Science fiction author Neal Stephenson, who coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, has argued he and others who believed immersive environments would require head-mounted hardware got it wrong.
In a post penned to mark Meta’s recent decision to end its work on the Metaverse after blowing through $80 billion, Stephenson said that twenty years ago, when he worked at virtual reality hardware company Magic Leap, he would ask “Do you really think that twenty years from now everyone is still going to be going around all day staring at little rectangles in their hands?”
“At the time it seemed obvious to me that the answer was no,” he wrote. Now he thinks that another 20 years into the future, devices like smartphones will still dominate. “Or at least that is the case if the only alternative is wearing things on their faces.”
Vr would be fine if any complex games arose, and the ones that existed weren’t murdered to make trend chasing pvpve slop
I don’t think VR need to be the “next big thing” but it is just a fun little thing. I have an old HTC Vive and I love firing up beat saber and taking turns with folks when I have company over.
Also vr chat is great!
It seem like people are obsessed with making vr better amd more widespread. I’m content with it to just be a fun little thing I break out every once in a while
I don’t think the issue is the goggles as much as, people multi task so much.
They watch TV while on laptops whike eating and checking their phones and being with friends of family.
Even with some magic virtual version of this, its still too disconnecting. Plus, if you are, I don’t know, joint watching a movie in VR, no one wants to pull out their VR phone to heck an actors name on IMDB, or stop their VR Fortnite matchto take a bite of their sandwhich which they just plow into their headset.
Make them cheaper and higher resolution than large curved monitors, and reasonably light and untethered, and you might get a surprise.
https://mrtv.co/2025/03/meganex-superlight-8k-review-the-new-king-of-clarity-comfort/
A bit pricy, with too many limitations (for me it must support open source which means mostly AMD), but definitely a step in the right direction.
That size makes me think it also likely has a battery life of seconds.
Science fiction author Neal Stephenson, who coined the term “metaverse” Metaverse inventor
That’s not what inventing means. That’s like saying George Lucas “invented” hyperspace.
This isn’t even the actual article headline, it’s “Head-mounted VR hardware will never happen, says Neal Stephenson - who coined the term ‘metaverse’”. OP?
I run the hed connected with the link when posting.
VR still lives for gaming! Steam VR offers some great experiences, with mods taking that further, and the upcoming Steam Frame headset (if AI doesn’t steal every component in existence). Don’t expect growth for daily digital tasks (Apple VR and the like tried and failed), but the niche has been carved out for gamers!
I got Virtual Home Theater on Steam to watch 3D movies, it’ s a great experience.
Half-Life: Alyx and the Psychonauts VR game are also great. Pro Tip: The HP Reverb G2 is really cheap and it’s got 2160p per eye. It’s not officially supported anymore since Microsoft canceled their VR platform, but Oasis drivers make them work better than ever.
Can’t go wrong with an affordable headset with solid resolution :) and agreed, Alyx was an absolute banger!
Might have to try that home theater offering 🎭
Lots of multiplayer VR FPS’s too, pretty fun! Forefront’s been my Battlefield fix, way more fun than BF6 wound up being at a lower price, and I do love VR tank-time lol
TBH though, the best VR experiences I’ve had have been survival crafting games :) loads of fun and super immersive, especially as you build up your base and get to actually be inside of it, then run out for some fighting and looting lol but it really shines in multiplayer, and for whatever godforsaken reason all the devs that do wind up making survival crafting VR games leave ‘em as single-player :/ at the moment best multiplayer survival crafting games for VR are mods for Valheim and 7 Days To Die - wish we could get some similar experiences that are actually built for VR! Feels like that’s been a drought since The Forest did their VR mode
I never understood the hype of VR goggles beyond things like VR Chat combined with body trackers. Fun to watch people make an ass of themselves in VR games, but that only lasts so long before it gets boring.
That’s my take, at least.
I really enjoyed Beat Saber for a while. It seemed like the only game that really made VR worth it as a hard requirement, though. Pavlov was fun for a while, too, but my knees definitely suffered.
Stephenson uses Substack? I really would have imagined him using something more bespoke or Ghost.
Went from believing “yes” is inevitable to believing “no” is inevitable instead of learning the lesson that most of this is just random
the tech isn’t any good yet, but I believe smart glasses could be a good candidate.
These devices were never gonna gain mass appeal, it’s simply too expensive to develop for in exchange for a significantly smaller userbase
