You're Wrong About VR

Everyone thinks VR is dead. They’re wrong.

Every few months, someone confidently declares that VR is “over.”Too expensive. Too niche. Too awkward. Not enough users.

Every time I hear that, it feels like people are confusing current adoption with future inevitability.

VR isn’t failing — it’s quietly crossing the same awkward valley that every breakthrough platform crosses right before things get interesting.

And I didn’t arrive at this conclusion from a spec sheet or a demo booth. I arrived at it on Christmas morning.

My Accidental VR Wake‑Up Call

This year, I bought my family a Meta Quest 3S for Christmas.

Here’s the part that surprised me most: I had never actually tried modern VR before — beyond a brief Apple Vision Pro demo in an Apple Store. I’d absorbed the takes, the memes, and the skepticism secondhand. I assumed it was still stuck in that “cool demo, questionable daily use” phase.

I was wrong.

Within minutes of putting it on, it clicked. Fast setup. No cables. No friction. A surprisingly mature ecosystem of apps. Watching media, playing games, multitasking — even just being in the environment — felt natural.

At its price point, the experience borders on absurd. This isn’t a toy. It’s a real, usable computing platform.

The Mistake People Keep Making

Most critics still look at VR through a 2016 lens:

• Headsets were heavy

• Content was thin

• Setup was annoying

• Social experiences felt like tech demos

  
  

That critique used to be correct. It isn’t anymore.

Today, standalone headsets boot in seconds. Passthrough is genuinely useful. You can watch sports, play games, work, and hang out without wires, base stations, or a PhD in troubleshooting.

The technology crossed a threshold — people just haven’t updated their mental model yet.

Why the Quest 3S Changes the Conversation

The most impressive thing about the Quest 3S isn’t any single feature — it’s the balance.

The price is approachable. The hardware is good enough that it gets out of the way. The software catalog is deep enough that you’re never hunting for something to do.

That combination matters far more than spec‑sheet dominance.

Why It Outclasses the Apple Vision Pro (For Most Humans)

Yes — the Apple Vision Pro has better screens. Better passthrough. A wider field of view.

But once you get past those undeniable technical wins, the question becomes uncomfortable:

What are you actually doing with it that you can’t do on a Quest — for a fraction of the cost?

For most real people, the answer is: not much.

The Vision Pro feels like a statement device. The Quest feels like a product.

One is stunning. The other is usable.

And usability wins.

VR’s Real Breakthrough Isn’t Gaming

Gaming matters, but it isn’t the unlock.

The real shift is ambient computing — VR as a place, not an activity.

I can sit in a virtual home with:

• ESPN playing on one screen

• Cloud gaming on another

• Notifications floating exactly where I want them

• Zero TV monopolized

• Zero couch politics

  
  

That isn’t “playing VR.”That’s being somewhere else on purpose.

Once people realize VR can replace screens instead of competing with them, adoption changes fast.

Why Adoption Feels Slow (But Isn’t)

VR adoption feels slow because:

• Phones spoiled us with instant mass adoption

• Headsets are still hardware, not downloads

• Most people haven’t actually tried modern VR — they’ve only heard opinions about it

But this is normal.

PCs took decades. Consoles took generations. Smartphones needed infrastructure, app ecosystems, and pricing curves.

VR is following the same arc — just louder, because the internet loves declaring winners and losers early.

People Are Sleeping on Meta (And I Don’t Get It)

Somewhere along the way, Meta became uncool to like.

Bad PR? Zuck memes? The whiplash from Facebook → Meta → metaverse hype backlash? Probably all of the above.

But here’s the disconnect I can’t shake: the product is actually great.

The Quest OS is fairly polished. The UI is fast and friendly. Nothing feels buried or hostile. You can hand this headset to a non‑technical person and they’ll figure it out.

Meta AI inside the headset is genuinely useful — not gimmicky. It helps you discover things, navigate, and get unstuck without breaking immersion.

The Meta Horizon app is solid too. Setup, device management, social features — all clean and intuitive.

And Horizon Central? Such a cool idea, I could see my kids loving this for a hangout place with their friends.

It already feels like a place, not a menu. The social energy is there. The potential is obvious.

Which makes the obvious question unavoidable:

Why isn’t this more popular?

Social + Presence: The Sleeping Giant

Video calls never solved presence. Social feeds never solved connection.

VR actually might.

When avatars stop being novelty and start becoming identity, things change. When worlds become places people return to — not just experiences they sample — network effects kick in.

That’s the inflection point people are sleeping on.

Social Media in VR Is Better Than You Expect

This surprised me more than I expected.

Instagram on the Quest is wild.

Scrolling photos on a massive virtual screen already feels better, but then you hit 3D photos — and it clicks that social media in VR isn’t just a bigger phone screen. It’s a different medium.

Depth matters. Scale matters. Presence matters.

Once you see how naturally Instagram works in VR, it’s easy to imagine what comes next. Threads showing up. Facebook content designed for spatial layouts. Feeds that feel more like rooms than timelines.

It stops being doom‑scrolling and starts feeling more like browsing a space.

Meta already owns the social graph. Putting that graph into a spatial environment changes how people consume content — and how creators think about making it.

This isn’t a distant vision. It’s already peeking through.

Xbox Cloud Gaming in VR Is Absolutely Insane

This deserves its own callout.

Xbox Cloud Gaming on the Quest is ridiculous — in the best way.

You’re playing full console games on a massive virtual screen, floating wherever you want, with no console, no TV, and no cables. Grab a controller, boot a game, and you’re in. It feels less like streaming and more like teleporting your Xbox into a private theater.

Latency is shockingly good. The screen size makes everything feel more immersive. And because it’s VR, you’re not fighting for the living room or negotiating screen time — you’re just there.

This is another example of VR quietly winning without needing exclusive content. It doesn’t replace consoles. It liberates them.

Once you’ve played Xbox this way, going back to a fixed TV setup feels strangely limiting.

Even If You Only Watch Stuff, It’s Worth It

Here’s the part that really breaks people’s brains.

Even if you never touch a game. Even if you never care about avatars, worlds, or social VR.

If all you do is watch movies or sports, the Quest still wins.

A massive virtual screen, perfectly positioned, in your own private space, with zero competition for the TV — it’s unbeatable. Watching a game feels closer to being court-side than sitting on a couch staring at a 65‑inch rectangle.

Once you experience scale like that, it’s hard to go back. Physical TVs start to feel… small.

And that’s the sneaky part.

VR doesn’t need everyone to become a gamer. It just needs to be the best screen in the house.

This Is the Moment for Developers

If you’re a developer, this is the part you should be paying attention to.

VR right now feels like the early days of mobile or social platforms — capable enough to build real things, but still early enough that the rules aren’t set and the winners aren’t locked in.

The tools are there. The hardware is finally good enough. The audience, while not massive, is engaged — and engagement matters more than raw numbers at this stage.

The people who build now aren’t just shipping apps. They’re helping define norms, patterns, and expectations. They’re shaping what “good” looks like in spatial computing.

That’s where the leverage is.

When platforms break through, they don’t reward the people who waited for certainty. They reward the people who helped build the community before it was obvious.

VR feels exactly like that moment.

It’s Not All Perfect (And Motion Sickness Is Still a Thing)

To be clear, this isn’t all glaze.

My wife tried the Quest and was out within minutes. Motion sickness hit hard enough that she just about barfed. She’s always been sensitive to that sort of thing, and VR absolutely exposed it.

That’s still one of the biggest barriers the platform has.

Some people acclimate over time. Some apps are better than others. Passthrough, stationary experiences, and media viewing help. But the reality is that for a non‑trivial chunk of people, VR is still physically uncomfortable.

That’s not a small problem — and it’s one the industry hasn’t fully solved yet.

The encouraging part is that this is a hardware and software problem, not a concept problem. Lighter headsets, higher frame rates, better locomotion design, and smarter defaults will continue to chip away at it.

VR doesn’t need to work for everyone immediately. It just needs that group to keep shrinking.

The Question That Actually Matters

The real question isn’t “Why isn’t VR bigger?”

It’s this:

What happens when the hardware gets boring?

When headsets become lighter, cheaper, and as unremarkable as earbuds, the use cases explode.

And when that happens, the people who wrote VR off will be asking how it “came out of nowhere.”

It didn’t.

They just weren’t looking.

✌️ Steven