MISSING THE MOMENT: VIRTUAL REALITY'S BREAKOUT STILL ELUSIVE

Virtual reality — computer-generated 3D environments that can range from startlingly realistic to abstract wonderlands — has been on the cusp of wide acceptance for years without ever really taking off.

The pandemic should have been VR’s big moment, offering an escape for millions of locked-in households. Special headsets and gloves let people interact with a 360-degree, three-dimensional environment, seemingly a good fit for people stuck indoors. But consumers preferred simpler and more accessible tech like Zoom, Nintendo Switch, and streaming services like Netflix.

It’s the latest disappointment in an industry famous for stop-start progress.

Patrick Susmilch, 33, an administrative assistant in Los Angeles, figured it was time for a VR headset after the lockdown began. He has a PlayStation and a Nintendo Switch and was spending about an hour and a half a day gaming when he couldn’t do outdoor hobbies like rock climbing at the beginning of the pandemic. He had tried an Oculus when it was still a Kickstarter project in 2013 and thought it would be ready for prime time in 2020.

“I was stuck at home here in L.A.,” he said. “I thought now must be the time.”

Industry observers have thought the same thing for years. Facebook was so wowed by early demonstrations of the Oculus Rift back in 2012 that it bought the company for $2 billion. Rivals like the HTC Vive and Samsung’s Gear launched in 2015. The Oculus Rift finally went on sale in 2016.

But consumers have balked at the hardware’s expense: a headset costs several hundred dollars, the same price as video game consoles that support hundreds of games. Early VR headsets also lacked a game or service that would make them seem indispensable, like web browsers for consumer PCs or the mobile Internet for iPhones. Headsets’ hefty weight, slow software, and tendency to sometimes cause nausea also kept VR from taking off.