Mike Abrash – chief Scientist at Oculus, gave, as always, an inspiring keynote at this year’s F8 conference. He gave a great talk, coined the term “virtual computing” to glom together VR, AR, the cloud, and how it’ll all mix together. Best quote:
20 or 30 years from now, I predict that instead of carrying stylish smartphones everywhere, we’ll wear stylish glasses. Those glasses will offer VR, AR,and everything in-between and we’ll wear them all day and use them in almost every aspect of our lives. The distinction between VR and AR will vanish. The real and virtual worlds will just mix and match throughout the day according to our needs.
The only part I disagree with is the 20-30 years – it’s too powerful of a metaphoric, enabling technology to wait that long. Think of something 20x more powerful and useful than a smart phone, and it gets rid of the phone. 5-6 years before we start seeing early commercial adopters, 10 years it’ll be unthinkable not to have them. In 20-30 years they’ll just look way cooler.