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[mainiac]

According to Citibank, Virtual Reality will be a 1.2 trillion dollar industry by 2030.  Slightly under half of this will be hardware while most will be the sale of products within virtual worlds:
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-12-01-at-14.37.37.png
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/12/01/2146247/welcome-to-your-simulacrum-future-a-674bn-opportunity/

According to PriceWaterCoopers, Poland's GDP in 2030 will be an estimated 1.16 trillion dollars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IMF_ranked_countries_by_past_and_projected_GDP_(nominal)#Long_term_GDP_estimates

To put it another way, if we extrapolate the trend out to 2040, VR will be bigger then all economic activity in the Soviet Union at it's peak.  And that is interestingly not a scenario that assumes exponential growth.

So, how do y'all feel about our transhuman future?

[cochramd]

So, how do y'all feel about our transhuman future?

In a word? Doubtful.

[SirQuiamus]

poland stronk, poland can into virtual reality

EDIT: also, virtual reality == transhumanity == lelelelel dream on, techbros, dream on :^D

[Levi]

I still think VR will be awesome.  I mean, the stuff they are coming out with now is pretty interesting, so the stuff they have in 15 years ought to be amazing.

[Jopax]

This seems relevant.

[Neonivek]

I still think VR will be awesome.  I mean, the stuff they are coming out with now is pretty interesting, so the stuff they have in 15 years ought to be amazing.

I dunno... what was out in the 2000s? The PS2

And how much have games improved? barely at all... in fact Triple A Gaming has gotten worse.

Besides by VR they are referring to oculus Rift... as in putting TV screens onto your eyeballs...

Not anything legitimately cool

[Neonivek]

You're talking mechanics vs. hardware. It's a better idea to compare the engine to the hardware, but then you're still comparing apples to oranges.

Well... in all honesty gaming hit the plateau hard and we are getting to the point where graphics cannot appreciably increase.

As well we already have games that can handle hundreds upon hundreds of physics objects with complex movement patterns.

There is going to be a limit in videogames coming fairly soon where gaming companies will actually have to think about "Making their games good" instead of just relying on graphical and engine improvements to carry them through the dumb masses who think that just because a game looks nice that it is nice...

[MrRoboto75]

What about virtual Poland?

[WealthyRadish]

I think it's still possible that VR will be a fad, a minor auxiliary like the motion control stuff. One difference is that VR has this cultural hype behind it from decades of sci-fi, so it gets loads of funding and expectations (and will probably be less likely to flop), but with expectations as high as they are I have some serious doubts. Personally I doubt I'll ever use it, so maybe it's an opportunity to be crotchety about something 60 years from now when they're jacking them into your brain or something.

[Neonivek]

I think it's still possible that VR will be a fad, a minor auxiliary like the motion control stuff. One difference is that VR has this cultural hype behind it from decades of sci-fi, so it gets loads of funding and expectations (and will probably be less likely to flop), but with expectations as high as they are I have some serious doubts. Personally I doubt I'll ever use it, so maybe it's an opportunity to be crotchety about something 60 years from now when they're jacking them into your brain or something.

The biggest barrier is that for VR to work you need to use an entire room of your house.

And while yeah people use entire rooms for Televisions... Not only they don't have to but they tend to use the room for other things.

While VR basically goes "NOPE!"

[itisnotlogical]

I'm irrationally hopeful. VR is still pretty young, compared to how long video games in general have been around. When serious VR has been around for over three decades and received the kind of advances that consoles and computers have experienced in that time, it'll probably be pretty spiffy.

[RedKing]

According to Citibank, Virtual Reality will be a 1.2 trillion dollar industry by 2030.  Slightly under half of this will be hardware while most will be the sale of products within virtual worlds:
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-12-01-at-14.37.37.png
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/12/01/2146247/welcome-to-your-simulacrum-future-a-674bn-opportunity/

According to PriceWaterCoopers, Poland's GDP in 2030 will be an estimated 1.16 trillion dollars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IMF_ranked_countries_by_past_and_projected_GDP_(nominal)#Long_term_GDP_estimates

To put it another way, if we extrapolate the trend out to 2040, VR will be bigger then all economic activity in the Soviet Union at it's peak.  And that is interestingly not a scenario that assumes exponential growth.

So, how do y'all feel about our transhuman future?

Faster, better, stronger, hype-ier.

Until I see an immersion experience that can make me forget I'm an aging dude with a gadget strapped to my head, I ain't buying it. Especially not the idea of a trillion dollars spent on virtual transactions. Though we are raising a generation that doesn't see the insanity in dropping a few hundred bucks for "skins" in a game, so I suppose it's possible. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to spend money on things.

[SirQuiamus]

View-Master Virtual Boy 3D to the Maxxx Ready the Barf Bags the Future is Here.

EDIT: Space Harrier Outrun Wolfenstein Immersive True 3D Graphics Get Hype. EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

[i2amroy]

This is why I think that current VR is a joke. The only progress made since the 80's was moving the screen closer to your eyeballs, making it HD, and adding gyroscopes and accelerometers.

Seeing as how literally all of those can be accomplished with a cell phone these days, that doesn't say much about actual progress.

We've also managed to do a few of the more important things, like curing the "VR sickness" (which was caused by "low" framrates, to cure it you need to take framerates up to around 240 FPS at a minimum).

I mean, technology-wise we do currently have the potential. It's just a matter of putting it all together cost-effectively, and filling in the missing psychological pieces if we want true 100% VR. Currently the big missing piece in this puzzle is figuring out how to read information from the brain. We already can write: Sony patented a device back in 2004 that shows that, even if their device doesn't entirely work, the premise is there. It's just a matter of reading, and writing in a cohesive pattern i.e. understanding more of how the brain internally processes sensory information.

Honestly the biggest problem with VR technology isn't reading what's in your brain. We're already getting pretty good at, and things like the NeuroSky Mindwave get more accurate, smaller, and cheaper with every year that goes by. We're even getting pretty good at writing to the brain non-invasively with magnetic stimulation and such. Really our biggest problem is simply the issue of figuring out how to noninvasively stop your own body from writing to your brain/reading from your brain. Figuring out how to stop the signals from your brain and body from reaching each other without any permanent damage or surgery would be the holy grail of VR; since it would change things from being the person randomly wandering around a room with a visor on that we see now to the person lying unmoving on their bed that we see in science fiction and tvshows.

[LordBucket]

extrapolate the trend out to 2040

25 years from now?

Let's look at 25 year ago:

 * Google, facebook, twitter and youtube did not exist
 * The first "web browser" had only just been made, and "the internet" was not a thing that the common man knew existed. And if you were to access "the internet" you probably did it via dialup, using a modem, over a telephone line.
 * The smartphone had not been invented, and if you were one of the very few phone with a cellular phone, the brand new digital AMPS models had just arrived, that weren't 4 inches thick, and featured a 1-2 line black and green display. Mostly likely, however, you didn't have this, nor even a "mobile walkabout" house in your house, but rather a wall attached to wall that had no display of any kind.
 * Your computer, if you were of the few people who had one at home, was probably either an Intel 386 or 486, running DOS, a text-based operating system. "Windows" version 3 had only recently been deployed, and it was an entirely optional shell run from the command line.
 * Your IBM PC probably didn't have a mouse unless you went out of your way to get one. "Mice" were for apples. And if you did have a mouse on a PC, it plugged into a serial com port, and you had to configure that port manually so that it didn't interfere with your sound card.
 * Downloadable porn came in 256 colors, was probably 640x480 pixels, and took about a minute to download a single image
 * Software came on floppy disk[sic]. Often, on "floppy" disks that were actually floppy, and your computer probably had two different disk drives so you could read either disk type.
 * CDs existed, but they were used primarily for music. Because, you know, people bought music. From stores. Stores that still sold vinyl records and cassette tapes.
 * DVDs did not exist. And while foot long "laserdiscs" did exist, you probably didn't have one. Instead, you probably had a video cassette player that played movies from magnetic tape that you physically rented from a store.

A lot can happen in 25 years.