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

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

#361

Post by thebigman433 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 7:03 AM UTC

an_opabinia wrote: post #94

dougmwne wrote: post #89

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…

> 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. Ironically, by getting acquired by a giant company, Quest development was set back by that many years. The real problem isn't technology or even adoption, it's that people who work at giant companies suck at making games.

> Ironically, by getting acquired by a giant company, Quest development was set back by that many years.

What does this mean? We likely wouldnt even have a Quest (or really even a 3rd headset imo) from Oculus if not for Facebook. The Oculus founders were all almost completely about building high end enthusiast hardware, which wouldve almost surely made the market die off again.

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

#362

Post by shpx » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 7:05 AM UTC

novok wrote: post #140

dougmwne wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pulled my neck last week and spent the weekend working, watching amazon prime and playing xbox cloud streaming flat on my back on a 10 foot virtual screen. I was working for multiple hours at a time reviewing programming specifications and taking notes. The display tech is pretty much there, even for text. Keyboard input is still unsolved, though I was using Office 365 dictation and that was working well for taking…

When I tried it, it wasn't that good. The screens on the Q2 felt like a resolution of something between 720 and 1080p, which isn't that good compared to my dual 4k monitors. Same with a 8k & 6k 180 & 360 video. Overall VR feels like it needs a 4x resolution bump. Basically a 16k 360 video rendering and 4k x 4k per eye vs the 1832x1920 per eye that the current q2 has. To do that well you probably need something like a…

If you have $4000 to spend, you can get the new Varjo VR-3. It has a 27° by 27° display with 71 pixels-per-degree resolution embedded in a 115° wide display at 30 PPD. 20/20 vision is ~60 PPD for ~210°.

https://www.roadtovr.com/varjo-xr-3-vr-3-announcement-specs-...

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

#363

Post by helsinkiandrew » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 7:20 AM UTC

I first used a VR helmet 30 years ago in a CS department (think Dire Straits 'Money for Nothing' quality graphics). It was a fun experience and I've used VR helmets since then and its been another fun experience, but we still don't have a must have, killer application that is going to bring VR to the masses.

iPhones were replacing something that people already had with something that did it so much better than before that it seemed like magic. I can't see VR doing that unless the tech becomes so wonderful that it can be added to spectacles/contact lenses or the experience injected right into the brain cheaply and someone creates a killer app that people will want to use repeatedly.

There will always be technical and industrial uses - training, visualization etc that can justify expensive headsets and expensive content creation but those are niche markets.

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

#364

Post by blueblisters » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 7:21 AM UTC

SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #336

nbardy wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gaming consoles and PCs have not had an "iphone moment" after decades because their market is and always will be limited. 56% of US households have at least one gaming console.

81% of Americans use a smart phone. Likely almost every house in the country contains one and usually many smartphones. Likely no consumer product will reach the success of the smartphone.

It's not just the market penetration of the smartphone but time spent engaging with it that makes it so successful as a platform. VR's biggest handicap is that it tends to be tethered/unwieldy to be useful for day to day applications.

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

#365

Post by asiachick » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 7:39 AM UTC

vtange wrote: post #328

pbourke wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t gaming a larger industry than the movies, driven largely by consoles? Seems like gaming had its iPhone moment a generation ago. Edit: gaming is larger than the movie and music industries combined

Yes it's true it's larger than books and movies, but games in the end just compete with other forms of media for customers' entertainment dollars. Unless we can come up with a use case for VR beyond gaming and fulfilling escapist fantasies. It will likely just be another contender for entertainment dollars. Smartphones on the other hand essentially made it possible to do anything a general desktop pc could do for peo…

This is true but I think this is mostly irrelevant to the topic at hand. If VR was as popular as PS4 then we'd have said "VR took off". It doesn't need to be as popular as smartphones to be called successful but it's arguably not successful yet by many definitions. It certainly hasn't "taken off"

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

#366

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 7:48 AM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #89

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…

[deleted]

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

#367

Post by Intermernet » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 7:51 AM UTC

SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #336

nbardy wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gaming consoles and PCs have not had an "iphone moment" after decades because their market is and always will be limited. 56% of US households have at least one gaming console.

81% of Americans use a smart phone. Likely almost every house in the country contains one and usually many smartphones. Likely no consumer product will reach the success of the smartphone.

The oven in all of it's forms? The light bulb? The washing machine? The refrigerator? The clock? The knife?

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

#368

Post by bquest2 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 7:53 AM UTC

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #75

memetherapy wrote: post #28

The quest 2 is pretty much a revelation. Untethered, light, cheap, high quality display and inside out tracking and connects wirelessly to a gaming PC allowing you to play virtually any title if you pay $15 for vrdesktop. Obviously you have to be comfortable with facebook but it's just a better end to end experience than any other headset I've tried, although it would be better if VR desktop or something similar was…

> Obviously you have to be comfortable with facebook Interestingly enough this is the primary reason that my quest is collecting dust. Once they forced a facebook login for accounts I decided it was no longer worth me clearing an open space in my apartment.

I don't know if you know this but, existing Quest users are grandfathered in (no fb account needed) for the next 3 years so you dont have to let your device collect dust.

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

#369

Post by jmiskovic » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 7:55 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #256

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…

> VR is already fun and we're in for a wild ride once AR hits the market. I, personally, see VR as being much more exciting than AR, from an entertainment and capabilities perspective. I don't want to be limited to my small living room or whatever setting I'm in. When I'm in the real world outside of my house, I can't imagine what AR would bring that wouldn't be completely utilitarian, like replacing my phone/watch w…

To focus on positive potential: Augmented hearing, like tuning into parts of frequency spectrum and directional amplification. Augmented vision with integrated maps, 'scouting' around with street view. Visualizing music with colors. Remote socializing with even less friction. Surrounding yourself with contextual spatial information - food recipes next to stove and PDFs around working desk. Completely new forms of media content, like TV series that follows you around.

It's predictable that big players will want to control every aspect of AR because it gets them complete attention while device is on. Facebook has already pounced. I'm more interested in VR/AR that is in service of user and that means open source.

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

#370

Post by stiray » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 8:00 AM UTC

I love idea of VR but...

Sure, I would love to buy VR headset but there are things that are stopping me, and until they are fixed, I will wait before buying, it is not a crucial piece of technology after all (like robotic vacuum cleaners are :D )

- I will not vendor lockin myself into some store "Hey, buy xy monitor and you can only use software for it from xy store".

- I will not pay for the VR substantially more than good monitor (of normal size)

- I will not pay extra for games that I have already bought as non VR

- I will not upgrade my whole hardware just to be able to use VR (I do understand why hardware requirements are as they are but I will just not do it)

- I will absolutely not buy anything subscription based.

- I will never buy it from facebook (,google,...), I dont consider them a trustworthy company and I am not buying anything that is positioned in home from those.

- While watching tv, playing playstation whole family can have fun, for the same price, not just one

And once I go trough all the points I dont think that here is any VR headset that fits. And to me all those points are showstoppers. Maybe buying new computer hardware can be left out as a showstopper, it is just a huge annoyance.

Bottom line the VR technology is not even a problem at all.

Everything around is.