This article almost seems like the introduction to a different, better article. Just as it gets past the obligatory "compare to the 90s" and "mention porn" and "reference ugly devices" and "remind everyone AR is a thing", it just ends.
As someone working in the VR industry, I guess I have a much higher exposure to these sorts of articles. After a while, it just starts to look like everyone is sitting in their coffee shops or bedrooms or what have you and saying to themselves, "welp, if I don't say anything about VR, people are going to label me irrelevant, so better see what everyone else is saying." Hell, there isn't even a reference to 3D films and TVs! The Economist is really falling down on the job here.
I think the author basically a shift from clunky VR hardware to slick consumer friendly devices. I don't quite agree that that's exactly what happened with the iPhone or that there actually is something similar to the Nokia phones that are referenced in VR space but that's the idea from the article:
"""But the strongest advocates of the smartphone revolution, such as Nokia, failed to anticipate how it would play out, with the result that others now dominate the new industry. The turning-point was Apple’s iPhone. With its touchscreen and elegant apps, it set the model for the entire industry. VR has yet to have its iPhone moment. The idea is sound and the gear works, but today’s chunky headsets are unlikely to conquer the mass market."""
I've often made the comparison between the smartphone industry and the VR industry, likening the current crop of VR solutions (Oculus, Vive, etc.) to the first Treos and Pocket PCs. Those devices were the some of the first phones that qualified as legitimate smartphones and could perform the tasks associated with smartphones (email, web, calendar, media playback, 3rd party apps, navigation, etc) in a manner that was acceptable to early adopters and enthusiasts.
It took a while before the work done in that space could lead to more modern hardware iterations that brought the same features in a more ergonomic and streamlined device (like the iPhone and its contemporaries). If VR is going to take off, I can imagine a similar scenario.
These first devices will be the first real, functioning examples of consumer VR tech that doesn't totally suck, but they'll still be a bit bulky, often require a more powerful computing device to do the heavy lifting, and won't really be appealing outside of the enthusiast and early adopter space. It'll take some time before the displays and HMDs are smaller, lighter, and don't require as much in the way of offboard processing power. Once the hardware catches up, we'll be more likely to see more mainstream telepresence, communication, and entertainment users getting into the space whereas now it seems to be focused on tinkerers, developers, and gamers.
>> These first devices will be the first real, functioning examples of consumer VR tech that doesn't totally suck, but they'll still be a bit bulky, often require a more powerful computing device to do the heavy lifting, and won't really be appealing outside of the enthusiast and early adopter space.
Looking at review videos of VR by regular people, it seems that the emotional experience it gives people is strong enough for them to live with compromises being made.
Of course there's a difference between that and paying $1500 , but maybe with mobile phone based VR we can bypass that , to an extent ?
Oh I agree completely. I've got an Oculus dev unit and mostly use it for tinkering around in Unreal Engine or playing demos. As you say, it's cool enough that many people are willing to deal with the compromises. I guess that's how I've come to the smartphone analogy. My first Treo smartphone was bulky as hell. It cost a lot more than similar "non-smart" phones at the time and it took a bit of effort to do certain things (plugging it into my PC to back certain things up, flashing updates, etc.)
Still, I loved that thing. Being able to have a synced copy of my calendar in my pocket all the time, being able to browse the web and listen to streaming audio, looking up maps, keeping up with email, using IM apps to avoid (at the time) expensive texting plans...that made it all worthwhile.
Still, if you look at the size of the smartphone market and compare it to the popularity of the early Treos and PocketPCs and Blackberrys, it's clear that the groundwork was laid in those early generations but it wasn't until the basics were sorted and hardware caught up (and prices went down) that the modern smartphone became available and you saw mass adoption.
These HMDs are the first viable consumer VR devices that will see notable adoption but I'm really excited to see what's available in 5+ years when early sales help push hardware capabilities up and the scale of manufacturing pushes the prices down.
Actually nokia had an iPhone like device in 2004(whatever that means, not a lot of details, understandably[1]) but: “It was very early days, and no one really knew anything about the touch screen’s potential,” he explained. “And it was an expensive device to produce, so there was more risk involved for Nokia. So management did the usual. They killed it.”
Apple faced a similar decision - an expensive device, that wasn't a sure success(at least in the beginning) - but they could leverage their iPod customers and their music libraries to get an initial market for the device - and than use that power together with a smart strategy(playing carriers against each other, which was hard for nokia) to fully control the phone - what enables a very different app store dynamic .
Couple that with Apple's deep understanding of brand building and marketing ,one gets the notion that nokia lost to the iPhone less because of not seeing the future, but more because Apple had better resources and skills and just played a better game.
And why did Apple lose to android ? due to the same reason - Google is far better at software development + Open source phone financed with ads fits Google very well.
I love how they gloss over that iPhone was out for a year before it got any kind of apps going. Hell, Apple was pushing "web apps" (glorified websites basically) for that whole year.
Damn it, the original didn't even ship with UMTS (3G).
The only ones that was hot and bothered about it was those already invested into the iTMS sphere, and MSM. The latter because for some reason their world runs on Apple computers.
That's revisionist. The release of the iPhone was a huge inflection point in the industry. You can argue about how much was inevitable and how much was innovative, but you can't dispute that the iPhone led the way.
As someone working in the VR industry, I guess I have a much higher exposure to these sorts of articles. After a while, it just starts to look like everyone is sitting in their coffee shops or bedrooms or what have you and saying to themselves, "welp, if I don't say anything about VR, people are going to label me irrelevant, so better see what everyone else is saying." Hell, there isn't even a reference to 3D films and TVs! The Economist is really falling down on the job here.