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VR Was the 'Next Big Thing' 20 Years Ago. What's Different Now?

The foundation for broad adoption is more substantial, but content could be problematic.

Perhaps it's just because enthusiasm is a prerequisite for technological progress, but sometimes the tech world can get ahead of itself, hyping up a new technology a bit too soon. The current hype around virtual reality, for instance, sounds awfully similar to hype we heard twenty years ago, which turned out to be either a head fake or a failure, depending on how harsh you want to be.

Tony Parisi, who describes himself as a VR OG, helped create VRML—a universal language for authoring 3D applications over the web that was superseded by X3D—during the 90s VR wave. He currently works as the head of VR and AR at Unity, a popular 2D and 3D game engine. "To say it was a little early would be an understatement," he said. "People barely had the Internet, barely knew what a webpage was."

This go-round, though, things are different, he added. Computing infrastructure is radically improved; consumers are used to interactive media and increasingly expect it; and there is a class of creators who know how to work in 3D. "Folks have grown up watching CG movies and playing video games. If you put a magazine in front of the youngest generation, they're gonna tap it and expect it to do something back," Parisi explained. "And there are millions of 3D developers out there. That was not true twenty years ago."

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