The death of VR? Again? Meta thinks not…

Is it alive? Is it dead? Meta has some views on the subject. John Ternus does too. He likes the Vision Pro. He’s certainly “excited” about the Vision Pro’s future, though to be honest the Apple crew do tend to be perpetually excited about everything. But is that excitement warranted? Is there really anything to get excited about anymore?

Away from the tech companies, it feels as though VR has passed everyone by again. Meta bought Oculus maybe a century ago, brought out a couple of cheap headsets and one incredibly expensive one, created the Metaverse, renamed the company, left the Metaverse, and then decided to pivot hard on so-called “pervert glasses”, which to be fair sold pretty well until the “pervert” moniker stuck. Even Apple have now seemingly paused Vision Pro development, moved over 100 people off the team, and have their own “privacy-adjacent” glasses waiting in the wings for a 2027 release, no doubt pending the fallout from all the bad publicity going around. Perhaps Norway’s ban on them in public places, and how that plays out across Europe, will influence that date.

But this isn’t VR. It’s not even really AR. In fact, unless you’re some kind of influencer or reviewer, I’m not sure what it is, or what music + AI + camera actually does for you. I know lots of people like these so-called “smart glasses”, but I’m just not sure I get it. Today’s versions can’t display anything (aside from the real world, because, well, glasses), and the technology for doing so is a long way off. Compared with today’s VR headsets, even Meta’s $10k prototype attempt at displaying visuals on see-through lenses doesn’t come close.

So where are we? We have glasses that are light and cheap but do very little, and VR headsets that are big, heavy and expensive but do a lot. Where’s the bridge? Actually, there are a few, but one in particular stands out. I bring you Meta’s newly announced VR Glasses. They’re light enough to sit on your face like a pair of glasses. They’re a third of the price of the Vision Pro at $1,200, and an eighth of the weight at around 100g, with most of the computing power offloaded to a chunky wired puck that you put in your pocket. And the experience is very close indeed. There are compromises, of course, at that weight and price, but far fewer than you’d think. The field of view, for example, is 70% of the Vision Pro’s, but it still has eye tracking, hand tracking and half-decent software built in. Is it going to set the VR world on fire? Probably not. But it is a bridge device, and I’ll tell you something: if the Vision Pro had been at this weight and price point, I know for certain we’d all be talking about it very differently.

Perhaps more importantly, Meta have shown how it’s done. Apple’s Vision Pro started the race, but the Meta VR Glasses have now taken the baton and are leading the charge. I have zero doubt that Apple will take up the next leg within the next couple of years, while other contenders try to compete: the likes of Google, Xreal, Samsung, Pimax, and Valve with its recently released Steam Frame.

My certainty comes from having used VR as my go-to development environment for nearly half a decade, starting with the Quest 2 and now firmly entrenched in the Vision Pro ecosystem. These things are magical. I code on an ultra-wide screen, with widgets pinned around my walls. I get up, make a coffee, and look back at everything in my work room still displaying what I left visible, all intact, all exactly where I left it. I walk back, grab a few windows, move them around with a pinch, and carry on writing. Which is exactly how I’m writing this. And then, when the working day is done, the headset sits me in a Formula 1 car racing round Silverstone, or courtside at a basketball game as the ball comes flying at my head, or inside a WWII submarine as it starts to fill with water after a torpedo strike, or in an F-16 doing a barrel roll ten thousand feet above a mountain vista. Like I said, utterly magical, and so far removed from the flat-screen TV experience most of us know. This stuff is real.

The corporates hate losing money, and they wouldn’t keep pouring it into this if they didn’t think they could create something special, not just for us simulation nerds, but for everyone. There are roadmaps out there taking us forward in ways we can’t even imagine right now. But someone, somewhere is imagining them, and they have the money, the time, the people and the power to create it. There’s a hidden race going on behind the scenes, and every so often we get a device that lets us know it’s happening, with hints of what’s to come that will throw us for a loop when it arrives.

What comes after Meta’s VR Glasses is anyone’s guess. Who makes it is equally open to speculation. But VR is most definitely not dead and, just out of view, continues to be one of the most exciting places to be in tech. My Vision Pro is stellar, but it’s only the first of its kind. The next will no doubt blow it away.