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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

#371
I love Love LOVE VR!!!

I'm unfortunately not convinced it will ever "take off". At least not in its current incarnation of HMDs and controllers. There are just too any limitations.

1) You usually need a 10x10sqft open space to use it. Sure there are examples of experiences or tools that you can sit in chair but they are very limiting.

2) You're isolated. Watching TV or playing a video game you can be in the same room as others but standing in the same room as other playing VR is kind of off putting (maybe that's just me)

3) People get sick from motion so more limits on what you can actually do. I generally don't get sick and have played a few games 5-8hrs a day though I have experiences serious debilitating sick for 3 hours nausea in 2 "VR hacked into a not designed for VR" games

Other issues are chicken and egg.

* You can't show people what it's like to be in VR without them being in VR. If you stand out of VR and look at the screen it looks just like a standard video game. The feeling of presence is not something you can show in video so the user who doesn't have VR equipment will never get excited about it from videos of what the experience is like

* The audience is too small so there isn't enough content. There's a ton of tiny indie games but there are very few well made AAA VR games. Some AAA games have a VR mode but the game wasn't designed for VR and so is usually poor. I'm sure this will be controversial if you're a fan but for example Eve Valkyrie fails for me because none of the controls are in VR. You need to sit at a keyboard where as I just want to reach out and touch the controls that I see on the control panels of the ship I'm in. No Man's Sky did some of this better with it's VR control stick and thrust stick and the exit handle but failed everywhere else where all the inventory screens are designed for joypads, not VR.

* This is more of the same but many interfaces are bad or to put it another way they are kind of like "by gamers for gamers" I almost wish valve/oculus had shipped controllers with no buttons or at most one button per controller to force the devs to put the controls in VR. In VR they are usually intuitive where as most games it's press one of the 18 buttons on both controllers (Oculus has A,B,X,Y,Left Trigger, Left Grab, Right Trigger, Right Grab, Left stick Up, Left Stick down, Left stick left, Left stick up, Left stick press, right stuck up, right stick down, right stick left, right stick right, right stick press and there's actually to more, left menu button and right menu button.

I realize that 1 button per controller would be limiting, I just wish more games/tools/software embraced VR more

* Inside out tracking of controllers and Quest level smartphone hardware are very limited. I know many owners of Quest are enthralled with it but for me it's a step back. The fact that it can't track your hands in all directions at all times breaks many experiences. Designing around that limitation basically means giving up on many experiences. Similarly a smartphone GPU is just not up to providing the top level experiences. It's like Switch vs PS4. Sure there are wonderful experiences on a Switch but there are also 100s of PS4 experiences that are just not possible on a Switch. Same with Quest. It's underpowered so Beat Saber, great! HL2: Alyx, not going to happen. (even with the link which you can go read reviews of blurriness and latency. People make due but it's not compelling the same way high powered VR is)

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

#372

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

> Isn’t gaming a larger industry than the movies, nowhere near comparable in reach. Way more people watch movies than play games. Since movies are typically cheaper to consume, it appears as a smaller industry while it is actually bigger in reach.

> Way more people watch movies than play games.

I don't believe that is true, any evidence for this?

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

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games cost a lot more than music and movies. $50, $60, $70 per game... Gamers like to pay for collectables, DLC, limited editions, figurines, steam sales for games they don't play, etc. Meanwhile unlimited music streaming is $9/mo. (Are concerts and merch considered in the "industry" revenues?) Unlimited steaming on Netflix is $13.99/mo for their mid-tier plan. If games had an "unlimited streaming" subscription equiv…

I'd imagine the $ spent per unit of time for games today (especially live service games) is very low. In fact, I believe gaming is one of the most cost effective forms of entertainment. There are games that can be completed in a few hours, but on the other end of the spectrum you have people playing a single game for thousands to even tens of thousands of hours. In addition, there are unlimited streaming services for…

It’s close between books and video games, depending on which examples you choose. If you chose a best seller from 2020, say A Promised Land, it’s $25 for approximately 15-20 hours of entertainment. I think most books are at a $/hour or less.

Single player video games are also in that range - 30-40 hours of gameplay for $60. But where it gets really crazy is endless games (Sims, Factorio, Simulators) or free to play games (League of Legends, Fortnite) where you could be entertained for thousands of hours for a couple of dollars. I personally played a free to play game for 2000 hours while spending about $40 total on it.

Even movies are pretty cheap, considering we most of us watch what’s included in our monthly subscriptions of Netflix/Amazon/Disney. Even buying/renting movies works out to about 1$/hour.

Conclusion - we’re in a golden era for entertainment where the options are nearly unlimited and dirt cheap.

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

#374
post #370

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 th…

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

Steam VR games, the largest VR market, have no vendor lock in AFAIK

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

A Rift 2 is $300 right now. Many of the windows ones are also in the $300-$500 range. I don't know what your range is. To me it would be unreasonable to limit the price to $100. I've bought monitors for $800, $1500, $4000, $200, $400.

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

you don't want non-VR games ported to VR. They suck

> - I will absolutely not buy anything subscription based.

I know of no subscription based VR except porn and even though you're paying for access to their libraries and you download unencrypted mp4s. Your subscription just gives you access to new content.

> - 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.

Agreed though sadly, in my experience, they do have the best experience ATM (I know others disagree...) I hope that changes meaning I hope the experience elsewhere becomes better.

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

Not sure what your point is here. you're comparing apples to oranges. That's like saying "I'll never buy a snowboard because my car carries 4 people"

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

#375
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My bet is when someone makes a spoon that can reproduce any flavor. I think everyone will want that.

Why would that be anything more than a novelty? It completely misses the joy of sharing food and cooking.

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

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats true, but for most headsets, resolution still isn't high enough to read bodies of text without eye fatigue. until that is solved, I don't think VR will move from entertainment to productivity. Varjo is getting closer to that resolution level, but their headsets are priced for enterprise ($8k i think?)

> but for most headsets, resolution still isn't high enough to read bodies of text without eye fatigue. Most? Is there anything, no matter how expensive, which is currently capable of clearly presenting large bodies of text? The moment something like this appears I'm going to buy it even if I had to sell my kidney for it! EDIT: forgot about input. I'd probably be willing to finally learn to touch-type, if that would…

Hololens is technically a headset, right? It gives you 47 pixels per degree, which exactly matches the CSS reference pixel of 96 DPI at 28 inches.

VR headsets are generally stuck in the mud at about 15 pixels per degree.

But it makes sense when you consider how crippling the hololens field of view is... https://mk0uploadvrcom4bcwhj.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload...

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

#377
post #256

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…

We won't get VR force feedback for a long time. With AR you could turn a laser tag arena into almost any scenario and incorporate a lot of physical elements.

AR lets you bring virtual experiences into a more ad hoc setting. You can't really play a VR game while waiting for the bus but you could be feeding your AR pet.

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

#378
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Wii Sports is that you couldn't make it a high intensity workout. High intensity workouts are a reality in VR. This is just one example out of many https://www.getsupernatural.com Even boxing is amazing and tiring https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3008315795852749

Don't need VR for that at all, Konami did a great arcade boxing game that was also quite the workout in 2001, called Mocap boxing: https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8724

The Oculus Quest 2 is $299 and it fits inside a small case.

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but your alternative is a giant, heavy, antique that's hard to find and that probably costs a few thousand dollars not including maintenance; and it plays only one game.

I would highly recommend at least trying modern VR (Google Cardboard doesn't count) before having a stronger opinion on it

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

#379
post #370

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 th…

So buy a PSVR then. You're locked in software wise, but it sounds like you don't care if its a Playstation.

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

#380

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…

It looks the consensus here is pretty much that anyone who tried the latest tech understands that we have went beyond a certain point here.

Comparing to phones, I think this is the point where we have keypad-phones. Content is still limited, but using your imagination you can create good experiences.

Personally, I switched to VR/Quest gaming from PC this autumn, and I feel good about it. I feel healthier than sitting in front of PC. I also feel less isolated with the family, as we have more 'playing together' now. As a developer, I'm exited to try out to create new kind of experiences, like I did 16 years ago with phone SDK's.

If you think yourself as a creator, I think you feel a fool if you wait another ten years - seeing the times when a single person could do something meaningful, going past.

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