seen Mark talk about the metaverse shit like 20 times and he clearly states that it’ll become indistinguishable from reality.

Yes, from a visual/audio standpoint. He sometimes talks about how multisensory integration and the brain's plasticity allows people to have believable experiences in VR despite only two senses being functional, because the brain is very good at filling in the rest.

That's what he meant. Having experiences that are indistinguishable from reality because the brain can fill in the rest.

And even then, he makes it clear that this is not uniform. He has said that you can't replicate reality in every scenario, and that some things will feel more real and others less so.

> Elon has even said on the Babylon Bee podcast that neuralink would be able to let you play games online like in sword art online.

Maybe one day, but they are far from approaching writing detailed signals to a human brain.

No one knows. If I had to guess, it's at least 20 years out and maybe many more years beyond that.

This is literally the main person responsible for Meta's development efforts in VR/AR.

By 2030, we will likely have hyper realistic visuals (at least 60 PPD + little to no optical distortions + HDR + variable focus). Can be pushed further and no doubt FoV will still have a ways to go, but vision will likely be in the realm of hyper realism.

Audio will likely be convincingly real due to personal HRTF generation being common and standard with audio propagation being utilized to fill in the missing pieces of spatialization.

Touch will likely not be solved as an affordable product for consumers. You will have consumer options, but it's unlikely to be standardized by then and won't be at the fidelity that we all want. It may take another 5+ years to get us there.

Smell and taste just won't be a thing outside enthusiast options like smell capsules which have serious drawbacks. There won't be a scalable product that can be standardized by 2030.

Hopefully you'll see what I mean with this: https://youtu.be/rXuswL_3Qto?t=2503

Yet Zuck has never said this, and no one in Meta has said this, and no one in Meta is working on all 5 senses.

You made it up.

I've watched as many interviews from him as I can find.

Having 5 senses is not the same thing as the metaverse being mainstream or investments fully paying off - these are different claims.

So yes, Zuck has grand claims about VR's success in the next 5-15 years which I agree with, but has no claims about all 5 senses being there.

Zuck has never said this.

Infact, Meta's chief scientist Michael Abrash has said that solving the sense of smell isn't going to happen in the next 10 years (smell capsules don't count - they can't scale to the masses), and he believes taste is not even on the distant horizon, because you need to figure out how to replicate the feeling of texture and actually swallowing food without actually swallowing real food.

Touch may be solved in 10-15 years, at least as much as it can without a brain interface.

We're talking a possible $2000-3000 device here.

> sell twice as many

Not this product though. It's rumored to be a very expensive device.