VR today is like early TV: it suffers from the split personality of most start-up high-tech industries. At the one end is the top of the line research, carried out by institutions with no mandate to sell anything. At the other end, we have new hardware and software products whose developers are only too happy to demo them at a plethora of VR conferences, but where the differences in product are less important than the similarities. It’s like having a VCR and no movies to rent: who needs it? Virtual Reality will continue as the domain of media hype until its supporters and developers start to pay closer attention to the content of what they put out.

Ira Meistrich in Pix-Elation Issue Vol II No II

17 years later, is the situation drastically transformed? Perhaps not. In many ways 1993 was the golden age of VR, not only because the systems were truly immersive (e.g. wide field of view HMDs), but there were some complete VR experiences, especially from W Industries. OK, maybe it was the bronze age, not the golden, but it seems like we’re now back in the stone age. What happened? And… does anyone remember what a VCR is?