The biggest problem I have with "Will Ready Player One ever be real?" stories is the lack of platform discussion. Come, friends, journey with me through Sci-Fi nerddom.
Awhile back I was talking to other nerds about how close Earth: Final Conflict got to a couple of future things we have today. Video chatting, portable computers making "desk" computers less useful, that sort of thing. It's a cool thing to go back and see.
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But the hangup in that show for a realistic future is the use of a single platform. Everyone is on the same network, has the same features, and mostly uses the same tech. Basically nothing about our world today works that way. Calls and texts are mostly universal now, that's it.
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Ready Player One puts The Oasis as a centralized platform, which made sense in that universe because its initial selling point was education. Put this headset on everyone and you don't have to pay for schools. Gross in other ways, but it set the groundwork for that platform.
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Even if that were to work in one place today, it's never going to be a global event in our lifetime. There's not a single global need for a single VR or AR layer, and capitalism creates space for competing features in that endless dance. You'd get a VR equivalent of iMessage.
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"But SteamVR" No. Steam has done a decent job offering a centralized hub for the Desktop systems, but it needs to live in standalone headsets and that isn't happening in this or even the next generation. SteamVR is probably the closest, but it's still way, way off.
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