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Comment by Tepix | Hacker News Reader

I think this may be their first foot in the door towards the inevitable development of a Metaverse/Oasis type VR multiuser environment where millions of people will eventually spend most of their time.

The 2nd coming of VR is cooling a bit right now but with the advent of improved hardware I don't see why it won't heat up again reaching mass adoption within a decade.

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> where millions of people will eventually spend most of their time.

I'll try very hard to avoid that. I'd like computers to evolve in a way that we have to spend less time with them rather than more.

Whether for better or worse, the current trend of smartphone and social media usage implies that this is more likely than not.

Yes, and as I wrote I'm trying hard to avoid it. So far so good.

>The 2nd coming of VR is cooling a bit right now

It's true and it's unfortunate, we're just starting to see "affordable" hardware with decent performance. I finally pulled the trigger and bought a Rift, at 400 euros for the headset and the controllers it's pretty decent value IMO. Too bad VR seems to have lost some of its hype in the past year or two.

Err.. that's the exact definition of .. hype.

I don't understand, what is?

Exaggerated promotion/excitement for a certain thing/tech in a short time. Which then suddenly disappears when another new think/tech is announced.

Ah I see. My point was that in this case the hype was maybe a bit early, the tech was way too expensive for anything but wealthy early adopters up until a few months ago. I see that Oculus has announced the "Go", set to release early next year at $199. At this price it's no longer early adopter tech.

I'm sure when these affordable VR sets are coming out the vendors are going to make a marketing push, preferably coupled with some big game releases.

Personally I would call it the 3rd coming, VRML in 1995, Virtual Worlds in 2005, and now VR/AR in 2015. Just might stick this time, but it will be slower than they predict.

>>>Metaverse/Oasis type VR multiuser environment

If anyone has an app for AR, Amazon has an app for AR.

Maybe they're expecting us to browse the aisles virtually in the very near future?

Nearly every valuable and or volume product (not every copy of every product) will be scanned for VR/AR purposes, so you'll be able to actually examine it from most or all angles. There's no scenario where Amazon doesn't do this eventually. The applications for clothing alone (which they're extremely determined to be huge in) makes it a big obvious must. Near-term it'll be ugly, 20 years out it'll be so good as to be the routine way to shop for a lot of products (you won't bother with basic well understood purchases, things in generic boxes, like advil).

Furniture apps using ARKit work shockingly well for this already. I definitely expect to see Amazon support something similar for a lot of products soon, and I think it'd be genuinely useful.

My company did a lot of experimentation with VR shopping. While the idea seems cool, 2D is generally faster and easier than 3D.

If 3D TVs failed to reach mass adoption why would this?

Because 3D in a TV is kinda ok, VR is actually affecting.

I'm not convinced that most people are going to care. 3D was cool, but putting glasses on was too much friction. Putting an entire headset on is, I think, a bridge too far.

Content availability issues aside, I think it's because it's single user. TV is often a social pastime, and if anyone involved has issues with 3D, no-one gets to use it.

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