> despite not being new or revolutionary, real solid use-cases for the technology hasn't really been found outside of "better stereoscopic presentation and head tracking for games"
That's an interestingly alternative way to say: VR presents a radically different, superior experience of immersion which no other current technology offers. Not to mention it's still in the first inning of development and is accelerating rapidly.
You might as well be in 1952, claiming there has been no other use found for the transistor, other than radios.
> VR presents a radically different, superior experience of immersion which no other current technology offers
Well VR covers and has covered for many years a huge number of different technologies. I used a CAVE system decades ago, and I'd still call that VR. If there were some technology that provided a superior experience of immersion, we'd call that VR too, so that statement is pretty close to contentless.
Whether or not a 'superior experience of immersion' is something that is worth paying significant chunks of money and the inconvenience that go with all hardware you need is the real question, and I tend towards suspecting that for the normal consumer with the hardware where it is at the moment the answer is still no.
I still enjoy breaking the VIVE and the Oculus out on occasion, particularly to show people who haven't tried VR before, but neither of them have a huge chance of becoming something that I'll use frequently.
so I'm basically filing your response under the "Vague "this'll change everything" statements don't count" clause. The Oculus, Vive etc. are merely the new kids on the block in a neighborhood that's been around for decades.
> Not to mention it's still in the first inning of development and is accelerating rapidly.
No, VR has literally been around for decades. I've used probably a dozen different systems over the years, some great, some terrible...at this point I feel like the hype machine is preying on either the young who don't remember or the uninformed who simply don't know.
VR systems builders have some very hard problems to solve beyond head tracking and game-style hand controls to become immersive. There's probably 20 years alone researching haptic feedback systems and none of the ones I've used were all that great and had very large performance cost and capability trade-offs.
Solving all of these problems means that all of the issues I highlighted in my grandparent post simply magnify.
That's an interestingly alternative way to say: VR presents a radically different, superior experience of immersion which no other current technology offers. Not to mention it's still in the first inning of development and is accelerating rapidly.
You might as well be in 1952, claiming there has been no other use found for the transistor, other than radios.