Thoughts on VR

This illustration was created by repeatedly asking the Stable Diffusion AI to show "the future of VR"

In all likelihood, VR will split into commercial professional and consumer variations. Both will “suffer” from being “just good enough” to satisfy their purpose, due to the laws of economics.

Commercial Professional VR will be split between training/education for equipment too expensive to be used for training, and remote collaboration training where the collaboration purpose is too expensive, too dangerous, or too remote to operate real equipment on location, so it is done in simulation. It is worth noting, such VR training/education/collaboration is expensive, and if such professional learning can be handled without VR, it will be.

Note I do not include remote operation of heavy machinery or remote operation of much of anything by humans, to be honest. The current use of remote human operators for flying drones is already coming to a close, as fully automated AI controled drones are simply better across the board when compared to remote human operation.  

Consumer VR is gaming, social media, and pornography. Unless there is a very compelling reason for a change, just as the interactions in games, social media, and pornography changed only slightly in response to the shift from desktop/console to handheld mobile, so will VR gaming, social media and pornography barely change. There is no economic reason to do so.

As these two broad areas of VR advance in technology and sophistication, they will experience generational turn over, without any material changes to the quality of treatment between end-users and their technology providers. Plus, due to the profit motives of the technology providers, the tech will always be under performing as compared to the advertised promises. By the time VR is “good enough” you will most likely be too old to care. Just as people watch less TV, play fewer video games, and engage in other activities with family and in-the-flesh friends as they age - digital media will continue to be a youth and young adult product. We will not be spending any significant time in VR, unless we’re young or forced to do so for work.