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Perhaps part of the problem was a premature switch from exploration to exploitation? When Facebook bought Oculus for $$$$, the collaborative community which ha

Perhaps part of the problem was a premature switch from exploration to exploitation? When Facebook bought Oculus for $$$$, the collaborative community which had been pushing the envelope, exploring for possibilities, rapidly died. People took it as a hint to switch modes. And eye-tracking rent seekers, already in low-volume high-cost exploitation mode, weren't then incentivized to support exploration. Gaming had dollars, and so became a dominating focus. But it also had challenging constraints, which further pruned exploration. Do you want higher resolution, to allow text and programming in VR? Well, a panel existed, but gaming standards of immersion and such were too GPU intensive for the market at that resolution, so ... feel free to diy it yourself. In an environment where diy was no longer a supported thing. Programmers - a niche market. Facebook et al, even Chinese OEMs, aren't interested in niche, or in making "commodity" hardware. Consumer platforms, and lock-in, and unicorn dreams. Even while that further cripples exploration. Nreal light AR glasses are a laptop-comparable 1080p 3D screen at 2 meters. As with their dev kit, consumer availability is now first in China, SK, and Japan, then later in Europe, and eventually in the US. So asia now, and maybe US late next year. And the glasses are developed on linux, but you can't have that - no unicorns there. Here's this amazing tech, and instead of an exploratory ferment, we wait for a few large companies to navigate patent thickets, to eventually meet the severe constraints of creating mass-market consumer devices. And then we'll dig in to exploring.

TulliusCicero 6y ago
Facebook has already released two mass market targeted VR headsets with moderate success. It's not console numbers yet, but then again, there's still plenty of low-hanging fruit to grab when it comes to technical improvements (and unlike early video game consoles, the market always has plenty of mature ecosystems for interactive games).
- mncharity 6y ago
  Yeah, sorry I was less than clear. The idea was that capabilities become available to us for exploration, via mass consumer and gaming products. A rather narrow and higher-latency channel. Rather than say a dynamic market of small companies and a diy community. Leaving plenty of low-hanging fruit not yet grabbed. A less concentrated industry might have been more interested, creative, and effective, at gathering such fruit, and exploring for accessible markets. Perhaps yielding a less slow takeoff. A counter argument is that Intel's RealSense does exist to build on, and Leap Motion's hand tracker and Project NorthStar. A counter^2 argument is these are outliers, with LM's work only remaining available, because they dropped IIRC three separate acquisition attempts by Apple. Most work hasn't remained available to use and build on. But perhaps a healthy commercial-diy blended market was never an option. Given a patent regime optimized for pharma-shaped industry. There seemed a long-term pre-concentration pattern of patent dodging via non-commercial software, and hardware "kits". Leaving many capabilities already unavailable, because a bit of commercially-motivated effort was needed, but discouraged by a too-small community market and/or associated patents. The current concentration of effort may well get us more quickly to eventual phone-scale broad consumer adoption of XR. It has motivated the supply and R&D tech chain in a way a small market never could. But perhaps it has also contributed to a less-diverse flatter takeoff. And perhaps, if XR encounters difficulties with mass consumer adoption, it maybe have added a fragility risk of larger delays.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

Facebook has already released two mass market targeted VR headsets with moderate success. It's not console numbers yet, but then again, there's still plenty of low-hanging fruit to grab when it comes to technical improvements (and unlike early video game consoles, the market always has plenty of mature ecosystems for interactive games).

mncharity 6y ago
Yeah, sorry I was less than clear. The idea was that capabilities become available to us for exploration, via mass consumer and gaming products. A rather narrow and higher-latency channel. Rather than say a dynamic market of small companies and a diy community. Leaving plenty of low-hanging fruit not yet grabbed. A less concentrated industry might have been more interested, creative, and effective, at gathering such fruit, and exploring for accessible markets. Perhaps yielding a less slow takeoff. A counter argument is that Intel's RealSense does exist to build on, and Leap Motion's hand tracker and Project NorthStar. A counter^2 argument is these are outliers, with LM's work only remaining available, because they dropped IIRC three separate acquisition attempts by Apple. Most work hasn't remained available to use and build on. But perhaps a healthy commercial-diy blended market was never an option. Given a patent regime optimized for pharma-shaped industry. There seemed a long-term pre-concentration pattern of patent dodging via non-commercial software, and hardware "kits". Leaving many capabilities already unavailable, because a bit of commercially-motivated effort was needed, but discouraged by a too-small community market and/or associated patents. The current concentration of effort may well get us more quickly to eventual phone-scale broad consumer adoption of XR. It has motivated the supply and R&D tech chain in a way a small market never could. But perhaps it has also contributed to a less-diverse flatter takeoff. And perhaps, if XR encounters difficulties with mass consumer adoption, it maybe have added a fragility risk of larger delays.