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You seem to be somewhat conflating "mass consumer adoption" and "useful". I'm not a fan of Facebook's mass consumer adoption strategy, I don't think it's ready

You seem to be somewhat conflating "mass consumer adoption" and "useful". I'm not a fan of Facebook's mass consumer adoption strategy, I don't think it's ready. I am very long VR over time but I think we are at the Palm Pilot stage not the iphone stage. Metaphors are not precise in these matters but perhaps that one is useful to you. The input devices are a huge part of the story for VR and the 3d/VR wand controllers ie Oculus Touch and the Steam Lighthouse controllers are only in the hands of a few hundred people at this point. We've had 2-3 years of tens of thousands of headsets but terrible input solutions so far. That has produced shoddy demos and kiosk applications because of the lack of good input into the 3d environment. Facebook is doubling down on this terribleness by going to mass consumer launch using xbox one controllers. As others have mentioned, VR is transformative when the input solution fits. Elite Dangerous with HOTAS controllers. Several driving games with steering wheels, Dirt Rally is great fun. Amazing experiences for more serious simulation games. With proper 3d wands there are a number of new serious game types that will be very compelling but the content needs to be designed from scratch with VR input in mind. As the serious creative applications (ie Blender or Maya3d, CAD/engineering,medical/science visualization, music etc.) actually get accurately tracked 3d wands I think we will see some transformative creation experiences. After laying out vertexes in a properly designed VR application I think people won't go back, for example. Trading desks and financial sectors probably have a lot of territory to explore as the screen pixel density improves. TLDR; The money in VR is largely seeking AngryBirdsVR but I don't think that's going to happen soonish.

wpietri 11y ago
Just to be clear, I'm not looking for mass consumer adoption. I'm looking for the initial signals that prove that somebody is getting sufficient value that it's not just a novelty. E.g., the agricultural uses of drones are not mass market, but they're not just "OMG drone". The Palm Pilot is an interesting example, but as somebody who had one, they were actually getting used. I used mine daily. When I broke my first, I bought a second. There was also quite a lot of third-party software, including a robust commercial market. E.g.: https://web.archive.org/web/19991003055719/http://www.zenithair.com/ppilot/ https://web.archive.org/web/19991003055719/http://www.zenith...
- hammerandtongs 11y ago
  Yes I think you get my drift then. Based on your example, I would say that VR is even pre-PalmPilot. It's still a territory for people building the future or for those wanting to peek at it.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I think we agree, except I'd call it a possible future. Maybe it's the future of jetpacks, Google Glass, or anaglyph 3D. Or maybe it's the future of the smartphone. I keep hoping it's the latter, but 3D has such power as a novelty that I worry that it's the former.

wpietri 11y ago

Just to be clear, I'm not looking for mass consumer adoption. I'm looking for the initial signals that prove that somebody is getting sufficient value that it's not just a novelty. E.g., the agricultural uses of drones are not mass market, but they're not just "OMG drone". The Palm Pilot is an interesting example, but as somebody who had one, they were actually getting used. I used mine daily. When I broke my first, I bought a second. There was also quite a lot of third-party software, including a robust commercial market. E.g.: https://web.archive.org/web/19991003055719/http://www.zenithair.com/ppilot/ https://web.archive.org/web/19991003055719/http://www.zenith...

hammerandtongs 11y ago
Yes I think you get my drift then. Based on your example, I would say that VR is even pre-PalmPilot. It's still a territory for people building the future or for those wanting to peek at it.
- wpietri 11y ago
  I think we agree, except I'd call it a possible future. Maybe it's the future of jetpacks, Google Glass, or anaglyph 3D. Or maybe it's the future of the smartphone. I keep hoping it's the latter, but 3D has such power as a novelty that I worry that it's the former.