VR gets reality check with significant decline in investment

SANTA MONICA, CA APR. 30, 2015. Vrideo co-founders Alex Rosenfeld(left) and Kuangwei Hwang with the Oculus VR viewer at a meet-up in Santa Monica on Apr. 30, 2015. Vrideo, an apps and services that run on virtual reality headsets wants to be the YouTube of 360-degree camera videos.(Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

LAS VEGAS: A few years ago, virtual reality was all the rage in Hollywood, helping to fuel the rise of Silicon Beach with the promise of reinventing the entertainment business. 

At its peak, investors pumped US$253mil (RM1.03bil) into two dozen deals involving virtual and augmented reality startups in LA and Orange counties in 2016, hoping that pricey headsets projecting virtual worlds would become as popular as smartphones. But investment in the technology has slowed dramatically in recent years, and what seemed like a promising boom has largely fizzled.