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John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

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Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#161
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Right now this is a very expensive, multi-billion dollar toy with toy demonstrator apps and proof of concept games. We are far past tech demos and concept games.

But it's clearly not a mass market thing either— mass market is mobile games raking in millions, Switches selling out during quarantine, the upcoming PS5 launch, and Epic having splashy platform wars with Apple and Valve. Those are billion dollar gaming events which all have nothing to do with VR. There's no non-nerd out there who thinks "maybe I'll try VR", and goes into a store to buy... whatever it is, goes home t…

The PSVR has sold 5 million units or so to date, and there's going to be a second generation. There are a lot of games which support it due to this install base. That's pretty mass market.

(It's popular enough that Sony actually has made a second iteration of the headset, but it's not an upgrade.)

It's not as accessible as the Oculus Quest, but the PS4 has sold roughly 106 million units to date, and gamers are probably the biggest market at present for VR devices.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can now buy a haedset for 400$, rather than 100000$. That creates wealth. That you personally care more about starting a business than about using a VR headset is not really relevant.

It creates purchasing power only in VR, but that is not the same thing as wealth. I think it's important to keep that distinction. Wealth is more directly connected to financial stability than the price of specific technology products.

I don't think you have a proper concept of "wealth".

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to buy a VR headset for 400$ is "real wealth".

I appreciate that. Economy of scale makes it possible for really amazing products, concentrating the efforts of many, to be spread far and wide. That is a great thing, but there are very serious negatives that come along with that incentive to scale when it's not tempered. Hegemonic industries disproportionately empower owners over workers and limit opportunity, competition, and diversity to the point where the "best…

I appreciate your concerns, but I think they are mostly propaganda. Without the industries, there would be no jobs and no workers that could be deprived of their power.

If you want to strengthen workers, create more demand for jobs, so that workers have options. By for example creating a successful VR industry, you create demand for more jobs that haven't previously existed, thereby empowering workers. Somebody who has previously been exploited to manufacture fridges can now give their boss the finger and go manufacture chips for VR headsets instead. One easy way to create more jobs is to hire a cleaning person, by the way. Everybody who is concerned about "living wages" and things like that should start by hiring cleaners and possibly gardeners for their homes.

I personally think the whole concept of "workers" is bunk. Everybody is a free agent entering contracts with other market participants. That's it. "Worker" is a social construct, actually, a socialist construct. More so, being a "worker" does not sound like a very desirable state of affairs, so I think society should work towards getting rid of workers.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#164
post #12
post #3

I thought he locked himself up in a cabin in the woods and tried to get into AI lately.

If you're in an isolated cabin in the woods are you still allowed to use cloud servers?

If you're in an isolated cabin in the woods I suppose you can do whatever you want.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#165
post #53
post #43

question for VR people: is the tech at a place yet where a headset could be a monitor replacement for productivity work? i mean my laptop screen is 13" -- could i instead be coding on a virtual 100" screen, still using my regular OS, keyboard and trackpad?

FOV is way too narrow for that.

Anyone know if this is likely to change? I was playing super hot VR last night, and thought to myself, “this game wouldn’t be so hard if I didn’t feel like I was looking through a toilet paper roll”.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#166
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t sound like you have tried a Quest. I’m not sure I understand your argument at all - what is the logic you are following?

I don’t think OP’s tried VR either. Any of my friends who tried VR once was immediately blown away by it. It’s such a paradigm shift. You want a play paintball in space, in a medieval setting? It happens immediately. There is nothing in real life that makes up for it.

Watching someone try a good VR headset for the first time is so fun. It takes mere seconds for it to “click”, without fail.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#167
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do think he was very proud of the shipping product and saw that there were many more achievable gains. My impression of pessimism came from his skepticism that Moore's law would continue long enough to get them to where they really wanted to be on mobile VR, his struggles with latency probably making cloud rendering a poor experience for most, recognition that they were already at the ceiling of their heat and…

I'd recommend anyone interested in the future of VR displays to take the time to watch Doug Lanman's (FRL) recent presentation (IS&T Electronic Imaging (EI) Symposium: Quality Screen Time: Leveraging Computational Displays for Spatial Computing) to get a taste of what's coming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQwMAl9bGNY - it's great, and one of the more optimistic technology talks I've seen in a while. As far as the…

That is an amazing talk. Thanks for sharing. Lanman also seems to indicate that eyetracking is really hard and is still unsolved to the level it would need to be to drive the halfdome 3 prototype. And yes, that bouncing iris totally did give me the willies. It seems that there may eventually be a varifocal HMD with eyetracked fovated rendering, but I'm doubtful it's coming in Oculus Quest 3 or even 4.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#168
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FOV is way too narrow for that.

Anyone know if this is likely to change? I was playing super hot VR last night, and thought to myself, “this game wouldn’t be so hard if I didn’t feel like I was looking through a toilet paper roll”.

Pimax 5K/8K? Those have 200 degrees FOV.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#169
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend anyone interested in the future of VR displays to take the time to watch Doug Lanman's (FRL) recent presentation (IS&T Electronic Imaging (EI) Symposium: Quality Screen Time: Leveraging Computational Displays for Spatial Computing) to get a taste of what's coming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQwMAl9bGNY - it's great, and one of the more optimistic technology talks I've seen in a while. As far as the…

That is an amazing talk. Thanks for sharing. Lanman also seems to indicate that eyetracking is really hard and is still unsolved to the level it would need to be to drive the halfdome 3 prototype. And yes, that bouncing iris totally did give me the willies. It seems that there may eventually be a varifocal HMD with eyetracked fovated rendering, but I'm doubtful it's coming in Oculus Quest 3 or even 4.

Personally, I'd wouldn't count out electronic varifocal coming in Quest 3 (2022?) as it looks like the Half Dome 3 prototype was already TRL6 w/ the electronic varifocal, and Facebook has been making additional moves like acquiring Lemnis earlier this year, which already has a similar-approach full-stack commercial varifocal system. Varifocal would be a huge win for comfort/long-term usage (eg, if FB continues to push on the remote work/productivity/collaboration use cases).

While I'm less sure on foveated rendering (although I'm really impressed by DeepFovea https://research.fb.com/publications/deepfovea-neural-recons... I wonder what kind of rendering pipeline will be required), I think basic eye tracking will be coming w/ Quest 3 as well - it's not only needed for DeepFocus, but also their Codec Avatars.

The stuff that FB has been showing off the past few years is insanely impressive - I think their mixed reality approach beats the pants out of what MS has been doing. I'm really curious to see what Apple has been whittling away at in secret - I'm doubtful if it can compete, but who knows? Google seems a bit out to lunch on all this.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#170
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, too bad IMO - I personally enjoyed him talking about games and CG much more than about VR (which I don't care too much about) even though there is, of course, an overlap. I wonder whether I will enjoy him talking about ML even less since I hear that all the time already in my day job.

You should really try out a good VR headset. I think it will change your mind.

As much as 3D TV did?
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