RetroFed
Metaverse inventor Neal Stephenson says VR goggles are dead
Powderhornhttps://www.theregister.com/2026/03/24/neal_stephenson_death_of_metaverse/
Science fiction author Neal Stephenson, who coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, has argued he and others who believed immersive environments would require head-mounted hardware got it wrong.
In a post penned to mark Meta’s recent decision to end its work on the Metaverse after blowing through $80 billion, Stephenson said that twenty years ago, when he worked at virtual reality hardware company Magic Leap, he would ask “Do you really think that twenty years from now everyone is still going to be going around all day staring at little rectangles in their hands?”
“At the time it seemed obvious to me that the answer was no,” he wrote. Now he thinks that another 20 years into the future, devices like smartphones will still dominate. “Or at least that is the case if the only alternative is wearing things on their faces.”
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“Never happen” is quite an ignorant prediction to make when it’s already been happening since the 90s. Sounds just like another one of the people that think everyone has to adopt something for it to be viable.
I actually know several people IRL who have VR headsets, so it’s not super uncommon. It doesn’t have to be “for everyone” to succeed - look at the hang glider market for example. How many people are flying around on hang gliders these days? It’s still going on, and there’s millions of dollars in the hang glider market. I only know one guy who used to fly around on one but I don’t know if he still does.
https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/my-prodigal-brainchild
Read his post. This article is lazy, he at no point says it will “never happen”. What he does do is argue that there’s not much of a business case, they aren’t really doing anything with it that’s new and good enough to warrant that, which makes it unlikely to ever be a major success. He also concedes that after the $80 million dollar failure of the metaverse his opinion might be worth ignoring. So, he isn’t really drawing a hardline on any of these opinions either.
after the $80 million dollar failure of the metaverse
Billion, not million.
Right, good call, those zeroes probably matter to someone at Meta
The fact those zeroes didn’t matter enough is the interesting part. I’d be happy with either 80 million or billion, the fact they kind of shrugged off this experiment is both mind blowing and completely unsurprising at the same time.
queerlilhayseedEven meeting him where he is i.e. headsets replacing pocket computers, “never” is a long time. I am no sort of expert but I don’t think there’s any technical reason we couldn’t achieve some kind of headgear that’s a suitable replacement for a smartphone. After that, it’s only a matter of time before everyone living is used to them being around, at which point I think they’d be just as easily accepted as cars or skyscrapers, for better or worse. My money’s on it happening eventually.
Yeah, there’s lots of takes on technology that are outlandish, but something like VR/AR HMDs becoming so unobtrusive that they become common seems perfectly viable. Not yet, but I could easily see it being capable of happening in the next century at most, if not far sooner. We aren’t there yet, but it doesn’t seem far off. The issue with current HMDs is mostly just that they’re too heavy to be comfortable, which is a solvable hardware issue.
caseyweedermanI really can’t stand him, he’s so hardball. Survival of the fittest etc. I wouldn’t consider him an authority.
I do think VR has its place, just not in every living room or every metro car. It was way overhyped but I do think it adds value in some cases.
AR probably even more. The stupid thing is just that Meta and Google always stick cameras on them. A heads up display in glasses would be useful in many cases. The camera id never use but it makes it insta creepy. Of course these companies are super creepy already too.
I liked ready player one a lot more though it was a bit of a nerd circlejerk.
I don’t see a point to AR without cameras. Text translation and context-based information are all I would want, maybe a navigation aid, everything else just seems annoying to have right in front of me.
Other than a steering wheel, I would put a vr headset as critical for a racing Sim setup. I can’t go back to screens after that level of immersion. Its so insane being able to stick your head out of the window while you’re drifting. I’d take a quest 2 over the most expensive screens you can buy.
Edit: also flying sims, especially dog fighting. You have to really be able to look around and vr makes that possible. Before that you would have to build one of those bubbles with a projector and it would look so shit.
AR without cameras is kind of pointless, imo. The creep factor is huge, though. It would be reasonable (not easy, but reasonable) if people could curate what information about themselves was available to whom, but that would preclude the corporations having access to whatever information they could glean about everyone. And if they have it, why couldn’t they provide it to whoever is willing to pay them a small monthly fee for it?
Until that problem is solved, AR is going to be a very tough sell.
For me it would work. Just getting the notifications from my watch in the glasses would help a lot, and directions too. I had a Google glass and I’d often tape off the camera if I’d take it out in public (with big red tape so it’s visible). It would still be handy to see messages and maps.
At the very least it would need a physical sliding cover over the camera.
talStephenson actually specifically addressed how people would feel uncomfortable around AR users from a privacy standpoint back in Snow Crash (as well as the fashion side).
It’s a gargoyle, standing in the dimness next to a shanty. Just in case he’s not already conspicuous enough, he’s wearing a suit. Hiro starts walking toward him. Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider, these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.
Gargoyles are no fun to talk to. They never finish a sentence. They are adrift in a laser-drawn world, scanning retinas in all directions, doing background checks on everyone within a thousand yards, seeing everything in visual light, infrared, millimeter. wave radar, and ultrasound all at once. You think they’re talking to you, but they’re actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes flying overhead. For all he knows, Lagos is standing there measuring the length of Hiro’s cock through his trousers while they pretend to make conversation.
Gsus4Wasn’t snowcrash satirical?
I don’t consider it satire, but I believe it was originally going to be a graphic novel which explains some of its silliness/campiness.
I thought it was supposed to be a cash grab because Stephenson was hurting for cash so wrote a book that was real campy and targeted edgy geeky crowd that wanted more fantasy than harder scifi and it ended up being even more of a success than he had anticipated. So to a degree satirical and maybe a bit eye rolling to who the expected readership would be. Not mean but I remember reading the book and thinking these characters are like how someone would poke at super geek scifi fantasies
Have you read The Big U?
I have not. Maybe I’ll check that one out
It’s all of the silliness of Snow Crash without the science fiction.
I listened to a podcast where the main people argued that it was parody. Mona Lisa Overpod, Ep 20 / MLOP 20: Snow Crash. Spreaker link: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/mlop-20-snow-crash–65322706 . Or choose your favorite podcast site.
I’m pretty sure it already did happen. HTC Vive 2016, Oculus 2017, Valve Index 2019, Steam Frame 2026 assuming that still happens with the AI bubble fixing everything up; but that’s not the fault of anything with VR.
So, the issue is basically that a lot of people — I think including Stephenson, given his portrayal of the Metaverse in Snow Crash — expected that the bar was getting viable VR headsets, and then getting over the hump of writing enough initial software, and then it’d just explode.
The thing is that we have VR headsets that more-or-less work for playing VR games. We don’t have as many VR games as we do games designed around conventional hardware, but they’re out there. But…we haven’t really seen that explosion. People haven’t said “hey, I’ll drop maybe $300-$1k to have a larger FOV with more peripheral vision, some additional immersion, and the ability to use my head as an input.”
Like, you’re saying “I can get a VR headset and play VR games in 2026”, which is true. But the state of the field is just nowhere near where advocates hoped it would be.
They just need to keep getting smaller, cheaper, and continue improving the display/optics. Quest 3 was lighter but not light enough. I think the Steam Frame is listed as lighter. Thing is they’re both neither super high res nor do they have incredible OLED/micro-LED displays. The upcoming Pico headset that was announced would certainly be too expensive and probably still not light enough. Someday though
When you can get 480hz and high quality optics you can get rid of the nausea problem from your brain seeing not matching up with what your balance feels. You’ll also need wireless power and wireless high bandwidth low latency video streaming, then you can have a fairly light set of large glasses that aren’t sweaty. That’s all achievable fairly soon, within two decades maybe.
That’s all achievable fairly soon, within two decades maybe.
Sure, if there’s: (a) investment in it, and (b) engineering and research behind it.
The person in the article is doubting that there will be A, and the way things are trending in America I doubt B will occur here.
Political stability isn’t just a “nice to have” it’s “table stakes” as the suits are fond of saying. People are not going to achieve much advanced research in a country that is actively collapsing.
But who knows? Maybe China will crack it.
Codename Eagle came out in 1999. World of Warcraft in 2004. Why has he decided that Fortnite and Roblox are the Metaverse?
I don’t want to wear a VR headset all the time, but I sure do love a good VR game when I’m in the mood.
Maybe, but I’d lean towards disagreeing.
Current HMDs have poor angular resolution, and are not drop-in replacement for existing monitors.
I’d get an HMD once it hits something roughly comparable to today’s monitors in terms of angular resolution, and comfortable to use for as long. I probably won’t buy one just to play VR games. I don’t think that we will never get to the point that they’re a monitor replacement, though. It’s more-portable and can fill more of your visual field.
And I think that at that point, it becomes a lot more appealing. You can have a private screen that people can’t see. You can potentially consume less power than a laptop screen, since you can have a dark environment where the light only needs to go to one place. Laptop form factor is kind of defined by the display; if you don’t have to do that, you can use other portable computer form factors. You can use the thing while walking.
Once you have an HMD as a monitor replacement, then it’s a smaller bump to use it for VR purposes.
Stephenson’s argument is mostly that either (a) it fails on the fashion front or (b) it’s creepy to have people just staring at random things. I think that fashion has been pretty flexible over the years, and that people already just talk at the air for cell phones with Bluetooth headsets.
I think that if we never get mainstream VR HMDs, it’ll be because by the time we get there, we have some sort of direct-to-brain connection that just supersedes them. Not because we can’t make something that people will accept because of fashion concerns or because they’re worried about looking strange by looking in random directions using it.
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VR still lives for gaming! Steam VR offers some great experiences, with mods taking that further, and the upcoming Steam Frame headset (if AI doesn’t steal every component in existence). Don’t expect growth for daily digital tasks (Apple VR and the like tried and failed), but the niche has been carved out for gamers!
I got Virtual Home Theater on Steam to watch 3D movies, it’ s a great experience.
Half-Life: Alyx and the Psychonauts VR game are also great. Pro Tip: The HP Reverb G2 is really cheap and it’s got 2160p per eye. It’s not officially supported anymore since Microsoft canceled their VR platform, but Oasis drivers make them work better than ever.
Can’t go wrong with an affordable headset with solid resolution :) and agreed, Alyx was an absolute banger!
Might have to try that home theater offering 🎭
Lots of multiplayer VR FPS’s too, pretty fun! Forefront’s been my Battlefield fix, way more fun than BF6 wound up being at a lower price, and I do love VR tank-time lol
TBH though, the best VR experiences I’ve had have been survival crafting games :) loads of fun and super immersive, especially as you build up your base and get to actually be inside of it, then run out for some fighting and looting lol but it really shines in multiplayer, and for whatever godforsaken reason all the devs that do wind up making survival crafting VR games leave ‘em as single-player :/ at the moment best multiplayer survival crafting games for VR are mods for Valheim and 7 Days To Die - wish we could get some similar experiences that are actually built for VR! Feels like that’s been a drought since The Forest did their VR mode
Stephenson uses Substack? I really would have imagined him using something more bespoke or Ghost.
I don’t think VR need to be the “next big thing” but it is just a fun little thing. I have an old HTC Vive and I love firing up beat saber and taking turns with folks when I have company over.
Also vr chat is great!
It seem like people are obsessed with making vr better amd more widespread. I’m content with it to just be a fun little thing I break out every once in a while
That’s not what inventing means. That’s like saying George Lucas “invented” hyperspace.
This isn’t even the actual article headline, it’s “Head-mounted VR hardware will never happen, says Neal Stephenson - who coined the term ‘metaverse’”. OP?
The general rule on this instance is to use the link headline, to avoid people editorializing them. A lot of times sites will have a different in-article headline (or even change it post-publication).
Yeah I figure it was something like that.
I run the hed connected with the link when posting.
I never understood the hype of VR goggles beyond things like VR Chat combined with body trackers. Fun to watch people make an ass of themselves in VR games, but that only lasts so long before it gets boring.
That’s my take, at least.
PC VR is amazing, but still the number of worthwhile full feature games is still small. Meta is just claiming VR is dead because their product sucks: their game library is shit, the metaverse was a joke, and their headsets are privacy nightmares. “Nobody wants what we’re selling, so obviously it’s the tech’s fault.”
I love VR and still gave away my quest 4 and deleted my account. I’m happily waiting for the Steam Frame to come out.
I really enjoyed Beat Saber for a while. It seemed like the only game that really made VR worth it as a hard requirement, though. Pavlov was fun for a while, too, but my knees definitely suffered.
Went from believing “yes” is inevitable to believing “no” is inevitable instead of learning the lesson that most of this is just random
It’s funny because literally in Snow Crash there are guys who wear giant head-mounted camera/ antenna/ hacking rigs, that the MC says are weirdos for doing it. The Metaverse in Snow Crash is a ‘full dive’ thing you basically plug into like the Matrix, not a headset. How they went and reversed those roles, and tried to market tiny screens strapped to your head as a Metaverse, is beyond me.
The absolute hubristic ignorance of tech bros, man…
the tech isn’t any good yet, but I believe smart glasses could be a good candidate.
I got bad news
These devices were never gonna gain mass appeal, it’s simply too expensive to develop for in exchange for a significantly smaller userbase
I don’t think the issue is the goggles as much as, people multi task so much.
They watch TV while on laptops whike eating and checking their phones and being with friends of family.
Even with some magic virtual version of this, its still too disconnecting. Plus, if you are, I don’t know, joint watching a movie in VR, no one wants to pull out their VR phone to heck an actors name on IMDB, or stop their VR Fortnite matchto take a bite of their sandwhich which they just plow into their headset.
So this guy made the same prediction once already and was completely wrong
Never heard of sunglasses? Creeps have been using them to covertly ogle strangers in public for generations now, and yet the majority of people own and use them.
This guy is a fucking moron.
Vr would be fine if any complex games arose, and the ones that existed weren’t murdered to make trend chasing pvpve slop
I noticed this year that none of the VR games were on sale on steam during the Spring sale, like they were just ignored entirely.
I do think VR is back to dead for a while. Hit sweaty goggles that make a third of people sick just aint it.
Make them cheaper and higher resolution than large curved monitors, and reasonably light and untethered, and you might get a surprise.
https://mrtv.co/2025/03/meganex-superlight-8k-review-the-new-king-of-clarity-comfort/
A bit pricy, with too many limitations (for me it must support open source which means mostly AMD), but definitely a step in the right direction.
That size makes me think it also likely has a battery life of seconds.
If I remember correctly it is cable bound either to a PC or a battery pack.
Yeah, it definitely won’t survive an 8 hour day.