As soon as you don’t have to put that huge thing in your head anymore.
When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
381–390 of 418 posts
Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
#382I worked for a VR/AR platform helping 3rd parties port apps onto the platform for a couple of years. Low traction seemed to be a combination of the following related problems: 1) ROI for the platform's premium was not worth it, due to... 2) lack of must-have apps, due to... 3) poor ratio of difficulty designing a great user experience vs low number of outfits trying to build that software, due to ... 4) fragmentation…
> The mouse is such an excellent precision instrument, it's going to be a long time before we have a 6 degree-of-freedom input device that can match it for precision and ease of long term use. From my experience don't most professional 3D modelers use some sort of pen tablet like a Wacom? Now I'm thinning I would love if Wacom pivoted to the VR/AR space and made a special 6 DOF pen you can use. I hope they don't go t…
Wacom does make a special 6 DOF pen for use with VR: https://developer.wacom.com/en-us/wacomvrpen
Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think it might be because I don’t want to be standing and moving around when playing a game and if you’re not doing that, the motion is kind of unpleasant. Project Cars 2 and DCS make it worth the headset alone - throw in Elite Dangerous and No Man Sky and I have enough VR entertainment to keep me busy for the foreseeable.
I'm dying for gaming PC parts to become more available to build a new rig. I hacked together my OG Pixel XL to play E:D on my current potato via the Daydream headset and Riftcat and got to enjoy a very pixelated experience for all of 10 min before my phone rebooted so it wouldn't melt. It was still night and day. How are both those games with the Quest 2? Those two are my primary interested for VR but I worry about t…
As a Quest owner, and previous Vive owner, if you can get over the Facebook thing, I would 100% buy the Quest 2 over anything else. The Index might be better, but it costs 2-3x more, and only works on PC, and needs the lighthouses.
The hassle you skip with inside-out tracking is worth it on it's own, and the Quest games are honestly pretty good, and I haven't had any issues with Link to PC. Great for PC VR, great for taking with you to family/friends for fun demos (post-covid).
I strongly dislike the forced Facebook integration, but it's hard to contest that Oculus Quest (and likely 2) is a fantastic product.
Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
#384I 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…
“ All entertainment since sung epic poetry has aimed to briefly take us into another world. ” Maybe it is just me but I can achieve perfectly satisfactory immersion with a good book.
Also, the tech may enable wonders but the implementation may suck. If you have an amazing technology but the scenario of all the movies / games using this technology turn out to be the Nth version of the same story (like basically every movie on Netflix) then it is subpar compared to a book.
I think a domain where it can exceptionally shine is the adult entertainment industry.
Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
There's nothing wrong with it per se. To each their own. I don't see playing soccer or rock climbing as "distraction", on the contrary. I mean distraction as in distracting your mind from the present moment.
For example, I used to go running and weightlifting while listening to music and podcasts for example, because I was in the mindset of physical exercise == unpleasant & time consuming therefore I must distract myself "to get it over with". VR workouts sound a lot like an idea coming from that same mindset.
Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
#386I worked for a VR/AR platform helping 3rd parties port apps onto the platform for a couple of years. Low traction seemed to be a combination of the following related problems: 1) ROI for the platform's premium was not worth it, due to... 2) lack of must-have apps, due to... 3) poor ratio of difficulty designing a great user experience vs low number of outfits trying to build that software, due to ... 4) fragmentation…
> The mouse is such an excellent precision instrument, it's going to be a long time before we have a 6 degree-of-freedom input device that can match it for precision and ease of long term use. From my experience don't most professional 3D modelers use some sort of pen tablet like a Wacom? Now I'm thinning I would love if Wacom pivoted to the VR/AR space and made a special 6 DOF pen you can use. I hope they don't go t…
The 3dConnexion mouse series are big in 3D CAD shops but totally agree that industrial inertia is what's holding back use of VR HMDs
Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ All entertainment since sung epic poetry has aimed to briefly take us into another world. ” Maybe it is just me but I can achieve perfectly satisfactory immersion with a good book.
Fair point and I can as well. It takes a great book, time, a good atmosphere, a nice state of mind and the page can disappear and I enter that other world. The last book that did this to me was The City and the Stars and it was just incredible. But with VR you are instantly, automatically and with zero effort just THERE. The immersive pull is probably thousands of times stronger if you could quantify it by number of…
fair, maybe it's me getting old (and i'm only 32) but perspective of the slow immersion is more appealing. Taking the time to make your entire environment just perfect, with good music and some whisky is part of the enjoyment for a slow relaxing evening.
But i guess it's just me there could be a market for instant immersion. I have second dev version of oculus at home, never used it much. I also went to a VR venue in London and it was great fun. From my perspective VR would work great in venues, as a night out alongside bowling, karake and similar options. I can't imagine using it reguralrly at home.
Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
#388I 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…
I don't know about plays, novels or movies, but it's worth it just for the porn itself.
Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
#389Earlier 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.
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.
The Quest (1/2) isn't tethered, and runs for hours off battery. It's about as wieldy as I can imagine these getting for a while...
Which is to say, it's still an unwieldy box you put on your head. But even hand-tracking works well now, so for a lot of games you don't strictly need the controllers.
Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
There will never be an iphone moment because its not a product useful to literally every person. Gaming consoles and PCs have not had an "iphone moment" after decades because their market is and always will be limited. I don't see why people are so obsessed with instant and explosive growth. Almost no recreational product has seen this kind of growth and they have all continued to exist just fine. VR is ready today i…
Gaming is a only small part of what VR can do. Education (language learning, geography, biology, engineering...), real estate, porn, psychology, situational training (firemen), scientific visualization and collaboration, spatial painting and other artforms, social interaction, movie shots planning, etc.
All of the things mentioned are already being done without VR headsets. People can go through their entire lives not realizing they've been stereoblind. The world seems as real to them as to anybody else. It's not obvious to me VR is such a huge game changer.
Suppose we had 2 computer games.
One that perfectly reproduced real world "graphics" and "gameplay", looks like a real life high resolution video. Everything is life-like but you use fairly standard controls and a regular display.
Second that comes with perfect VR integration including physical resistance somehow, unlimited running space, ability to taste foods and whatnot. But the mechanics and graphics would still be off (current-gen).
It's pretty clear to me #1 would be way more immersive and the bottleneck is game/simulation tech, not VR tech.