Days after reviewing Meta’s newest VR headset, the Quest 3, last fall, I was hospitalized with high blood pressure. Although the two events were unrelated, the latter changed my life quite a bit. Besides needing to pay even more attention to my eating habits, and going on a lot of new meds, I was told to focus on getting regular cardio exercise. These were familiar reminders: I’ve faced this path before.
When I told a friend I needed to exercise more, she recommended a VR fitness app called Supernatural on the Quest. I laughed because I’d already tried it, but this time I was hearing a testimonial from someone I didn’t even know used VR. She got the Quest 2 as a gift earlier in the year and has been using it ever since. So I joined again too.
I’ve been doing daily VR workouts for months now. The Quest VR headset is my purpose-based fitness device. Meanwhile, downstairs, my oldest son plays Beat Saber and The Walking Dead on Quest 2. For him, it’s his game console.
The future is now the present. Welcome to VR and AR, circa 2024. While Apple and the forthcoming Vision Pro represent an exciting potential future for the technology, Meta’s Quest and headsets like it are the already real and sometimes functional present.
But can these devices do even more? Can they transcend being game consoles, fitness devices and experimental toys? Will VR and AR, in a sense, grow up? It’s something I’ve seen slowly emerging throughout the pandemic years and the obsession with the metaverse, but in 2024 we may finally see products and apps that bring virtual augmented reality into the same functional universe as our phones and computers, maybe finally leading to mass adoption like smartphones over a decade ago.
Apple Vision Pro: The device that could change the landscape
I saw a glimpse of the immediate future of AR and VR in 2023. Apple’s Vision…
Read the full article here