10 years ago, many people would have thought 2026 would see widespread use of VR, but we’re still waiting. Oddly, just as the tech to support already exists. 2026’s top-of-the-line VR headsets are technically impressive. However, they are still expensive and headache-inducing after extended periods of use.
It’s odd. The many possible useful applications for VR still exist. When will the tech finally take off? What will it take? I suspect that if someone could make a great headset that was in the $100 range, that might do the trick. Perhaps that is in the near future.
Good fucking riddance, Meta/Facebook ruined Oculus.
Looking forward to Valve’s new headset though.
Meta’s attempt at VR had some big issues: their “metaverse” thing was laughably bad (and ugly), their platform is very closed and requires a Facebook account, and many people simply avoid Meta like the plague.
Interestingly, an article titled “Will Virtual Reality ever take off?” doesn’t even mention Valve.
This. I genuinely think all they had to do was make the Metaverse FOSS and it would have had a chance.
VR is already in widespread use, and the existing technology is great already. Facebook can go piss up a rope, they are not needed for any involvement in VR and probably have been holding the industry back. I, for one, would never buy a Facebook-associated piece of hardware or software.
Also “headache inducing” is subjective to the user and the equipment, not a universal problem with VR.
I’ve argued for years that VR would only succeed as a subset of AR. We don’t have the technology for AR either - small, light-weight, affordable, and with transparent displays that can show perfectly opaque objects rather than translucent ghosts.
With the decline of global trade and social stability, the long-term destruction of technological advancement in pursuit of the ponzi scheme that is AI, the rapidly accelerating death of our planet, and Capitalism behind all of it, I am inclined to believe that we are entering into a dark age that we will not recover from.
So no, VR will never become widespread. We’ll be lucky if most people can afford to eat and have shelter, never mind luxuries like technological devices.
Once ASICs and battery density advance enough make it practical, AR could still become a big thing. VR might have hit saturation, though.
Zuckerberg saying “let’s be a VR company” always smacked of “I got lucky once and now people expect me to find the next big thing”.
Without reading the article, I don’t think what meta says regarding it really appropriately reflects VR development. my personal opinion on the matter with their virtual reality can take off or not is that at the current technology no it won’t. I have an index. I’ve touched it a handful of times. It’s too annoying in its current state to ever want to go through the effort of using it.
It’s a big bulky item that you have to put on your head and you’re required to have lighthouses/cameras around your room to use it, all for something that is cool, but doesn’t match human capability so you risk motion sickness.
If a company ever manages to go through with what they’re attempting to do, and make a glasses version of it, Without the need of it being all bulky and the ability to wirelessly communicate with the system, I can see it taking off quite well. But out of currently available hardware, nothing like that really exists. Either is a standalone system that can’t communicate with your primary hardware or lacks the capability of properly doing it.
Wait, they still have 14,000 people working in that division. How is that ‘shutting down?’
I’m not a VR fan or customer, but these headlines are a bit much.
