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We Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012)

blogs.valvesoftware.com

21–30 of 59 posts

Re: We Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012)

#21
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> won't be seeing truly immersive VR any time soon either. Have you demoed VR on a PC, or at least PSVR? I've heard this far too often from people who have only seen a phone HMD, which are complete and utter crap (apart from the mobility aspects - which has recently been solved for Vive).

Rift and Hololens. I get that there is an immediate "Wow" factor, but then I wander off and look at the real world, and think "Holy crap!". They are good, I get that... Not great but something. I don't understand the purpose though. The best virtual reality experiences I've ever had have been between the pages of a book, or induced by psychotropic substances. If they can fix the latency, resolution and FOV issues, re…

"Rift and Hololens."

Tiltbrush on the Vive absolutely blew my mind. I could paint in the air and use the wide brushstrokes as an immediate and intuitive 3D modeling tool. And then walk around my scuplture, etc.

I would have to categorize the experience to the same slot where building snowmen, igloos, painting, etc goes - ie. creative fun with aesthetically pleasing results. The difference is that modeling on on the Tiltbrush/Vive was so effortless I literally felt I was operating at the speed of thought and intuition, instead of figuring out what to do, then work the aspect for several minutes, then move onwards.

Consumer side I agree, I've not seen anything I would call transformative.

Re: We Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012)

#22
But we've seen "soft" AR and it appears to be fairly popular - Pokemon Go and Ingress. If you ask players of either of those games, if they would like a "harder" - i guess this means more immersive - experience while playing these games, they'll bite your hand off.

There's also father.io, which looks pretty fun, but I haven't tested that out yet.

For me, in my uneducated almost ignorant understanding of the situation, AR has a massive advantage over VR in that it tends to not make you quite as motion sick.

Re: We Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012)

#23

It seems that black pixels could be achieved using LCD technology. Even of just to augment the display.

Not really. At least not in the simple way of having an LCD screen somewhere near the eye blocking out light from an object in a certain direction by interposing a black pixel. It seems like it should work, but it would be exactly like putting some paint on a camera lens and expecting it to block out that exact part of the picture; it won't - the lens will simply get dimmer, or if the area of paint is large, there wo…

Thank you for the explanation. I now see why this won't work.

It seems then that the best option would be a device which affects your neural cortex more directly.

Re: We Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012)

#24
post #2

I think it's safe to say we won't be seeing truly immersive VR any time soon either. At least any that doesn't make you want to blow chunks, or has a compelling and broad raisondetre. It's interesting to me since I've followed VR/AR for 40 years myself, and what I can say is if you look at the money and hype that have surrounded HMD's (especially in the last couple of years), the technology is still just not there, a…

> truly immersive VR A statement like that is so subjective. What is "truly immersive"? I believe it is soon here, at least from my definition of truly immersive.

It's similar to the moving AI goalpost. At the end of the road, it's Matrix level wetware, though I'm sure at that point there will still be people waiting for "really, actually truly immersive".

Re: We Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012)

#25
post #2

I think it's safe to say we won't be seeing truly immersive VR any time soon either. At least any that doesn't make you want to blow chunks, or has a compelling and broad raisondetre. It's interesting to me since I've followed VR/AR for 40 years myself, and what I can say is if you look at the money and hype that have surrounded HMD's (especially in the last couple of years), the technology is still just not there, a…

> truly immersive VR A statement like that is so subjective. What is "truly immersive"? I believe it is soon here, at least from my definition of truly immersive.

I think my Vive is immersive, with the definition that it tricks my brain into believing I'm somewhere else to the extent any technology short of a direct neural interface could.

You're never going to "truly" be immersed. You feel your carpet under your feet. You feel the weight of the headset. You don't smell anything. Nothing you pick up weighs anything. The list goes on. Every item breaks "true" immersion to a certain extent.

But your brain really loves to be tricked, and the visual does this rather easily. When I'm playing Valve's Xortex 26xxx, I'm in a futuristic room fighting orbs that are shooting at me. My hand is that spaceship. I don't even really care that my FOV is smaller than normal, or that it's a little blurry due to the low resolution. It's good enough that my brain is fooled. When I take off the headset, I generally have NO CLUE where I am in my room because for the entire time my brain didn't know or care.

And does it need to be "truly immersive"? No. It just needs to offer experiences that you can't find elsewhere. Try coming even close to the awesomeness of Google Earth VR, for instance.

Re: We Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012)

#26
post #22

But we've seen "soft" AR and it appears to be fairly popular - Pokemon Go and Ingress. If you ask players of either of those games, if they would like a "harder" - i guess this means more immersive - experience while playing these games, they'll bite your hand off. There's also father.io, which looks pretty fun, but I haven't tested that out yet. For me, in my uneducated almost ignorant understanding of the situation…

But every player of Pokémon Go that really tries to play the game not just for 30 minutes disables the AR camera first to save battery and because it doesn't add value. People using Pokémon Go with the AR cam enabled are young kids (it's funny) and Asian tourists snapping photos with Pokémon in front of landmarks and tourist spots.

I second your remark on motion sickness. And VR cuts the user/player from the real world, which is a social annoyance outside your own living room.

Re: We Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012)

#27
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> won't be seeing truly immersive VR any time soon either. Have you demoed VR on a PC, or at least PSVR? I've heard this far too often from people who have only seen a phone HMD, which are complete and utter crap (apart from the mobility aspects - which has recently been solved for Vive).

Rift and Hololens. I get that there is an immediate "Wow" factor, but then I wander off and look at the real world, and think "Holy crap!". They are good, I get that... Not great but something. I don't understand the purpose though. The best virtual reality experiences I've ever had have been between the pages of a book, or induced by psychotropic substances. If they can fix the latency, resolution and FOV issues, re…

I think motion controllers and room scale make the difference. Usually it's Google Tiltbrush where it clicks for people. I think Valve's Robot Repair also did it for me. Walking over and slowly opening a drawer was really immersive.

I still think it's missing the killer app that'll make it stick. It's too low resolution for a virtual monitor and the fatigue would set in well before lunchtime.

I've seen a few very niche businesses where VR will probably change things. Room scale VR really helps with visualizing something; scale and shape. One of the car companies is using VR to prototype interiors--this replaces foam core, glue, and paint. I also think it'll do well in architectural visualization if the tools and talent to generate content are reasonably priced.

Re: We Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012)

#28
The Magic Leap is rumoured to be able to create pure black: "Such may be used to cancel light from the planar waveguides with respect to light from the background or real world, in some respects similar to noise canceling headphones." http://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will-...

Re: We Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon (2012)

#29
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> won't be seeing truly immersive VR any time soon either. Have you demoed VR on a PC, or at least PSVR? I've heard this far too often from people who have only seen a phone HMD, which are complete and utter crap (apart from the mobility aspects - which has recently been solved for Vive).

Rift and Hololens. I get that there is an immediate "Wow" factor, but then I wander off and look at the real world, and think "Holy crap!". They are good, I get that... Not great but something. I don't understand the purpose though. The best virtual reality experiences I've ever had have been between the pages of a book, or induced by psychotropic substances. If they can fix the latency, resolution and FOV issues, re…

Fix what latency? Resolution and FOV, yeah. Quite a way to go. But the latency of modern headsets is imperceptible.

And it really is a shame you haven't tried Vive roomscale. 9/10 people I've demoed it to all agreed that it was immersive as hell.

>The best virtual reality experiences I've ever had have been [...] induced by psychotropic substances.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/3nxyei/oculus_rift_f...

;)

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