Virtual Thoughts
Last year, I visited the Glacier National Park in Montana (which I think is the best national park in the US) and hiked up to the Grinnell Glacier. It is certainly one of the best hikes that I’ve done in my life, and the peace I felt after reaching the top was quite amazing. I wanted to share it with my friends, so I took a panoramic picture with my phone and posted it to social media.
Even though you could see how beautiful it was, it was not really possible to experience the serenity or the scale of the spectacle. A video may have helped, but you would still be consuming the content on a flat screen. That got me thinking: What if there was a way to share experiences, instead of content? I think this is the piece of the social media pie that virtual reality could potentially help solve. But, we’ve got a long way to go to achieve that vision.
Right now, the devices on which we consume content and the devices that we use to create content (content = text / pictures) are the same: a computer or a smartphone. Such a device does not exist for virtual reality. We have devices like Vive, Playstation VR, Oculus, Gear and the Daydream View which more or less have the same form factor, that can be used to consume VR content. VR devices seem to be at the same level of adoption as were smartphones in the pre-iPhone era (Palm, Blackberry, Nokia E62, et al). The similarities are striking: a) they are few and far between — you don’t see them very often in your everyday life, b) they are used by the nerdier type, thus introducing a stigma for adoption, c) the cost does not justify the value (except for Cardboard?) and d) you just look weird using one of these devices.
It took an iPhone for smartphones to become mainstream. It may be a long way before such a revolutionary VR device comes along. With all the buzz around VR, what’s Apple doing? My guess: waiting it out. We live in exciting times.
