The screen is the first form, not the last
The destination is a world you enter rather than open. Stated because it is honestly the ambition — and dated by capability rather than by calendar, like everything else here.
Nothing beyond Stage I should be planned around.
One world, progressively more present
- Flat screen
PC and console first, and excellent there. If the world is not worth living in on a monitor, no headset will save it.
- Spatial
The same persistent world, entered in VR by the people who want to. One world, two ways in — never a separate, emptier version.
- Presence
Full-body movement, spatial voice, hands, weight and distance. A city you have physically walked through rather than navigated.
- Continuity
The long ambition, stated plainly because it is the destination: a world you enter rather than open, and leave rather than close.
What has to be true before presence is even attempted
Published instead of a date. If these are not met, the answer is that it is not ready, however loudly anyone wants it.
- The flat-screen world must be genuinely good, with a population that stays.
- Simulation and networking must hold at civilization scale before adding presence to the problem.
- Comfort, safety and accessibility standards published before the first spatial client ships.
- No mechanic that only works in a headset, and none that punishes the people without one.
- Time inside the world must never be engineered to be hard to leave.
The last commitment is the important one. A world designed to be hard to leave is a trap, not a civilization.