There is good chance that virtual reality catches on because of the many application areas and the mature technology. Furthermore the possibility of being mobile and wireless, exploiting smartphone technologies too, widens the application range while making its use more effective.
It all then depends on market adoption and content availability. Even reaching massive adoption and with all of us becoming familiar with using virtual reality, it won’t probably be as imagined in the Minority Report movie, but possibly a close version of it. We could be embracing part of the behaviour portrayed in the movie as well as adopting many of the gestures that showed human interaction with virtual objects as identical to interaction with real objects.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/JcG1RodI_5w?wmode=opaque
Innovative coherent touchless interaction with three-dimensional virtual objects displayed off-screen has been proposed by researchers at the University of Hertfordshire, and a specific Patent containing implementation details has been filed recently. This represents another step forward towards living, and in particular acting like, in the Minority Report’s world.
Recent inventions like the mentioned Patent, latest technologies for S3D displays, motion capture hardware and VR headsets, make it possible to re-vitalize S3D and create a new VR market too, bringing interaction with virtual objects to a new level. The Minority Report-like gestures have wide applicability ranging from e-shopping to education, from biomedical to gaming, etc. They can be proposed to control panels and dash-boards and for PC’s and smartphone’s interfaces.