It'll be a while yet before virtual reality beams us up, Scotty

If virtual reality is the next big thing, it's taking its time getting here. One of the most telling comments about its potential was by Piers Harding-Rolls, research director of global research consultancy IHS Markit, speaking at the IFA global press conference in Lisbon recently: "In 2017, VR is a niche technology. The market is going to grow, but it will still be a niche market by 2020."

A few weeks later, on the other side of the world, Michael Dell, CEO of computing and storage giant Dell Technologies, told media at the Dell EMC World conference in Las Vegas that virtual reality was still in its early-adoption stage, and most early adopters tended to be gamers, but it had huge potential.

"We're just at the beginning," he said. "It takes time for these things to occur. We see the use of VR and augmented reality in training, education and in medical applications. The problem is that VR today is game-like: it's not high resolution, and the frame rate not so great.

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"There's going to be a change, an inflection point in the quality of video and of experience. As you go from 2k to 4k to 8k video, as you move from 24 to 48 to 60 frames per second, and you go from 360-degree video to photo-realistic AR and VR, you will get an experience that is akin to teleportation.

"But we're a long way from that. The enhancements required are hundreds of times what it is today. As you get to those higher-quality experiences, the amount of data required will be enormous. The serious uses will require a ton of computing power and data storage, and we're very excited about that."

Outside the gaming world, most of the excitement is focused on augmented reality, which lays digital information over a scene being viewed in the real world.

Augmented-reality hardware manufacturer Daqri, exhibiting at a Solutions Expo held as part of Dell EMC World, presented research that showed augmented reality was already having an impact on manufacturing .

An Iowa State University study at Boeing found that building aircraft wings using augmented reality as opposed to 3-D instructions on a tablet resulted in an 82% reduction in assembly time and 94% fewer errors.

The first mass-market success of augmented reality, said Daqri, was expected to be in automotive, with holographic heads-up displays projecting information onto windshields. This will mean motorists no longer have to look down at dashboard displays or smartphones for navigational, speed and other information.

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The gamers remain gung ho. Tim Sweeney, founder of leading gaming software company Epic Games - part owned by Tencent, which is, in turn, part-owned by South Africa's Naspers - presided over a "guru session" at Dell EMC World, declaring : "I believe VR and AR will become the next billion-user platform. We can expect a revolution in computer graphics to really change the way people interact with computers."

Back in Lisbon, Harding-Rolls agreed but, like Daqri, with a bias towards augmented reality. "The consensus is that AR has bigger potential as a mass-market proposition, but each is going through its own roadmap. It will take three to five years before both broaden their appeal."

Goldstuck is the founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter @art2gee