When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet • Hacker News Board

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#161

Post by fatnoah » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #139

nitrogen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Facebook is in VR because they don't want the Metaverse to belong to anybody but them.

For sure this is his play. My early take is that the VR/AR social experience is absolutely the killer app and will beat the pants off phone, chat, social feeds and video calls. It will be so good that it will be the default way to commutate at a distance, making it a huge threat to Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger. I think the fufilment of that promise is still probably more than a decade out.

>For sure this is his play. My early take is that the VR/AR social experience is absolutely the killer app and will beat the pants off phone, chat, social feeds and video calls.

And that, IMHO, is why FB wants you to use FB login for your VR experience.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#162

Post by jedberg » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

I didn't think I'd love my Quest as much as I do. I got it on a whim because someone here on HN was offering theirs for sale at a discount.

I wish I had more time to play it! I'll put it on and start playing, and two hours later I'm still going, I'm exhausted from the workout, and I don't want to stop.

And my six year old loves it too! She loves to draw in 3D. She loves the YouTube VR roller coasters, especially because she isn't big enough for the biggest coasters just yet.

And every other person whose tried it loves it too (sadly with lockdowns I don't get a chance to share very often because I don't see a lot of people and have to quarantine the unit for two days every time I loan it out).

My sister in law is an artist so I dropped her into the 3D paint program. In 10 minutes she had made a beautiful 3D sculpture from nothing. My brother refused to give it up for days because he couldn't stop playing.

And I just got a second unit from Amazon to participate in a virtual world experience for re:invent, and it was the most awesome way to have a remote meeting! The sound is directional, so you have an idea of who is talking, and the avatars have hands, so you can see people's hand movements as well as their head and body movements. It adds so much to the conversation to see body language.

Let's just say I'm a bigger fan than I thought I'd ever be. Especially since the last time I tried it it got really motion sick, but that was years ago. The tech has come a long way.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#163

Post by bsenftner » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

jmiskovic wrote: post #66

On same note, developing VR from inside is incredible and it quickly turned into my #1 hobby. At first you are surrounded with blank space, then you slowly fill it out with whatever reality rules you can think of. I went with code-only approach (no binary assets) and built a primitive development environment that works in VR. Now I have a neat little virtual shed with different experiments and demo projects. Geometri…

I was an early video game developer, publishing games in '82. I found then that making the games was far and away a more creative and productive and lucrative way to spend my time. Beyond the while developing testing of the several dozens games I made when I made games professionally, I've not played a video game out of interest in the game itself since "Robotron 1984".

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#164

Post by Kiro » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

stevebmark wrote: post #67

I don't think the current incarnation of VR will ever take off. It's too inconvenient to need to block out everything around you with a headset. It's fundamentally incompatible with human behavior. Until VR is as convenient as picking up a phone or tablet, it's not going anywhere.

I don't understand this argument at all. As someone using VR on a daily basis ever since Quest 1 the whole point is to block out the outside world and immerse yourself in the VR world. Even days I don't feel like playing (I have a schedule for VR fitness) I instantly feel at home and get excited the moment I step inside.

What behavior is it not compatible with?

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#165

Post by awillen » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

I think it's really great when people write down bets like this publicly, so we can go back and see what people's expectations of the future are. There are snippets of this kind of speculation from many decades ago, plus of course there's sci-fi to look at, and it's amazing how much further we've advanced than most people expect.

If you look at where we are now vs. 100 years ago, our technology would be utterly unrecognizable to them. When people of that age predicted the future, they didn't do great. I'd like to think we have better foresight, but the reality is we'd probably be just as bad at predicting what things will be like in 100 years.

The thing that amazes me is the exponential nature of human progress. Even if we made linear progress - that is, some "equal" amount of advancement in the next hundred years as we did in the last, that would be incredible. But of course our progress builds on itself, and so if we assign a value of 100 to the amount of progress in the last hundred years, we're likely to have a 200, 300 or 400 over the next hundred years.

Personally, I'm betting on pretty much all computer interfaces being directly connected to the brain and people living off of earth permanently.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#166

Post by Kiro » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 9:04 PM UTC

allenu wrote: post #86

stevebmark wrote: post #67

I don't think the current incarnation of VR will ever take off. It's too inconvenient to need to block out everything around you with a headset. It's fundamentally incompatible with human behavior. Until VR is as convenient as picking up a phone or tablet, it's not going anywhere.

That's my problem with it as well. You need to have a space set up where you can use it, and you also have to have the VR headset/equipment available to just grab and put on in an instant, otherwise I think it will just languish in the closet. VR is competing with phones, tablets, and TVs today, which are in my opinion good enough and way more convenient. The experience within VR might be amazing, but it has to be so…

For me, the Quest is pretty much like that. It's so small I just keep it on a shelf and I don't need a dedicated space. I'm just playing in the living room or in the office (you paint a Guardian for the play area in AR, and it remembers it unless you put it on another place).

Been playing almost every day for more than a year now. I'm still amazed of how low friction it is to start using. I just grab it, put it on my head and all of a sudden I'm in the VR world.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#167

Post by abraxas » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

Rhythm, exercise, boxing, fencing games are second to none in VR thanks to the medium itself. They are much more compelling in VR vs jumping in front of a television set while waving a pair of Wii wands.

The reason VR is struggling is the same reason that most exercise games eventually struggle. Humans are lazy and prefer sitting on their asses and click buttons with near zero muscle activity.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#168

Post by lwansbrough » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

edmundsauto wrote: post #106

lwansbrough wrote: post #102

It was pretty clear to me back in 2015-2016 that VR was going absolutely no where. All you had to do was try on any headset and evaluate it honestly. The graphics sucked, the lag sucked, it gave some people nausea and others an unwanted sense of vertigo. Prices for high-end equipment were (and still are) ridiculous and unattainable for the mass market. Even if you could afford it, do you also own a space big enough t…

The Quest line has been a major step up. You should consider updating your 5 year old opinion in a product category that is nascent. Also, I believe a lot of hype around VR is that it is a necessary first step before VR. Finally, while I agree that AR is the “mobile phone” type of revolutionary product, I still think VR is going to be wildly successful. To me, the limiting factor is the builders tools - it’s so expen…

> You should consider updating your 5 year old opinion in a product category that is nascent.

I no longer have a Facebook account, so this is impossible for me, right? But let me check Google. Bulky, isolating, still requires controllers. Yep, nothing has changed, as expected. People who have staked their livelihoods on this technology are mad about my initial comment but the fact remains: nobody is buying these things, and the product hasn't changed meaningfully since the last iteration.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#169

Post by Kiro » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

I think fitness is the killer app.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fKpJ-hKbiE

I haven't tried Supernatural but FitXR was a great improvement from Beat Saber (granted, BS is more fun but the workout is nothing compared to FitXR or Thrill of the Fight).

I'm very excited for the future of fitness in VR. Oculus Move shows that it's a rising star.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#170

Post by lucasmullens » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

blackearl wrote: post #42

ajcp wrote: post #32

When VR starts delivering on the "virtual" part of the "reality" concept whereby my girlfriend, uncle, or neighbor can put on a headset and say "why go back?" or When VR doesn't merely solve for an "immersive" experience, but rather provides for a better way to interface with 3D "space" than does a 2D monitor.

I don't think I'll play a 2d rhythm game after beat saber

Aren't most successful rhythm games already 3d? I guess I'm agreeing with you, DDR, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band all are sort of 3d, just not VR.