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Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

thesoloist-vr.com

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Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#111

Post by NwtnsMthd »

1_player wrote: post #46
aeonik wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He climbs all these routes with a rope dozens to hundreds of times before free soloing them. The routes that he free soloes are also considered relatively easy to intermediate in skill level, well within his skill level. The really incredible part of his free soloes is just how long his body can last. It's Olympic levels of endurance.

Is his free solo climb of El Capitan considered an easy to intermediate route?

Considering what an average (casual) climber can achieve in a lifetime the hardest moves on the route would be very difficult but doable. But the route as a whole is probably out of reach, it requires a tremendous amount of endurance.

For a dedicated sport climber the route would be very difficult but doable.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#112

Post by up_and_up »

Fricken wrote: post #74
aeonik wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He climbs all these routes with a rope dozens to hundreds of times before free soloing them. The routes that he free soloes are also considered relatively easy to intermediate in skill level, well within his skill level. The really incredible part of his free soloes is just how long his body can last. It's Olympic levels of endurance.

One of Alex's most impressive feats was doing the triple crown in a day, in which he soloed El Cap, Half-dome, and Washington spire (the 3 tallest faces in Yosemite) in a single 18 hour push. Physically the feat is comparable to running an ultra marathon, but to maintain the necessary mental focus for the entire push is beyond my comprehension.

More like an ultramarathon where you do 100 pushups every mile.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#113

Post by recursive »

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

> Apple does just fine with their walled garden

There is a large group of Apple apologists right here on this very site!

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#114

Post by up_and_up »

1_player wrote: post #46
aeonik wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He climbs all these routes with a rope dozens to hundreds of times before free soloing them. The routes that he free soloes are also considered relatively easy to intermediate in skill level, well within his skill level. The really incredible part of his free soloes is just how long his body can last. It's Olympic levels of endurance.

Is his free solo climb of El Capitan considered an easy to intermediate route?

Background: I have climbed for 3 years.

This is the route: https://www.mountainproject.com/route/106261545/freerider

30 pitches at 5.13a.

That is very very difficult.

Keep in mind:

1. Very few climbers can even climb one pitch of 5.13 (maybe top 1%)

2. Even fewer could attempt 30 pitches of 5.13 over several days.

3. Like maybe only dozens in the world could attempt 30 pitches of 5.13 in single day

4. Only 1 person ever in history that has attempted that without a rope.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#115

Post by chaostheory »

JeremyNT wrote: post #108
chaostheory wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

I’m not saying that meta’s past rep isn’t important, but that’s still not as big as the form factor. In my little adhoc experiment, even if you took that away, it didn’t matter. Form factor still drives them away. It’s like being a VR user makes you Neal Stephenson’s “gargoyle” if I’m using the right term from snow crash

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#116

Post by f0e4c2f7 »

pdevr wrote: post #45

A colleague recommended "Free Solo" to me a few years back. There was this part where the doctors claim (paraphrasing) his brain is unique in that he is much less afraid of danger than us. The part towards the end, where he does the actual climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, is also worth watching.

I find rock climbing or other sort of "adventurist" movies like that really enjoyable and interesting. If you haven't seen it The Dawn Wall was also pretty good and features Honnold at one point. It's not free soloing but it's interesting in other ways.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#117

Post by chaostheory »

recursive wrote: post #113
chaostheory wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Apple does just fine with their walled garden There is a large group of Apple apologists right here on this very site!

I’m not defending Apple. I’m just saying that non-techies tend to not care about that particular issue.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#118

Post by hindsightbias »

pdevr wrote: post #45

A colleague recommended "Free Solo" to me a few years back. There was this part where the doctors claim (paraphrasing) his brain is unique in that he is much less afraid of danger than us. The part towards the end, where he does the actual climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, is also worth watching.

Less fear would normally be associated with greater casual risk taking.

Given his incredibly rigorous training and laborious and meticulous preparation (years!) for the ascent beforehand, what looks like risk to us is probably as much experience to him. The connections to his amygdala don't seem to have had impact on rational thinking.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#119

Post by eternityforest »

robotresearcher wrote: post #27
eternityforest wrote: post #25

I would never in a million years want to do this, but it must be pretty amazing to be able to do something with that degree of reliability. There's only one thing that I can start doing and be reasonably sure I'll succeed, and that's coding, and only because there is a defined process to follow that is resistant to basic errors, because it's so highly mutable and mistakes can be fixed individually without starting ov…

Do you drive a car? Ride a bike in traffic? One false move and you are dead. You, like most people, are probably competent at these things that would be very risky but for your skill.

Nope, I've never learned to drive. I mess up basic things like left/right confusion far too often, and have no idea how people are able to safety drive.

I've tried a few times but it seems entirely impossible.

One time I literally made it a months long project to learn to not leave my keys in the front door. To the point of programming my phone with random voice reminders and getting up to check at 3AM.... and I never got anywhere near 100%. I just use a lanyard.

I don't see how I'd ever drive when driving is made of dozens of tasks like that, and I can't even do one of them.

My list of rules and workarounds is long enough that I've actually posted them on GitHub and I treat counting to ten as a high failure risk project that demands care and triple checking.

Re: Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

#120

Post by takk309 »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #109
takk309 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For me, 5.13 is my life goal with climbing. I tend to agree that nutrition is a huge component. When I am more focused on training, not just climbing for fun, and eat right I make strides towards that goal. All that being said, my hardest red point outside is 12b. There is a lot of work to still be done.
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