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Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

thesoloist-vr.com

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Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#101

Post by maloney »

jasonkester wrote: post #28
lordnacho wrote: post #10

Makes me feel weird just watching him. One wrong move and you die. So you need to have extremely high confidence in each move. But how do you build that without falling off something? Practice in a safe environment? Ok so when is it safe to try for real?

It's unfortunate that most people are first exposed to rock climbing by watching videos of free soloing. It really distorts your perception of the sport. It's no surprise, of course. Free soloing is pretty much the most riveting thing you could watch on a screen, whereas every other form of climbing is frankly quite boring to watch if you don't know the sport intimately. Mostly, it's people pushing their own personal…

I would give yourself more credit, I highly doubt he would be able to flash a v11, I don't think he boulders much harder than v12.

Nice work by the way, Font is the best!

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#102

Post by seemaze »

Traster wrote: post #64

I get extremely strong 3D movies vibe from this. I honestly think this is probably a worse way of watching this content than just viewing it as a movie. You might watch this as a gimmick but I don't think it really presents any value above real movies. Having said that, I wonder if Facebook will start to engage in the content war, trying to ramp up their spending on original video content for their VR. It's an extrem…

I think that's an issues with this medium in general. The utility decreases as the barrier to entry increases. With this title in particular, I'd just as soon spend my resources (time, energy, money) to GTFO the couch and climb something in Reality™.

As a side thought, can you imagine how boring skydiving in VR would be?

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#103

Post by rfreytag »

Because they create an incentive to practice BASE jumping or free solo climbing I do not watch or support this kind of movie. Watching a tightrope act without a net is similar.

They are amazing people. They are free to do what they want.

I am not going to contribute to their possible sad end.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#104

Post by ahelwer »

Traster wrote: post #64

I get extremely strong 3D movies vibe from this. I honestly think this is probably a worse way of watching this content than just viewing it as a movie. You might watch this as a gimmick but I don't think it really presents any value above real movies. Having said that, I wonder if Facebook will start to engage in the content war, trying to ramp up their spending on original video content for their VR. It's an extrem…

I watched the first half. Having watched many (too many?) climbing vids it was actually incredible by comparison. The scenes are a series of statically-positioned full-sphere 3D shots where you can watch him climb through a sequence or turn and look out at the mountains. Scale is conveyed in a sense not possible with your standard 2D video, especially of both height and the actual geometry of the rock he has to move through. Very similar experience to watching someone climb as a belayer or when hanging next to them on a rope. Greatly enjoyed.

Anyone who has tried to take a photo of a climb they've just completed will know how difficult it is to really capture the climb and what was interesting or difficult about it. So much so that people will often resort to visual tricks to make the photo of the route look steeper, to match their non-photographic perception (you can pick this out by looking at the angle of trees in the background). It's also notoriously difficult to match a real-life climbing route to a photo, as anyone who has stumbled around a crag squinting at a guidebook will attest. I think this form really does capture what it's like to be looking at the route in real life.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#106

Post by ahelwer »

dividuum wrote: post #62

Stupid question, but is that really full VR in the sense that you can move your head around in a limited volume and see everything with real depth perception? Or is it a 360 degree video projected to a sphere and you virtually sit in the center? Is the former even possible to produce somehow?

There is only 3 degrees of freedom, not 6. So yes it's a sphere and you sit in the center. You only get depth perception from your eye parallax, but it's enough to see the rock geometry.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#107

Post by Tarq0n »

______-_-______ wrote: post #91
rjh29 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Future' is an odd term, console game exclusivity has been a fact of life for 40+ years.

Dedicated fans can get around console exclusivity, as long as you're willing to wait a couple years. I wonder when we'll see the first VR headset emulator?

There already exists software [0] to let you play quest games on steamvr/windows mixed reality, but you still have to use the oculus store unless you pirate the games.

[0] https://github.com/LibreVR/Revive

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#108

Post by JeremyNT »

chaostheory wrote: post #98
mojzu wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think VR is already there unfortunately, and that it's one of the things holding back wider scale adoption. On PC there's Revive which lets you play Oculus games on other headsets which is great, but it requires a little setup so most consumers aren't going to do it, and if Meta/FB decided tomorrow to remove accounts using it there'd be no recourse. So there are effectively arbitrary silos between hardware/stores o…

Normal people don’t care. For example, Apple does just fine with their walled garden. The biggest issue with VR at the moment from my personal experience is the form factor. The giant box you put on your head really intimidates normal people. Even if you take care of the price and complexity of VR, people still don’t want to fully dive in beyond trying out a demo. I am still having trouble understanding why

"Normal people" may not care, but enough of us early adopters / tech savvy people do care to have some impact here. Facebook's reputation is so deep in the gutter that some people will never purchase anything from them (I count myself among those ranks).

VR's widespread adoption has been "right around the corner" for at least a decade now, but it keeps failing to actually materialize. These things are niche gaming peripherals still, and proponents can ill afford to ignore potential users if they really want to reach ubiquity.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#109

Post by pcthrowaway »

takk309 wrote: post #100
pcthrowaway wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, it's not just pretty hard, it's pretty damn hard. Most climbers will never climb this hard (maybe ~1-5% of climbers reach this grade with lots of practice and training). Even fewer will get to a point where they might conceivably flash or onsight 5.12d ( I doubt there are more than 10,000 people alive who would consider free soloing 5.12d at all, and I don't think anyone else has free soloed a 5.12d big w…

I agree with you for sure. I don't think 12d is unattainable to a typical fit person, it just takes a lot of training and focused desire to get to that point. It isn't a grade you can reach in a year or even five (except maybe children with their crazy power to weight ratios) but normal 2-3 days a week climbing over time will get you the strength and technique to climb a 5.12d. Style matters too. Are you good at stee…

Speaking from experience, 2-3 days a week of just climbing isn't enough for everyone to reach 5.12d. Many people would also need focused training and deliberate nutritional support at 3 days a week. It's entirely possible younger people (teens to early 20s perhaps?) could get to 5.12d with less work, but that's not generalizable to the general population of climbers.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#110

Post by aronowb14 »

seemaze wrote: post #102
Traster wrote: post #64

I get extremely strong 3D movies vibe from this. I honestly think this is probably a worse way of watching this content than just viewing it as a movie. You might watch this as a gimmick but I don't think it really presents any value above real movies. Having said that, I wonder if Facebook will start to engage in the content war, trying to ramp up their spending on original video content for their VR. It's an extrem…

I think that's an issues with this medium in general. The utility decreases as the barrier to entry increases. With this title in particular, I'd just as soon spend my resources (time, energy, money) to GTFO the couch and climb something in Reality™. As a side thought, can you imagine how boring skydiving in VR would be?

I agree, I climb a lot IRL and yep, VR can't come close to touching that experience :). But yeah as far as what VR is good for, there are definitely places where it sings: and where people tend to make a mistake is thinking that it can be a 1-1 with reality and is supposed to replace existing experiences, like climbing or skydiving. I think it's more of a creative medium that will need a really long time to develop (think film, which has had over a century to get its feet under it).

Anyway as an example: this video is kind of the inverse of skydiving, (360 camera on a balloon floating into space), but definitely an interesting experience that can't really be replicated on traditional media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCve1w1GFOs&ab_channel=Seeke...

Another really interesting one: https://tenderclaws.com/theunderpresents

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