Why are there still no *really* good AR apps or games?

It was always speculative that it would be the "next big thing". The basic claim of this tech is that a higher bandwidth screen experience is a better experience - and that's always had practical constraints, like, I'm not replying with a 4k video message here, because it's not the medium for that.

Between AR and VR, AR is the harder to address comprehensively - we knew going in that we can make pretty pictures in VR by leveraging existing CG pipelines, and there's definitely some market for aesthetic immersion in VR. But VR has also mostly hit a wall outside of that realm since it gives up a lot to achieve this goal - cost and accessibility are both much weaker relative to 2D screen experiences. It's badly positioned for consumer use despite intensive marketing in that direction. AR adds the extra claim of making use of more of the real world, and this is still a thing with potential, but again has trouble in many cases justifying itself relative to the headaches - for a lot of applications the quality and kinds of sensor data needs to be higher for it to really give results.

Net result: a bunch of startups got funding to chase after the buzzword, the survivors mostly pivoted into more traditional businesses.

It might be AR is still too risky. For single player games AR is mostly a gimmick, and for multiplayer games you need networking effect, a large enough user base to achieve the viral effect. It doesn't make for a safe investment.

I guess this market is waiting for wearable AR hardware. Oculus should release consumer product in next 12 months, and Apple is also cooking something big behind curtains.

While there are headsets that are cheaper than some mechanical keyboards now, their quality is too poor to be enjoyable (slow motion tracking, low FOV, etc) if they don't outright induce nausea. The really good hardware is still too expensive for the average consumer. Give it a 5-10 years for the price to drop and maybe it'll be more mainstream.

On the other hand, I could also see the tech just fizzle out completely because it'll turn out that most of the population will get motion sickness from VR experiences regardless of tech advancements.

I'd say it's similar to how games took a long time to transition properly to 3D. Most of the early 2.5D or 3D games would probably have done better in 2D. It's hard to say what was the first truly good 3D game, but at some point, we got Half-Life, then Counter-strike, and plenty of games now like Skyrim.

Heck, besides Angry Birds, very few transitioned well to touchscreens. Touchscreen only works because it's a convenient platform, not that it's better at anything.

I think it needs some creative effort as a lot of it is still groundbreaking, and people have difficulty thinking in the "real world" dimension. Remember, a lot of our current technology was probably influenced from sci-fi like Star Trek first. It took some inspiration for operating systems to go from pure text based to windowed, and some more time for users to accept it.

It's possible the first practical use of AR might be like the Iron Man scene where Stark uses it to view the suit in 3D and manipulate the controls. It seems like Magic Leap is working on something like that for education.

Because you can't build a good app or a game if your primary focus is on a gimmick, and AR and VR are essentially just gimmicks.

Occasionally someone will enthuse about a particular car's great Heads Up Display; but I think thats as close to a real world "AR" app as has been realized.

I have this feeling that there's a few really good, but not flashy uses for "AR", things like measuring angles and lengths at a glance in carpentry and construction. These are obvious but not pursued because the "Virtual Reality Will Make Billions" scam / reality distortion effect stomps all over them, and no idea that's not worth billions will be discussed.

Also, "VR/AR" displays are probably progressing, (surely the horking problem has been solved by now, right?) but where's an input method even half as good as a keyboard?

Because it doesn't really add to the fun and it makes people dizzy and sick.

My theory is that for mass adoption to take hold, you've got to have a pioneer set the bar, and once that bar is set and successful, then people will be inspired by that bar, imitate it, and eventually exceed it.

We're in the interstitial space between the technology becoming available and widespread, and what will foster that adoption is for someone to make the first great AR game.

It seems like there are cool fitness apps, no? I've been really tempted by some VR ping pong, boxing, and I just saw an interesting sword fighting game, "Until you fall." Once light headsets come out, VR/AR fitness and highly physical apps might be seriously awesome? Maybe instead of full VR, AR fitness games could help you avoid thrashing not only that virtual Viking but also your house...