Cool story. Interesting point of view. Love the title too.
It is true with every advance down the road of increasing fidelity, there are fringes of folks who will continue to stay loyal to older, more characteristically flawed technologies of media.
I would argue that, for the majority of those folks, they have a fondness for the character of that particular form of media, rather than it’s product.
For Plato, he was fascinated by the optical character of the water which distorted his view of the subject, rather than the subject.
In the case of movies, film buffs love film more than they love the movies.
In the case of music, vinyl and analog buffs love the whole idea of a spinning disk vibrating a stylus, which is then amplified preferably with magical valve amplifiers.
The whole point of higher fidelity mediums is to make the medium itself characterless; as close to invisible as possible, so that what it produces cannot be distinguished from reality. A system capable of hiding itself in such a way is also capable of simulating the character of an older, lesser fidelity system. For example, there are apps in Oculus that provide the experiences of watching movies and playing games on simulated flat screens, in VR, just as you would do in real life.
But nobody uses them.
If vynil buffs really liked music characterised by the hissing, cracking, and distortion that characterise that form of media, they would ask for the music that they listen to via digital media to have those characteristics added.
But they don’t.
For me, the real reason for the apparent hiccup in the much anticipated mass adoption of VR, is not really down to people preferring lesser convincing forms of media, but rather, it is down to a shortage of media offering true to life experiences.
“VR movies” do not really exist; it is not yet possible to capture and reproduce actual real life scenes in such a way that one could move around in them, choosing whether or not to try to duck, or hide, for example. 360 degree movies can only be viewed from the point the movie was captured.
It is routinely possible to provide interactive game environments which offer that kind move-anywhere experience. But the media that people obviously seek is of actual real life.
Like live interactive performances, news, education, business, and so on, i.e. the stuff of social media.
The link that is missing, is between VR and the real world.
In a world where the only music that could be produced with digital techniques had to be synthesised, never live recorded, vinyl would still be king.
Thus 2D video is still king over VR.
That missing link between VR and the real world is Augmented Reality (AR). Those two technologies have effectively been driven separately, by different commercial forces. Now they need to be brought together. This is no small task. In fact it cannot be done at all at profit.
The world is changing, in ways beyond most people’s imagining.
Read more in the VRENAR blog.

