Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

blog.codinghorror.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 139 posts

Re: I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

#121

Post by sayangel »

rwmj wrote: post #5

As a counterpoint, I used a DK1 and I thought it was brilliant. Can't wait to use a production model. I also showed it to an architect friend of mine and he loved it and wants to use it to walk his clients around unrealized house designs.

hey rwmj! Would love to talk to your architect friend about how we wants to utilize VR for client presentations. email: angel[at]insitevr.com

My company, InsiteVR, makes it easy for architects to take their 3D models and deploy a VR walkthrough that they can use for design reviews or client presentations. No coding experience required, just a 3D model.

here's a cool example of one of our customers using our software: a cool case study: www.interiorarchitects.com/blog/the-future-of-architectural-renderings-at-ia-is-in-virtual-reality/

Re: I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

#122

Post by jonstokes »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #115
jonstokes wrote: post #43

This article is pure distillation of everything that's wrong with VR -- not the tech, but the people who are thinking about it and trying to build it. Specifically youngish white male gamer nerds. I want to write about this more at length -- maybe I'll put something on my blog or on Medium or something -- but I also tried VR, and the most interesting aspect of the experience was just how clueless all of the gamer typ…

I think to a large extent the focus on gaming is more about the low hanging fruit and about what can translate into immediate business. What do I mean by that? Well I mean to say that there are no experiences you talk of that currently work on a screen. i.e. nobody turns on their computer screen to start a video of a sundown backdrop to create a romantic moment to have dinner with their partner. But millions of peopl…

"Of course if you're going to visit a gaming company, you're not just going to find people disproportionately passionate about games, but you'll find people trying to focus on gaming products. After all if you'd gone to an architectural company and they demo'd a business meeting where they showed the new building design to a client, and you spent 30 minutes after talking about how it'd be so cool to shoot orcs in VR, what do you think they'd say or think? They'd just go right back to talking about their company's use of VR, architecture."

Yeah you've totally missed the point of my post. I'm talking about (and to) the people who are actually working in VR and building things with these systems -- which right now is game devs who know lots of math and can code, and not architects.

Game devs are the ones that, for a variety of reasons, are in the hot seat here and are tasked with building out the first generation of consumer VR, and they belong to a particular demographic. And that demographic is narrow, parochial, and hyper-focused on scratching its own itches. Often those are strengths, but in the case of VR they're a weakness.

Re: I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

#123

Post by norea-armozel »

I feel that VR hardware may be good enough to sell to early adopters, but my fear is that the software and products like 'SL 2.0 (Project Sansar)' won't be good enough to give early adopters a reason to buy the hardware. It's all a chicken/egg situation. If there's no good product out there to justify the price tag, no matter how small, then why buy the thing? With products like the iPod and the early smart phones there were compelling reasons to buy them (convenience is a common factor for both). But what's the compelling reason for VR other than novelty? Will it make it easier for game designers and story makers (think Pixar or anyone in the film industry tbh) to convey previously impossible stories? I'm not so sure VR gives creators a new tool in that regards, so I'm going to wait out this cycle of VR to see what happens. Buying the Rift to play Elite Dangerous in VR mode doesn't really excite me and I'm a long time user of virtual worlds like Second Life (going on 11 years on January 2016).

Re: I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

#124

Post by aetherson »

austenallred wrote: post #117
aetherson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person was wrong once about the iPod, that means that all criticism of new tech products is invalid forever!

That's not what I was saying at all. I'm saying it's easy to misjudge the potential of very early technologies by looking at the wrong criteria.

Fundamentally, I'm just sick of that quote about the iPod. It gets trotted out all the time, and I don't see any sign that it encodes any profound wisdom. Is it easy to misjudge the potential of early technologies? How do we know? Because one guy misjudged the popularity of the iPod once? Was the iPod an early technology? Was its popularity due to at-that-time unrealized potential?

But perhaps more relevantly to the VR thing, I don't think that the original article had anything to do with "potential." Everyone understands the potential of VR, but there are people saying that it is really awesome RIGHT NOW. And the author was saying that it is not really awesome RIGHT NOW.

Re: I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

#125

Post by nazgulnarsil »

the hype is about the trendline, not the current experiences. The DK1 was a quantum leap over previous efforts. DK2 was so far beyond DK1 it was a completely different experience. Vive is apparently as far beyond DK2 as DK2 was beyond DK1, though I haven't tried it.

Ignoring this in favor of "lol DK2 isn't that great" is shortsighted.

Re: I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

#126

Post by dwild »

coldpie wrote: post #2

I agree with this article. We bought a Oculus DK2 for work[1]. It functions. It's cool for an hour or two. But no one's touched the DK2 since I wrote that article. There's simply nothing to do with it, and what you can do is better done with a monitor screen. The DK2 is incredibly low resolution. You can easily see the pixels. I was able to get a sense of presence once or twice, when driving down a straight in iRacin…

> There's simply nothing to do with it, and what you can do is better done with a monitor screen.

What content? It's an development kit... except if you intends to develop content for it, for sure you won't find stuff to do with it. It's like saying I hate the android development kit because there's nothing to do with it.

We need content for VR, personally I believe this is why the rift is still not released. That's also why they invest that much in game development.

> I was able to get a sense of presence once or twice

You are unlucky then, the immersion I feel is crazy. Each time I remove my headset, I get the same weird feeling of not being at the right place.

> it was always just a cool 3D effect

I'm pretty sure some good old gamer said the same when they transitioned from text to graphic, and then again when they moved from 2D to 3D.

For sure it's not for everyone, the same way game console aren't for everyone. This is not the revolution that some are saying it is, it won't be the next iPhone, at least it doesn't have to be. It's a new way to play game, a new environment, that's all.

Re: I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

#127

Post by dwild »

codinghorror wrote: post #47
mdemare wrote: post #9

Jeff compares the DK2 to Quake resolution (640x480), but I think that's quite misleading. Quake looks terrible, to modern eyes, but that has little to do with the resolution, and much more with the low polygon count, low quality textures and the lack of lighting effects. Run Far Cry 4 at 640x480, and it'll look much better.

I do not think Far Cry 4 would look very good at 640x480. Imagine it full screen on even a modest 20" monitor at that resolution. There are tricks, yes, but big pixels are a fundamental problem until you reach a "good enough" size. Sort of like when the iPhone 4 and retina was released. We are very, very far from retina resolution in VR.

It still look way better than Quake.

Re: I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

#128

Post by coldpie »

dwild wrote: post #126
coldpie wrote: post #2

I agree with this article. We bought a Oculus DK2 for work[1]. It functions. It's cool for an hour or two. But no one's touched the DK2 since I wrote that article. There's simply nothing to do with it, and what you can do is better done with a monitor screen. The DK2 is incredibly low resolution. You can easily see the pixels. I was able to get a sense of presence once or twice, when driving down a straight in iRacin…

> There's simply nothing to do with it, and what you can do is better done with a monitor screen. What content? It's an development kit... except if you intends to develop content for it, for sure you won't find stuff to do with it. It's like saying I hate the android development kit because there's nothing to do with it. We need content for VR, personally I believe this is why the rift is still not released. That's…

> You are unlucky then, the immersion I feel is crazy. Each time I remove my headset, I get the same weird feeling of not being at the right place.

What games/demos do you play with it? I'd love to experience more compelling software.

Re: I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

#129

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

m000z0rz wrote: post #101
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #10

My only disagreement is with the "gloves" idea. I thought we learned from the Wii that motion controls without force feedback is anti-immersion. Imagine "firing" a 12 gauge shotgun and seeing considerable recoil in VR while your hands stay still. Without haptic feedback I'll have to rely on imagination for the full experience, which I thought video games were supposed to skip.

I always thought that shooters worked well on the Wii - simple rumble force feedback gives you recoil, and the Wiimotes work great as pointers, because the pointing mechanism was closed loop. What they lacked was closed loop position tracking of the Wiimote itself, which is why we ended up with terrible waggle controls in games. Oculus Touch & the lighthouse system will be closed loop, so they should be significantly…

My disappointment with Wii force feedback came with the very first game I played for it: Legend of Zelda. Happened when I swung the wiimote to swing the sword, got blocked, and my arm kept moving. Then it just became the gimmick waggle.

Pointing/shooting controls were all right, couldn't really complain about a mechanic that Nintendo's had since NES Duck Hunt.

Re: I Tried VR and It Was Just OK

#130

Post by intrasight »

People fall into two camps:

Camp 1: "Anyone that doesn't understand what a seminal change this is needs to take a history lesson"

Camp 2: "Anyone that doesn't understand that this is mostly hype needs to take a history lesson"

I'm gonna stake an opinion here and put myself solidly in Camp 1. I think this is going to be as impactful as the transition from radio/audio to tv/screen. Radio didn't go away, but it is a much diminished medium. Compare your own daily radio time vs. screen time. The same shift will now occur, and we'll see similar ratio with daily screen time vs VR/AR time.

Go backward in time to 1945 and ask a teenager if they'd rather watch TV or listen to the radio. Ask the same question of today's teens with regard to VR. The human brain craves high-fidelity stimulation. A flat screen is just no match.

TV was "just OK" when first introduced to consumers. The picture was lousy, the tech was complex, the cost was high. No doubt that is all true of VR today. It won't be true for long.

Post reply on HN