360 video is not going to take off because it’s a sucky experience. “Real” VR with positional tracking makes you feel like you’re in another space, and has lots of potential for that reason. 360 video does not.
AR stands for Augmented reality, the overlay of information and artificial constructs over the real world in such a way as as one can both perceive the artificial constructs and interact with the real world simultaneously.
Nobody will view this by holding their phone up and looking at the world through their phone screen. Real products in development use glasses. Science fiction depicts contacts, currently impossible, or some sort of implant, even less realistic.
Remember we wrote about going to the moon prior to being able to actually go there.
A 360° video is one which has been recorded with a 360° field of view. Add in software + a head mounted display, and you can turn your head to view the video in different directions.
It's a fun novelty, but it should not be conflated with VR. If you move your head forwards or backwards (as opposed to rotating your head), the environment does not adjust itself to match your new position, because it's just a prerecorded video. Without this ability, you can't trick your brain into believing it's in a real place.
I only brought up 360° video because the GP mentioned "livestreaming videos to VR headsets [at] 2x8k@120hz", and there's no other type of video you can stream to a VR headset†. Real VR, with positional tracking, needs a 3D modeled environment, like a video game. We may be on the cusp of being able to stream traditional video games, but VR needs much lower latency than that—around 30ms for absolutely everything in the chain.
I don't think AR is any different in this regard. If the processing is being done on-device the assets are small and you don't need 5G. If the processing is being done remotely, you've got that same latency problem.
How does 5G benefit AR?
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† Well, okay, there have been some weird experiments, but they preclude standard resolution measurements. They also require an order of magnitude more data—5G won't cut it.
I'm certainly open to a future with a Google Glass that works well (or even Google Contacts?) and its users aren't widely viewed as "Glassholes." But, in the meantime, a lot of use cases can be explored with devices that many people already own and that aren't considered obtrusive in many contexts the way that computer eyewear is.
