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How to Get into VR

blog.ycombinator.com

151–160 of 221 posts

Re: How to Get into VR

#151

Just wanted to add my voice to the author's plug for Rainbows End (book). Although I didn't find the story especially engagin, the technological ideas and perspective on VR were inspiring. Bonus if you're into genetics or bioinformatics at all (similar to Jurassic Park in that respect).

Seconded. I ended the book very impressed with Vernor Vinge's ideas but found the story and writing almost insufferable. I tried it again a few years later and had the same experience. If it were a movie, it would win all technical oscars and blow lots of minds.

Neuromancer, on the other hand, has aged astonishingly well. Even though Gibson is a sort of awkward writer, I believe in the people he writes about. If it were a movie, it would bomb but the actors would say it was the best work they ever did.

Re: How to Get into VR

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found the gaming experiences pretty mediocre. It's $900 + big clunky thing on your head vs $500 for a really nice 4k monitor. Something like Onward is pretty special for its realism, but its not a better game than Rainbow Six was 20 years ago. There are some other fun games but the novelty wears off quickly. It's like a really expensive ($1300 setup) Wii. The current experiences aren't worth the money.

I've barely played a single non-VR since I got VR. That's going back to mid-October 2016 so hardly a flash in the pan.

That's just 6 months. Wait another year before having a final conclusion on it.

Re: How to Get into VR

#153
"Silicon Valley" touched on this last week:

“It’s a VR play,” Bachman says. “That’s the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a fucking room, utter the letters ‘v’ and ‘r’, and VC’s would hurl bricks of cash at them.

“By the time they find out it’s vaporware, it’s too late. I’ve got to get into this.”

Re: How to Get into VR

#154
One thing that I think can get lost is that to "Get into VR" if you are already a great software engineer you may not need to learn anything new, just find a place to work where you can immediately apply the skills you already have, towards a VR-oriented product. From there, look for opportunities to develop VR-specific skills like the ones mentioned in this article.

For example, at our company (AltspaceVR) we have a huge need for engineers of all stripes, not just the types of folks you'd normally think of for what is traditionally thought of as a "game" (this term, too, is probably about to become very stale.) It's a huge challenge for us to get great engineers who are not in the games industry to realize that working in this space, depending on the application, can be much like hopping, say, from a web app to a mobile app. Are there new skills to learn? Yes, tons. But that doesn't mean you are starting at ground zero nor that your current skills aren't going to highly valued and critical to an organization's success.

We need people to help build our backend systems (Rails, Kafka, etc), manage ops (Ansible, Datadog, AWS), create deployment tools, build UI (React, but rendered in VR!), work on our mobile app (React Native), build analytics pipelines, the list goes on. In fact I'd argue if you are looking at an organization that doesn't understand the need for such a wide spectrum engineering talent to deliver a great application, you should be careful!

Basically for VR companies who are working on applications that will leverage VR, the "VR-specific" slice of the engineering work is probably a lot smaller than you'd expect, just like for companies developing mobile applications, the "mobile specific" part of engineering work is only a part of the effort.

In other words, don't think you can't get into this field just because you aren't a graphics geek.

(Oh yeah, we're hiring :) https://altvr.com/careers)

Re: How to Get into VR

#155

"Silicon Valley" touched on this last week: “It’s a VR play,” Bachman says. “That’s the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a fucking room, utter the letters ‘v’ and ‘r’, and VC’s would hurl bricks of cash at them. “By the time they find out it’s vaporware, it’s too late. I’ve got to get into this.”

The show is about a year, year and a half out of date. Anecdotally, the funding climate for VR was stupid in 2015, more restrained in 2016 and today. (I think AR might be frothier at this point.)

That said, I haven't seen the episode yet, but the show is usually pretty spot on.

Re: How to Get into VR

#156
post #52
post #40

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 th…

You know what's funny? I actually think Ready Player One nailed the only use case that might be a game changer for VR: remote schools. You can just make all learning materials virtual. VR school means no physical real estate, buses, cafeterias, bullying, janitors, you can cut like 90% of support staff, the list goes on. Also if you divide people by location (like we do now) you can still coordinate field trips and/or…

So when the parents go off to work, they just leave their kids at home alone to don their VR headsets? Which naturally kids will use to learn and not play games or watch movies.

Re: How to Get into VR

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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."

If anyone does this, Steve Mann will: http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/steve-mann-my-au... This is my favourite image showing the trend: https://www.flickr.com/photos/inju/3171307367

Re: How to Get into VR

#158
post #23
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

Can't be bigger than the internet if it is one of the things that runs on top of the internet.

It's like stating that computers are bigger than electricity.

Re: How to Get into VR

#159

"Silicon Valley" touched on this last week: “It’s a VR play,” Bachman says. “That’s the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a fucking room, utter the letters ‘v’ and ‘r’, and VC’s would hurl bricks of cash at them. “By the time they find out it’s vaporware, it’s too late. I’ve got to get into this.”

The show is about a year, year and a half out of date. Anecdotally, the funding climate for VR was stupid in 2015, more restrained in 2016 and today. (I think AR might be frothier at this point.) That said, I haven't seen the episode yet, but the show is usually pretty spot on.

There was a lot of hype, but from what I understood watching the experience videos, the first experience is amazing, then boring because there isn't anything else to it. Like a boring game with great graphics.

I suspect once better games or software are written for it, it may improve. Perhaps training and whatnot, but I don't see what it offers over headphones and a big monitor setup, other than nausea, hot eye sockets and possibly a headache. Like I said, I haven't experienced it yet though. Maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety.

AR is also interesting. I'm not quite sure how much more helpful it would be over your regular ole' eyeballs. Maybe identifying wildlife or something. Currently a HUD for cars is the most useful thing out there and it's been around for years. It's not groundbreaking though, I can just look down a few more inches. Also, you can't do much more with a HUD as far as information goes without distracting the driver. I would definitely like to identify speed traps before I get there. The police have been trying to collect revenue around my neighborhood (for my safety of course) and I almost became a donor.

AR reminds me of the segment where Colbert made fun of the "tech" cup that was able to identify and confirm what you just poured into it.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/9nzwjt/the-colbert-report-vess...

IMO, for something to really matter, it must be related to: communication, automation or transportation. (CAT) I just made that up, so if someone wants to put that in a textbook or something, I want credit. You can just use "Clubber."

Also, their cellular network idea was pretty good, but it would make much more sense to do something like that out of WIFI because there isn't a centralized provider to snoop and restrict bandwidth.

I don't want to spoil it, this season is pretty good.

Re: How to Get into VR

#160

"Silicon Valley" touched on this last week: “It’s a VR play,” Bachman says. “That’s the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a fucking room, utter the letters ‘v’ and ‘r’, and VC’s would hurl bricks of cash at them. “By the time they find out it’s vaporware, it’s too late. I’ve got to get into this.”

The show is about a year, year and a half out of date. Anecdotally, the funding climate for VR was stupid in 2015, more restrained in 2016 and today. (I think AR might be frothier at this point.) That said, I haven't seen the episode yet, but the show is usually pretty spot on.

> more restrained in 2016

Huh? https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/ar-vr-startup-funding/

EDIT: Another report: https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/vrar-breakdown-vcs-inves...

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