VR is a huge emerging market that will settle in particular key industries, entertainment, training, gaming, architecture, property sales and yes billions will be made in these areas.
I do think that VR will literally hit the limits of functionality and will be stuck in these key areas however AR is the sleeping giant here.
I agree the plumber down the road will not want or know one end of VR or AR.
That being said when the current technical limitations of AR have been addressed AR will be as ubiquitous as Google is now.
The potential for AR is far greater to society than VR. Imagine your entire digital world transposed into a device less AR and voice experience. Or even to wind back a little to an actual glasses style experience and your “how to” AR experience turns into something extremely useful (dependant on the AR content being relevant, up-to-date and an AI experience that can guide the AR dummy for unexpected real world events).
Whilst VR will find itself constrained in very specific and profitable key fields this is not true of AR which has huge potential in many areas.
Apple has recently released an AR development toolkit giving developers more scope to create. Google has recently released a consumer product allowing user to take a pictures and videos and objects are recognised using an AI Algorithm ultimately a first step in object recognition in AR, and Microsoft’s “Mixed Reality” Holo Lens is gathering pace.
There are quite a number of hurdles to overcome for AR to become a true reality, namely; computing power, visual display/projection, object tracking, real and augmented object interaction to name a few.
