Jan 2, 2019 · 38m · a16z
a16z Podcast | Mapping the Future of Virtual Reality
Kyle Russell · 19m spoken Chris Dixon · 11m spoken Saku Panditaratne · 5m spoken Michael Copeland · 43s spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the a16z Podcast, host Michael Copeland and tech experts Chris Dixon, Saku Panditaratne, and Kyle Russell analyze the evolving landscape of virtual and augmented reality, highlighting how presence, enterprise productivity tools, and technical hardware convergence will drive mainstream adoption beyond video games.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 5.9 Guest teaching 3.3 Guest disagreement 1.1 The host pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 17:29 Saku counters Kyle's emphasis on haptic feedback
Saku directly dissents from Kyle's focus on hard-science haptics, arguing that consumers can have highly compelling VR experiences without complex bodily sensory feedback.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 14:59 Chris rejects the 'gamers-first' market assumptionChris explicitly challenges the prevailing industry consensus that VR adoption will be driven solely by video gamers, arguing business and enterprise users may lead adoption.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:11 Saku explains light field technology capture mechanicsSaku breaks down how light field capture differs fundamentally from traditional video by recording light angles, creating massive data streaming challenges for current infrastructure.
The host holds their own ▶ 12:32 Chris details the economic and technical shift in 3D spatial designChris demonstrates deep domain knowledge by explaining how native 3D spatial tools in VR overcome the UX limitations of traditional 2D screen CAD software.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mapping the Current VR Hardware Landscape | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Chris sets up the discussion by categorizing the market into high-end PC tethered VR versus low-end mobile VR. Kyle elaborates on hardware specs and launch timelines for Oculus and Vive, while Saku notes market positioning. | |
| Defining Presence and Room-Scale Immersion | 5 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Chris articulates the technical definition of presence as a sensory threshold and refutes popular media comparisons between high-end VR and 3D TV. Kyle and Saku outline the hardware requirements for room-scale tracking. | |
| Technical Challenges in VR Content Creation and Streaming | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Chris raises specific technical bottlenecks like video compression and frame rate thresholds (90fps), offering live event mixed-reality examples. Saku and Kyle educate on light field capture and multi-view video transcoding. | |
| 3D Spatial Tools and Enterprise Applications | 7 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Chris demonstrates strong industry knowledge by explaining how 3D VR spatial tools invert traditional 2D CAD modeling paradigms, pointing to enterprise willingness to pay. He challenges the assumption that VR is purely for gaming. | |
| Distinguishing Engineering Hurdles from Hard Science | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Chris frames a foundational question on whether VR progress relies on predictable engineering under Moore's Law or hard neuroscience. Saku mildly dissents from Kyle regarding the immediate necessity of haptic feedback. | |
| Exploring Non-Gaming Use Cases: Events, Education, and Skills | 7 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Chris draws historical parallels to early PC and mobile misdiagnosed use cases, proposing that VR's core value proposition is digital time travel and teleportation across education and simulation. | |
| Social VR, Virtual Presence, and Backend Infrastructure | 7 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Chris analyzes remote team dynamics and high-stakes sales to explain why eye contact and subtle spatial cues matter. He connects sci-fi concepts from Ready Player One to portfolio investments like Improbable. | |
| Comparing Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Chris proposes viewing AR and VR on a continuous spectrum rather than as binary opposites, highlighting computer vision and SLAM physics challenges. Kyle explains spatial tracking compute demands. | |
| 2016 VR Outlook and Consumer Conversion | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Chris asserts that the key metric for 2016 VR success is total hands-on demos given rather than initial hardware sales, emphasizing retail salesperson training and skeptic conversion. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Russell: Apple and Google have hundreds working on VR
“It's clear that they have hundreds of people working on these”
Russell: Mobile will permanently be ten times larger than desktop
“Mobile as a platform is, you know, 10 times larger than desktop will ever be”
Panditaratne: Near-term VR adoption will be limited to gamers and prosumers
“The next couple of years will be the years of VR for gamers and for prosumers. So people who are really enthusiastic about VR are the ones who have the high-end version. And like the mobile's just like a teaser for the general popular.”
Dixon: 10 million people will try high-end VR in 2016
“Even if, you know, only, I don't know, a million people get these devices this year maybe ten million will get to try it, and, you know, some significant subset of those might go start companies”
Dixon: Critics comparing VR to 3D TV haven't experienced high-end VR
“Some of the critics, most of whom I think haven't tried the high end VR, compare VR to three D TV. There's, you know, with the low end devices, it is a little bit like three D TV and that you have just a sort of, you know, you have this parallax effect, but it…”
Russell: Mobile VR is a non-revolutionary teaser that feels gimmicky
“If you're looking at mobile VR, it's a step up from the kind of video where you move your phone around you. But it's still at times can feel gimmicky. It really depends on implementation, but It's not that revolutionary of an experience. It's a teaser.”
Panditaratne: VR engineering is fundamentally about crossing a binary presence threshold
“I think one thing that's interesting is that in VR, because of the threshold is so binary, a lot of the technical problems are about getting over the threshold. So whether that's in capture or rendering or any of the, or even the headset technology it's really…”
Dixon: CAD software will move to VR within two years
“I think CAD, for example, just no brainer is going to move to a VR in the next couple of years.”
Dixon: Enterprise users may adopt virtual reality before gamers
“People, people just, this assumption that it's all going to be gamers, I think, is just, is highly, to me, is highly questionable, and it could very well be business users like this at first.”
Russell: Hard science VR advances will drive mainstream applications in 10 years
“I think that the hard science things are going to be what lead to the totally unexpected use cases that we're all going to be used to 10 years from now.”
Russell: Processing one second of volumetric capture takes an hour
“And right now they can, that takes, like, an hour of processing to get one second worth of footage.”
Russell: Entire events will be recorded via volumetric capture within years
“And, you know, over the next couple of years as volumetric capture kind of, you know, it's invested in more you know, new breakthroughs happen because people are really paying attention to it because of VR arising. You'll start to see just events entirely reco…”
Dixon: VR isn't just gaming, but virtual time travel and teleportation
“And so I think games are sort of that version of VR where everyone thinks, Is games, and we'll kind of look back and laugh. I mean, I think it's basically, my view, I mean, this is the, obviously, optimistic view, is that it's basically anything where you'd wa…”
Russell: VR facial tracking will enable realistic virtual meetings within a couple years
“And I think we're only a couple years out from having things where it's tracking the muscles on your face, tracking the movement of your eyes, where your avatars could really reflect what you look like at that time, and you could do things like have an entire …”
Dixon: Andreessen Horowitz has invested in VR infrastructure startup Improbable
“We have, yeah, we have an investment here in Probable which is, I think of as you know, if you read Ready Player One, which hopefully the listeners have read, it's a canonical VR book the there's a section where they describe the system called Oasis that's in,…”
Dixon: VR headsets will soon scan surrounding rooms and overlay virtual objects
“VR will very soon sort of scan the room around you, and put you back in the room, and add things onto the room”
Russell: VR will not fill micro-moments of downtime like smartphones do
“What makes mobile devices like smartphones so powerful is it can fill kind of the empty times throughout your day... Whereas, you know, with VR, you're not gonna fill empty time. AR, you know, the case could be made that you could use in that way.”
Russell: Millions will get free Gear VR headsets in coming months
“So we're gonna see potentially millions of people get a VR headset for free in the next couple of months.”
Dixon: Demos given is the key success metric for high-end VR
“I think the key, for me, the key metric is not number of units sold on the high end. It's the number of demos given, kind of like, it's how many people get to try high-end VR, which I just think will create a whole new wave of excitement and new companies and …”