His description of what web dev felt like in those early days captures how I feel about VR now.
Back then it was obvious to me that was the coolest thing you could possibly learn. Still to me it is outrageously cool that I can think something up and then in not that much time it can be a website.
So whats the new magic? To me it's the idea of being able to think something up and conjour it into the virtual world too.
* More innovations with passthrough (combination of a VR headset and AR). Currently you can get "X-Ray Vision" to see where your controllers are in a room. In the future, this could be expanded to other peripherals such as keyboards. It allows you to have a cooking video playing while cooking (hands-free control) [1] or place/design furniture in your room [2]
* Once the resolution is a little better - virtual offices[3] and cinemas[4] allow for significantly more screen real estate than a traditional setup, requiring less space and capital investment.
* Live/pre-recorded virtual concerts and sports games[5] are already occurring (where you can invite friends to watch in real time). The current 'experiences' (wingsuit flying, virtual tourism, etc..) are far more immersive than watching the equivalent 360° Video
* VR fitness is a reasonable method of cardio, burning ~9 calories a minute. It can also augment other training methods, such as a stationary bike[6]
* Haptic suits[7], gloves and treadmills[8] - not really my thing, but allowing 360° running and feeling the interactions with your environment.
If you get a chance to try it, or maybe you already have - you get this odd sense of presence when using VR. It's not quite the same as playing a normal game. Even just perspectives of things like size seem much more real in VR. Even with today's early hardware it's pretty good at tricking your brain.
This combination of presence and multiplayer create these crazy (to me) experiences where it's like you're stepping into the internet to meet people and explore it with them.
VRChat is one of the more popular examples, but most of it stuff still needs to be built in the first place.
Back then it was obvious to me that was the coolest thing you could possibly learn. Still to me it is outrageously cool that I can think something up and then in not that much time it can be a website.
So whats the new magic? To me it's the idea of being able to think something up and conjour it into the virtual world too.