The answer is neither, because 2D stories are crafted under a specific paradigm which everyone "gets" with time, so it's a default but not a natural one. E.g. people don't act irl like in movies/animations and events don't get viewed from efficient angles with repetitions and timely attention switches. So no, 2D isn't the best way cause we had to adapt 3D-to-3D to it.

On your initial comment, there's already a {f|c}ringe group of LLM users who use [E]RP to participate in... scenarios (text, can generate pics using SD). It's hardly googlable, you may or may not want to dig into this, I warned.

I can fully accept that what VR gives you is far more immersive, but if you’ve got no answer to the laundry list of downsides. It doesn’t really matter that it’s better at some point. We as the mainstream consumer don’t all run out and buy racing simulator rigs just because it’s better than playing on an Xbox controller.

Plenty of higher technology products fail when simple and cheap solutions compete with them.

If you want to tell me that 3D, depth, and space is main the draw, I could point to the various failures of 3D movies and television that were supposedly the technologies of the future.

I used to own a VR headset, a Valve Index. I loved it for what it was. Games on that system were immersive like nothing I had experienced before.

But there were numerous downsides.

Cost, not really solved by today’s products.

Eye fatigue, not solved even by the Vision Pro.

Group experience. Not really solved unless you’re a total hermit. Am I going to go to enjoy a SuperBowl party where all the attendees are wearing a VR headset? How does VR benefit the experience of watching shows with family/friends on the couch? Is it an upgrade to put on individual headsets and using virtual avatars? How do I cuddle and kiss my spouse while we watch a movie with a headsets on? How do I watch VR content at a bar or restaurant?

Multitasking: At best not an upgrade, at worst a downgrade. If I use a TV I can watch the show talk to my friend and order toilet paper on my smartphone that I already own at the same time. What upgrade am I getting there with VR?

Battery life. Not solved. Can I even get through a SuperBowl game on a headset? Is my SuperBowl party going to be a group of 30 people standing around the power outlet?

Nausea and VR acclimation. We could call this partially solved. A pretty high percentage of the population just can’t do VR physically.

Sweaty face, messed up hair, not solved. Period.

Compatibility with corrective vision: not really solved, every headset needs custom prescription lenses or needs space to fit glasses (this was uncomfortable in my Index, I was lucky to be able to wear contacts).

Visual fidelity: not solved, a standard TVs still beat the Vision Pro at pixels per FOV. 4K per eye includes all the periphery vision that doesn’t represent the main focus of your content.

Profit, not solved. The only companies making a profit on VR are companies like Valve that aren’t burning cash on R&D. How long will public companies like Meta and Apple tolerate wildly unprofitable product lines? which Apple product that sold under 500,000 units at launch is still with us today? Maybe the Mac Pro?

Let’s also not forget that high technology in the medium isn’t typically the driver of what is popular in content. The 5th highest grossing film in 2023 was a film shot on analog film technology that primarily used practical effects. The most watched show in 2023 was a cop procedural that has been on antenna television for over 20 years. The top selling video game of all time is Minecraft. Nobody really cares about being blown away by immersive visuals when they just want to watch deckhands on a chartered yacht reality show sleep around and gossip.

It's fine if you're a VR skeptic. But I never gave a timeline on when my vision might come true.

Do you think we'll have solved the problems you outlined in 5 years? 8 years?

I'd rather focus on the actual vision I laid out rather than the limitations we have today.

Maybe the timeline isn't important to you, but the timeline is the most important thing because it determines whether public companies continue to invest in VR/XR as a money-losing business. If it takes too long to realize this vision it will not be a viable business. Every dollar invested in a technology is a dollar that can be invested in an alternative that returns its investment faster.

Microsoft and Google backed out of AR/VR and they were early adopters. Why would mega-tech companies with "unlimited money" like that back out of the market if it's so promising? Microsoft even seemed to have the B2B/industrial AR market cornered and they just dropped the whole thing. But then again, why should Microsoft spend $10 to make $10 on AR when they can spend $10 on Azure and make $20 selling basic compute services?

Meta is spending 5x more on R&D than it is making back in revenue from its Reality Labs division. This is 5 years after they launched their first consumer device, an eternity in technology. Compare that to the smartphone business where Apple was making wild profits from day one.

It's very important to note just how capital intensive VR/XR is to develop and deliver in a way that's truly reality-bending. The development time and effort is closer to a commercial airplane than most traditional technology products, like PCs that are designed with generally off-the-shelf parts and software. Seriously: Boeing spent $32 billion to develop the 787, Meta burns that on VR R&D in just 2 or 3 years and they aren't selling planes to make up for it.

So, the answer to your question is, absolutely not. These problems won't be resolved in 5-8 years. Too few have been resolved in the past 5. It's just all moving too slowly.

Let's just single out the battery life issue as an example of why these problems can't be resolved fast enough. Apple's silicon is the best product out there for VR/XR but there hasn't been a generational leap in their computing power since the M1 chip. Apple is constrained by the lithography that TSMC can produce so each new generation of processor is in that 10-20% range of improvement. Therefore we can expect their processing to be no better than about twice as fast as their current chips in around 5-8 years. Battery technology won't progress in density significantly between now and then, so what you're left with is the Vision Pro of 5 years from now possibly doubling the battery life or shrinking the battery so it doesn't need to be external anymore while delivering pretty comparable battery life. It's still going to be a situation where you need a big bulky ski goggle thing on your head messing up your hair and makeup.

Finally, we have to talk about sheer market size numbers and just how wildly far off VR/XR is from the kind of numbers you see with smartphones, TVs, etc. You need an almost impossible growth rate that just hasn't showed up even though we're on the third iteration of the market leader's product line, which is sold at a relatively affordable game console-like price.

According to Statista the total size of the XR market installed base is 50 million units as of 2024. They expect the total size to be 100 million by 2026.

Let's compare that to 5 years after the iPhone launched, 2012. Smartphone sales were 600 million in 2012 alone. The global television market is sized at about $250 billion (which is not that bad for devices that have an average selling price well under $1000 and last much longer than a smartphone or computer).

We've seen what it looks like when Apple launches a successful product. The Apple Watch and AirPods were flawed products in their first iteration but we all IMMEDIATELY saw them EVERYWHERE within a year or two of their launch. The Vision Pro is approaching 6 months past the launch date, and it's supposed to be the first immersive spatial computer where you can be productive anywhere anytime, the ultimate movie system for the airplane, the ultimate mobile workstation, and in all my time living in an affluent city with lots of people and going to the airport almost every month I've NEVER seen one in a single coffee shop, coworking space, on the street, on the plane, nothing. Which makes a ton of sense when we find out that Apple was barely able to sell 500,000 of them, and we hear rumors that they are delaying/canceling next year's model.