Why Isn’t Brilliant AR/VR Everywhere Yet? Four Factors Driving Tipping Point

Wonder why despite all the excitement and hype about Augmented Reality (AR) and the frenetic energy around Virtual Reality (VR) that neither of these is everywhere yet? Don’t know what the big deal is about turning around and looking behind you all the time? Really cannot see why there are no better use cases than those for which just two dimensional video would suffice? What features will push these technologies into widespread adoption? When and how is the tipping point?

In my view AR/VR need to address the following four questions in order to reach the compelling value proposition required for adoption at scale:

• Training video/AR/VR is great but how does it tell me what am I doing wrong? Or prevent it?
• I don’t turn around to look that much in real life. When can I have interesting things like olfactory, gustatory and tactile instead?
• How can more than one person work on the same thing at the same time in AR/VR?
• What about the cost and ease of set up?

I have written about VR before and compared it to a drug that might destabilize humanity in “Take VR, Add 3D Printed Food. Will Anyone Stop Playing?”. Full VR — which is akin to artificial and permanent nirvana cannot possibly be good for…