The CAD and Computing markets aren't significant enough to drive GPU development and still provide enough demand to keep production high and costs low. There is a reason graphics cards used to cost $10k or more in that segment.
(ok, I'm ditching most of the quotes so I don't break the forum
)
We really weren't talking about the effect high-end gamers have on the ability of consumers to afford solutions which were previously unreachable. A huge chunk of the cost of those graphics cards was R&D, and those companies paid it because it made them money. So rather than the graphics card companies needing to extract those costs from fewer units, they can be amortized over a larger user base. These advancements were taking place, and were paid for, long before the advent of 3D gaming. And virtually every physical product is simulated and designed digitally now. You can't watch a movie without seeing some very high-end 3D work (even in traditional, non-animated film.) A buddy of mine did IT at a large productivity software company (you've heard of them), and talked occasionally about the hardware they used in just his small branch. $200,000 boxes, and they had multiples. I think the professional market is much, much larger than you profess to know.
VR on phones isn't at it's critical marketing point yet. Samsung wants to be established in that space for when it gets there. It's coming. What happens after that remains to be seen, but I predict that due to the lower cost of entry, it will be quite successful. In a short time, I suspect that VR capabilities for phones will be as common as cameras are currently. Which phone provides the best VR experience, will play heavily in the consumers decision on which to purchase. Google is why Samsung is so heavy in the game.
The future of warfare is automation and robotics. At some point, VR headsets will be as common as night vision goggles.
Yet no technology comes about without passing this dilemma. You can always make short term profits on making a consumer product with existing technology, but VR is currently falling just short of the mark even with the latest tech, so it is going to take more development to make this take off.
The visionaries sell the ideas, and there's a lot of "if we just add this, or fix that, then the world will be our oyster." That will go on for some time, and that's where things are now. If it bears fruit, or at least looks like it could, then more money is invested. If not, shareholders and bean-counters slam the brakes. No money, no development.
Most businesses that fail are small businesses.
By definition, ALL startups (<5 years old) are "small businesses".
The reasons they fail are almost too numerous to list. And yes, even those with smart people behind them, with substantial investment, go down as well. In those cases, it's often that the idea/product wasn't as marketable as was thought, or couldn't deliver what was promised, and the cost/time required to get it to the point that it would be, was not attractive to those investing in it. Publicly traded companies crap out all of the time, and it took a while for them to even reach the point of being publicly traded. If this wasn't happening, there would be no such thing as high-risk investments, nor overnight millionaires.
Point being, large investment does not equate to a successful business. As for the term, there's a reason why big companies never want to see a negative trend in their earnings, even for a few quarters. Investors start selling, and their stock falls. Falling stock prices erodes investor confidence and operating capital starts to dry up. Again, no operating capital, no further development.
Rich people are rich, because their gains outweighed their losses. Risk is risk. Smart people do what they can to mitigate it to the extent possible, and try to make all the right choices. But at the end of the day, investing in anything new and unproven, is a much larger risk than investing in something which has an established market and a proven record of return. Investment companies look for the things they believe, through whatever market research they have available, will have the highest likelihood of a substantial return, while realizing that whatever they throw in is "at risk" (meaning, they could lose most if not all of what they invest). Few invest stupidly and lose their money, and few become rich through luck. But both do happen, and even with the best research, some things just don't work out in the end. That's where diversification comes into play.
I can see where you might get the idea that a company with billions of dollars doesn't care about investing 100 million and losing it. Companies like Google and Amazon seem to throw away millions on dumb ideas all the time. But in each and every case, they weigh the risks and are prepared to take a hit if it fails.
Ok, now explain how this is any different from any other large investor? Unless you are making the claim that some of them are "all in" and not ready to take that hit.
Yes, I am exaggerating, but let's be honest, 20 years ago the dream of a 5" display with over 8 million pixels and a wide color gamut and high dynamic range of brightness was the stuff of the most outrageous science fiction. Yet I can hold one in my hand today
Here's the problem. If VR/AR doesn't make it, there's virtually no other reason to keep pushing the screen size down and pixel density up. 4k is overkill for a handheld display, and it wouldn't even be that high now, were it not for the cell phone market, where, you know, more is always better. And we all know that those who just had to have a 4k display will be complaining about refresh rates, battery life, or the size of the phone to house a proper battery.
I don't know, a lot of what we are talking about is miniaturization, efficiency and power storage, and we are very close to physical limits of what can be done conventionally and safely on a number of these fronts. The only good thing is that on the display side of things, there isn't much which relates solely to VR, so as advances occur organically over time in those fields of study, the results will be useful at a later date for VR. But even with an unlimited budget, getting past some of these hurdles can take an amount of time which we probably can't even quantify at the moment.