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When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's also the definition of disallowed monopolistic behavior -- using ownership of one area to control another. This is more egregious if you consider "VR" as not "virtual reality", but "virtual relationships."

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

#192

I don't think it's been mentioned enough that VR doesn't fundamentally bring anything new to the -gameplay- table. There are some 'experiences' that are better, like piloting games since they play to the "sit here and look around" model, but that places VR in the same category as a really awesome flight stick, steering wheel, or the Kinect. Mobility is a huge problem that needs to be solved. Until then, VR will be a…

> I don't think it's been mentioned enough that VR doesn't fundamentally bring anything new to the -gameplay- table

Disagree with this strongly.

VR brings realistic physical motion skills in to replace thumb-twiddling on controllers. When I play VR table tennis I am exercising my gross motor skills. It is a 100% different experience and type of skill acquisition to anything you will get from flat gaming. There are actually pro table tennis players who now train in VR because it is so realistic and of course they can fine tune to the nth degree what they want to work on. Alternatively, games like Space Pirates have you literally swaying and ducking bullets coming at you in 3d space. There is no comparison at all to me moving a joystick to achieve the same thing.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any resources you can share? Sounds amazing

Here are few dated examples [0][1] and the code[2]. I saw similar thing from Mr.doob[3]. Few years ago Carmack talked about live-coding VR[4], but code was on 2D monitor. [0] https://twitter.com/j_miskov/status/1312701109232902144 [1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/mqw1s04z70dm3y4/vr-physics.mp4?dl=... [2] https://github.com/jmiskovic/indeck [3] https://twitter.com/mrdoob/status/1263498538316636162 [4] https://www.youtube…

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

#195
I'm sold on VR because it has completely revolutionised my fitness regime. It turns what is otherwise a boring, painful chore into immersive, interactive and fun experience that leaves me sweating and heart pounding and running late because I wanted to do just one more round ...

If my headset broke today, I would order a new one same day.

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

#196

I very much think that folks on HN are jaded by the long wait and the unfulfilled promises of VR. I recently picked up a Quest 2 as my first VR headset and I am blown away and convinced it is the future. The thing is, I also recognize that while it is already an incredible achievement, it's still probably 5-20 years from hitting its iPhone moment. By then, my initial excitement will have gone away and I'll have tired…

yeah we can do one better with the holodeck. im not sure the problem is that much harder...

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

#197
Once the headset is as big and light as a pair of sunglasses and has 2x 8k screens build in. Since desktops are no longer mainstream, the controlling hardware is most likely not integrated yet. It needs to be +-50 times faster than current hardware though. Probably in 5 to 10 years it will be a necessity in order to live a mainstream life.

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

#198
Perhaps part of the problem was a premature switch from exploration to exploitation?

When Facebook bought Oculus for $$$$, the collaborative community which had been pushing the envelope, exploring for possibilities, rapidly died. People took it as a hint to switch modes. And eye-tracking rent seekers, already in low-volume high-cost exploitation mode, weren't then incentivized to support exploration.

Gaming had dollars, and so became a dominating focus. But it also had challenging constraints, which further pruned exploration. Do you want higher resolution, to allow text and programming in VR? Well, a panel existed, but gaming standards of immersion and such were too GPU intensive for the market at that resolution, so ... feel free to diy it yourself. In an environment where diy was no longer a supported thing. Programmers - a niche market.

Facebook et al, even Chinese OEMs, aren't interested in niche, or in making "commodity" hardware. Consumer platforms, and lock-in, and unicorn dreams. Even while that further cripples exploration.

Nreal light AR glasses are a laptop-comparable 1080p 3D screen at 2 meters. As with their dev kit, consumer availability is now first in China, SK, and Japan, then later in Europe, and eventually in the US. So asia now, and maybe US late next year. And the glasses are developed on linux, but you can't have that - no unicorns there.

Here's this amazing tech, and instead of an exploratory ferment, we wait for a few large companies to navigate patent thickets, to eventually meet the severe constraints of creating mass-market consumer devices. And then we'll dig in to exploring.

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

#199
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there are probably some narrow applications where it’s clearly better than not having it, but I’m skeptical of VR as a platform. Fitness. It is much easier to grind in a VR game for an hour than it is to grind on a treadmill for the same amount of time. I have a Quest, the games suck, but the fitness experience is paradigm changing. Beat Saber was and still is the Quest's killer app, but there are lot of si…

Fitness? The idea of puffing and sweating inside a heavy VR headset doesn't seem very alluring to me for some reason... Besides, I personally think fitness should be about reconnecting with the body and the real world, not "grinding" and distracting yourself while getting this physical thing done.

What's wrong with distraction? Plenty of people stay in shape as a side-effect of their enjoyment of sports and games. Am I not really working out when I play soccer or go rock climbing?

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

#200
post #195

I'm sold on VR because it has completely revolutionised my fitness regime. It turns what is otherwise a boring, painful chore into immersive, interactive and fun experience that leaves me sweating and heart pounding and running late because I wanted to do just one more round ... If my headset broke today, I would order a new one same day.

What headset do you have and what do you play to work out?
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