It is my deep core belief that the current teams on VR & AR are trying to solve different subsets of problems and it is only a matter of time before battery life has improved dramatically, computing power has increased (while the size of said powerful computers has decreased significantly, more or less to the size of today’s typical smartphone) and at the press of a button (or perhaps a voice command/a gaze/the execution of a simple hand gesture) any headset in AR mode would be able to “blackout” the scene effectively becoming a VR headset while any VR headset would be able to show you the real world or a representation of it, not unlike how the HTC Vive is already trying to show you what not to trip over, in case you don’t have a completely clear room for VR fun.
I’d love to hear from anyone who believes otherwise to better understand why they feel that AR and VR will absolutely have to remain 2 distinct things.
Update: Guess who else has been thinking that long before I thought of it…