Realism is not and has never been VR's problem. VR being a pain in the ass is VR's problem. The hardware is annoying to break out and get comfortable if you wear glasses. The software is an absolute nightmare. Backwards compatibility is pathetic compared to a PC and you're never quite sure if a game you heard about is going to be available for whatever platform you invested in. There's also no faith in durable VR products. The people who bought a headset and phone to use Samsung VR got fucked. The people who bought a headset and a Google Daydream-certified phone got fucked. The people who bought an Oculus Go got fucked.
Maybe when I can get a headset that offers onboard focus-adjustment and some kind of omnidirectional treadmill I'll sink another thousand dollars into VR but until then I am done.
I kinda feel like VR is still in the "Should I get an Amiga? Or an Atari? Or a TRS80? Or a ZX81? Or an Apple II?" stage.
One day it'll end up consolidated into some equivalent of Windows/Mac/Linux, probably categorised into the same sort of "business/professionals", "artists/creatives", and "geeks/tinkerers" approximate major demographics.
If you need some hints about which platform(s) will "win", keep an eye on what I buy. And avoid them. I have a GearVR/S6Edge - on a shelf with my Apple Newton, Sinclair ZX80, and Betamax video recorder. I think perhaps my only technology win is the turntable I bought in 1985 and still use...
Tangent: You might appreciate the premise of "harbinger customers"[1]. The theory is that there actually are consumers who are a bit out of sync with the collective and do indeed consistently value/buy products that lose out.
I suspect I'm a fellow harbinger. I thought Apple was cool in the 90s and that Microsoft was on to something in the 00s-early 10s (including Win8/Phone), so I'm at least a solid 5+ years off (or, as a positive spin, simply much too early).
Sounds like high school me buying a zen creative and a zune because they were "better than iPods" and hating iPhones when they came out because physical keyboards would always be superior.
I loved my Motorola Droid. Tiny phone (3.7" screen took up the whole body !) with a slide out full qwerty keyboard. If someone was crazy enough to make it today with a snapdragon I'd be all over it. Choice quote from this review to show how 2009 it was:
> The Motorola Droid on Verizon is the first device to feature Google Maps Navigation. It’s a completely free service that offers 3D maps with voice guided turn-by-turn directions. The VZ Navigator available on most Verizon Wireless phones costs an additional $10 a month for use. A decent turn-by-turn direction App on the iPhone sells for a one time fee of nearly $80-$100. On the other hand Google Maps Navigation is entire free and is offers a lot more.
Just in case anyone reading this is considering purchasing the Astro Slide... be very wary. I backed the Indiegogo campaign over 2 years ago, still nothing. The wait isn't the issue here (COVOD and the related supply chain issues are real, I get that), but the major lack of transparency from PlanetCom is abysmal. A quick read of a few pages of the comments on the Indiegogo campaign page gives you a pretty clear picture of how many of the backers feel...
I'd buy a iPhone with a slide-out keyboard—a la the HTC Dream/G1 [1]—in a heartbeat. I'm happy with the onscreen keyboard for simple things like a quick search or message, but I also really want the option for a proper, physical keyboard any time I need to dig in and write something in depth. Bonus points for slider style devices like the G1 because you still got the "full size" screen, without having to sacrifice on keyboard size either; it really was the best of both worlds, and it's still my favorite device form factor I've ever used.
And they still are. I hate virtual keyboards, it's just a terrible experience. It requires a lot of attention, has low accuracy and features like swipe are too unreliable that I find them useful in the long run.
Multi lingual swipe works just fine on my iPhone with Google keyboard. If it is not it's just because I get too comfy and lazy, not actually "spelling" the words properly.
With the dawn of on device language models I believe the typing experience will get even better in the upcoming years.
Language models and dictionaries will always be incomplete and out of date.
I just don't like being slowed down by a clever feature not working as expected and so for me a physical keyboard simply cannot be replaced. It always feels like a fragile crutch otherwise.
Speaking of reliability, I suspect that screen keyboards are much more reliable than physical ones for a pocket device such as a phone or tablet. Much worse in usability and feel (if we ignore their ability to easily reconfigure to the task, such as a dedicated numpad where it makes sense), but likely more reliable as long as you don't break your screen, as there's less mechanical parts to break.
If the correlation turns out accurate, that would explain why marketers use every possible tactics to collect data about who we are and what we purchase, as it could give them an indicator of which product will fail. Such profiling is already done for targeted advertising, although this way it means buyers are also finely categorized including data about their political orientation and other sensitive aspects of their life.
ps. I like a lot Cory Doctorow's articles; also Boing Boing was among my favorite sites in the early 2k; I'm saddened to see what it has become today: mostly a shop for overpriced crap. Suffice to say that after noticing my account was terminated during my long hospitalization in late 2020 with no warnings given, I didn't create another and removed the site from my bookmarks.
You can count me in that group. I'm that guy who bought weird Toshiba and Archos MP3 players because they supported USB mass storage. I am now buying a Unihertz Pocket, a QWERTY phone in 2022.
> Harbinger households tend to be white, suburban and headed by older, less-educated single parents.
Ouch...
> I thought Apple was cool in the 90s and that Microsoft was on to something in the 00s
It's not on my shelf of bad decisions anymore, but in '95 I though I was making the best possible purchase when I bought a Mac 6100 DOS Compatible... A Mac with a daughterboard that had a 486DX2 which ran MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 and later Win95. (I paid $1200AUD for 3 8MB SIMMs for that, so the DOS board didn't;t have to share RAM with the Mac...)
It seems like Apple waits to see what other people do and then come out with a product that works for normal people. When I see Apple come out with iVR, then I will start to believe that VR might actually go mainstream.
I think what he is trying to say is, that different companies experiment with a concept (for example, what business phone or touch screen phone were 20 years ago) Apple is observing that and when the moment is right will launch it's own product (iPhone).
They might have a hard time with this one. Maybe the 3k price tag means they will release something with close to the processing power of a PC but I doubt it. Most of that cost is probably in the display they’re using plus the brand. That’s going to have a hard time competing with existing headsets that can tether to a gaming PC. The price alone will put them in a niche market where they’ll be competing with Varjo and Pimax which already have products with equivalent or better displays. Apple would have the advantage of being standalone but that is also a big disadvantage when it comes to gaming or wanting to upgrade hardware.
Nah, they'll just cripple the graphics, gaslight everyone into claiming it's better, strongarm tmsc into giving them exclusive access to the next node, and then claim that their gpu design is literal magic.
Plus it will probably break if you get a hair stuck in it or accelerate at over 0.1g, and everyone will blame the user for wearing it wrong when it happens.
VR is the "supersonic jet airliner" of computing.
It will never be a thing. Give it a rest, sometimes technology is complete and doesn't need to be "disrupted" anymore.
Sorry, you’re wrong on this. If you’ve actually spent significant time on the hardware and software that is getting it right then you would know. The problem is that there is a lot of experimental hardware and software getting it wrong but that’s to be expected in the early stages of any new technology. Go find someone that has a good VR setup which is either a valve index or a quest 2 connected to a high end gaming PC and play a few rounds of Pavlov on the weekend when everyone is online. Check out habie147 on YouTube for some decent reviews of good VR games.
Flying the Concorde was also really sweet, I heard people tell.
That's not the point. I'm sure the technology for VR is kickass and the games are great, but nobody wanted or asked for "disruption" in the videogame space. (Except people who get a rush of "disrupting" things for "disruption"'s sake.)
>I'm sure the technology for VR is kickass and the games are great, but nobody wanted or asked for "disruption" in the videogame space.
Nobody ever asked for disruption... that's why it's called disruption. But it turns out that VR never really disrupted games anyways. It just created a new category. Most people don't care about VR and have just continued playing normal games that are already expensive enough. VR has just added to the pie, not taken a slice.
Games are only the surface here but for me at least VR games are the only ones I play now. My steam library had been gathering dust for a few years since I had started to see the endless grind of modern games as nothing but a time sink, they had lost their flavour.
With VR and multiplayer it’s opened an entirely new world of immersive and emergent gameplay. I’ve had more fun playing silly custom maps in Pavlov than I’ve had in decades of traditional gaming.
I wouldn’t call VR a disruptor so much as a replacement for current displays and an addition of a new form of human interface device. People will probably still play pancake games in 10 years time using a keyboard and mouse or a game controller but they’ll be wearing a headset so they can have their game displayed at whatever size and fov they find optimal. There will also be a huge number of VR games and gamers and probably also a lot of mixed games where you can play in either VR or on a (virtual) screen.
>VR is the "supersonic jet airliner" of computing. It will never be a thing.
Someday VR will be there. It's not physically impossible. Supersonic passenger travel will never be efficient because aerodynamic drag exists. VR just needs a few generations of slimming down the hardware, innovating on control input, and streamlining the software. In 20 years we'll probably be in a place where eyeglass form factor full FOV AR/VR is a thing.
As a reminder for people reading this, the TRS80 & co came out around 1977. PCs reached ubiquity around 1995-1997, I would say (mass introduction in offices and schools around the world - not only in developed countries; mass purchases for at home, both for work/homework and for fun). So that would mean around 20 years.
And back then we had Moore's Law on our side.
So truly mainstream VR might be 20+ years from now.
I used my Quest 1 a lot, and had to buy another one when it stopped working (during COVID, sigh) because it was so much a part of my daily lifestyle. The Quest 2 is even better, and I got custom prescription lenses just for my VR system that solves the problem of comfort with glasses.
But I only use my VR system for fitness, and only a few fitness oriented or active apps. It is the killer but only VR app for me.
I don't think the Go was a very good product. Facebook was right to double/triple down on the Quest, but that does leave early adopters a bit in a mess with outdated hardware (although I'm on my third quest system already).
For me it's Supernatural [1]. It's a bit expensive ($15/month, paid annually), but it's worth every cent. It has the same polish of Peloton (with instructors, curated musical set, decent mobile app companion, etc), with the advantage that it gets your brain laser focused on what you're doing (as opposed to any other form of exercise, where I put my headphones on and tune out on a podcast, YT video or something).
It's similar to the feeling I get when I'm coding and in the flow: time stops, and I can't think of anything else. And this is coming from someone who always hated exercise, so it has been a pretty fantastic experience so far (~1 year). But YMMV.
ps: if interested, I have 4 free guest passes (it gives you 30 days free trial, instead of the normal 7). Email in my profile.
pps: strongly recommend Quest2 with extended battery (or counterweight [2]), so the weight is more evenly distributed in your head. I had some neck pain at first, until I replaced by the elite strap with extra battery.
I’m extremely sceptical of fitness For VR, at least with the current hardware available.
- sweaty and nasty as hell on the headset
- no substitute for a proper gym or run or swim, there only so much stuff you can do on the ground or punching the air, jogging on the spot
- conditions you to only be active in VR, which coddles you in an environment that does not mirror real world applications of your body
Im happy to be debunked but those are my impressions. I’m very fit, frequently go to my nearby boxing gym, i just couldn’t see myself doing this
I respect your skepticism; exercise in VR is certainly not for everyone. If gym works for you and you have the time to go several times per week, great. Just sharing that VR works for me (and apparently some other hardcore users [2]).
FWIW, sweat is solved problem; there's plenty of silicone covers [1], sweat bands, etc. And the parent also mentioned of wearing glasses, but prescription lenses are widely available (I use these ones [3]).
I'm just puzzled by your comment of "doesn't mirror real world applications of your body"; as if boxing, squats and cardio in general weren't "real world" :)
> I'm just puzzled by your comment of "doesn't mirror real world applications of your body"; as if boxing, squats and cardio in general weren't "real world" :)
It depends, a bit, what your fitness goals are.
If you're doing squats because you want to be able to lift 100 lbs boxes confidently, or boxing because you want to fistfight in the real world, you might be limited by the fact VR can't provide resistance; detect if you're putting enough force in; or punch back.
On the other hand, if you're looking to get your heart and lungs going, burn some calories, and generally compensate for the fact you've been sitting at a desk all day? Anything from ballet to bodybuilding will do, including VR exercise.
I recently bought a Quest for fitness as well, and while I was a bit unsure, I'm fairly convinced. (For reference, I lift weights about 4 times a week. I play basketball once a week or so, but don't do much other cardio, which is the hole that I was looking to fill.)
It's worth asking what your goal is though. If it's only to burn calories, what matters is a mix of intensity and how long you do the activity. Walking for two hours burns more calories than running for 10 minutes. So through that lens, a game that has you moving only a bit, but that you will play for an hour, is a pretty good idea.
If you don't have that much time, or your goal is more health-focused in that you want to get your heart rate up, there are definitely games that make that happen. A boxing game is considered the gold standard, but there are other games that definitely make me sweat.
All in all, it's an activity I enjoy doing, and that I can do every day without leaving the house, which for my specific situation is exactly what I needed.
It isn't that bad with the silicon wrap around the eye piece. Keeping your headset clean is a simple wipe down after each session.
> there only so much stuff you can do on the ground or punching the air, jogging on the spot
The "game" aspect allows for long sessions of punching things in the air, dunking, and some knee movements (no running in place yet). You also have to psychologically charge your punches or your slashes to add weight to them (otherwise you aren't getting much out of it).
> which coddles you in an environment that does not mirror real world applications of your body
Real world application of my body is programming 8 hours a day. I'll take an hour of shadow boxing a day even if I won't be able to apply it at work (thankfully).
You really do have to give it a serious try though. If you aren't enthusiastic about it, it probably won't work for you, and even if you want to try it, it doesn't guarantee that it will work for you.
Have you tried it yet? I’m skeptical for the same reasons but telling myself to not judge something before I’ve tried it. After all, my prior should be “do other humans find this useful” and I’m probably not all that unique.
The hardware is the least of their problems. I had never heard of this before so I looked at the website and saw their pitch.
It basically looks like simple movements repeated over and over. Because all you have is 2 controllers. There’s no way to add complexity or load because that would just be dangerous if you can’t see your surroundings.
> There’s no way to add complexity or load because that would just be dangerous if you can’t see your surroundings.
Definitely don't do this in your living room with your three year old toddler around (as I learned very quickly :) ).
You have to add your own load (or "weight") to your movements, it won't work if you are just out to win the game with minimal energy expenditure (which the software won't really penalize you for).
Seeing your surroundings generally wont be an issue as most VR rigs have external cameras. It’s that the software for such “augmented reality” isn’t there yet - the cameras today are mostly for boundary/guardian setting.
My impression of supernatural from the website is that they are showing you exotic locations, not your living room. So you won’t be seeing your surrounds during normal play. Is this wrong?
Correct; it does not use the pass-through camera, so you can't see your surroundings (in fact no Oculus app does; it's only used for safety, if it detects a human or a pet entering your space, or if you get too close to the room boundaries you've defined).
In practice, moving around is not a problem, provided you have some minimal space around you (they recommend a 7ft diameter circle). I use their workout mat [1], which is perfect to give you a sense of where you are in the room at all times. I've also successfully used for exercise in hotel rooms when travelling (a bit more challenging, depending on the layout).
A lot of fitness games don’t involve moving. One of the reasons I don’t play thrill of the fight is that I don’t really have space for it. But fitXR and best saver are stationary.
Mostly FitXR. I shied away from Supernatural because they asked for a credit card off device on a website. Beat Saber is always good for some fun, though you won't sweat as much as in FitXR (but also, you can play it for longer, so its a wash if you have time). I also use Les Mills Bodycombat sometime, it has better variation in movement, but still not as intense as the FitXR content I'm used to (if I want a cooldown, its a wash between that and Beat Saber).
I'm not sure how it detects how hard a punch is, but I suspect form (or the closest approximation it can detect) is a significant factor.
But honestly, it's not real boxing it's a boxing themed cardio exercise. At a purported 10-15 calories a minute it seems like a pretty good cardio workout as well.
Unless getting in and out of VR becomes as easy as putting one and taking off a pair of sunglasses, it's never going to become mainstream. Some serious disruption is going to be required to get there.
Compare it to the PDAs (e.g., Palm Pilot) of the late 90s early 2000s. They were cool, but hard to use. Though they were popular, they were far from mainstream. Then the iPhone came out, and a few years later everybody had a computer in their pocket. VR sorely needs a similar disruption.
I used to have a Newton, I tried developing for it in college. It was terrible but I learned so much from it. It was one of those things where everybody had to tell you how dumb you were to have it or use it. I had a similar experience with smart watches and believe it or not the first generation Samsung Note. I remember someone telling me I was ridiculous to have such a "big phone".
I don't know which thing will work out and which won't, but people telling you why they won't or will never use it is not that meaningful to me. I have seen too many things in my life that people say they will never use become quite common. I have always had my best successes on new technologies so I am always rooting for people trying to create new hardware.
FWIW I love my Quest 2 and use it every day. Your mileage will vary.
I have one of those big phones with 6inch+ screen (they're pretty mainstream these days) and I wish I had something smaller. Hard af to use with single hand and screen is still pretty small for comfortably reading anything or consuming media (you have to hold it very close to your face for too long to be comfortable). Wish I had bought something cheaper and smaller and gotten a tablet with the extra money I saved. I'm buying a tablet anyways now.
The Note4 was the best phone I ever had as it had:
1. Large screen
2. Didn't really need a case as it didnt have curved glass
3. had a plastic back with texturing for grip / metal frame
4. Easily replacable battery, could pop off the back in a second.
5. Sd card
6. The pen was cool
When I say it it didn't need a case, I dropped that phone many times, and the screen never cracked due to the metal rim. In the end as os update bricked it. Went to an s8 which was slippery as could be, with its glass back. Cracked both sides and short order, and from there on out I've needed a bulky case to wrap my delicate flower of a phone.. Damn.
I am in complete agreement. My Note 4 had by far the best smartphone display I've ever used. 2560x1440 with zero screen wasted on camera or navigation buttons. I keep mine in a display cabinet and every few months take it out and enjoy just how huge the screen looks despite the fact I can hold it vertically in one hand. Dropping a spare battery in my pocket for a day hike when I'm going to run the GPS for hours. MHL giving me lag-free HDMI-out with charging. True mass-storage USB mode where I can copy files and navigate the folder structure at the same time. I used mine until the screen was so yellow it looked like I dipped it in popcorn grease.
>Unless getting in and out of VR becomes as easy as putting one and taking off a pair of sunglasses
In my opinion it already is. I have an OQ2 and play whatever the golf simulator is, and a sailboat simulator in it all the time, but it's exactly the type of quick, 2-3 minute sessions that used to be mobile games or tiktok. From lifting my laptop off of my laptop to starting a race in the sailboat game takes less than a minute, and almost all of that is just load times on the game.
(The sailing game is marineverse, btw. Lots of fun when its 115 degrees out in Phoenix and too hot to go on real water)
Buy her a Quest for her birthday, I’m just trying to provide helpful suggestions here. I just use the included spacer and it works fine with my glasses and is quick to change out give that a shot.
I don't believe VR going mainstream is really the point. And also why Meta's approach feels off to me. Even when you read Cyberpunk literature, the concept of a cyber decker is as rare as a modern day hacker.
As for the Ready Player One experience. There is a different issue to be addressed and that is the finite experience offered by modern day "games." Taking a look at Diablo Immortal and it should be clear of what little runway there is to live your life in VR. Experiences extended by lootboxes.
Even games that don't use that mechanism are bloated through artificial grinds. Economy resets and just lack of budget for story outside of 80hrs. Why even sink the development time in if you have the former to fuel profit margins?
There's a lot more to be said inside the scope of what XR is and how it will impact. And its not just comfort or accessibility preventing adoption. There is no killer app and it's the same with crypto. But that's more to do with the current limits of concepts we have relied on to get to this point.
Social VR aka “The Metaverse” doesn’t need loot boxes and fake internet points to be compelling. Those are tricks that devs use to hook you on an otherwise very underwhelming experience. Social VR has real people with voices and body language and that’s pretty much all you need. You can add activities like movie screens and party games as ice breakers but they aren’t necessary. The most used feature in social VR apps is a mirror.
I think our games have a too coarse grained degree of simulation.
The problem is that you want different levels of simulation at different times so developers just pick the easiest one to implement that is still fun. If there is an MMORPG you might want the ability to simulate actual cooking but at some point it becomes a grind and you just want to press a button instead of repeating the same recipe over and over again.
The minute, someone uses VR to gain/master skills 5x-10x times faster than regular users, everyone will switch to VR.
The minute, enterprises use VR to improve productivity, everyone will switch to VR.
I'm always astounded by the lack of imagination from smart people that they get so fixated on small things while completely missing the bigger picture.
That's how you end up with Grammar Nazis, REST Nazis, TDD Nazis, Security Nazis, Code Format Nazis.
Make no mistake, society needs people who are obsessed or paranoid about little things, but they aren't the ones you look up to or go to for next generation advances.
So, as usual I'll take any HN future prediction with grain of salt and stick to people who have created Trillion $ companies or built products used by Billions.
>The minute, someone uses VR to gain/master skills 5x-10x times faster than regular users, everyone will switch to VR.
I have little doubt that this is the killer VR app that we just haven't found a way to deploy yet - Imagine, say, an auto manufacturer issuing a digital twin of their vehicle to mechanics that includes walkthroughs for each maintenance procedure.
The scaffolding on both the production and consumption sides which would be necessary to support this are significant, though.
AR for some mechanics is probably helpful in one way or the other.
But when you create a digital twin for traingin, VR or AR, it will be easier to teach a robot to do that job without any human. It might be that VR/AR is a short intermediate step, but robots are the future.
And i' still waiting for the master skill application. Were is it? What is it? Why does the lizard talk about tech stuff in his video only and not about what you will do with it? Guess why?
Full body tracking without extra equipment and much better hand tracking are on their way. Those are the keys to unlocking a lot of skill training. The other big hurdle is just building the software, someone with domain knowledge has to create Electrician Simulator 2023. Industry is doing this right now in a few areas, wider adoption will increase that pace.
But i think it will end up like 3d printing: Fun and niche for nerds and the professional versions are better and more expensive and only yused for their usecases.
once again, you are underestimating the potential.
When I say skills you are limiting your imagination drudge-work skills. Skills could also be Tennis, Dancing, Sex, Golf.
Productivity could also be fixing your car, bikes, plumbing.
VR is one of the few technologies which both lazy and active people can benefit.
Unless you put yourself in the category of a neck-beard who doesn't like moving from your lazy-boy and also don't like porn, the category of people who won't benefit from real-life VR is very tiny.
Once something benefits them, People will jump through all kinds of hoops to get them
I don't think I underestimate the tech. People were predicting mainstream flying cars by the year 2000s
I think tech bros are way overestimating the interest of people in general. Nobody's going to train for sex or sport in VR, it lacks 90% of the experience.
People want to live real world thing, not evolve in a virtual world alone with appendices that barely mimic real life sensations.
Flying cars depends on massive capital spending on infrastructure, manufacturing to build a thing only the top 1% ile can afford. Not to mention massive changes to law. There is also a big binary chasm to cross (fly as safe an airplanve vs not)
A $300 VR headset has none of those barriers and is open to millions of developers and can constantly iterate.
Understand the difference and you'll become a better investor.
Else you are just falling for the Availability Heuristic Fallacy
It’s more than just the ability to get in or out of VR — VR has space requirements for most applications; even if you’re standing still, you’ll need space around you for your arms to move. VR, in part, is a real estate problem.
I have a headset I bought a few years ago (PSVR), and while it’s easy enough to set up, I don’t want to rearrange my living room every time I use it.
This is mostly solved by going wireless which allows you to use your headset anywhere you have space. A lot of experiences are designed to work while seated or in very limited space as well. It is a bummer if you don’t have enough room for the really active experiences though but in my experience that’s the minority.
> This is mostly solved by going wireless which allows you to use your headset anywhere you have space.
I think you're missing what I'm saying: while I have space, the space I have requires some effort to make VR-ready. Wireless is interesting (I can use it in my backyard, for example), but that comes with its own set of caveats.
Even as an enthusiast (5 headsets and counting) I have to agree. There have been several month periods where I didn’t use VR due to driver instability.
That being said, body tracking is what made the platform click for me. Hanging out with friends from all over the world in an immersive space feels like the future.
I'm a huge VR nerd, I love collecting headsets and playing with new ways to display visuals. But I've never thought it would be a mainstream product, because of exactly what you said: you have to strap something to your head
It really isn't that immersive. Once you are into the game or story it doesn't matter whether you are reading a book, watching a TV or viewing it through VR. You get immersed regardless
My main interest in VR is playing with the idea of replacing my monitors for coding, graphic design and 3D modelling. 3D modelling in VR is already very good and better than a screen due to the hand-tracking and being able to easily manipulate directly in 3D space (not the immersive display, so much)
For instance, my Rift 2’s left controller died for unknown reasons and Meta has been “out of stock” for a year on this part and the Rift 1 controller is “discontinued”. You can’t even find it on ebay. $500 out the window.
Go you can still use just fine too. I watch movies on mine from time to time. They unlocked the bootloader last year so you can do whatever you want with for years to come.
this is like henry ford's "whatever color you want"
its unlocked, but all the new proprietary VR apps are not going to be backwards compatible with it.
(not to drag it too much, I hope to be working on the open source side of the metaverse, but I think OP has a point about forward compatibility, there's very little reason to throw down good money for another headset with a limited lifespan, we're still in that early adoption / fast trash phase)
Nothing would be compatible with it anyway. It’s too slow and it only has a single controller with only 3 degrees of freedom. It’s not a VR problem or even a proprietary problem, just rapid improvement.
The Go existing at all was probably a mistake. It was a good test bed but it was always headed for immediate deprecation, it could’ve just stayed in the lab.
To this day the Go is actually one of my favorite headsets, and I have owned many. The small controller and form factor are great for travel and I can comfortably watch a movie with it on the plane, which can't be said for most headsets.
That said, whilst it is a great device for watching movies, that is really all it was ever good for.
But I will admit that even though each time I take off the dust from my Quest I am wowed at the experience,
... each time I take off the headset I shrug and I'm like "cool".
Maybe we just need to come to grips with the fact that _as an entertainment or work_ device, it's friggin awesome - and as far as "reality" goes, it's pointless.
Now of course if it came to a point where you don't want to remove the headset.. but thankfully personally I don't have any worries.
A funny philosophical thought.. you reproduce the sense of smell, taste .. etc... Then people will be like, "umm, it's just like my real life now.. what is the point?" Other than being "transported" (for fake) and experience another place.
I think that's the main misconception with VR. There is the dream of "living another life". But it's just entertainment.
edit: I should also add that despite promising stories in the media, the ability of VR to heal trauma, to heal our nervous system, to make us better people... is still very much up in the air.. and as I am healing trauma myself I can see how VR could just as well unbalance the nervous system. I mean you're already seeing how "novelty" messes us up in social media (inifinite scroll etc)... why should we expect VR to make everything betteR?
The Valve Index is pretty amazing. You can adjust for Pupillary Distance as well as inward and out for comfort with glasses of all sizes. I doubt if Steam or Valve are going anywhere anytime soon. I recommend it. 144hz screens.
Yeah, the hassle of having to put it on and store it somewhere is gonna be hard to get over. The thing with a tv and video games is you just plop yourself on the couch and go. You don’t have to grab the tv from the closet and put it on.
The other issue is even if people are open to the VR device itself, I think you absolutely have to nail the experience for them the first time or else people will treat it like a fad and then never give it a go again. You don’t have a second chance to make a good impression.
> The people who bought a headset and phone to use Samsung VR got fucked. The people who bought a headset and a Google Daydream-certified phone got fucked. The people who bought an Oculus Go got fucked.
These things were all essentially experiments, or at best a little taster of VR for those not ready to invest in serious (PC-based) VR. Decent VR needs a truckload of GPU power, and these early attempts to use phone hardware for VR were never going to be much good.
I can use my Oculus Go apps (like my beloved 'Race for the Galaxy') on the Oculus Quest (and perhaps there's a way to run it on the Quest2).
I can still use my Google Daydream VR set, but there is no real use case for it (except, like with samsung gearVR underwater VR with a watertight phone). Most if not all apps of these early mobile VR systems have been ported to the Oculus Go, which has superior hardware compared to GearVR (and weighs less then the Quest). There are probably useful apps or good games on Go that haven't been backported to Samsung GearVR, but seriously - the Go is much more comfortable to wear then the bulky GearVR. 250 euro is a lot, but I gladly paid it for a bit more comfort. Why still use Daydream or GearVR?
SteamVR apps can still be run on Windows11 and streamed to Oculus Quest.
What do you mean with
New equipment may be too expensive and novel for home purchases, but an arcade could invest in those fancy omnidirectional treadmill and VR gloves.
The demand is there. People pay $30+ for a spin class, why not VR lightsaber zumba?
Video games in the 80s and movies started off in commercial locations before becoming cheap enough for home use. I'm not sure why VR hasn't followed their model. I've assumed it was because the tech isn't there yet.
Their drivers caused what has probably been the only windows bluescreens I've seen in a decade.
Then because they can't provide individual downloadable versions (or for that matter even recover them from their build artifacts, per support) anytime something breaks following an update your SOL until they fix it, if ever. (this is part of a larger dark pattern of creating "installers" that actually are only downloaders that download whatever version is current and install it without saving the downloaded image).
I'm in the situation where about a year and a half ago they pushed an update which broke my setup, and they can't seem to fix it, nor are they apparently motivated. The solution is basically buy a new computer/reinstall the OS/whatever and see if that fixes it. I'm not the only one, reddit is full of people having various problems like this, and some have even gone so far as to create restore point style scripts for saving/restoring the install.
Their USB drivers have been trash, or they have some requirement that isn't clear, which means that its a game of plugging in the headset and sensors into random USB ports until it decides everything is going to work (maybe).
I could go on, but their software people obviously aren't up to the task of providing kernel mode code, or debugging problems in the field.
Funny bit, one of their recruiters poped me an email shortly after I gave up on their software/support teams actually being capable of fixing things. Right into the trash it went, I can't imagine working for a dev shop that can't even recover older versions of their build artifacts to do a/b testing.
Same. In a few decades I'm going to look up the obituaries of the Oculus Home software dev team and savor reading about them dying. It says the headset is connected despite showing an amber light, it refuses to play audio from the headset instead of the pc speakers, it refuses to set up the play area without having a PC monitor facing the play area, it makes you reset the play area every time so much as a housefly fart touches a camera.
I was so mad for a while, I considered taking them to small claims court to recover the price of the games, since they broke it, and have basically refused to fix it.
Right now its just in the category of "never give meta/etc money for anything because they will f$*k you and never blink" I don't do bus with google, and I won't do bus with facebook, they are just to big to notice when they squash people like me.
I don’t think they have to go that far. How often do you lug a laptop around with you or work with one on your lap or what about the money and floor space you put into having a workstation set up in your home? As much as Apple keeps trying, it’ll be a long time before laptops are as light and easy to use as a piece of paper and a pencil but that isn’t stopping anyone from using them. VR just needs to be more ergonomic, that’s it.
I use it very often to view google streetview. Static images don't cause nausea. I think i ve already gotten enough return for my investment and they keep shipping new updates all the time (last one was quite buggy).
I mean, I think there's a secondary problem. Even if it _wasn't_ a pain in the ass, does anyone want it? I mean, clearly some people do, but a significant number? I've used a VR headset a few times, and it was a deeply unpleasant experience, but even if you address the main sources of unpleasantness (bulky, extremely fiddly to set up, dreadful software) it was still, well... a pretty pointless experience, in my view. Even if the tech improves I wouldn't be keen to revisit.
Honestly, I kind of suspect it's this decade's 3D TV; enormous hype, quickly followed by the whole industry pretending they were never involved in it.
VR will be a dud for a long time. We need a lot of tech advancements and then we need an actual business model (i.e. killer app).
AR is the real deal for the immediate future. AR has direct applications in a lot of environments.
To put it shortly, AR is something that will be truly useful within the next 5-10 years, VR is something will be truly useful within the next 20-25 years.
AR definitely (already) has specialized industrial applications. I think it's _somewhat_ less clear that there's a mass-market consumer product there, though.
Once we get the tech to actually put it into glasses properly, it will be ubiquitous.
Google Glass failed because the tech wasn't there yet, smart glasses need to look like regular glasses. Once they do, then of course everyone will want it. For anyone willing to wear glasses, smart glasses are basically the smartphone killer (or enhancer).
VR is the odd one out for mass-market consumer products. Flight simulators and the like don't cut it as "mass-market".
What defines mass market? Meta has sold over 15 million Quest 2 units in the past two years.
In that time they’ve debatably eclipsed the entire VR headset industry units sold over the past decade - about 10 million mostly PSVR, but some Samsung, Vive and Valve.
First of all, I don't really know a lot of people talking about and using VR. So the first thing would be to check real adoption. There are a ton of famous products that were purchased in large quantities and then only collected dust.
PS5 for sure doesn't suffer from that. Quest 2... the jury might still be out.
The second thing is, PS5 is famous by being hamstrung by supply issues. PS4 sold almost 120 million units, and for sure it wasn't abandoned in some corner of the house.
The third thing would be the ecosystem. Number of titles, their sales, the overall market value, when including the platforms themselves and the products sold on top of them.
My impression so far is that VR is still far from mainstream. It's very loved by enthusiasts but it's not at the late adopter or laggard stage, it hasn't crossed the chasm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm).
I don't quite get why people are so hyped about VR. A novel experience, sure. Something to be "in" everyday, I'm not sure. And what about R [0], which we already have, and way better than VR, anyone?
It has an amazing potential in gaming. For example, racing, which in R is too expensive for the majority, while the computer simulations are so close to reality, that the VR ads to the experience.
It is also used by architects when designing buildings and different spaces, so it can also be used in professional environment.
On the other hand, I think that all the meta thing is just corporate hype blown out of proportions. I can imagine tho that for some people their R isn't that great, or they will never have a chance to experience certain places in the world in first person. My 90 years old great-grandmother can experience Iceland only through TV documentaries, google street view or maybe VR.
Where are all these people who are so hyped about VR they want to spend every day "in" it? Maybe some of these people exist, but I don't think they exist in anywhere near the numbers they seem to exist in people's imaginations.
Meta's VR tech is undeniably amazing. I picked up a quest 2 off craigslist and was blown away - wirelessly streaming VR games to the headset over wifi is the first time I felt the technology had actually arrived. The resolution is also good enough to use it for actual work with text on virtual screens. It's conceivable that the standard workstation + monitors setup will be a thing of the past by the end of the decade.
It is sad that we are unavoidably headed to a world where a company like Meta monopolizes control of two of our five traditional senses (sight and sound). Their business model is based on behavior modification and I fully expect their highly-compensated employees to be endlessly creative in the application of headsets to that end. The sheer scale of R&D expenditure required to get realistic/usable VR is daunting and seems beyond FOSS capabilities. Not just hardware, but software like SLAM/VIO or image processing. I backed the Simula One headset but the disparity in development resources between them and meta is pretty astounding.
I find myself constantly surprised in threads like this. The few times I’ve tried VR sets (including a Quest 2), I found the resolution to be shockingly low. It’s easy to overlook when the image is moving, which is most of the time in games for example. Just like Jurassic Park still looks great despite having HD res computer graphics.
But sitting stock still, I was so distracted by big obvious pixels. I can’t imagine trying to do real work with text at that resolution.
Don't worry, you're not alone. During the pandemic, one of my clients got about 20 Quest 2s for employees to have at home in an effort to make people feel more in touch and experiment with VR meetings & workspaces. After the novelty wore off, usage dropped to basically zero and I don't know anyone who uses theirs now for anything besides games.
For me, Quest 2 is very obviously a "not there yet" product that seems to mostly appeal to kids and people who don't actually care about graphics or comfort. It's hot, battery life is bad, strapping over a pound on your face for hours at a time is not fun, and the graphics are visibly bad - even just sitting still the edges are horribly aliased and the screen door effect is massively apparent. Plus the nausea for many people, and the complete lack of spatial awareness. I will say that untethered is massively better than tethered, though, even with the graphics penalty. Quest 4 (I don't think v3 will be a big enough improvement) or whatever Apple eventually releases might actually be appealing, though.
In the niche area of VR fitness, I think the Quest 2, or the Quest 1 for that matter, was already there. It is the killer app...but maybe the only one for those who use the Quest that way: this morning I did 45 minutes in FitXR and another 25 minutes in BeatSaber, I have a few other fitness apps I use sometimes but I've never even explored the gaming aspect of the system. I don't want to go back to the way it was before the Quest 1 came out, gyms aren't that convenient for me anymore and everything else I could think of to do at home wasn't cutting it.
DDR was as really great fitness app back in the late 90s, early 00s, similar experience, but it required insanely expensive hardware if you wanted to do it at home at any decent quality (rather than just a novelty for a few parties). The Quest has none of that problem (though most of your work is in your arms rather than your legs). It is also too bad Microsoft didn't go the fitness route for Kinect, that worked fairly well also in getting sore at least.
You can buy a top quality DDR pad for €200, and could back then too. A Quest 2 costs £299. Since £299 > €200, the Quest 2 is also "insanely expensive", and so most definitely has all of that problem.
Those still aren't that great. What I really want is a hard pad that detects via air pressure (like the arcade ones), resistive pads feel flimsy and stop working fairly quickly after heavy use.
An air pressure hard pad...well...you have to buy a DDR arcade unit. Those are going for $10k+ last time I looked. Then you have to find a place to put it....
The great thing about resistive pads is their mechanical simplicity. You can make any part in them yourself with supplies available at a hardware store, and conduct most repairs with basic hand tools. What sort of "heavy use" breaks these pads quickly? Are you playing with a sledgehammer? There's videos of people passing ITG14s on Cobalt Fluxes posted to YouTube this year. Cobalt Flux went out of business in 2011, so those pads are over a decade old, and you don't get good enough to pass 14s playing casually.
And if your definition of 'flimsy' is 'requires some maintenance every decade', note that the product we're comparing it to, the Oculus, has a lithium ion battery in it that's e-waste after less than half that time, and good luck getting spares in a market that discontinues its products every couple of years.
I'd like to see these, because when I went looking, they were a hell lot more expensive than that.
DDR is in this awkward space where it's either cheap and garbage, or expensive as all hell. The DDRGAME stuff, from what I've heard is somewhat pricy AND garbage.
The biggest challenge I've found is that most items in the Quest marketplace look gimmicky. As soon as you use AirLink and connect it to a PC, it is honestly pretty good. I admit it has a few meh moments, like the gap by the nose and doesn't seem wide enough to cover full peripheral vision, but for wireless VR it is great for the price.
The resolution of the Quest 2 is quite good given the context: it's a really cheap headset, and the resolution is generally much better than really cheap (or even not-so-cheap) headsets of previous years.
VR as a whole still has a long way to go though, for sure. You need like 8k per eye or something crazy before you're "maxed out" on what humans can perceive IIRC.
what I've found from playing a lot of VR over time (was an oculus dk early adoptere waaay before they were acquired by facebook, then got a vive, then got an index) is that my brain is rather easily fooled even with cartoon graphics. the world reacting like I expect the world to react seems to be the major factor in whether the vr 'sells' itself, and is only tangentially related to graphics.
I do agree with you that the resolution is still to low to replace screens.
The Quest 2 is a terrible replacement for screens, (also because it has a fixed focal distance of 2 meters) but the resolution and clarity has improved so much since the launch of the Vive that I’d bet new headsets will be there within the decade.
While I agree the resolution is not good, mind that the "pixel" effect is reduced when you are perfectly aligned with the lenses (and see more clearly the pixel, weirdly).
I can't imagine doing real work with text too, but it's enough to be immersed in realistic worlds like hl alyx.
I also have a htc vive pro + wireless transmitter + highend pc and i don't think at all that this will replace a normal monitor setup on a table.
Why?
Because wearing a headset on your head is just cumbersome.
I don't think anyone would ever sit in any outdoor setup with a VR headset on their heads because it looks idiotic, it ruins your hair and its too expensive to let it lay around.
And at home? At home people stoped wearing pants why would they give up a good display for a headset?
Except with a 5in phone screen, you still have some sort of situational awareness of people walking up on you whether you choose to ignore that or not is totally different than being in a headset where you have none.
I keep seeing ads/promos for VR with people on a train/subway in a VR headset. I hope you don't mind having the rest of your stuff taken from you while you crush it in what ever game you're playing on the subway
Yeah, the Terminator AR view was always the best use to me. Instantly image rec to find the names of people in your viewport type of stuff. Adding turn by turn arrows while walking a city/mall/etc.
Then, Black Mirror comes along and ruins it for everyone, because of course people will use it exactly as they proposed it could go. After seeing that, I don't want any part of it.
Is there a rule of the internet/tech/life that says for any good use, people will first take it to the dark places thereby ruining any potential good usage first?
3 words, full color passthrough. Meta includes sample footage of this in their demos so it's definitely coming with Cambria. While it would be possible to use a standalone headset out in public, I don't think that's the main goal. The hardware belongs in a home or an office where you have a dedicated play space tailored to whatever your use case is. Asking for something that people can use on the train on their way to work is trying to run before we can walk. VR headsets will replace desktop displays first because why wouldn't you want a device that can emulate any size, shape, or number of displays instantly with no cable management or mounting hardware and allow those displays to be visible whether you're at your desk, on the couch, grabbing a fresh cup of coffee or doing some stretches on your yoga mat.
> I don't think anyone would ever sit in any outdoor setup with a VR headset on their heads because it looks idiotic, it ruins your hair and its too expensive to let it lay around.
Not something I care about in both counts. And I don't think people care. In fact I was at a trade show this weekend where someone was playing a Q2 game and everyone looked really interested.
because it looks idiotic
Same as when people started talking to their bluetooth headset while walking on the street. It used to be disturbing and idiotic but no one bats an eye now.
The Quest 2 already has passthrough. When you exit your guardian, which is an area you defined as "safe", it will use the external cameras to essentially act as thick glasses.
Not to say that it is some kind of blissful experience, but it works reasonably well to go get a glass of water.
And yet, whenever there is a regulatory initiative to reign in those companies some people, especially on places HN, will claim that it is a futile attempt despite past evidence to the contrary.
My prediction if this takes off: Just as in Phones right now we will see a period of mono/duopolism after which lawmakers around the world will start to decide that the public space expanded into a new field and that companies such as Meta are unfit stewards.
Then laws will be written to align platforms more with whatever the local society expects. (And some people will, again, complain about that "overreach")
I can only provide anecdotal data but every single person in the dev world that I've talked to would disagree. Having unlimited virtual screens is useless if you're limited to how much of the screen you can see it at single time given the extremely limited ~90° FOV.
Furthermore, the resolution on a Quest for viewing actual text for long periods of time is entirely too low, and that's not even considering the fact that it can be very difficult to get the entire virtual screen to be in focus given the fresnel lenses. What do you do your programming on, a TI 83 screen?
Can confirm, I tried the virtual desktop thing and was somewhat underwhelmed. The pitch sounds amazing, but it practice it just hard to read code in VR.
It’s hard to believe that advertisers would be paying Facebook $100 billion a year if their product didn’t modify behavior. Maybe they’re just misinformed about the efficacy of Facebook ads, but I doubt it.
AR/VR is inevitable. I find it astonishing that there are so many naysayers on HN, a community that in its early days embraced technology innovation. Today's VR (and even AR via Mobile Phones) is primitive, sure, but the same could be said about desktop computers before the transition to mobile ever was an idea?
I expect more comments on how to influence this technology versus dismissing it as not applicable for the human race.
AR/VR skepticism is an attempt to influence the tech landscape and imo the most compelling dismissals are not made on grounds of irrelevance or lack of application but principled judgements about how we want to interact with the world
is it particularly surprising that people who know what goes into the sausages might be skeptical about feeding them to everyone for every meal?
volumetric displays have a lot of room for improvement but "looking glass" has been shipping a pretty slick product for a couple years now, I hope they can keep innovating
Tough to believe in a company that can’t even get their animated headers to size correctly on mobile. I’d love to see what the product looks like.. but on an iPhone 13/chrome I have no idea what the thing does.
fair critique, I just linked to that to show its a real thing you can buy
here's a quick sizzle reel that shows the product - it's a stack of transparent displays that produces a very convincing depth hologram, I've seen them in person, they're really cool
What I care about is that people largely don't talk about them, even though they're at least as plausible as fully immerse VR, which looms large in the collective third eye.
The public imagination is bent toward the cyber-dystopian, whereas these two technologies represent other possible futures.
great point, I consider the zuckerverse a kind of target fixation, where we are doomed to hit the dystopia because we can't look away / imagine an alternative
I suspect Steve Ballmer's motives to trash the iPhone in 2010 were rather unlike those leading some of us to doubt the desirability of Meta's VR ambitions in 2022
I used to think so, it just sounds like it would be "the future", right?
But realistically, what exactly is the appeal of it? The Metaverse? I mean, if no one can figure out how to make a fun MMORPG these days, what makes you think the "Metaverse" will actually be something people will want to spend time in? And why would Facebook be the one who actually figure out how to build some super appealing virtual world, they have 0% experience in doing this. It's gonna be boring, in immersive VR, still boring. And who really wants to wear these headsets? They always gonna be somewhat bulky.
But even if you could make it super immersive, and super fun, and totally appealing, you always gonna be one thing that's holding you back: Your real body, yes unfortunately we are all tied to these meat bags, so our dream of moving into our self created Matrix is always gonna be somewhat limited.
I mean you gotta be realistic here, no matter what we do, life will always be best experienced without a VR headset on. It might have some cool fun uses, but that's about it.
I think you are just out of touch. Don’t kids already spend tons of time in Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite? Fortnite has concerts by artists like Travis Scott that are massively attended, fashion areas where you can shop virtual clothing, etc. You really think this trend will dissipate as the tech gets better?
I just know that nobody wants to actually do the Carlson dance in VR when they can instead push one button in Fortnight to do that emoji.
VR has some interesting games and interesting effects. Emulating reality is not it at all. We as a tech society are still trying to figure out what VR is good for.
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My best experiences in VR is and remains Beat Saber.
A few other games (Keep Talking and nobody Explodes, Super hot, the spaceship shooter game from the lab) are good and fun.
There is nothing like reality in these games. In fact, the closer things get to reality (ex: throwing objects in Superhot) the worse the experience gets.
In contrast, when you become a fantasy avatar who moves a spaceship around with your hand (space shooter from the Lab) and I can play that for hours.
The best experiences are honest about what VR does well and what doesn't work well. Real life experiences are best one in real life, not with expensive $1000+ goggles on a computer.
A synthetic reality would be amazing. People would figure out all kinds of killer apps in the first year. Wearing a monitor on your face though is not capable of creating a synthetic reality.
I always see people mention VR fitness. I would love a synthetic gym with every piece of gym gear ever made and then build our own new gear from there. The problem is there is no way to lift synthetic weights by just strapping a monitor to your face, obviously.
I'm with Carmack on this one, reality may be better than VR for you but there are a lot of people in the world where that may not be the case either all the time or for some of the time. A VR headset is cheaper and more attainable than moving to a new city/state/country. Meeting people in VR is easier than trying to make new friends offline. VR allows people to choose everything about their physical appearance, not just clothing but physical proportions and attributes, gender, etc. Is it escapism? To some degree yes but it does allow for real social interaction on a level not previously possible with a computer. That means a lot to people who aren't able to socialize with others offline for a whole host of reasons.
Look, if you can solve the latency on voice chat or video chat, you are a hell of a lot further on making virtual experiences feel more intimate than any VR headset.
We've been meeting up online since 2020 due to the pandemic. We all know the problems with online meetups, and it has nothing to do with the nonexistence of VRChat (which obviously exists)
Awkward pauses and slower conversations and a far less intimate feel occurs due to this latency. It's enough to hold a work meeting since most people talk one by one, but not good for say... an online prayer service where coordinating everyone's timing to the Our Father or Hail Mary prayers is completely impossible.
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You literally can't sing or pray together online. It's a very dull experience.
I've experienced a lot of what you're talking about in video calls but a fairly minimal amount of it when talking in VR. I've never tried singing together in VR and I'm sure it wouldn't be good but conversation flows much more naturally than it does in a video call. I haven't checked but I think video calls have much higher latency because you are also encoding/decoding video streams. VR only transmits headset and controller/tracker positions so it doesn't have to deal with that overhead. Honestly though it doesn't detract from it much, I can't sing and I don't participate in prayer groups so those two things don't affect me. Personally, I'd much rather (and do) spend hours talking to people in VR rather than talking to people in video calls which I also have to do on a regular basis. An hour long video call makes me feel like I want to throw my computer out a window and go live in the woods, an hour long chat in VR doesn't seem quite long enough.
there is clearly a cultural schism developing, i've heard the phrase "terminally online" to describe people whose social circle exists entirely on twitter
so we will have a majority of people being totally dismissive of interacting with avatars through goggles (I hate the experience personally, feels like putting on a blindfold), and a growing minority that wouldn't have it any other way, divorced from anything going on IRL
I was privy to something while I still had a twitter account: a certain group of people, mostly anon or semi-anon accounts, having been brought into contact by some combination of algorithm, self-selection and serendipity, many of whom seemed to identify more with their emerging twitter ingroup than local circles, more than a few of whom self-described as very (if not terminally) online, self-organized a gathering IRL, which, while some seem to have had a good experience, quickly strained apparent bonds and revealed a number of fault lines
if this sort of thing is not unique to this particular group I could see it reinforcing the schism you describe, with online "communities" hesitant to talk to each other with goggles off lest it be discovered that a virtually established milieu may depend more on the avatars than the people behind them
I think VR and Twitter are far too different for this to fully apply. VR interaction involves real time voice communication along with a good deal of body language. Twitter has a forced limit on the number of characters you can use and is text and static image only. A fairer comparison might be video calls but I don't know of any online communities that use these exclusively so the closest would be Discord servers where a lot of people use voice chat.
There are quite a few people that have met up irl after building a relationship in apps like VR Chat, I think they've probably had the same success rate that people who met through chatrooms or dating sites have.
Good point. I imagine people will self-modify substantially in VR though. If we have high resolution VR it seems likely we'll be able to alter our voices and change our virtual bodies at will. And if video games and Twitter and even IRL cultural practices show anything it's that the typical human is a role-playing animal. When roles which previously floated free of any material basis come into contact IRL I wonder if this has the potential to create tension regardless of the immersiveness of the original virtual environment.
I suppose it might in some cases, especially if the relationship is a romantic one. If it were two friends meeting up for the first time I'd bet they'd be able to maintain the friendship even if there was a bit of a surprise about each other's appearance or actual voice. People do already use voice changers and a huge variety of avatars in VR Chat and other social VR apps so I'm sure this has happened quite a few times.
So while I’m general I do think some of the fascination with VR ubiquity is overhyped: this last weekend the Furality VR furry con was held in VRChat. It had over 5000 registered attendees and peak simultaneous players was over 4200, with most of the popular events/times still numbering in the 1000s of players.
And that’s with VR still very much in the gen 1 (maybe gen 2 if you want to be generous) phase of development. Within five or ten years tech like eye and mouth tracking and partial/full body haptics (which are all already a thing, just niche) will be typical offerings.
I don’t know to what extent it’ll displace existing tech. But the popularity of it today (especially in spaces where artists and developers can do whatever they want) is real and growing crazy fast.
That's a little like tracing computers back to ENIAC, sure it's the same concept and can do some of the same things but there are worlds of difference between it and a personal computer.
Even if you limit scope to only consumer grade VR there's still examples from the mid-nineties of strap-on headsets. The jump to wireless has also been a generational leap, despite its tradeoffs. So by my count this is the 3rd generation.
I'd be cautious of reading too much into that, because furries are also, these days, the main users of SecondLife. When everyone else bailed out of Metaverse 1.0 15 years ago, the furries stayed. It's arguably a community with very different requirements to the mainstream.
> And why would Facebook be the one who actually figure out how to build some super appealing virtual world
They don't need to build a super appealing virtual world, they just need to figure out how to get you coming back to something every day, even if you don't like it and/or think it adds negative value to your life.
With VR it’s not about the world you play in, it’s all about the people who are there. Most of what I do in VR is just hang out and talk to people but when I do game it’s anything with multiplayer. As long as the game includes grabbable objects and physics people will make their own fun. It’s a much lower bar than traditional games, just make sure your networking is on point and you almost can’t lose.
It's a fascinating phenomenon ... I call it "passionate dismissal". You can tell many of these people aren't 100% sincere from the mere fact they showed up to make a comment.
"This technology is boring and going nowhere ... so I read an article all about it and then took the time to make a comment about it ..."
I'm ready to predict that these people are radically wrong. The VR adoption curve is so sharp now in the 10-15 yr age bracket that people haven't caught up to the fact it is happening yet. I say that as someone with children in that age range and > 50% of their friends suddenly have and use VR routinely. These kids are all super acclimated to spending large amounts of time in VR. These kids are "primed" to become the next wave of tech users.
HN folks, get ready to feel really, really old in 5 years from now - probably how all our parents / grandparents felt when we showed up with smart phones.
Do you have any stats or other evidence that it’s taking off among kids? I know teachers in our affluent town and have not heard anything about it (though I haven’t asked).
no - for me it's anecdotal and I accept that is weak evidence by any reasonable measure. I guess you can cite things like the Oculus app being the most popular download on iOS last Christmas, etc.
But the way I see it rippling through that demographic is pretty crazy ... the kicker is that to join in with multiplayer you need a headset to play. So once a couple of them are doing it there is a pretty strong pull for the whole group to get on board. My theory is that this demographic is a bit "under the radar" and hence we are seeing less reporting on this than you would otherwise.
Well, no thank you. I have enough problems getting my teens - - especially my son -- to live the real world, to make friends, socialize, get outside, breath fresh air, and get off touch screens and games.
I won't let VR goggles enter my home. I'm not the only one. Maybe it's the future, but I'll hold it off as long as I can -- especially if it's Facebook, with all their ethical blindness and attention monopolizing -- that's pushing it.
The funny thing is that this tech is far more social than phones and computers ever were. When you hang out with a friend in VR, you actually can end up feeling like you hung out and had a silly fun time, like you had really gone out for a round of mini golf.
Thanks won’t claim that VR is better than being outside, but to me it seems a hell of a lot better than sitting on the couch with a phone.
I spent a lot of my teens on MUDs & MOOs (really, textual VR), so I understand the substance of what you're saying, but
Honestly, the full sensual immersion of VR is the last thing we need in our house at this point after 2 years of COVID. I need my kids to get more physical exercise and time outside this house, not less.
And I am not trying to convince you to buy in, just trying to correct some misconceptions about the tech. VR, depending on the app can be awesome exercise. The best games are very physical and while it may not be a gym workout, it is miles better than watching tv or playing console games.
Just a few examples, rhythm games like Beat Saber, Pistol Whip and Synth Riders are at least on the level of Zumba or other aerobic dance exercises. Thrill of the Fight is a boxing game that is seriously intense and one of the best stress busters I have ever seen. Even something like eleven table tennis is essentially identical to playing real table tennis so is also much better than being a couch potato. VR is part of my and many other people’s overall fitness regimen.
Of course you need to set some limits, but I actually look forward to going on adventures together with my son in VR. Why not embrace it? When I was young, my parents showed zero interest in my gaming interests. At one point I even bought a game specifically because I hoped it would be something my dad and I could enjoy together (based on his interests, not mine), and all I got was a shrug. They're great parents and I love them, but I wish they'd engaged a bit more. To them video games and PCs didn't really exist. I want to experience cool new worlds with my kids, if they'll let me.
We play games together and his interests are often sparked by mine. But the dark side to gaming in the 21st century is they can easily become all-encompassing at the expense of a lot of things that I mentioned above (outside interests, etc.) Much of the modern gaming stack is engineered for total immersion and focus stealing, and leaves little room for outside interests.
I played games as a boy and young man as well. But I also wrote BASIC and 6502 assembly, or built forts in the woods, looked at neat plants, soldered projects for my VIC-20 or Atari ST, read ElfQuest graphic novels and acted them out with my friends, explored the local RadioShack, rode my bike, etc. The nature of my son's gaming obsessions has actually made it hard to get him to diversify.
Parenting is not easy. Defining limits is hard, but if you don't things can go
sideways really badly and we have learned this the hard way.
That is something I'm definitely worried about. I don't let my 4-year old play on tablets and phones, but I do let him use the PC as I feel mastering it could lead to more creative uses of technology. But the fact is that games have come a long way since the 90s when I played (not even online at that point), so if it was consuming then it must be much more so today. I'm not sure how to deal with that. On the one hand I'm glad my parents didn't really limit my use of the PC as it let me explore freely, but doing so today may not be an option.
Regarding VR specifically, I feel like limiting it comes more naturally _because_ it is so all-encompassing. It should be regarded as a special activity that you do for short bursts of time, en preferably as a social activity. It also helps that it's quite physical compared to other types of games. But in the end I guess we'll have to introduce these things slowly and watch how our kids handle it. If they show addictive tendencies it might be time to limit it.
while i appreciate what you want for your sun, jumping to "I won't let VR goggles into my home" doesn't seem like a reasonable response either.
Will you also ban game consoles and televisions? Will you limit his internet usage to wikipedia, and only non sexual articles?
There is a lot of room between 'I don't support meta's endeavours' and 'BAN VR', and you've jumped directly on the extreme end of a scale for seemingly no reason.
Maybe eventually. I agree that it's very fun as a toy. Some of the games are an absolute blast. Most are trash tbh, but that'll change / improve.
However, the weird mEtAVeRsE wet dream zuck is pushing is total BS. NOBODY wants to live/work in VR. It's a fun thing to do for short periods of time for entertainment, and AR/VR is a cool tool for certain tasks (e.g. interior design).
The idea that we're gonna be flying through cyber space like some kinda Hackers (the movie) scene is just nonsense. It's honestly bad UX that people have been trying to push forever. Windows 95 had this goofy virtual world thing where you were in a room and all your software was on bookshelves and other silly shit that was a fun gimmick, but infinitely less efficient than buttons, menus, and sorted lists.
Also, unless headsets get MUCH lighter (and less sweaty) while simultaneously getting much better battery life they aren't going to be a thing people wear for long periods of time any time soon.
How will the headsets not get lighter and better battery life? That'd be the easy part to bet on, don't you think? Computing devices have shrunk dramatically over the years. I'm surprised people are so impatient about how this is developing.
And while I don't use Facebook and feel uncomfortable about Meta owning the dominant virtual space, I absolutely think it will happen and prove very popular. Have you seen how much time people currently spend scrolling their phones with the little interfaces and small viewports? Lying on the couch with goggles between dinner and bedtime will be the norm soon enough, IMO - watching TV/movies, experiencing spaces, browsing content, socialising, learning, etc.
A more comfortable strap helps a lot. The quest 2 with a standard strap is just horrible. The quest 1's strap was really great. The 'elite' one for the Q2 is somewhere in the middle..
I fully agree that nobody wants to strap a big set of googles, but I'm also willing to bet that more and more of our lives will take place in "cyberspace".
I'm willing to bet in the distant future almost all our lives will be virtual because it is simply so much cheaper than physical things.
Our video games will become more immersive, I would not be surprised if a generation or two a family holiday could be a week inside a video game.
Our work conference calls are becoming more and more immersive. I would not be surprised if work from home and work in the office eventually meet in the middle where you are physically at home but with a virtual representation sitting in a vertical office, where communication and collaboration are easy.
That doesn't change the fact that the input problem for AR/VR is not solved. Some VR is trying to solve this by integrating back in the mouse/keyboard. Others, like Elon, are trying to leapfrog to human-brain interface.
Neither of those efforts change the fact that for current AR/VR your input is lower bandwidth than a smartphone which is already lower bandwidth than mouse/keyboard.
This input bandwidth limit means that the applications for the tech are currently very minimal and means that any product being sold today is unlikely to do well.
I honestly don't see VR ever really taking off before we manage to solve the "output" problems either. Every sense except vision and hearing gets ignored. Walking is a complete mess, because real life furniture tends to get in the way. Smell and taste are usually completely ignored. Touch tends to fail completely as soon as you "push through" the haptic feedback.
VR is just not very "real", and I don't think we can ever make it real enough with the tech path it is on. Human brain interfaces seem like the best bet, but they are so far away that I don't think they'll be commercially available in my lifetime.
Yeah. AR/VR being future heavyweights seems obvious.
Currently though? They're all kinda shit. And there doesn't seem to be a clear incremental step from "current" to "good enough" for a GIGANTIC range of scenarios, so it seems reasonable to claim "it's not coming any time soon".
And I say all this as an enthusiast. When resolution and compute power increases a bit, I'll probably make a real effort to use VR (AR seems further away) to replace my desk/monitor(s)/etc for work. But without a ton of effort and severe tradeoffs, it's not really currently feasible.
I think integrating existing devices and new ones is the way to go. With high resolution, color passthrough you can easily use a keyboard and mouse. Even better will be adding tracking to devices that you can use in VR. This already exists for a small selection of keyboards when using the Quest but could be expanded as needed either with purely visual tracking or base stations ala Vive or even using inertial tracking (like the IMU in your phone). For some applications using the VR controller as a laser pointer is more natural and faster than using a mouse, I'm sure the hardware and UI design will evolve to maximize this utility.
For some the "VR is inevitable" predictions clash with past experience about the coming VR wave, virtual words, and failed 3D hardware (Google Glass, 3D TV, etc.). For those who invested time and money into these earlier attempts, it's difficult to believe that this will be any different despite some undeniably cool demos and compelling niche use cases.
I think you are right based on the media coverage, but I’m bewildered that anyone who has tried these can equate them. My personal experience trying all of these when they came out
1. Google Glass: This is the most underwhelming and lamest thing ever. Tried for 20 seconds and never thought about it again.
2. 3DTV: meh, I’dr rather watch 2D.
3. Magic Leap / HoloLens: this is way less cool than the commercials, tiny field of view, incredibly far way from something actually usable.
That’s not to say VR is perfect. In fact, it’s far enough away from perfect I currently never use it. But it is so much more impressive and close to being amazing than these other categories.
This is close to my position. I was completely unimpressed by 3D TV but VR made me stop what I was doing and learn Unity. It seems strange to lump them in the same category. There was no grass roots passion for 3D TV. There's still tons for VR/AR.
Don’t remember the model, but I used a very early Oculus VR headset and came away thinking it was like looking at a blurry image through a screen door.
> I find it astonishing that there are so many naysayers on HN, a community that in its early days embraced technology innovation.
You're creating a false dichotomy - probably unintentionally, but I find it's important to point it out. As one of these naysayers, I'm not against VR because I'm somehow skeptical of futuristic/modern technology (nuclear fusion when?), it's because I am specifically against VR/AR in the hands of a megacorp like Facebook. If all this development was happening in the open, like for example the web developed, I would be jumping on this yesterday. As someone who's dreamed of the Star Trek holodeck since I was a child, the thought of becoming an Oculus dev to pursue this dream does not excite me one bit.
For some use cases, AR/VR is already here! There's nothing to be skeptical about. But I think it's healthy to be skeptical of the idea that AR/VR can be shoved into every aspect of our lives and it will make sense. Phones/tablets didn't replace regular computers for productivity. Will VR do it? Who knows, but I kind of doubt it. Will every genre of game make sense in VR? Probably not.
Then there's also the history of each recent step forward in technology coming along with increased top-down control and surveillance. Here, it's especially important to be skeptical of Meta's influence on VR specifically. I think Meta's goal is to create a fully walled garden where they can surveil their users freely to sell ads. An App Store for VR, but with even more monitoring and advertising. This is not a future I want, regardless of the benefits of the technology itself.
I'm simultaneously a huge advocate of VR/AR as an amazing new medium and at the same time sceptical about it's chance of short or medium term mass adoption.
Can't it just be a niche/enthusiast product for another decade or so? There's enough people that care and it to keep our afloat. It doesn't have to shift a billion units
It's not though; it's a gimmick. The scenarios aren't there. In fact, I think the scenarios won't be there for a general purpose AR/VR device even if they make them as thin as glasses. Sure, navigation on a bike is nice, and maybe hololens-like scenarios for manufacturing or high-end industrial support, but that's it.
I have an Oculus 2, and before that I've had a couple of Windows VR headsets when Microsoft was doing their push; they're all gathering dust in a box now...
It doesn’t just have to be on bike. I would say walking directions are far more valuable.
Let’s take what I say is the Peak AR Device:
Glasses with Shuttered Camera + LIDAR, Bone Conducting Audio, Haptic Feedback, High Quality Microphones, & Smart Assistant.
Often when I’m out in the city and finding a new place I would rely on my phone. Often the GPS on my phone would be screwed since I was underground and I would have to look at the streets on the map to see where I am relative to where I need to face and go. On the newer models of the iPhone I can use it’s LIDAR feature to tell it exactly where I am , but it’s cumbersome to wave your phone back and forth. An AR glasses would already be scanning around, know exactly what direction your facing , and give you visual indicators of where to go the whole trip.
Let’s say someone who speaks a different language ask’s you a question like say directions , an often enough encounter where I’m from. With the strides Apple are making in their Translate technology (with much more to go), the translated speech can appear as text right in front on your screen. Let’s say the show you a piece of paper enter in a different language. That same translate technology can show you a translated page. AR , if we get there, will be amazing and all of the technology I said above already exist in mobile form.
It my mind is was flyer for an event but I can also be on a phone!
As someone who gets lost often to ability to have directions to everywhere is a killer feature to me. I can also see LIDAR based glasses being a huge accessibility device for the blind.
I have headsets also gathering dust, but the scenarios are there. The odd night spent doing Pavlov gun games with rando 13 year olds, having a deep fireside chat in Horizons with a guy who built the virtual cabin, and watching old Bond movies with an Israeli guy are core VR memories for me.
It's a pain to set up and get on, it has issues, but those experiences will continue to be attractive as the technology eventually fades into the background.
This argument is a classic template for enthusiasts when faced with skeptical push back. Comparing your pet-technology with the nascent version of something that went on to be incredibly successful is a very common fallacy that doesn't help your argument.
It's more like Meta trying to lead the revolution seems dystopic at best. Purchasing virtual property to live in? I already deal with that in real life, why would I want to deal with that in a virtual world where the possibilities should be limitless and not tied to real life?
Why do you expect to have to purchase property in VR? I think this was just a headline that uninformed people ran with because it was so provocative. There may be a VR equivalent to domain squatting, but probably nothing that would require you to get a mortgage.
>Why do you expect to have to purchase property in VR?
because its already a thing in virtual spaces.
> probably nothing that would require you to get a mortgage.
oh so now you expect it, but you think its not a lot of money. Seems like you're in agreement with him about purchasing virtual spaces, you just think its worth the money.
Probably because I am old and it has been inevitable at this point for nearly my entire life.
The fundamental flaw IMO is that VR always over promises and under delivers.
Meta will make VR indistinguishable from reality but of course we don't mean smell as part of reality.
Indistinguishable from reality but of course we are not talking about going under water, feeling water as being wet and feeling like you are floating in water.
Indistinguishable from reality but of course we don't mean a virtual massage parlor that someone could touch your back and it feels like your back is being touch.
We mean we are going to make the tech equivalent jump from a 15 inch CRT monitor to a 27 inch nice LCD monitor and pretend VR is now indistinguishable from reality because that is what the Emperor wants and the Emperor signs my checks.
To me, you either need a full body suit, disregard smell and then stand on an underwater treadmill with a motorcycle helmet on or it is all a waste of time until we have a good brain computer interface.
What is inevitable VR? Is it ready player one? Because that's what companies keep explaining it as. But that's never going to happen. Is it treadmills? Is it just what we have now but with better glasses? The discussion is swamped with people who saw a dumb movie once and don't understand how anything works.
Virtual world is easy. Virtual world where you are immersed beyond having the camera on your head is pretty much impossible. We don't have an idea for what tech would be required for that. There's a large gap between moving your character with a control stick and "being" in the game like in the movie implied.
We don't have the tech to do massive enormous orders of magnitude larger than typical MMO servers.
And of course the movie was some sort of dystopian web3 nightmare without considering the evil tech CEO. It showed the characters having fun going to doom world for PVP with real money and permadeath at stake. The main characters father loses everything because he dies in the game. But it was fine because the main characters were talented so it looked fun. This isn't a requirement for a virtual world of course, but the concept of the VR economy implies the game needs to be a lot less game and a lot more business. Not a spunky playground where you, a non pro gamer, will be able to do anything noteworthy.
I was wowed the first time I put on a VR headset, and I continue to be wowed every time I try it. But lots of regular people aren't sufficiently wowed to pay console-level prices for the experience, which to me indicates that the culprit isn't just immature technology.
> AR/VR is inevitable.
Calling a given technology "inevitable" shuts down criticism.
There's nothing inevitable about a technology that takes charge of our two most important senses (sight and hearing) at once. I think that counts as sensory deprivation to a lot of people.
> takes charge of our two most important senses (sight and hearing)
A quibble with this - the next gen is all about full color high res passthrough and many headsets like the Quest have open ear headphones so you still hear your surroundings. I think it's going to be much less isolating than the "VR is an isolating dystopia" people think.
Yeah, the folks who sank piles of money into it last time all thought that too. Turns out that "inevitable" might mean "tomorrow" or it might mean "thirty years from now". Pointing that out _is_ an attempt to "influence this technology" by reminding people that thinking gigantic problems will just magically be solved Because This Is The Future is a recipe for disappointment.
I wonder if the reason this community embraced innovation in the early days is because only those who embrace new things are going to be attracted to a site in its early days. In other words, even the act of using Hacker News was an embracement of the new, which filtered out anyone who didn't embrace the new -- so you were only going to find people embracing the new in the comments.
Now that the site is established, it moreso attracts people who are interested in the established, and less-so attracts people who are interested in new things. This problem tends to amplify itself, as a community that rejects new things is also going to drive away people who are interested in new things.
Now that Hacker News is established, it's just not "it" anymore. "It" is somewhere else.
But this is all just a theory. The counter to this argument is that many people on Hacker News in 2007 expressed serious reservations to Dropbox/cloud storage when it was first revealed -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863. So perhaps what we're seeing is that problem-solvers (developers) also tend to be problem-finders.
It's not inevitable for the masses until the only way to do it is a headset. It will be only a tech for specialized markets and in controlled environments. Gamers, engineers, doctors. You're not going to do AR/VR while walking or when killing some time waiting at the restaurant. One reason is that not many people will carry a cumbersome headset with them. A phone is a better device for those scenarios.
Glasses or contact lenses could change that. I can't wear contact lenses anymore but I wear glasses all the time. Light glasses, not heavy ones.
It is inevitable that the technology will mature. It is not inevitable that it will play the role people think it will play.
I think I'd be more enthusiastic if:
- VR headsets weren't still so bad. Merely good VR devices is still a long way off.
- the existing VR experiences weren't still so bad
- the market wasn't completely fragmented and any purchase you make now is very short term
- any meaningful degree interoperability is still way off in the future
- the dominant player wants a walled garden where you are a powerless guest - at best
Headsets will get better, but it'll be a slow, expensive and frustrating journey I'd be happy to let someone else get frustrated with. I've followed VR for about 30 years and if you look at it in that perspective, astonishingly little has been accomplished in terms of building something that even rises to where it isn't a frustrating, nauseating, sad experience.
And if Zuck's walled garden is where the action is going to be at, I might sit it out entirely. Why would I invest my time being part of a community where I have absolutely no rights? That would be a really poor choice.
There are legitimate reasons why people aren't as enthusiastic as you. And it doesn't make them naysayers.
Yes, I also find it quite astonishing. I bought a Quest 2 so that I could explore if this was a gimmick or the real deal. It’s absolutely the real deal and in my mind, the unquestionable future of computing. And if Facebook ends up owning the whole thing, it’ll be specifically because others in the tech industry had lost the plot and were too busy dismissing it to chase for a piece of the prize.
An example of this is in game development. The app library is currently so that that it has opened up a huge opportunity for solo indie developers to build simple games and end up at the top of the sales charts. And we’re talking about something that has outsold the new Xbox.
Tech people like to wax on about how concerned they are about Facebook, but these comments usually are just a chance for them to take a few swings at a favorite corporate punching bag, not because they have any particular interest in VR.
I think in many ways the HN community is going through a deep skepticism cycle where everything new is dismissed. After Zuckerberg’s huge gamble pays off and creates a bigger gold rush than mobile, this same community is going to be posting guides on how to custom program hand tracking gestures and detailed breakdowns on how the distortion correction works.
"[Thing A] was bad once, and now everyone uses it, thus everyone will use [Thing B], because Thing B is currently bad", is not, generally, a great argument. For instance, take 3D TVs; those were _not_ good (though they were far more mature than current VR stuff) or, as it turned out, of particular interest to the general public, and now they're gone.
While I can't predict the future, I tend to think that VR is more of a 3D TV situation than a smartphone situation; an industry which is hitting market scaling issues ("Argh! Everyone in the world has a HD TV/Facebook account!") is pushing a new thing, to expand its market, and it's not particularly clear that consumers want it. This all feels very top-down; giant companies deciding what consumers will want next, and telling consumers they want it. This works less often than you'd think.
Now, this eventually worked for the TV industry with 4K and particularly HDR, but those were both less jarringly different from what people were used to, and had more creative support (your average film director was much more excited about HDR than 3D...)
My contention isn't that it won't happen only that it's irrelevant. AR/VR is just UI. It doesn't really make anything new possible. An absolutely perfect headset will be marginally more convenient for some modalities than a phone and much less convenient for a lot of others.
My contention isn't that it won't happen only that it's irrelevant. Smartphones are just UI. They don't really make anything new possible. An absolutely perfect smartphone will be marginally more convenient for some modalities than a laptop and much less convenient for a lot of others.
Smartphones make loads of things possible that weren't possible before. They are extremely portable, have excellent displays for text, can connect to mobile data networks and contain an array of sensors that benefit from mobility.
You can connect usb GSM adapters to have the mobile network on a laptop (same for all the other sensors). It is just a lot more "convenient" to have a smartphone in your pocket rather than carry a giant laptop with you everywhere. Which is the point I was trying to make. Yes, technically all thinks VR does is possible with a smartphone but it is a lot more "convenient" to have google maps directions overlayed on top of real world rather than looking at it through a smartphone.
I'm not sure it is more convenient. Google Glass did heads up directions years ago and nobody cared. I don't get lost so quickly that I can't just peak at my phone every minute or two. I'm not buying a piece of hardware to strap to my face for just that one thing. The current pinnacle of AR adoption is still Pokemon Go and that was 5 years ago. And it was really just a gimmick.
> I'm not buying a piece of hardware to strap to my face for just that one thing.
Obviously this was just one example to demonstrate the convenience of VR/AR over smart phones. You would not be using VR/AR for "just that one thing". The applications are numerous:
* Ability to have virtual workspaces with multiple high-resolution simulated monitors (and that's just the low-hanging fruit of simulating existing workspaces at a lower cost and more portability, it is entirely possible that VR will lead to completely new workspaces. But let's be a pessimist and assume simulating existing workspaces is the best we can do.). I mean if VR can deliver this one thing and nothing else, I would say it will be a huge success.
* Ability to read/work on commute without getting a headache from vibrations (since the image will be stable)
* Lifelike interaction with friends and family in a moment's notice and no air pollution
* Videogames
And these are some of the easier and less speculative uses of VR.
How are you actually defining "new" here? Have you considered that you are defining "new" in an amorphous way that allows you to reject everything new that VR/AR offer?
AR allows one to create virtual objects with actual position and shape in the real world. We can see these objects in their location in the world, and interact with them. That is the abstracted case of what is truly new -- the thing that simply does not exist without AR.
From this abstract case, we can give concrete examples. When buying products online, one can discover what furniture will look like in their house, or what clothing will look like on their body -- they can better see it from every angle and the form it will take. In terms of "adult entertainment", one can literally experience a virtual person up in your face and on your body, something that is just not offered by any existing form. Shit, we can attach a virtual note to a physical object (that only select people get to see!), we can use a ping pong table without needing to own a ball, we can see "subtitles" next to a person who is talking, we can see a label next to our friend in a crowded place without having to constantly cross-reference a map on a phone screen... honestly. Have some imagination.
If you can see this list of things and say "none of that is new", then I seriously challenge you to define "new" for me, because I'm willing to bet you are not applying the same rigorous definition to smartphones.
Sure, but that's still all just UI. You can build all of those things on a 2D screen. If you build a Unity 3D app, you get to choose to build for whatever platform if it's Windows or Android or VR rig. In fact, I have done the 3d furniture simulator thing for a furniture retailer but it was all just done on screens. I've also done a load of work in AR with both handheld and headset devices. We had clients who desperately wanted a cool AR experience and we spent many weeks and months brainstorming things we could do and really just came up with fluff. We looked at everything in the market, talked to manufacturers, did some experiments with users. Nobody came up with anything compelling. We built some cool novelty experiences, but nothing anyone would pay money for. I can believe that a massive (and it has to be like 10X current gen) improvement in resolution and refresh rate will make the experience smooth enough to be a complimentary technology for some niches.
A smartphone is merely a dumbphone with better UI. Look how transformative that was.
None of these things are achievable in the same way with a 2D screen because by definition a 2D screen lacks the ability to literally display along the Z axis. Our minds perceive in 3D, not 2D. A 2D screen literally provides less information about distance and location to the senses. Moreover, a 2D screen has a complete inability to create the feeling of presence, something that is new to AR/VR.
Actually, to act as if the feeling of presence is not new, despite you apparently having used a headset, seems bizarre to the point of incomprehensibility. Use VR porn and tell me that’s not a completely new, compelling experience. I’m addicted to it — it’s like I’m literally having sex. Honestly, your rejection of presence as revolutionary means I don’t actually think it’s possible to get anywhere with this discussion.
Lastly, your difficulties developing something compelling with AR is not a sufficient argument that nothing compelling can ever be achieved with it.
I'll add to this that having subtitles next to the person one is speaking to is completely transformative for hearing-impaired people. The only way you could replicate this with a 2D screen is by having them either (a) avert eye contact to look down at a phone, which prevents them from being engaged with the person, or (b) hold up a phone camera to someone's face, which is obviously significantly more cumbersome and socially awkward than wearing some glasses (and please try to imagine the future of AR headsets that are becoming increasingly compact like sunglasses, not a bulky existing Hololens headset).
So, take that idea. It's not a novelty experience. It's not fluff. It significantly improves the lives of hearing-impaired people.
Did you even come up with this idea? If so, why were you not able to create it? Have you considered that perhaps it was due to the fact that something like this is extremely difficult to develop and can't be done by a regular team over a period of 'months'? Have you considered that AR/VR isn't just going to be made transformative within a <1 year time period of you getting your hands on it?
On the other hand, if you didn't even come up with such a practically beneficial idea as this (or were unable to see how life-changingly useful it'd be for the hearing-impaired), then the issue with all of your ideas being "fluff" was not due to the technology at hand.
This even sparks my imagination further. Right now, if someone yells at a hearing-impaired person from behind, they have no immediate way of knowing (any phone-based solution is not going to give quick information about the direction of the yell when it's in-pocket). On the other hand, an AR headset will be able to immediately inform that person that a loud voice has come from exactly the direction it is pointing to, because it can literally show an arrow in their visual sight. That is so goddamn exciting and useful. And I simply can't comprehend how you cannot see it.
Believe it or not, overlayed closed captions was one the first things I came up with. It's also not that hard to do with commodity voice and face recognition. We did a POC just on a 2d phone screen in like a week. Trying to capture multiple people speaking at once is way beyond the capability of any retail headset and would require an elaborate 3d microphone array and noise filtering to pinpoint where a voice is coming from. Ours worked pretty well sitting across a table, but would struggle mightily trying to hear something across any distance in a noisy room.
Is it though? Technology is progressing, sure. And it will find its use, but what are the datapoints or other clues that predicts that AR/VR will become mainstream? Not saying it will not, but what makes it, in your opinion, "inevitable"
I think that is exactly the point of the comment you are replying to here. HN is a place where you would think people can see the use case opportunities and extrapolate them into the future based on the featured article's assertions (like getting access to a PPD of 55) and what that all means in the long term.
Spatial computing will bring about a fundamental UI/UX design refactoring of established 2D applications we just take for granted as fully baked. It won't replace them, like screens didn't replace books, but it will allow for enhanced functions we didn't know we were missing until they were in front of us and it will be offered in a more delightful human centric experience at the same time. HN dogs can bark but the caravan is rolling.
I doubt it. Navigation in 3D space is far more awkward than 2D. Depth is hard to get accurate, and you now have to deal with things closer to you obscuring things behind them. It's slow and awkward.
Improving this space isn't dependent on new technology either. We don't need more fps for them to solve the UX problems, they could've been solved for 3D navigation on a 2D screen - but they haven't, it has always been easier, faster and more accurate to navigate a 2D space.
10 years ago I thought we would all be driving in autonomous cars by now, I was seriously concerned about the impact this would have on the trucking industry. For context I have a background in ML/Stats so I was reasonably familiar with the research going on in this area and had many friends working on it.
In that time I have relearned an old adage that people before my generation would know well "the last mile is the longest mile". In R&D this feels far more extreme than in running.
VR seems very similar to autonomous driving. Quest 1/2 are light years ahead of what we had a decade or so ago. At the same time it's nowhere near to the point where it's going to be a major part of my day. The Quest was mind blowing when I first used it, but I got bored remarkably fast. Most importantly, none of my problems with quest are the problems that are being solved here.
The biggest one, in my opinion, is still space. I want a 10'x10' area to run around in to even start having fun, and even in a house I still don't have an open space that supports that without moving furniture around.
The mobile phone took over our lives because it's so small and convenient. Large TVs work because we've been building homes around them for decades, and TV spaces are also communal, family/friend spaces. This brings up another issue, VR is fundamentally isolating. I get annoyed enough when friends don't look up from their phones.
The remaining obstacles for VR to conquer seem to be arguably bigger problems than the ones that self driving cars need to tackle to take over the roads.
> This brings up another issue, VR is fundamentally isolation.
Wait. Why? Online games exist. They're social.
I'm not really a gamer. But it's interesting why social interaction in online video games is some secondary tier to social interaction playing basketball, for example, or just talking in coffee shop - or on the phone...
Social interaction in video games is second tier because it's vastly lower bandwidth than real life social interaction. 3 senses - taste, touch, smell - are completely missing. Audio is present, but often sounds distorted, disconnected, or ethereal - i.e. "off". Meanwhile, visually you only gets to experience the virtual space you're interacting in which is rife with limitations. In particular, body language from those around you is either missing entirely or is very rudimentary.
Though I'd say interaction in games can easily beat "talking on the phone".
You can get very good body language through, but... it will cost you quite a bit in additional hardware (trackers and add-ons). The demand is clearly there and the supply is catching up (various competitors). I think competition will drive down the cost.
Audio is likewise a matter of cost. And manufacturers not cheaping out on components, I'm looking at you HTC (and the notoriously horrible Rift S too).
I'm looking forward to programmable smells based on a combination of basic smell cartridges. That's totally a thing people are working on.
Touch is a hell of a lot harder to solve. More could be done to provide good haptic feedback. Haptic vests and facial interfaces already exist (at additional cost, of course), but the problem is the more crap you have to add to your body the more inconvenient (and sweaty) VR gets. I believe providing better VR touch interfaces is key to the development of the technology.
And I really, really don't want to taste anything in VR!
If we get good body and face and eye tracking all built into a headset I think social VR will have everything it needs. I’m pretty sure all tracking can be done purely with cameras, maybe even only with cameras on the headset and controllers though I think having a single wireless base station studded with cameras would make it easier. Touch is great but not really necessary in most cases.
Your point is very culture-dependent though. Due to sound orientation and voice chat, playing Pavlov VR does feel like a very social activity, probably more so than just going to a bar with the same friends.
I don't usually touch, taste or smell my friends either.
> In particular, body language from those around you is either missing entirely or is very rudimentary.
> I don't usually touch, taste or smell my friends either.
It would be very out of the ordinary to not touch or smell your friends quite frequently.
While some people prefer not to, hugging, patting on the back, nudging, passing objects back and forth, and even less common things like holding hands or touching each others' hair are very common social interactions.
Smelling just happens passively when you're spending time with biological creatures who have perfumed clothing, armpits, and hair, and sweat to boot (among other less desirable odors). This isn't necessarily a great thing but experiencing the biology of other human beings is personally important to me.
To not taste things with / alongside your friends would also be out of the ordinary.
They do, but most people also live with other people. If you're immersed in VR, you're isolated from those you're with in real life. It's harder to keep immersed, if your g/f, wife, or kids hit you up every couple of mins.
So unless they also have headsets that are interacting with you, it's likely, that both you and they want to spend time with each other in real life, and when you go into VR, you're isolated from them.
Same goes for playing games or browsing on a computer. Most people aren’t capable of keeping up active conversation while immersed in a game or even just reading an article. VR can include other people that are present physically but it really should be treated as a separate activity. You should make time in your day for your loved ones outside of VR.
It's not that you can't have social interactions in a (VR) game, but someone with VR goggles on is extremely unapproachable for other people in the same room.
My profesor at Uni predicted, that the next computer revolution will be "invisible computing". That firstly basically all everyday items will get chips inside (ie "Smart Things", it was way before Iphone &co) and then computing will bee something in the background. IDK, but it seems plausible to me and looks like we are moving into such future. VR is not compatible with that vision. Most ppl prefer real life to escapism. And event if you want to escape drugs are more fun and more addictive.
I dunno, escapist industries are pretty big, and occupy quite a big of most people's non-work waking life. Film, tv, video games, books, comics, social media, etc..
I was extremely skeptical of VR until I got a Quest 2 and spent a bit of time with it. I used to think it was just a tech gimmick that added no value, but I think I was wrong and I've completely reversed my stance on the idea. This device is still rather primitive and far from great, but IMO it's just good enough to show you what's possible in the very near future.
I still really hate facebook/meta and don't have a lot of faith that they can make the world a better place, but I now feel like VR can add a lot of real value and is fundamentally a good goal.
I find it very underwhelming (and I was already suspicious to begin with). My wife got one for a conference and after doing the First Steps and being used for her conference, it's basically just gathered dust other than showing friends First Steps (after recharging it because it's just been sitting in its box for weeks or months). The Jurassic Park/World/whatever game was OK, but I was basically bored after an hour or two (I did not find it very immersive at least). Certainly not groundbreaking. My mom has it now and enjoys the roller coaster sim (which is quite vertigo-inducing and limits the playtime substantially), but without shelling out cash for unknown-quality software (something I find too risky at their price points) it's basically just a few gimmicks so far in my experience.
Beat Saber is basically the casual killer game for the Quest, much like Angry Birds was for the iPhone. I just wish more artists would release music packs for it.
My favorite has been the mini golf game. Just flat out fun and since I have a decent sized space for it I can walk over a few steps and tap a put in just like I am there. I will have to try Alyx--just figured out how to get SteamVR working with the Quest.
I mean, you've basically done nothing with the device. How can you claim it's not any good when you haven't even seen the fair-to-middling parts (Say nothing of the actually good parts)?
"Basically a few gimmicks" yet refuses to do any basic research and buy a few games to actually try it out. Huh.
Same. I’m always surprised by all these people on HN who claim to have had epiphanies trying the product. Especially the ones who seem to think wireless is the game changer when you’re still walking around a 5x5m space and relying on other inputs for actual movement.
Wireless is a game changer. Being able to just put it on and play is a blessing compared to the last generation and the ability to turn around 360 without worrying about getting entangled makes the experience so much better.
Sounds like VR is not for you, and that's fine, but mocking people who think wireless is a big deal is just nonsense.
Wireless is a game changer when I’m playing Pavlov and constantly sweeping back and forth looking for other players or quickly reloading or ducking behind cover or pretty much anything because the worst thing to have happen in a fire fight is to get your arms tangled in your cable.
My secret wish is that Zuck has a come to Jesus moment and ditches the creepy adtech business in favour of building real hardware and software that delivers real value to people allowing them to socialize with people around the world. I feel like they’ve taken the first few steps in that direction but I’m very worried that they will just keep selling attention and data out of greed and inertia.
Also not OP, but I use my quest 2 just about every day, so I could share a bit.
I've gone through phases since purchasing it where there is one game or another that I get into, but the general theme has been something with a 'physical' aspect to it + skill development (Beat Saber is a characteristic example here). The exception from that theme was when Half-life Alyx came out—I enjoyed it and put a good amount of time into it. Similarly, when I've felt more social I've deviated from my usual pattern and used Big Screen VR (social movie/tv watching app with virtual theaters/lobby) to hang out and talk with others.
Currently—and this has been going on for months—I play Zombieland VR: Headshot Fever daily. My sessions are typically between 20min and 1hr. For me it's a great way to get into "flow" because it forces you to keep your attention on your external environment, precisely control your actions (i.e. aim accurately), waste absolutely as little time as possible (the goal is to beat levels in smallest amount of time, compete with others on high score list)—and the biggest selling point: I can do this while standing up and moving around a bit, it's not going to keep me at my desk where I've already been all day.
I've been using the headset regularly since I bought it (a couple months after it was first released). I've gone through "dry spells" with it where I kind of forgot about it or didn't have anything I felt like playing—but mostly I've found consistent use for it.
No OP, but I mostly use it to play "hangout" games with friends who live in different countries, such as ping pong or minigolf. Much more fun to hang out and play a casual game and talk than sitting in a Zoom call with them. Sometimes I also play a quick round of Beat Saber or some other game.
How often? Couple of hours a month
Long term motivation? Do more social stuff with remote friends and, once it's more comfortable to wear for more than two hours straight, also work in VR.
> We're really getting to the point where it's mainstreaming.
I thought this for a while when my Dad (68), wife (45) and kid (5) all got into it really hardcore. They each got their own and were playing everyday, so much they had to recharge multiple times a day. I was actually a bit concerned. Then they all just completely forgot about them and now only my kid plays it, maybe once a month, for 10 minutes.
I love my Quest 2 and really count on it for my daily Eleven VR Table Tennis sessions.
For me, the real mainstreaming point though will be when we have actual lightweight glasses or goggles rather than headsets. With AR and VR built in. And/or attachments for glasses would be even better for me since glasses are tough to wear with headsets.
They're taking a loss on every unit sold. They can afford to this because they have a firehose of cash from FB, and they believe this is the "next big thing" so they want to establish dominance. Sadly, it's almost certainly gonna work. The content ecosystem will follow the user base, and a $300 headset will outsell a >$1k setup by a huge factor.
Nah, there's enough big players out there, and the tech will continue to get better and cheaper. I think Meta might be surprised by how many potential customers will run to their competitors if it means they don't need to have a Facebook account to use VR.
The money is in the app store. Video game console sell at cost as far as I know, but they make a killing over their lifetime because they make $15 on every game sold.
When I think about who would have the time and motivation to sit in a VR world all day long I can not imagine girls or a lot of adults of some type.
I really struggle seeing anyone outside of a private space wearing it in public, in an office or public transport. It looks weird. It removes you from reality and your surroundings.
So who is left? Boys? Already single man motivation for playing the same games all day long like egoshooters etc.
I’m actually very hopeful for it. I really believe that social experiences and games are the killer app for VR. I think a lot of people who would otherwise be very isolated by staying inside and playing video games will now be active members of growing online communities. That and they won’t be sedentary any more as most worthwhile experiences involve standing and moving around.
If they can deliver on presence, where I can look into someone's eyes in VR and have a conversation and feel like I'm with them in the room, I'll buy everyone in my family on day one.
I get giddy thinking about being able to have weekly dinners or watch movies with my family across the country and have it feel like we're actually there. This feels far off, but it seems like zuck is getting the pieces together, like the Codec photorealistic avatars [1], to make this happen.
Facetime, Zoom, etc, it's just draining not being able to hold eye contact because of camera placement. And people get distracted. And the current products, BigscreenVR and the weird cartoon avatars and VRChat, just don't do it for me.
FB will probably fuck this up, but I see the vision.
>I get giddy thinking about being able to have weekly dinners or watch movies with my family across the country and have it feel like we're actually there.
It's ridiculous how technology hasn't been able to replicate the 'hanging out on a couch watching Netflix or playing a videogame together' experience. All I need is the audio and video synching to work, with no feedback, and low latency conversation. I feel like you could stick a TV on your couch with a cellphone on top and accomplish this. Facebook could start by letting you do the most basic stuff like watch Netflix together. (Also it would help if Netflix wasn't 480P...)
Netflix had a sharing feature exactly like this that worked over Xbox Live on the 360 back in 2012 or so. Live audio chat was pretty low latency if I remember correctly so it was a pleasant experience.
Astonishing that that feature seems to be dead and we don’t have any kind of decent replacement for it. I got a lot of mileage out of it watching crappy movies with friends.
Prime Video has a Watch Party mode. There are also 3rd party options for Netflix. If the people you want to hang with are tech literate you can host a discord server and stream video in a voice channel.
Video calls already are deemed acceptable for a lot of people. But don't offer anywhere near the realism you describe. I reckon VR will win before being truly realistic
Windows Mixed Reality does this, and remarkably well. Launch an app from the VR "start menu" and it'll open as a floating window positionable in 3D space. Bonus is that you can use your mouse and keyboard still in VR, with mouse / keyboard focus on the window you're gazing at.
Downside: as far as I know, you need a WMR headset to use it. There might be mods to use the Mixed Reality Portal (the VR window manager) with other headsets, though.
As someone who still uses pen and paper for sketching out ideas and books for reference, I do not understand the appeal of VR for productivity. Going from 2 to 3 monitors was only a slight productivity improvement for me - one monitor is now dedicated to Slack. Being able to have a huge viewable space to work in seems like it's not going to be that much better. Meanwhile there is fatigue from the headset, having to charge (or tether) a thing you're always wearing, and a disconnect from the physical world which makes some things less convenient (e.g. writing things down).
Finally, there's an issue of who owns and controls the space you work in. With WFH, it's nice to be in a space that I fully control and can customize to my needs. If history is any guide, a VR space will become heavily monetized, if not by Meta then by someone else. And the possibilities for surveillance - either by your employer or the "owner" of the space - are now limitless. I'm not naïve enough to think that history won't repeat itself.
Why measure it by productivity? I mean it is one measure, but far from the most important and probably has very little to do with anyone's attraction to VR as a medium. And just stick with FLOSS software and you neither have to worry about lockin/monitization nor do you have to worry about surveillance.
I find the concepts of working with 2D windows or planes in a VR setting to be so odd. Isn't using a monitor in physical space better in every way? What am I missing?
But wouldn't they only be the max resolution of your VR set? Do inches matter then? And your POV isn't the 180 of the human but something much smaller right?
I've been saying this for half a decade now. It's really the only thing that would ever make me consider buying a VR headset.
I've thought about building something myself but honestly all the crap in X11 is too distracting anyway and half the time I just switch to VTs to focus.
I think one of the greatest barriers to VR adoption is not resolution etc. but motion sickness. It is caused by the conflicting signals the brain receives from the body and from the eyes. Currently the only way to get rid of it is through training, but I'm not sure how many people are willing to go through the process. It took me about a month to fully get rid of it, but I assume it vastly differs from person to person.
I got really sick playing wolfenstein in the early 1990's. After about three hours of play I threw up and had to lay down for the rest of the day. I was skeptical of doom when it came out, but the combination of a new computer and whatever work they did to speed up the rendering loop made it one of those games that I played for 15+ hour binges for a year or two at doom parties.
In the late 1990's I was part of an early VR motion sickness study at my uni, and I lasted about 20 mins before I refused to go any further, because I just wanted to get out before I threw up again.
So a couple years ago I was trying out all the new VR setups with the shorter head tracking->frame improvements, and I'm here to tell you I still get radically sick in any first person VR setup. 3rd person (moss, witchblood) i'm fine and can play for hours. But there is something about 1st person perspectives and i'm feeling it within a couple mins and I simply won't push myself to the point of throwing up again, its really miserable, its like being sea sick without the ability to stare at the horizon and feel better, or get quick relief upon return to dry land. It takes at least as long as I was immersed in it before I start feeling normal again.
PS: I also hate 24FPS movies, I find them really jerky even in a dark theater, with an actual projector. Especially pans just drive me bonkers, so maybe it was all the doom training/etc but I have a very low tolerance to low FPS video/games/etc.
Anecdotal evidence: I used to get motion sick in cars, but after playing hundreds of hours in Beat Saber on my Quest, no more. I can bear road trips just fine.
A lot of people have found motion sickness in VR is actually usually driven by refresh rate. They get sick because the screen doesn't update as fast as reality. If you have the chance to try a Valve Index, they have the ability (not default setting though) to go to 144hz, and you may experience way less sickness. The Quest and Quest2 can't go that high.
Not by motion in-game when you're body's not moving? I've tried the spider-man like swinging games, and I never got my "VR-legs" that other people got with it. I got seriously motion sick and had to sleep it off.
I only do VR games now where people don't have to developer "VR-legs" for it.
I do get motion sick in VR when I use games or apps that move you around like you are flying/walking. For Eleven Table Tennis and Demeo, there is no virtual movement, just physical. For Demeo there is very little virtual movement either.
Same with Golf+. Avoid the virtual walking/flying stuff and just occasionally teleport. No motion sickness.
Anecdotal but I knew many people who got motion sickness from last generation. None of the same people who has tried Quest has gotten it so it's definitely improving.
There's no easy way around it. I enabled continuous motion in a few games and practiced for a few minutes until I could no longer tolerate it. Try feeling the ground with your feet, that helps a lot. The interesting part is that when you lose motion sickness you also lose some of the VR immersion, it's like telling the brain "this is not real, it's the body you need to trust not the eyes".
A very long time ago I was quite stupid. I got an email about this weird thing and I tried it. It was slow, did nothing new and I dismissed it. This was the first web browser (NCSA Mosaic?). I dismissed it out of hand. The thing I missed was that despite the problems it had, in a fundamental way it changed how people saw and interacted with the internet.
No one now has a clue as to what VR will eventually look like. Meta is clueless, VR critics are clueless. But the fact is that VR changes how we interact with the internet in a fundamental way. IMHO. :-)
This is quite interesting actually, because this sort of directly lays out "Here are 3 difficult technical problems we need to solve for a VR headset" - Resoution, Focal depth, high dynamic range.
I'm not an expert in the area, but resolution and HDR seem like basically solved problems - in that they're just logical progressions of where we are today. The focal depth one I didn't understand. He says normal monitors are a fixed distance, whereas in VR and AR you need to focus on different distances. But these VR headsets are just a fixed distance away, so how is that really a problem?
Fundamentally these problems are clearly necessary buticie not sufficient for VR.
When you look at a monitor, you're looking at a quad at a set distance. Your eyes are focused on that quad in the exact same way they would focus on anything at that distance.
In VR, dynamic depth is simulated using stereo-screens where each pupil is pointed at a dynamic focal point BUT stero-focus is not the same as lens focus. Because of this, VR produces a disjoint sensation where stereo focus changes to the simulated position but lens focus remains fixed.
You can experience the difference by holding up a finger and looking at it, then look at a distant object. Notice that you'll see two images of your finger as you focus away. That is stereo focus. Now do the same while covering one eye. Notice that the finger is now blurry but not doubled. That would be the lens focal difference.
Your brain puts together multiple 3-d cues. If you are looking directly at something the angle of your two eyeballs is a little different dependening on the distance and this is vergence.
Your eyes also focus like the autofocus of a camera and the cue from that is called accommodation.
The two should match to provide perfect perception on reality. Certainly a VR headset works with a fixed focus for everything, but to get the ultimate perception of reality without eye strain a VR headset should be able to simulate focusing distance.
(Who knows, however? Meta’s Super Bowl ad might be revealing their real intentions. In that ad a discarded animatronic Android gets to relive its past with VR. VR is good for the elderly because you can enjoy it without learning anything new. I think one of the worst things about getting old that I experience is presbyopia where you can’t focus over the whole range so you have to wear two pairs of glasses. Maybe I’d find it easier just to have it all in focus all the time.)
> VR is good for the elderly because you can enjoy it without learning anything new
I hope this will eventually be the case, but with current iterations, navigating and interacting with VR UIs and experiences is quite difficult for people who aren’t already familiar with game controllers and console-like menu systems - especially the elderly.
On focal depth: In the real world you can look at an object close up and your eyes will adjust so that it is clear and objects at other ranges are blurry. Then, when you look at an object far away your eyes re-adjust focus.
You can test this by looking at your hand 6” from your face so it partially blocks your keyboard a couple feet away. You’ll notice that either the keys are blurry or your hand is as you shift focus between the two.
Future gen headsets will use eye tracking to understand which object in a scene you are looking at, and make that object sharp while making other objects blurry. This helps produce more realistic depth, while also dramatically improving performance as most of the scene can be rendered in lower resolution.
The screen being a fixed distance is the issue. The holy grail would be a system that fools your eyes and makes you think that it isn't at a fixed distance- something like eyeball tracking that detects, instantly, what you're focusing on, and adjusts the perceived focal distance based on how far away the cluster of pixels you're looking at is meant to be. This would improve immersion.
HDR is trickier than you think because devices like cell phones can improve their dynamic range by just making the screens brighter- increasing the range by raising the top end- but there's a certain cutoff on how bright a VR screen can be and still be comfortable.
However, the resolution/refresh-rate needed for immersive VR/MR is not quite a solved problem. If you assume something like 100deg horizontal and vertical for each eye and something like retina (not screen door or blurry) 40-60pix/deg resolution, you're looking at 5k x 5k per eye at 120-180Hz for 2 eyes. You can't do that over a single DP 2.0 link, and it would be too power hungry anyway. That leads to a requirement for fast eye-tracking and foveal rendering (only rapidly refresh where you're looking in high resolution)... and gains you ~10x reduction in bandwidth/power.
Then you get to directly monitor the user's attention, build a DL model of their attention, optimize it for maximum interaction, and sell the model to the highest bidder.
> But these VR headsets are just a fixed distance away, so how is that really a problem?
Focal depth is one of the cues your brain uses to perceive distance, in addition to (potentially more than, depending on which cognitive scientist you listen to) binocular vision. You don't mind that monitors are a fixed distance from your eyes because you don't expect them to give you real depth (your eyes can just focus on that distance). If, however, you want something to be "indistinguishable from reality" you need to emulate changing focal depth, which means (I guess) changing the angles that rays hit your eyeballs at.
IMO that's one of the reasons that 3D movies always looked so fakey; they could emulate the binocular vision, but they couldn't emulate the focal depth, causing a perceptual dissonance.
There are multiple ways that your eye/brain senses depth: binocular vision/vergence, lens focus, and relative correlated motion to name three. When these depth cues don't match each other well, it is distracting and can cause fatigue or headaches after extended use.
The focal depth thing is related to a human vision system bug/feature - Your eyes want to change their 'vergence' at the same time they change focal distance. This is sort of a hard-coded geometry solution. When you want something close your brain crosses your eyes a bit, adjusts the image to your brain, and changes focus. When you look far away your eyes uncross a bit, apply another transform to the result, and change focus again. Getting the eye-crossing and simultaneously trying not to change focus is one of the things that gives people eye strain and headaches when using VR.
> this sort of directly lays out "Here are 3 difficult technical problems we need to solve for a VR headset"
It lays out the problems Meta had most progress in. Another very significant VR metric is FOV which was not discussed.
> He says normal monitors are a fixed distance, whereas in VR and AR you need to focus on different distances. But these VR headsets are just a fixed distance away, so how is that really a problem?
You want dynamic focus to convey the feeling of real world eye focus, and make the projected scene more natural/believable.
Solved but still not enough to make it seem reel. He said that natural light has 10x more dynamic range than best monitors available.
As to focal depth - in real world there is no "screen", your eyes (or perhaps brain:) can decide which what you want focus on and what can stay blurred. On screen everything is in focus, so you need to make fake blur. But you need to know what user is focusing on. So you need to read retina movements to guess. Sounds like complicated and hard problem to me.
I actually think the thing that is going to make VR mainstream is more comfort from going to goggles or glasses rather than headsets. Or even better, something you can attach to glasses.
VR as a future is tied into "identity" and certain group identities, some of which we see clearly now in social media.
Identities which someone can invent for themselves which can be independent generally from geography, genetics, looks, temperament, age etc. Freedom to be whoever and whatever you want to be. Today's social VR users are often playing with their own identity right now.
It's all about image, a spectacle, a way to make personalities and reality flexible and it's a way for identity to be expressed as a kind of collection of things that can be commodified and packaged up for sale. That's the future which is looked at.
However I think we might see a genuine sub culture emerging, as a reaction against this. We can possibly see some of this in some of the language used in a few strange semi-underground youth music events today. It's not anti tech, and not anti identity at all! More like a demand to be in control of their own methods and ways of consumption. A certain ironic detachment from corporations.
People can hate on Meta, and hate on VR all they want, but I for one am really excited to see that there's a massive company going ALL IN on this technology.
It's easy to be a skeptic right now. The headsets are heavy, the experiences aren't perfect, etc. But what you see now is just the beginning. The VR skeptics and naysayers are the same people who dismissed personal computing. VR is absolutely game changing and it is just a matter of time until the technology is there to truly win over even the most die hard skeptics.
Fair enough. I acknowledge, nothing is certain in any market. But with that said I simply struggle to understand who isn't convinced that VR is the future of computing. It's currently in it's infancy from a technology standpoint, and even then is loads of fun. There's a huge upside, tons of potential, and a giant company going ALL IN to make it happen.
The reason I'm not convinced (anymore): humans are incredibly good at abstracting things. We don't need extremely high fidelity or realism to understand concepts, or interact with an environment. I am transmitting ideas from my brain to yours, right now, via text. Text. That's how good we are. As such, once the wow factor wears off, VR's downsides start to overwhelm the upsides. VR sickness is still a thing. Discomfort and heat. Isolation from the world.
If I'm right, you'd expect a lot of crazy good demos, and then usage to fall off over time. This is the exact thing you see in user data.
If you had to describe the value proposition of VR - what is it? "It's just really cool" isn't as compelling as I once thought.
Does the "wow" factor wear off and leave too little benefit to overcome the downsides? Yes, for a lot of people that is the case. I've witnessed it in many of my friends who I convinced to get a VR headset, absolutely sure that it would become their main source of gaming, only to see them barely use it outside of a couple games for a couple hours a week. Some of that is due to the lack of good content, but some of it is inherent to the discomfort and difficulty "getting into" VR.
I'm an outlier I guess. Much of what VR offers syncs with my life now. I don't play competitive multiplayer games as much as I used to. I'm starting to prefer longer form and immersive content. Single player games are actually enjoyable and not completely boring, when in VR. Gaming sessions are naturally time boxed, due to issues of eye strain and general discomfort in VR. I don't want to game for hours on end anymore and VR provides a natural mechanism for that. 1-2 hours a day, and I'm good.
But those are fairly unique attributes and qualities to be looking for in a gaming platform and definitely do not represent what traditional gamers are attracted to. There remains an enormous swath of young men (and increasingly women) who want ultra competitive and comfortable gaming which provides boundless opportunity to sit and consume. VR likely struggles for another simple reason which is most people's tolerance to simply stand for more than an hour is quite small.
All of that said ... I still think this its early and there's enough benefit in VR that I have a very hard time seeing it going away completely. It might never catch on as a gaming platform, but for seated content like work, I could see it being a great solution if / when the technology improves.
The low popularity and adoption level of VR, and consequently the very miserable shape its industry is in, is in my opinion because VR doesn’t really address its most plausible and largest consumer even at the slightest: a gamer. As a moderate adult gamer who is able to cut through the technological bs and buy a decent headset, I have no idea why would I wave my hands, turn my head/body and jump around after a day of work. I just want to relax in my chair and have a jetpack-like experience of hover flying on a keypad/mouse/controller and maybe glancing +-15 degrees around when my own instincts scream to do so. VR/AR >itself< isn’t as amazing as companies try in their marketing. I just want a full-fov 3D display and a controller that could AR-pass-through a part of my table as some “deck” or a dashboard so I don’t spill my drink and can see my vape device and phone while having a 3D experience in popular 3D games. I want to point and click/tap/etc as usual, and only sometimes to point with my hand in the scenes which do not require a quick action, just as a more elaborate way of control, or to perform a real gesture. Mostly I want to hold a controller with both hands in a way that it points to something like a two-handed laser tag with buttons and sticks.
I’m speaking not only of shooter/action games, but also quests, rpg, fixed-altitude (non first person) sims, third person character control in general. Basically the same games like on PC, but with a depth component and a little changes in controlling, if any.
Instead we have: jump-around and slash games; games that require to walk, move hands and point/look around, cinematic panoramic “games”, meditation “games”, and other try-and-forget lo-fi bullshit which almost no one would buy if it wasn’t VR novelty. Which fades away in just a week.
Basically, today’s VR is a tiny niche like any other flat-sales Steam niche. And it will stay so. Because most people like to sit and relax. When a job requires them to walk, jump and move their hands, they start to think about to maybe land into some office. When they want to talk to someone, they sit down. When they work with visuals, the last thing they want is to stay up and stress their hands. Hands at the belly is the most comfortable position for extended time.
How VR companies are unable to understand these basic, stupidest and already explored principles is frustrating.
That's quite bold of you to assume that you're the representation of the entirety of a 500+ billion market.
Not everyone looks for lazy relaxing experiences. You mention shooters, but if you tried Pavlov you'd see how transformative this tech can be for the gaming industry. And don't get me started on horror games.
The quest 2 is also currently selling more units than xbox series X and S, and the growth rate would make every investor salivate. There are plenty of projects and startups exploring this space. Gaming is the most flashy, pr friendly application but right now the big bucks are made in the enterprise applications and here again the potential is immense.
I’m quite a just one guy yep. But literally everyone I’ve talked with about VR told the same story of buying it and letting it collecting dust after a week or so, partly because it has “no good games except alyx”, partly because it’s too tiresome to use at the evening. Some talk about how AR will change everything, but not yet.
Also I bet that these sales you mentioned are in line with the other pandemic trends. When you’re locked in for half a year with these “news” and no clear perspective, you’re ready to believe in any escape hatch they provide.
That said, I don’t mind if what VR is now is mainstream. I just look at the obvious and can’t understand. With minimal software changes anything could run on a headset and standard inputs, if given a chance. Instead these vendors locked themselves into the paradigm of bumping into furniture.
They’ll get around to it, you can use virtual desktop for now but I don’t think you’re their target market. There’s even slang for your demo “pancake gamer” nothing wrong with it if that’s what you like but it isn’t the main channel with VR.
It might be difficult for us to imagine a shift to VR version of social media. But think about the next generation of kids growing up with these kind of techs. They will mass adopt them and we will follow. For Facebook, it was millennials who adopted first and for Snapchat/tiktok, GenZ.
And Facebook will get the opportunity to own the platform completely for the first time. So the soon they reach their goal, the better. Actually, it is a smart move.
If you look at a lot of Facebook's VR advertising campaigns, they're spending a lot of money on advertising to kids, making VR seem like a place they and their friends can get together and experience cool things.
Its strange to me that people aren't talking about glasses or goggles rather than bulky uncomfortable headsets. There is a big difference between a bulky headset where you can't see or do anything else and a normal pair of hands-free glasses.
When it gets to the point of comfortable, unobtrusive and affordable AR/VR/MR glasses with good hand and head tracking built in, that will be a really different experience than the current standard. Maybe throw in a couple of small convient cameras that can just plug in and adhesive to the wall for external tracking.
And with the high speed Wifi available now, or the possibility of connecting to a smart phone (maybe in a pocket or some type of necklace-like carrier), I don't think you need a lot of compute in those devices.
So imagine you just put these glasses on and get 6 virtual wide screen monitors, turn to the right and its your favorite virtual coffee shop, with people inside with fairly realistic recreations from the capture and expression and eye tracking being done by the external cameras. There is 3d positional audio as well.
Imagine with a small camera on the desk, or built into the glasses, doing finger tracking on virtual keyboards. Suppose someone makes a little 'clicky' membrane that provides a bit of tactile feedback regardless of where you press on it.
Now I only need my smart phone and a pair of glasses. I don't need a monitor or a keyboard. Once people realize that every virtual keyboard can easily be 100% customized for any application, physical keyboards may become passé.
When you have good eye and expression tracking, realistic avatars enabled by high-performance AI models, 3d positional audio, realistic environments.. then there really isn't that much difference from being there in person. And there are a huge number of advantages such as convenience and time saving, being able to instantly "travel" to a popular hangout spot even if you are 400 miles away from your friends, etc.
Pretty much everything you can do now in VR, but make it more comfortable and remove some of the friction points, better integration between applications and with the real world, somewhat more realistic, etc.
Suppose automation and robotics continue to improve. Maybe artificial muscles like https://www.artimusrobotics.com/ are widely deployed, enabling high strength-to-weight ratio mobility and much more dexterous, faster, and more general-purpose robots.
In 20 years people may look back and be amazed at how much time and energy we wasted driving around to do everything in person, and how everyone restricted the majority of their "in-person" interactions to small localities.
I feel like VR has been the next big thing almost my entire life.
I remember watching TV shows in the late 90s talking about the VR revolution that was just around the corner. It seems that Virtual Reality™ is still just screens on faces. The whole article is about displays and lenses.
Regarding the 'indistinguishable from reality', a virtual reality would need to include things like smells, environmental conditions like wind and rain and thinner air, and physical sensations like pain.
In many ways we're not really sure what 'reality' is, so suggesting that one could make a virtual reality that is indistinguishable from actual reality doesn't even really make sense.
Came here to say 'field of view'. I have a Vive and my girlfriend mentioned the "field of view" limitation, which I didn't even notice at first but now I can't unsee it. I'd love to switch to Pimax but I'm unsure if most computers can even handle it.
That's nice, but it's just the display part. Now you need something to generate a high-quality display. Right now, the minimum hardware for that is probably a Playstation 5, which can run the Unreal Engine 5 Matrix demo. So you could do this now, tethered, with somewhat bulky headgear. Like the Star Wars Experience location-based entertainment system, which cost US$10K and required a backpack.
Carmack says all that has to be squeezed down to swim goggle size to go mainstream. Eyeglass size to become ubiquitous, like smartphones. Eventually, but it's some years out.
Meanwhile, we should see low-end standalone systems (Google Glass 3.0?) and high-end tethered systems with a base station doing the graphics.
I have no desire to do anything in VR, no matter how good it gets. I want to use my keyboard, to have a screen in front of me, to not have my person completely captured inside of a virtual world. And I don't understand anyone who would want that.
My family is geographically spread out - we all meet up in vr once every couple weeks and hit a few rounds of mini golf/bowling or just chat for a while. It’s the closest thing we have to being in person for most of the year. It doesn’t replace that but it is way better than awkward group video calls where everyone has to take turns speaking… instead we break off naturally in real environments - have times when only one person is speaking or have side conversations with just a few of us… it’s great!
There are a lot of online activities that people can do that don't require a keyboard and mouse. Playing games, video calls, watching videos/movies, etc. I don't think VR is particularly good at any of these things right now and I don't trust Meta to do this in a way that's cheaper and better than what we currently have, but I welcome a future where it's easy to do these activities without having to sit in traffic or worry about space constraints.
It's kind of amusing that in the Bay Area, you have one huge company that's decided to stake a fair chunk of their future into this augmented / virtual reality, and then meanwhile, there's been all these old hippies and meditation teachers trying to get people to be more present in the (actual) real world.
Isn't the human body essentially advanced hardware through which we perceive reality? If our computer hardware had the same specs and could provide the same visual fidelity, you might not be able to tell the difference.
That's nice, but one thing that will be needed more is a wider field of view and the ability to look around by moving your eyes instead of your head.
All of these goals can be achieved with real holographic displays. We need the equivalent of a GPU optimised for computational holography, and a display with high enough resolution to render phase coherent interference patterns (rgb omg). No lenses will be required. This is the endgame for wearable displays.
Imho right now the immersion is "good enough"... but what I notice the most is the lack of light. So HDR or some evolution of that is what's most lacking in my opinion.
Even with the crappy compression on YouTube, you can watch a scene where you are on the beach in VR. After all, isn't that the dream? Of course you can't feel the waves splashing on your feet, but you can definitely enjoy the feeling of being in that space. However, the lack of the bright deep blue sky is really noticeable.
Likewise in games. I definitely preferred Skyrim VR on Quest via a cable over the RIFT because the blacks are much deeper (oled), but on the other end of the spectrum, the sky is always lacking in brightness.
My hunch is this is going to be hard to solve... I mean most homes today don't even have any kind of lighting that remotely reproduces the outdoor lighting.. I doubt that the small screen inside the headset will be able to simulate a bright blue sky... I mean I don't think it's just a matter of "intensity".
But who knows I am clueless, it could be that the pixel density is what prevents the screen from giving the "bright blue sky" depth of light.
Let's say tomorrow it will solve all 4 problems mentioned in article. Let's say it will use quantum communication so no delay whatsoever. Let's say it will be cheaper than cheapest Android device and let's say it will be easier to use than put on / take off a pair of glasses.
But if it will be locked to an FB account then fuck that shit.
Our culture, government, environment, and interpersonal relationships are all in shambles. Why don't we spend billions on solving real-world problems and having real-world interactions instead of using virtual reality technology to look around the artificial environment, move around in it, and interact with virtual features or items?
Holographic lenses - something I'd not heard of before. I am glad there's big R&D efforts in lenses as I think that's both the hardest and most important problem to solve. Moore's Law and software will solve all the other problems fairly quickly. But fixing the lens challenge requires hard-code physics. My bet is still on the arrival of visible-light meta-materials that have a negative index of refraction and therefore make flat lenses possible. That'll be a step function transition for XR, and open the path to mainstream adoption.
Kind of cool. But none of these seem to address the real problems VR has. There's no VR content that is held back by the graphical fidelity atm. Aside from maybe porn.
I bought a copy of immerssed and an occulus quest beause I loved the idea. sadly, we are still a ways off. the text was too blurry and I got a headache in minutes.
beat saber was a good pivot. its my gym when I travel now
I develop financial software and sysadmin in VR (/AR pass through for keyboard) on a Meta Quest 2, streaming a cloud "gaming" PC wirelessly.
Unlimited weightless 60 inch monitors which fit in a single laptop bag is real nice. 10 hour battery life with a pocket sized battery pack. Unlimited with a 12ft USB-C cable.
The only thing I can see making it better for what I do is higher text fidelity. Anything else would be a luxury, and unnecessary for repeated full days in VR.
it also seems like a wrong goal in general because to me the entire point of VR is that it's not bound to physical reality, investing billions of dollars so you can sit on a photorealistic sofa I think defeats the purpose. I think the popularity of Minecraft, Fortnite or VRChat shows that people aren't looking for realism but interesting experiences you can't have offline, with community being the most important thing.
Dunno, I think VR content will always just be shallow novelty experiences until it gets smoother to use, and being able to for example read text goes along way toward fixing that. Better hand controls would also help, I don't think VR without haptic feedback is really viable.
Solve that set of problems, and you might get to a point where you could build actually useful things in VR. Like a work environment for CAD or 3D modelling or whatever that has actual benefits over traditional interfaces.
Agreed. I play combat flight sims in VR almost daily, and even with that genre's high FOV and resolution demands, I think most of us are bottlenecked more by GPU performance and software tools than HMD resolution or dynamic range. (Reduced edge distortion would be fantastic, though.)
It's weird to me that these multi-billion dollar companies are investing so much R&D money into supporting my niche hobby, but I suppose I shouldn't complain.
A lot of those prototypes seem to cater to common complaints from first-time or casual VR users - eye strain, focus, fatigue, and weight. I think iterating on these aspects of comfort is important for VR adoption.
Personally, I don't really want or look forward to a future where people spend a lot of time in a headset, but if there were a lightweight, comfortable option it would be fun to explore experiences every once in awhile.
Those improvements are important for enthusiasts as well since they all take their toll during long sessions.
I look forward to having more amazing experiences at my finger tips during the long, dark winter months. There’s not much else to do here except drink and go snowmobiling.
I had a blast playing pokerstars vr, it's just fun to hangout in that VR space. I would probably play a lot more rec room. again fun to just hang out in that space.
I think whoever solves the casualness of VR will become the next big tech giant. It is looking like Facebook will come back HARD.
I m really glad they are trying. The Quest2 is the most innovative product in tech in a looong time and FB isn't even a hardware company. Beating Apple to it is a big feat.
But VR is not going to be a wide success, it will be a really nice 360 image viewer for when those cameras become popular and cheap. It has its place , but it is obstructive. And it cannot become a status symbol, which imho is a big driver behind iphone sales
I think it's gonna die the same as 3D tvs did. If it wants to have any chance of being popular, it needs to be comfortable with glasses. But even then, old people will have problems if they need to focus to see stuff up close. What are they gonna do, uses a VR lens to make small text in the meta verse bigger?
VR is more immersive, but it's a lot less convenient than just a 2d screen and I don't see that changing.
Maybe with eye-tracking we can help with those concerns. Altering the visual representation of text, for example, if the eye-tracker notices you're having issues focusing on it.
Interesting to me that here on Hacker News there are so many "VR will never happen" based on a static view of where tech is today. I don't think that staring into a lit rectangle with a keyboard based on 1800s technology is the be all end all of human-computer interfaces. I suspect mass AR/VR adoption will happen faster than most people imagine.
I have an original Vive and I hardly use it, mostly because of how it takes a while to set up and put on, but also because of the depth-of-focus issue that gives me headaches. I still haven't heard about any viable solutions to this.
And of course I'm not going to get a product that needs to be tied to a mandatory Facebook account.
VR has come a long way, and I will always be happy to see improvements in the tech. But "indistinguishable" from reality? That is not gonna happen in our lifetime.
I am rocking a Valve Index with 4 base stations, and I will say that the experience is a great one, absolutely, but Meta's goal is very far away...
The new design of the last one has a headset that you turn to mount on your head looks nice. That's so much better than the straps that comes with Quest 2, I hope they make that the standard.
The after-market Quest head kits for ~$20 make it much more comfortable.
Reality approximating VR will a huge boon for our fight against global warming & our capacity to use gas/fuel on things more important than transportation to conferences & offices.
IMO the real killer app here is porn. So much internet tech has been heavily influenced by porn (video streaming, payment systems, etc.) and VR is the holy grail of porn.
I don't know if this stuff is genuinely indispensable and novel, or if they're preparing to create a patent thicket around VR ? What would industry insiders think ?
The thing that turns me off of VR the most is rumors I've heard (sometimes here on HN) of eye health issues from excessive VR use. Is anyone working on that?
There was a handful of novels and light novels that explored this concept easily a decade or more before RPO. It especially became popular sometime in the mid 2000s I remember a bunch of popular light novels coming out around that time.
I'm personally imagining Zuckerberg as a .hack fanatic like myself and my brother were back in '03.
It was actually Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge that really got Zuck excited about the possibilities of VR—he read it a few years before he bought Oculus and talked about it a lot at the time.
I suppose we should just be thankful he didn't pick up Vinge's "Deepness in the Sky" instead; it would be quite disconcerting if Facebook was trying to develop talking spiders.
I find it charming Zuckerberg actually seems to care about this stuff. He of course wants every human interaction to be monetizable by Facebook, total control of our dopamine channels, etc. but I think beyond that, deep down, he's just a nerd who wants to live in a VR dreamland to shut out the millions of people who call him a weird lizard.
>... but I think beyond that, deep down, he's just a nerd who wants to live in a VR dreamland to shut out the millions of people who call him a weird lizard.
I mean, in his defense he might be pretty normal by lizard standards, I don't know. Calling him weird just seems unnecessary in that context.
>He of course wants every human interaction to be monetizable by Facebook, total control of our dopamine channels, ...
I agree. It'd be a much better future for everyone if he'd just throw his advertising biz in the garbage. Apple is going to kick Meta's ass in the long run just by virtue of their privacy stance—which isn't all that great to begin with, but it sure does beat "our intent is to sell every iota of information we collect on you."
It'll be interesting to see where this goes. If VR becomes a big thing and we get to the point where an appreciable chunk of social interactions start to take place over it (huge if), the device would at least be as significant as your phone.
People in the US are willing to spend extra on the Apple phone. There's already drama over the stupid blue text/green text thing, imagine a world where you know that your social interactions with a Facebook user are snooped on. I think it could lead to some significant ostracization. Private party -- no Facebookers.
There’s a Philip K Dick line that goes - “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”.
Reality shaping is like that - but coercive and in reverse. How much do I need to nudge your perceptual world with ubiquitous, desirable lizard-brain augmentations before you stop believing in reality?
I mean, we already have religion, advertising, and "influencers" so I guess this is a current problem. With VR, at least it will be obvious when headset is on.
Isn't part of the reason people are spending on iPhone that they can signal wealth to friends? From what I remember Apple always sells more when then introduce new golden colors so people can show they have the new device.
I have never seen a gold iPhone in real life, even though more than half of my friends/family have iPhones. IIRC they did better overseas(?). Not sure.
I don't think iPhones signal much (in the US at least) -- they have like 50% market share here.
You're probably right, though I don't think it all comes down to disposable income.
Laziness, apathy and network effects are perhaps equally powerful forces. After all, I continue to use Google and Instagram despite my knowing how the sausage is made there.
>But there is zero money to be made out of people who have zero money.
That's not true. That's why credit exists. Selling poor people shit they can't afford with terrible terms is a long-standing American tradition.
When a debtor is unable to pay (often times through no fault of their own), the creditor eats the cost because their margins are good enough to allow for it. That effectively represents a wealth transfer between corporations providing the services and the corporations providing the credit.
The creditor doesn't put a lien on the debtor's house, repossess their goods, or take them to court?
Obviously this happens with mortgages, cars, and other extremely high value things. IRS debts, student loan debts...
But what about credit cards? Don't they have mechanisms other than tanking your credit report? And if not, why don't poor indebted people simply default all the time to remove debt?
Sure, but you also can't squeeze blood from a stone.
That said, I was mostly talking credit cards, since that's what most tech services would fall under in a zero-money consumer situation.
>And if not, why don't poor indebted people simply default all the time to remove debt?
Some do, but having your credit ruined for seven years sucks for most people. Likewise the courts don't exactly smile upon those who run up huge debts with the intention of defaulting.
I would argue there is money to be made out of people with zero money. Student loans are an example. Instead of zero money, they now have negative money. This is terrible ofc.
Facebook does not sell users’ information. It uses their information to target ads, which it sells.
You might also be against the latter, fine! That’s a perfectly reasonable position to hold. But don’t muddy the waters by calling it something fundamentally different.
"In total, it said the social network had special arrangements with more than 150 companies to share its members' personal data. Most of these, it said, were other tech firms, but the list also included online retailers, car-makers and media organisations, including the NYT itself, among others."
Suffice it to say Facebook's track record with PII is pretty terrible. At some point the word sell really becomes a matter of semantics.
Again you are bumping the waters. Users were asked permission for Facebook to share their user data. Saying Facebook has a poor track record because they had a more open platform in the past isn't true. Now Facebook is more closed and locked down because giving people the option to share their information is apparently a bad thing according to the public.
I don't buy that narrative. As if things were somehow fine until the stupid public ruined it all.
Facebook is and always has been deep in adtech, which is fundamentally slimy. It's no surprise that led to a history littered with data privacy blunders.
>Again you are bumping the waters.
On the contrary, my chemistry knowledge is too poor to do such a thing.
It may not be good enough, but I think we can acknowledge that caving to political pressure is a very different posture than building your entire business model around monetizing antiprivacy.
Right, but the comparison here is that Meta also does this, in addition to selling every iota of information they have you.
Content scanning is just an assumed part of every major tech platform these days. That of course doesn't necessarily make it right, but it still places Apple's privacy stance significantly ahead of Meta.
People keep repeating the refrain of Google/Facebook selling your data, but is there any evidence of a single case where this actually happened? They use your data, to let advertisers target specific subgroups of the population. The companies that you should be concerned about selling your data aren't the advertising companies, they're the financial companies that are literally selling your transaction data to those and other companies.
I think it's a rather common dysphemism used in context of targeted advertising. Monetizing user data—while not actually selling the data (in the literal sense of the term)—is considered by many to constitute having their data sold, albeit with a layer of indirection.
My understanding is that while this is certainly superior to your data being actually sold, privacy is nonetheless adversely affected in fairly significant ways.
That article is talking about the on-device scanning which IIRC never actually rolled out. That's separate from the iCloud scanning which they still do.
They poisoned the well by showing they were willing to do it in the first place.
Instead of the baseline being they probably are privacy first, now it is "carefully inspect every announcement to see if they are backtracking yet again"
I don't really envy their position; if I built a business that sold hardware and software and found out that customers were using my product to distribute child porn, I would probably be willing to abandon lesser principals too.
There's a reconciliation, necessarily in a civil society, between promoting privacy and doing what's possible to stop child abuse. Should Apple allow child porn to be hosted on its cloud servers since that's the pro-privacy stance?
There's an alternate universe where Zuckerberg takes Yahoo's $1B offer for Facebook in 2006 (which Yahoo sells a decade later to Pinboard for $100k) and becomes more of an Elon Musk figure, investing in and running a handful of forward-thinking businesses.
Imagine Oculus becoming Meta without the Facebook baggage – a hardware-focused company with a major services play, but no adtech business.
This was legitimately the most humanizing piece of media I’ve seen from Zuckerberg. It helps that I find VR fascinating, and seeing him engage with it beyond a superficial corporate level like I’d expect was refreshing.
I found his recent conversation with Lex[0] interesting (though I haven't listened to all of it). It is obvious that he is personally interested in the future of VR. When he talks about it, he seems more relatable than usual.
It's a really good example of how media shapes our perceptions of villains in a way that makes us unable to see how villainous behavior works in the real world. In short, the tendency to reinforce attributive simplicity especially in moral terms, means that a decency and relateableness become ineffective socio-moral proxies.
It would be much greater if he actually cared for society and would fix what he did with facebook, addicted mobile/facebook games and fake news.
But hey now the poor can have a 1-2k high quality VR Headset with full immersion to see others in a VR Chat while living in a dumpster.
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On a more non emotional side: Of course i like the idea of a high quality VR Headset but i'm not sure what FB thinks what this will do for FB. Those millions/billions they invested in their Metaverse will not become something great.
I'm still very confinced that VR is a novelity and nothing people will just be in all day long. Why would they?
Lets compare it to others:
Apple key notes are about new hardware, new usability.
Google IO has a ton of diversity, doing things for society. They talk about taking good pictures of people with all type of skin tones. They talk about 24/7 sustainability, better and easier security, protecting their users, skin mold detection and they have android.
What is Meta talking about? How to put all of us into a VR world with probably a ton of monetarization. Awesome \o/ the poor who can't afford their own house/home are then sitting in a cheap/bad flat, sitting in a chair with a VR Headset on?
And of course there will be a handful people playing around with this, but you know Second Live is also probably still running...
Google is one of the few companies were their Keynotes are so boring because they actually fix real life boring shit which affects us all.
There exist people now who spend all of their sleeping time, and the majority of their waking time in primitive virtual environments while wearing incommensurately cheap hardware, speaking with almost nobody, over Internet connections barely fit for the task of voice, let alone streaming video. There exists appeal, for a few. You can do a lot with an avatar making one of two faces.
No I'm pretty sure his only interest in VR is to control our dopamine channels as completely as possible. He may be a nerd, but he's Machiavellian to the core and will do anything he can to amass power to control other humans. Things like legality and morality merely provide guidance to him on how other people will react to his efforts. His biggest challenge has always been convincing his employees that what they're doing has merit and is not pure evil. Generally that has worked by paying them tons of money and telling them they're special snowflakes.
I think it’s so strange that people are calling him a “Weird Lizard”. “Weird Lizard” is a mouthful - plenty of other names worth calling him and his monopoly. I highly doubt his VR dream is anything more than an anti-antitrust maneuver.
I like to bring up the Newton/Palm/iPhone example when we talk about emergent tech.
If you grew up in the 90s, you probably remember hand held PCs, and Apple Newton. Those were pretty cool. I wouldn't really HAVE to have one, but those were pretty neat. Then the "PDA" appeared -- I knew many who had those and used them for business. "Regular folks" didn't really need one but they could find these devices to be pretty useful. Then Blackberry came about, and then BOOM -- the capacitive touchscreen, and the iPhone with a few killer features that drastically changed mobile computing for the last 15 years. Everyone has one.
Sometimes it takes decades for someone to "get it right" as tech matures. VR is in the pre-newton stage... if we are to compare the "final form" of VR to be what we think of smart phones now, VR is probably in the "60's or 70's era" stage of development. We probably won't see an explosion or a revolution of VR-tech for a few decades.
I think VR/AR will see huge adoption a lot sooner. I see a few prerequisites:
- Hi-res screens (no more screen door effect).
- No external hardware needed: no desktop, no base stations, and no controllers.
- Capable of 100% VR, 100% pass-through, and everything in between. In other words, VR and AR no longer refer to different hardware but rather different modes.
- Under $500.
Some units have some of those qualities but none have all of them. I can see units having all of those qualities within the next 10 years.
Maybe when I can get a headset that offers onboard focus-adjustment and some kind of omnidirectional treadmill I'll sink another thousand dollars into VR but until then I am done.