Virtual reality to replace traditional displays "in a couple of decades", says Oculus founder
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey believes VR headsets will have made TVs and monitors obsolete within 20 years.
"I think there's almost no way that traditional displays will be around in a couple decades because it just won't be feasible," Luckey said in a group video interview transcribed by Gamespot.
"Why in the world would you buy a 60" TV that even if it were dirt cheap, for that, it's still going to cost a lot to ship it and make it from raw materials? A VR headset is going to be much better and much cheaper and you can take it anywhere."
Of course, we're not there yet; there are only 85,000 Oculus Rift dev kits in the wild, for one thing.
"It's not where we need it to be to be really mass-market," Luckey said.
That said, Luckey commented that it's getting good enough that the tech's potential has become clear - as evidenced by the Oculus Facebook acquisition and Sony's Project Morpheus, presumably.
In the future, Luckey sees VR embracing more than just visual technologies, or "certainly we'll never replace human touch-based interactions".
For some reason, this seems to be a thing he wants to do, saying that VR replacing our current methods of interaction and communication would save resources consumed in travel without leaving people isolated.
"Physically isolated, maybe. But I don't think socially isolated. If anything, I think VR is one of the most potentially connecting technologies we have out there," he said.
"I guess you will have to ask yourself, 'Why do we care if we're physically isolated if we're mentally connected?' If you can perfectly simulate reality, why do you need to actually go see people in real life?"
"Eventually, VR is going to be good enough some day [where it's] as good or close to as good as real life. And if you want to simulate sitting in a room watching a TV, you'll be able to do that. How good is has to be for someone to accept it, that's a different level for each person. But we'll get there eventually."
Speaking as hug addict, that's going to be a pretty high level, dude.