VR won’t be huge someday. We won’t live to see it at least. We also won’t experience quantum computing having a real world impact. We also won’t see humanoid robots doing any meaningful real world work. There also won’t be a Mars base in our lifetime or datacenters in space or underwater. There won’t be any flying cars either.

I can't tell how serious you are.

But I'm curious - thinking of your past self (depending how old you are), what would have said about the current AI revolution 10 years ago? Eg: the chances that fully agentic generalised automated software engineering would become orthodoxy? What chance would you have given it happening by 2026?

We're still waiting for "fully agentic generalised automated software engineering".

I’m like 8%5 serious. And you are right I never would have dreamed of some of the things that we have now including LLMs. So it might well be true that I’m very wrong on all of these.

I would definitely bet against the humanoid robot thing on good odds.

You mean that we’ll have robots that can do the same (more or less) things that humans can?

I think the field made great advances in the last decades but still so far away from a meaningful human robot.

Personally I also think it doesn’t make sense - we can already produce humans at mich cheaper cost than robots, they grow, repair themselves, can learn all kinds of stuff, etc.

I would rather invest in more humans than humanoid robots.

Specialised non-humanoid robots are a great idea on the other hand.

Sure there have been attempts, but nothing that regular humans actually use. Once I can book a flying taxi like I can book a regular one I’ll admit defeat.

> VR will be huge some day. Maybe not as huge as the Metaverse hype, but huge nonetheless.

I really doubt this. There’s too many people who suffer from motion sickness to make this payoff. 33% of the population suffers from motion sickness to varying degrees and current mitigations including blowing a fan at suffering users, is an unrealistc barrier to causal usage.

I love the quest and was just using it about an hour ago. Even beyond motion sickness, it is not the same experience as it was when I first got the quest.

There is a habituation that happens the entire experience becomes far less immersive feeling. I have used the quest so much I don't really feel the immersion anymore at all. I had just found youtube 360 videos of the sphinx and great pyramid last night. I wish I would have watched this a year ago as it would have been so mind blowing. It is still fun but it is nothing like what it use to be. I don't feel like I "go" to the places anymore.

It reminds me quite a bit of the way marijuana was such a different experience the first few times vs the 500th time.

So even if you don't get sick, the magic wears off in about a month and people stop bothering. The experience is so consistent with people getting bored after a month. I can say from experience that this has nothing to do with the lack of content but something to do with the way the brain adjusts.

i think the key is, about half of that 33% can tolerate certain elements of it (stationary experiences etc) and another slice suffer in a way that will be resolvable or at least somewhat mitigated by technology improvements. And then another slice will accommodate it if exposed early enough.

Put it all together and you probably are talking more like 10% of people residual. It is still a lot but I think it's just bearable to not be a death blow to mainstream use.

You can't have a modality that leaves someone out for a mass social or business product.

It's the vegetarians that constrain a shared restaurant choice.

I have the Valve Index and had to buy prescription lenses to put inside to allow me to play without my glasses.

The first company to have auto adjustment lenses to my eye sight will get my money. when I can use it with my current eye sight and without having to buy accessories, I'll root for VR.

I am tired of this hypocrisy world.

No.

VR is not going to be huge, and it misses the entire point of tech.

Think of something like a Bloomberg terminal. Ugly as sin, and incomprehensible to any one who hasn’t practiced using it. It also gets work done faster, and has a keyboard with multiple keys to get to menus faster.

BB terminals save calories. VR does not.

VR is cool, it is aspirational, but it is not saving experts, let alone the average person, time and energy.

> Even if the timing was correct, what differentiator do they have?

Being willing to put $80 billion on the line is a differentiator. It can subsidize hardware, hire talent, acquire companies, etc.

There were definitely ideas beyond just "VR good". But frankly, giving some of the high level employees he had (Boswell and Luckie and Carmack among others) $10billion each to make VR products they think should exist is something that would probably work