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How to Get into VR

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: How to Get into VR

#31

Post by haydenlee »

jarsin wrote: post #23
avaer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article argues "VR will also enable immersive concerts, reinvented museums, and live, court-side sporting events", but what is it doing now outside of games, which have been hit-or-miss? It's literally doing all of the stuff you mentioned, if you look for it. The blocker is that most people don't have a headset to experience it. The same thing could be (and was) said about the early internet.

The CEO of unity believes that AR/VR will be bigger than the internet and develop in much the same way [1]. Obviously he is biased but still pretty big statement from a CEO of the most popular game engine. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODXMhaNIF5E

Bit of a cringey statement to say "bigger than the internet" considering almost every AR/VR application will rely heavily on the internet. I think the spirit of his statement was that it'll be bigger than the Web.

Re: How to Get into VR

#32

Post by soared »

While this was super interesting to read it was fairly disappointing. I'm hoping the entire series focuses on VR and this wasn't our only post. They lead off with

> We talked to college students interested in engineering, business, and technology to figure out what resources would be most helpful to them. Then, we reached out to experts from academia, industry, or some combination of the two.

But we all ended up with was a blog post with some links to online courses and books. Is yc doing ...more? I was expecting something like an actual online course/intro with low requirements to get in. IE let me use my laptop camera and some html/css/js to see what building in AR is like.

Re: How to Get into VR

#33

Post by haydenlee »

jamesrcole wrote: post #26
haydenlee wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What have you tried?

I think this is a reasonable question, as different headsets are more likely to make people feel ill than others, from what I've heard.

Not just different headsets but even different content on the best headsets (as will always be the case until we figure out how to zap your vestibular system in an accurate and safe way).

Re: How to Get into VR

#34

Post by smacktoward »

haydenlee wrote: post #10
return0 wrote: post #6

First they should ask if you want to get into VR. I mean, there is a certain crisis, as the hype did not live up and obvious problems (sickness) remained obvious.

As a professional VR developer I'm unaware of this crisis. There's also about as many headsets sold as people thought there would be (and way more GearVR's than expected). I haven't gotten sick from a VR experience (that I wasn't half-way through building) in over a year. The headsets are good enough that they don't make you sick by default (like they used to) and to make somebody sick you have to go against best des…

I'm not a VR developer, but from an outside perspective it actually looks like there are a few different crises.

1) Developers seem to be interested in heavyweight VR systems like Vive and Rift, while users (based on sales figures, anyway) seem to be interested in inexpensive, cordless systems like GearVR and Cardboard. Which leads to the awkward situation where all the innovative software is coming out for hardware that very few users actually own. (And then that market gets segmented even further -- with Rift development now orienting around Rift + Touch, for instance, which leaves users without Touch behind.)

2) "It hasn't made me sick in over a year!" is not an answer to concerns about VR making people sick that is going to get people to rush out and buy hardware. Once a product has developed a rep for making people sick (not everybody, of course, but all it takes is enough people), it can take a long, long time to shake that rep off.

3) There's a fundamental problem that nobody in this generation of VR has been able to really solve yet, which is making a headset that is comfortable to wear for long periods. Even simpler solutions like GearVR are heavy enough that you feel their weight after wearing them for 30 minutes or more, and with developers pushing the platform towards bigger/deeper experiences, the trend in hardware doesn't seem like it'll be running primarily towards weight reduction. This could lead to a self-reinforcing cycle of pushing the tech further and further away from a mass audience, as VR enthusiasts (i.e. people who don't mind the weight of existing hardware) demand higher-resolution experiences, which leads to hardware companies pursuing more power instead of less weight, which leads to products that only sell to VR enthusiasts, who demand higher-resolution experiences, etc. Something similar to this happened to the market for flight simulations in the '90s, which resulted in one of the main categories of entertainment software evolving into a tiny niche market of interest only to obsessives.

None of which is to say that VR is doomed, or that these things are in reality as serious as they appear to be to an outsider. But I would say there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that VR will become a big, mass-market hit, at least this go-around.

Re: How to Get into VR

#35

Post by GFischer »

moron4hire wrote: post #3

I've only seen the talk in person and I've not been able to find a resource online that enumerates exactly what he means, but Dr. Ken Perlin gives an excellent talk (with live demo) about how AR could potentially change the human communication completely. The gist of it is: assuming ubiquitous access to an AR system that provides a completely shared experience, people will naturally start using that shared experience…

Sounds reasonable, VR or AR need to be a means to a goal, not the goal in and of itself.

I share that vision, I believe AR and VR will enable some truly amazing experiences and interactions - the currently limited means of communication of the Internet still amaze me, but we can do so much more...

Re: How to Get into VR

#36

Post by haydenlee »

soared wrote: post #32

While this was super interesting to read it was fairly disappointing. I'm hoping the entire series focuses on VR and this wasn't our only post. They lead off with > We talked to college students interested in engineering, business, and technology to figure out what resources would be most helpful to them. Then, we reached out to experts from academia, industry, or some combination of the two. But we all ended up with…

Here's an example of using your laptop camera and html to see what building AR is like: https://github.com/jeromeetienne/AR.js

Re: How to Get into VR

#37

Post by DSMan195276 »

it_learnses wrote: post #2

do I need a PC to be able to get into it?

Nope. I just recently did a VR project for school, and we did it all with a Gear VR using Samsung phone's. The interfaces aren't the best, but you can make things fairly portable so you could always move to a PC later if you wanted to.

Re: How to Get into VR

#38

Post by sidlls »

minimaxir wrote: post #8

> The development of VR has been surprisingly tied to science fiction. Authors in the field have envisioned the futures that engineers set out to build Incidentally, the high romanticism of VR one of the reasons why I am highly skeptical of the industry. The article argues "VR will also enable immersive concerts, reinvented museums, and live, court-side sporting events", but what is it doing now outside of games, whi…

There is a large market for training simulators that are essentially very advanced virtual reality systems.

Re: How to Get into VR

#39

Post by aVReality »

Perhaps counterintuitively, I see/hear more interest in VR for business/productivity than for gaming, right now. I think it comes down to stimulation: we're used to gaming and other entertainment being high-octane, exciting experiences. But work/productivity is boring. VR, by virtue of its immersion and fantastical interactions, can bring more excitement to productivity uses (which are typically boring), while adding legitimate value (e.g., building better relationships with remote employees through business collaboration in VR).

Re: How to Get into VR

#40

Post by Animats »

Somebody at YC likes "Ready Player One", which is a stupid book. (Essential skill for taking over a big company: ability to play a perfect game of PacMan.) "Snow Crash" was ahead of its time. Yet the plot of Snow Crash would play out the same if everybody simply had modern phones.

Where's the killer app for VR? VR headsets have been around for years. The current generation of technology works adequately. Yet other than first person shooters, there's not much to do in there. You can plug into Second Life or High Fidelity with a VR headset, but few people do. Using a VR headset to simulate a screen so you can watch a movie is more trouble than it's worth.

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