Takeaways: Why VR/AR Gets Farther Away as It Comes Into Focus by Matthew Ball
5 key points I learned from Matthew Ball's latest essay
(photo credit: https://www.thestar.com.my/starpicks/2021/06/28/extended-reality-xr-the-next-big-thing)
Original essay link: https://www.matthewball.vc/all/why-vrar-gets-farther-away-as-it-comes-into-focus
Original research publish date: Jan 23rd 2023
In his latest essay, Matthew Ball, the author of “The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything”, shared his observations and thoughts about the relationship between the Metaverse and VR/AR technologies. In order to help readers digest the essay with 20+ pages, I decided to summarize the content in the takeaway series, highlighting the key 5 viewpoints that inspired me the most.
(1) The state of XR in 2023: consumers & businesses still waiting for the killer XR experience
Though XR technologies have made significant progress in the past couple of years, it is difficult to say that a critical amount of consumers or businesses believe there’s a “killer” AR/VR/MR experience in the market today. The XR devices that we have nowadays are farther from substituting for the computing devices we currently use, and the user experience still has a lot to improve before mainstream adoption is possible.
The future that the Metaverse-related companies promised years ago was supposed to have arrived now. But, until today, the future seems to have a few years away. Many people believe that absent extraordinary advances in battery technology and wireless power and optics and computer processing, we simply cannot achieve the XR devices that many of us imagine and that would conceivably replace the smartphone or merely (a smaller ask) engage a few hundred million people on a daily basis.
(2) XR devices vs gaming consoles: a common but unfair comparison
It’s common to hear the critique that the experiences produced by these XR devices look worse than those produced by the gaming consoles of a decade ago that cost half as much at the time. However, when it comes to visually rendering a virtual environment, VR/AR/MR devices will always fall short of a modern video game console due to the higher rendering requirement and the greater constraints.
All consumer tech faces tradeoffs and hard problems, but XR devices require so many points of optimization - heat, weight, battery life, resolution, frame rate, cameras, sensors, cost, size, and so on. The “work” performed by these XR devices is far harder – XR devices require a higher refresh rate and at least 8K (optimally 16K) pixels due to their proximity to the eye while the portable Nintendo Switch is only 720p. And, the constraints of XR devices are far greater because they are supposedly “wearable” and require additional components for tracking. The weight, heat, and battery life need to be well-designed to accommodate all the components needed to run the functionalities (cameras and sensors for tracking, display module…etc.).
(3) Apple: the tech giant with the potential to define what XR device means
Apple produces the most powerful miniaturized system-on-a-chips in the world and produces more phones, tablets, and smart watches than any other device maker in the world, which reflects both its manufacturing power and the desirability of its products. And, it has the most lucrative developer ecosystem in the world. The company’s XR device has the option of tapping into other in-market devices—leveraging the user’s iPhone, for example, in lieu of a standalone pacemaker computer, or an Apple Watch to supplement hand tracking, and so on. As such, it’s not unreasonable to assume Apple’s mixed-reality device will be the most desirable, will yield the most performance per dollar cost, and will come equipped with the best interface—and the most applications, too.
More importantly, this device is likely to be, well, “different.” To quote Apple expert John Gruber, “Outsiders inevitably base expectations on the current state of the art. But the iPhone was not an iPod phone. Apple Watch was not a Fitbit with a higher price. If Apple is still Apple, this first headset should be much more than a slightly nicer version of VR headsets as we know them.”
(4) VR/AR/XR are not equal to the Metaverse, just ways to access it
Often, the topic of the Metaverse is confused with the very idea or experience of VR/AR/XR. But it’s important to recognize that the XR devices are just ways to access the Metaverse. A good analogy might be the touchscreen smartphone and its relationship to the mobile internet.
Roblox is one of many examples of the sufficiency of 2D interfaces for 3D experiences. While the platform does have a VR mode, it is not fundamentally designed for VR and thus it’s both available on, and optimized for, the billions of other devices in market today. And notably, Roblox boasts over 1,250x the monthly userbase of Meta’s VR-only Roblox competitor, Horizon Worlds. Roblox is also 20-60x the size of the VR-centric RecRoom and VRChat, which, unlike Horizon Worlds, also benefit from 2D-based access.
(5) AR: the big opportunity without a clear schedule
AR glasses are the XR device category that many consider the big opportunity — AR devices have the potential to replace smartphones as the dominant computing platform globally, with billions of daily users in the future.
Though many VR (or, more precisely, MR) investments are laying the groundwork for AR. Batteries and optics are great examples here. But this also means that AR is even farther from “MVP” than VR/MR—and thus also farther behind schedule.
It seems particularly wrongheaded to have bet XR would go mainstream years before the average person had a smartphone. The first mobile phone call was in 1973. The iPhone didn’t launch until 2007, with Android and the Apple App Store coming in 2008. It’s clear that 2007-2008 represented a phase shift from PC/local computing to mobile/cloud, more than 30 years after mobile “began”. And, people had to wait until 2014 to see half of Americans own a smartphone and 2020 for half of the world to own one.