Every one of your examples are “exactly like the real world, but cheaper, and with only 2 senses,” and a couple with time travel thrown in. Not exactly imaginative. I want more experiences that I can’t even potentially experience in the world, including chopping giant blocks with lightsabers.
Valve has some 3D scans of real world environments that you can explore in VR. I’ve also virtually walked around a 3D scan of Mars. Yes, these are neat experiences, but they are hardly the most popular use of VR.
Yes, I'm not trying to go MAX imagination here, but more answer in seemingly little hops what the "solution in search of a problem" crowd can't seem to visualize. Those I shared do not seem big stretch to me (or require a monumental leap in new kinds of programming or hardware)... and yet there are people every day spending much more than $3K for courtside seats (some games are going for $40K+) to
ONE game or to travel to NYC to take in
ONE broadway show, etc.
$3K for Goggles can look insane at a glance and against other known Goggles for considerably lower prices. I get the recoil and pessimism. But when one thinks about even SIMPLE things that could be done, $3K can be flipped into what may seem like a "bargain."
I don't need more than "simple imagination" to address that goal in this conversation. There seems to be plenty of simple applications that could easily be worth $3K or more to some people if we simply think through the power in showing our eyes and playing something for ears that make us perceive a different (but seemingly real) reality.
As I shared for my own interests: I recently paid $2K for a big desktop screen that will likely sit in one spot for its entire useful life. There's no practical way to take that screen out for mobile uses. And yet working on all that space is so much better than even a 16" MBpro screen. If VR Goggles could make a virtual copy of that desktop screen be available to me at all places, I could easily justify $1K more than I paid for that benefit ALONE. And- to me anyway- showing us a flat 2D screen in these goggles seems like the
simplest of all possible ideas of what goggles may be able to do.
Millions of NFL fans will pay $500+ for NFL Sunday Ticket, which amounts to watching out of market games on a 2D screen. How much would some of those fans pay to virtually attend those games? It seems like that would be MORE than $500+. How much more? What if the rumor of Apple negotiating for NFL ST was never about the existing product at all... but instead a whole new variation of that product: NFL ST VR? Would $1000/yr be too much for virtual ideal seats at all of the games? How much does it cost to actually attend only 1 game with ideal seats?
Now pile in the simple applications also like that. The vendor could make much more money by selling one "seat" to all VR "watchers" for a fraction of putting one actual butt in that seat, even after cutting Apple in for their big slice. Those who would love to go but would never pay thousands to $40K+ might be motivated at $200 or maybe $1000/yr for a favorite sport. Yes, of course, live would still be live and still motivate live butts to pay much more for actual seats. But most people would never be able to afford that kind of seat and/or simply cannot attend a desired event even if they can afford it. Maybe this lets them for less from wherever they are?
And as you point out: this is just simplistic stuff... not pushing the imagination- or technical- boundaries at all. Fool the eyes into believing they are seeing anything is a gigantic canvas for big and small imaginations to create. Paired with being able to fool ears into hearing "there" too and 2 of the 5 major senses is quite the creative playground for all kinds of possibilities.
From really early indications, Apple’s always said they going for experiences where they’ll be worn for specific purposes for short bursts of time, not hours and hours as Meta was pushing for the metaverse. If they’re like the ones from Big Picture, they could be quite small and easy to don and doff as needed.
