Google Trend is a wonderful tool that helps us to understand how a topic is evolving in the audience. I made this small research moved by curiosity and to search an answer to all the VR detractors.
Let’s start with the main topics. Virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality.
The topic virtual reality is the most used on google and have its peaks around december. Augmented reality is a less interesting topic and mixed reality entered only in the second part of 2016. I think this trend denotes some similarities and confirm the Gartner Hype Cycle. VR after the 2016 hype, went to the through of disillusionment and this year reached the plateau of productivity. But why if the searching trends are going down. I think the audience knows about VR, now it is a reality (sorry for the word pun) and less interest on a topic doesn’t mean automatically a bad thing. Other situation on Augmented reality that is still climbing the hill to the plateau due to lack of technology and high prices. We’ll see in the future when AR HMD’s will be on the market for a more affordable price. MR has the same problem is a new technology and sometimes is not clear what it is and here we enter the Terms war with XR etc.
I suppose the nexte year will be a very important year for this technologies.