I remember the excitement around VR back in the late 80s. These new polhemous motion tracking devices and LED microdisplays were going to change the world! Except the technology was expensive and ultimately it kinda sucked. It was barely used outside academia, interest died off gradually and eventually it was tacitly acknowledged to be going nowhere.

Then 30 years on Oculus was founded and everyone who'd never used one of the old VR systems was super excited. To be fair, the technology was a step better - much cheaper and more accessible, low motion input latencies, better resolutions. But ultimately it's still not really quite good enough and it seems that the hard reality is it's not going to make its way into mainstream consumer everyday use this time either.

I can't wait for round 3 in 2040 or so.

> But ultimately it's still not really quite good enough

I'm not sure what use cases you've tried it, but I'm "playing" a bunch of flight simulators, and after getting used using a HP Reverb 2 for all my simming, it's basically impossible to move back to "flat" screens again. It gives you a completely different depth-perception that is as vital when you fly as when you race, so basically any simming is a lot easier and more fun with VR. But again, if you make the plunge into VR simming, it's short of impossible to go back to "normal" afterwards.

> hard reality is it's not going to make its way into mainstream consumer everyday use this time either.

Yeah, simultaneously I agree with this. VR-in-motion (so not sitting still) is still pretty bad, and the setups you need for good performance are pretty expensive, so it's unlikely to break into mainstream unless some breakthrough is being made. With that said, there are niches that are very well served by VR and personally I guess I hope it'll be enough when the mainstream hype dies off.

IIRC there was a brief VR spike around early 2000s. I remember trying out Duke Nukem in a helmet and a three-button controller.

And then a bit later, there were 3D glasses, ones that synchronized with the high-rate monitor to show each eye its respective right and left frame. The demo for it at the time was Rogue Squadron and I thought the effect was amazing.

AR is the true future, but we're a materials science breakthrough away. You need waveguides or some similar thing that generates holograms that's cheap, has a wide FOV, and works in bright light. HoloLens and Magic Leap came close, but people couldn't figure out how to make enough money off the devices, apparently.

Maybe the change is the internet amplifies those holding the flame longer, like those responding parallel to me