re: Just like 3D TV, VR is NOT going to catch on

There's a system that came out a few years ago that looked like glasses. Unfortunately it never caught on. They are trying to revamp it. Can't remember the name.

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I can't see VR catching on for the masses as far as gaming goes.

There are just not enough good games.

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If they keep putting out games like Alyx, Saints & Sinners, Boneworks, Lone Echo 1 & 2, Creed. . .and Ports like Elite Dangerous, X: Rebirth VR, No Man's Sky, Subnautica, Skyrim, and Fallout 4

And the greatest port to date: Resident Evil 4

Plus the upcoming MMORPG Zenith: The Last City

I think it is a niche market, to be sure, but it is not going anywhere

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Like 3D TVs (thanks George Jetson), VR is something 80s and some 90s kids have wanted. The premise of this thread is 100% correct. We grew up thinking 3D TV would be the best thing, but that is because in out minds it was going to be a Holodeck. 3D TV was a major bust, because it was not even close to being cool or fun.

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My kids are obsessed with it.
My daughter plays Beat Saber online with her friends. And spends hours each week doing VR chat with her 2 friends that moved to Bama.

My son does Shooters and RPGs

I do exploration type games like NMS and X Rebirth

We have 2 Quest 2's and they have gotten tons of play in the last year +

Looking forward to grouping with my son in Zenith.

Sales are showing steady growth

Meta Quest store just said they surpassed the $1 billion mark in revenue. Combined with tech focus on the Quest Pro and Quest 3, PSVR2, surely Valve is doing something. . .bigger things are coming.

I expect enthusiasm to taper, but VR appears to be here to stay

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The reason 3D TV didn’t make it was because, as I predicted early on, nobody was going to wear glasses while watching television.

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3D TV didn't catch on for a number of reasons. The glasses were a part of it but so was the cost (both to the consumer to get the gear needed but to the companies producing the content). Also, some people with shitty depth perception (like myself) got little to nothing out of it.

3D in general has always been a niche market. It's been around for decades but only succeeds in temporary fits and spurts when new tech came along to better the experience and/or it was done extremely well (the latter is the more rare). The real desire has always been to draw the participant deeper into the content and 3D was always too limited to do that.

VR, on the other hand, does a far superior job in drawing the participant into the content. It can do this so well that most will feel vertigo from looking down over the side of a very tall virtual building. They know they aren't standing on an impossible precipice, but their senses override their knowledge to a degree.

This ability to truly trick at least that sense of spatial reasoning through virtual sight and sound has an incredibly high limit on what can be done and it's currently limited only by the technology still being new.

Changes which would/will draw far greater acceptance are things like:

-Not needing controllers
-Being able to switch between AR and VR
-More mobility
-Lighter and less bulky headsets (especially if they can get them down to Google Glass or cataract glasses)
-Full body capture
-Tactile feedback
-More truly enjoyable content across different genres (Beat Saber is a great example)
-Event access (like watching the Superbowl from the sidelines or one of the near rows)

The HoloLens does a lot of this (smaller size, no controllers) but MS has been slow in rolling out a consumer version. I believe a future version or upgrade to Oculus will begin incorporating this (read it somewhere a couple of weeks ago, can't remember if it will require a new set or use the existing tracking in a more refined manner so as to not require controllers).

Considering how much more power a computer can provide over a stand-alone set and how using one can infinitely extend usage time (over batteries), I think there will always be a PCVR aspect to the market (even if it's just being able to re-charge the batteries while still playing).

VR isn't the latest "3D", it's the next "console" in that it is (and will continue) going through ebbs and flows in hardware and software (apps, games) until developers find more solid mass-appeal.

It's a bit difficult (at least for me) to find actual sales volume charts by year for VR sets but this Statista chart shows how sales volume nearly doubled from 2019 to 2020. When taken into account with things like:





(ignoring the estimated numbers) we can see this isn't a niche market but rather one which was steadily, but slowly growing, and is now growing quickly. It reminds me a bit of video games as smart phones became a staple. You suddenly had people who were never interested in video games playing the shite out of Candy Crush, Farmville, etc. Hell, Wordle is only the latest in that long line.

We're only in the beginning of the beginning.