I'm old enough to remember the last VR boom. I was even lucky enough to work in a CAVE for a bit. That hype train derailed around 2000. The same promises were made, the same breathless enthusiasm, the same feeling that we were about to ascend into the cybernetic matrix. It didn't turn out that way, and the only thing that's fundamentally changed is that the hardware is cheaper. This is going to bankrupt some investors, and the remaining companies will serve a niche market.
The hardware is not just cheaper, but its orders of magnitude more powerful. There have also been two huge breakthroughs that I think make this wave the real deal, sub mm motion controller tracking and 90 fps to the eye.
> the only thing that's fundamentally changed is that the hardware is cheaper.
The same thing might have been said about the commodore 64. Hardware being accessible to the (rich) consumer vs only to research labs and businesses is enough of a difference to create new industries!
