Seems like it wasn't that many years ago that Virtual Reality was being touted as "the next big thing". I was assured that it wouldn't be long before I would be able to buy my own VR console and play video games that would be so realistic the bad guys would make me pee in my pants. Or that I would be able to interact with a travelogue program so intimately that not only would I think I had actually been to Fiji, I'd think I had flown the 747 that took me there.

So, it's 2005 and where the hell is my console? Did the developers decide the technology just couldn't be done cheaply enough? Did they decide the things were dangerous? Were they not able to make them user friendly enough to work without trained technicians? Or did John Q. Public just not fall as deeply in love with the idea as had been hoped?

I know there are still some VR type things around, but it's certainly not penetrated the mainstream like its proponents expected. What happened?