Was the VM a failure?

[bi3mw]

I think that if the manuscript is indeed encoded then the illustrations are more likely a ruse than not. Or at least they are certainly not to be taken literally.

I would assume abstraction rather than deception here. It was probably intended that the plants in the plant section, for example, cannot be assigned to real plants with certainty. Nevertheless, the first section is a plant section as can be seen in many other manuscripts. This is true even if the plants in the VMS cannot be clearly assigned to any known tradition. It seems as if the author wanted to prevent plant names from being deduced from the coded text ( usually first "word" ? ) at any point.

It was likely a highly unusual freak-event but most probably no technological break-through.

I see it the same way. Sometimes I think that the “code”, if the VMS is ever cracked, will turn out to be extremely unusual but basically simple in design. Many people will then think: “My goodness, why didn't I think of that before?”