Above: Nintendo's consumer VR launch in 1994
Is the market for VR headsets small and active usage apparently low (especially among Gen Z) because virtual reality is still in "early days"? Reader Nadeja thinks otherwise:
I don't think we are in the early days of VR. The earliest HMD were made in the 1960s. NASA worked with HMD in the 1980s, Nintendo had something too. [See above - WJA] Then there were several commercial releases in the 1990s. Now we are in the 2020s.
I rather think that VR headsets aren't so practical and human-friendly. I'm not talking about the technical limitations, the lack of peripheral vision, nausea, the risk of hitting or stumbling on anything as you have essentially a blindfold... but about the HMD device itself.
You could say that someone can wear a HMD for hours, but in general sunglasses and eyeglasses are probably about as much as one can take, and some people still prefer contact lenses.
We need a paradigm shift around HMDs. When VR will be as widespread as smartphones, we would likely not use HMDs, but something else.
Fun fact: In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg predicted that VR HMDs would replace the smartphone by 2025. With the smartphone market currently at about 6.5 billion, compared to VR's total install base of maybe (and at most) 30 million, I'm sort of guessing that's not going to happen.
The categorical mistake, I think, is not realizing that unlike VR, mobile phones had an immediate and obvious broadly valuable use case from the very beginning:
Pictured: The latest in mobile phone technology, 1987 -- 7 years before Nintendo's consumer VR launch (from the movie Wall Street)
Mobile phones in the 80s were incredibly expensive and bulky, the connectivity was sporadic and low quality, but their fundamental utility for communicating with anyone by phone nearly anywhere you carried one was immediately and universally obvious. This use case was so valuable, early adopters were willing to put up with their many shortcomings. (Especially when they, say, wanted to conduct asshole business calls from the beach.) And as that early adoption market grew, mobile phone quality improved and the cost began to go down. But it's important to keep in mind that the unique use case for mobile phones was immediately and broadly obvious.
Nearly a decade into the new generation of VR, that's still not the case with HMDs. Gaming and game-based socialization remain its main use case, but even there, it's not unique: Most gamers are perfectly happy to play on their consoles or PCs. Or even more likely, of course, on their mobile phones.
Great video clip find, Wagner!
The Virtual Boy was certainly was within the definitions of VR in that day and age. Today we have many more works that call themselves VR that are not a relevant as the early Nintendo product. The history speaks for itself.
Just because it wasn't full color, or succesful, doesn't mean it wasn't an early contributor to what came after in the 30-40 year timeline of VR development (spoken as someone who was there from the beginning)
Posted by: Jacquelyn Morie | Tuesday, August 16, 2022 at 12:20 PM
I mean, you point out yourself that cell phones existed in the 80s, were thought about decades before that, and always had a clear and obvious use...but it still took 30 more years for the iPhone.
I don't know that VR has an obvious use outside of immersive entertainment, but AR I'd argue has clear and obvious uses. I'd love to move around town in AR glasses that look like normal eyeglasses but show me everything I'd normally look at my phone for.
The technology isn't here though. It's why Meta has so many prototypes of new hardware slated the next decade. It's why Apple hasn't revealed or released its AR glasses yet, and Microsoft hasn't made a consumer version of the HoloLens. Every big company knows the iPhone moment for VR and AR is a ways away.
A blog like this one has different concerns than companies making this tech. You have to blog about now, since no one wants to read about what's happening in 10 years. Still, it doesn't change the fact that AR/VR hardware has a loooong way to go. You can argue we're at an end of AR/VR or whatever's being argued in this post, but the industry believes we're in the prologue.
Posted by: seph | Tuesday, August 16, 2022 at 02:04 PM
I say give vr another 20 years. Over population and general financial decay and possibly war will starve us into primitive escapes where all you need is a screen and a comfort place and you have a palace. While in reality you are living in a crime infested neighbourhood with a toilet, mathress and a refrigerator. This and drugs will be the only way in the end.
Posted by: kpax | Tuesday, August 16, 2022 at 04:31 PM
> No, Virtual Reality Is Not In Its "Early Days"
I guess time will tell.
Posted by: Martin K. | Tuesday, August 16, 2022 at 05:44 PM