Interview
Jessica Brillhart, Immersive Director, on VR and AR
Y CombinatorJessica Brillhart, Craig Cannon, Andrew Peterman, Michael Hodapp, Virginia Pigato, Can Olcer, Matt MacVey, Tony Cassara
- The VR medium is expected to solidify into a dominant force, making course corrections difficult, while machine learning and VR are predicted to become integral to daily life as systems shift toward adaptive learning models.
- Immersive technologies including VR, AR, and mixed reality are anticipated to converge into a unified environment, with AR serving as an accessible entry point that complements VR, eventually leading to volumetric, positionally wireless headsets that support full mobility rather than seated experiences.
- Content creation will shift away from traditional Hollywood-style studios toward diverse pockets of creativity, with a specific emphasis on functional, helpful, and artistic works rather than purely utilitarian or boring outputs.
- Storytelling mechanics in VR are expected to evolve from active "telling" to "potential story" formats where the audience decodes meaning, focusing on transmitting core truths through interactivity, agency, and limitations rather than preconceived narrative structures.
- Key examples of successful narrative integration include games like Florence, The Beginner's Guide, and Black Box, which utilize specific mechanics to prompt reflection on the narrator, device relationship, and format, as well as the use of temporary superpowers as a powerful narrative tool.
- The industry plans to expand VR's reach beyond entertainment into education, professions, and infrastructure to achieve mainstream adoption, while location-based experiences are viewed as a critical first step for introducing users to physical movement within virtual spaces.
- Future hardware deployments, such as Google's jump team and live action rig engineers, are expected to remain clustered in Seattle, potentially facilitating the convergence of machine learning and VR engineering teams.
- Significant risks identified include the dangers of ubiquitous memory indexing and the "unbearable" quality of current low-fidelity text-to-speech implementations, alongside social challenges in social VR regarding harassment, mistreatment, and the visceral impact of simulated violence like holding virtual guns.
- While long-term predictions suggest a future where people spend a significant percentage of their day in VR and technology will challenge human existence without necessarily destroying humanity, there is a specific fear that current technological approaches to memory and artificial intelligence could become sources of user disorientation or fear.