Reg straps on goggles from upstart that wants to 'democratize' VR

I bought myself a Vive for Christmas

My wife still disagrees as to the value of this purchase, but let's put that to one side for now (and hope she eventually will).

There's seated VR where you can sit in place and can look around - which is fun, but not really revolutionary. Your head replaces a stick on your joypad.

Then there's "Full Room VR" where you get to wander about, and when it works, is a revelation.

I know most of you reading this are cynics and without trying it yourself, I'm unlikely to win you over, but please, please try it.

Tilt-Brush, the MS-paint of VR art, allows you to wave you hand in the air to draw a 3-dimensional squiggle.

You then take a pace forward and look at this 3D thing from another angle. It just sits there. Floating in imaginary space. You can walk around your squiggle, put your head through it, it's mesmerizing, *this is VR*

The low level tech that supports this is pretty irrelevant (inside out/inside in etc) - what actually matters is the physical space you have available, and at least in suburban-UK that space is going to cost you way more than the tech you choose to map yourself into it.

Still dubious.

Despite goldcd's comment I fail to see any widespread market for VR aside from gaming, a few very specific applications, and novelty.

Probably most VR goggles will wind up on a shelf, collecting dust right beside the 3D sunglasses that came with the TV.

And I write this just after reading Neal Stephenson's excellent "Snow Crash."

For the vast majority of media scenarios regular 2D video is more than adequately immersive. 3D and VR just don't add enough to the experience to make it worthwhile messing with extra hardware and software.

Maybe some killer app will emerge that will suddenly make VR the thing that everyone wants, but it wasn't too many years ago when "Avatar" was supposed to make 3D the new wave in home entertainment.

Back to front

From a human perspective, unknown objects further than 4 feet away are 2d, they may be rendered to appear 3d but it is only when you get within the zone can it be determined with accuracy.

Small or faraway is interesting, without any accepted scale it is (more or less) determined by perceived resolution (if you can see individual hairs on the horse it is a close shetland pony otherwise it's a far shire horse)

You could improve VR/ER by tracking eyeballs and only 3d rendering an apparent circle of focus 4 feet deep whilst rendering the rest in 2d.

Charlie Brooker's...

.Black Mirror series had an episode focussing on VR/AR called "Playtest". In fact, all three series are well worth a watch. Most of the reviews for Playtest go on about how 'this is the future of gaming', which verges on clickbait tag-lining, but it does cram in a lot of easter egg references to current games, as well as nods to The Thing, The Matrix and so on. It does raise the question about where neural interface technologies such as DARPA's RE-NET project will end up...