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Comment by theshrike79 | Hacker News Reader

> In the past 25 years, many companies have introduced headsets with increasingly better displays. According to some reports, the installed base of VR headsets will be ~25 million units in 2023. Yet I have never seen anyone on an airplane or a train wear a head-mounted display.

Has the author seen anyone ever wear a head mounted display anywhere outside of their living room?

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I have never seen anyone wear a head mounted display anywhere, period. Not at work (finance, Chicago), commuting or travelling, at home, etc. Are you saying this is actually a thing?

I’ve seen one, a couple of days after the Apple keynote, sitting in the cafeteria at work. I’m not sure whether I was more susceptible to noticing it thanks to the AVP.

They are used in niche applications. All in a somewhat similar way, in my opinion: precision technical work. Where you need free movement of your head but also need urgent real-time updates, or a diagram or secondary view, of what you're working on. Fighter pilots, surgeons, underwater divers working on complex machinery. I've always figured they will stay largely restricted to those niches. But cost coming down might see new applications.

I've seen one used at work for R&D demo purposes, but aside from that I don't think I've ever noticed anyone using one while out and about (Cincinnati, OH). Certainly never in transit or on an airplane.

No, but then again I have never seen people drag their desktops with them, yet desktops are still quite popular

Yeah, the paragraph you quoted feels heavily designed to sound convincing but isn't very honest. For most of the past 25 years there haven't been 25 million headsets, and the headsets that did exist weren't standalone. It's simply 0% surprising that I never saw anyone watch a movie in VR on a plane before 2020.

A more honest way to make the point would be to say there are 10 million Quest 2's, and have you ever seen someone use in to watch a movie on a plane in the last 2 years? I will admit that, in the few plane rides I've taken in the last few years, I have not.

I've thought about it with my Quest 2, but decided against it because of the bulk of the headset and controllers when it comes to just carrying it around, the clumsiness of using the controllers in an airline seat (even a nice one), the difficulty of easily switching in/out if someone needs my attention, and how it's a pain in the ass to get media files on to the device. The Vision Pro has seemingly solved those issues so handily that I absolutely would have brought it if I had one in the same circumstances.

Yep. I don't know if I'd do it with an Apple Vision either but I do know almost for sure that I wouldn't with a Quest 3 because of the controllers. Whether there's other reasons that will prevent me from doing it is unknown to me.

The main point is that what apple has demonstrated has been possible since the 90s for just a couple hundred dollars, yet nobody cared. Hell, I used to wish for one as a kid, but now that I have a real VR headset, I know it wouldn't have been useful.

It absolutely hasn't been possible to watch a movie on a plane in VR since the 90s for a couple hundred dollars.

There's zero surprise that in 1990 nobody saw anyone watching a movie in VR on a plane because it was not remotely possible.

The main point may have some validity, supporting it with over the top misleading arguments just because they sound like slam dunks is dishonest.

Is this not referring to headrest mounted displays. The one mounted in the back of the seats?

no, it’s referencing VR headsets

Yeah I thought it might be a typo.

The term of art for VR/AR headsets is "head mounted display", or HMD.

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