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David Chalmers considers the possibilities of VR

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Re: David Chalmers considers the possibilities of VR

#21

Post by maroonblazer »

Animats wrote: post #3

Oh, another philosopher discovers VR. I asked the people who moderate r/metaverse to create a tag, "MYFIRSTMETAVERSEARTICLE", for this sort of thing, and they did. I've read about a hundred such articles in the last three months. They're rather similar. For a view from the other direction, "How to be a God", by Battle. This is a game dev who became an academic and spent too much time thinking about philosophy. If you…

> For a view from the other direction, "How to be a God", by Battle. This is a game dev who became an academic and spent too much time thinking about philosophy.

For anyone else who was struggling to locate this reference, the author is Bartle, not Battle.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-God-Would-Be-Deities/dp/095564...

Re: David Chalmers considers the possibilities of VR

#22

Post by billti »

mwattsun wrote: post #18
Animats wrote: post #3

Oh, another philosopher discovers VR. I asked the people who moderate r/metaverse to create a tag, "MYFIRSTMETAVERSEARTICLE", for this sort of thing, and they did. I've read about a hundred such articles in the last three months. They're rather similar. For a view from the other direction, "How to be a God", by Battle. This is a game dev who became an academic and spent too much time thinking about philosophy. If you…

Your comment(s) really nails my reservations about VR with my Oculus. After the Wow! factor of a sense immersion, you're in kind of a dead zone trying to think of something interesting to do just like in real life. You went from your real living room to your virtual living room. Big deal. You could play a game in either, but the screen is going to be much better back in your real living room. You don't want to watch…

> but the screen is going to be much better back in your real living room. You don't want to watch Netflix in VR because the screen door effect sucks

Some of the stuff that’s done well today (e.g. some of the Oculus originals) I already find to be far more immersive and engaging than sitting 20’ away from a screen on the wall.

I think the tech to make AR mainstream for consumers is still years away, and in the meantime, entertainment in VR is the killer app.

I expect this is where Apple may be the main (only?) threat to Oculus. They have the AppleTV+ studios to turn out great original content, and a core skill set in performant and beautiful mobile devices will killer displays. (Not to mention a lot of brand loyalty with folks already in their ecosystem). We’ll see what the price is though…

Re: David Chalmers considers the possibilities of VR

#23

Post by mwattsun »

billti wrote: post #22
mwattsun wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment(s) really nails my reservations about VR with my Oculus. After the Wow! factor of a sense immersion, you're in kind of a dead zone trying to think of something interesting to do just like in real life. You went from your real living room to your virtual living room. Big deal. You could play a game in either, but the screen is going to be much better back in your real living room. You don't want to watch…

> but the screen is going to be much better back in your real living room. You don't want to watch Netflix in VR because the screen door effect sucks Some of the stuff that’s done well today (e.g. some of the Oculus originals) I already find to be far more immersive and engaging than sitting 20’ away from a screen on the wall. I think the tech to make AR mainstream for consumers is still years away, and in the meanti…

I have high hopes for Apple. Given their reputation for "taste" and design, I would expect something more sophisticated than Meta, not so plug and play. More "Tomorrowland" vs. Meta's "It's a Small, Small World" vibe.

Re: David Chalmers considers the possibilities of VR

#25

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #3

Oh, another philosopher discovers VR. I asked the people who moderate r/metaverse to create a tag, "MYFIRSTMETAVERSEARTICLE", for this sort of thing, and they did. I've read about a hundred such articles in the last three months. They're rather similar. For a view from the other direction, "How to be a God", by Battle. This is a game dev who became an academic and spent too much time thinking about philosophy. If you…

[deleted]

Re: David Chalmers considers the possibilities of VR

#26

Post by aaron695 »

a_lieb wrote: post #8
Animats wrote: post #3

Oh, another philosopher discovers VR. I asked the people who moderate r/metaverse to create a tag, "MYFIRSTMETAVERSEARTICLE", for this sort of thing, and they did. I've read about a hundred such articles in the last three months. They're rather similar. For a view from the other direction, "How to be a God", by Battle. This is a game dev who became an academic and spent too much time thinking about philosophy. If you…

To Chalmers' credit, he's been writing about this stuff at least back to 2003, when he had a paper called "The Matrix as Metaphysics" defending the idea that the claim that we're living in a simulation is not a skeptical hypothesis, and that such a world would be just as real, just one layer "in." (Probably not as wild of an idea now as it was back then.) Also a couple of other papers on VR since then and many on AI…

No post body was provided.

Re: David Chalmers considers the possibilities of VR

#27

Post by chaostheory »

zmmmmm wrote: post #15
chaostheory wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metaverse will be a niche One big reason for this is some strange social stigma surrounding VR. Yes, there are many other issues like cost (minimum $2000 investment for a VR ready PC and headset) and complexity if you’re not using Oculus / Meta. Then there’s also Facebook’s toxic brand, which drives away many early tech adopters; but what if we were able to take them out of the equation? Anyways, I did an experimen…

Interesting experiment. > started to understand VR and use it more regularly, namely the fitness and social apps This is the interesting thing that I observe : beyond the hype there are some genuinely valuable quite mainstream applications. Fitness, e-sports, and virtual monitors being some of the key ones. I regularly use VR for 1-3 hours a day doing these. The problem is that the hype actually gets in the way of pe…

Meta’s Quest 2 doesn’t require either “skill acquisition or semi-non-trivial setup” which was why I found the results of my adhoc experiment interesting.

Re: David Chalmers considers the possibilities of VR

#28

Post by chaostheory »

oneoff786 wrote: post #14
chaostheory wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metaverse will be a niche One big reason for this is some strange social stigma surrounding VR. Yes, there are many other issues like cost (minimum $2000 investment for a VR ready PC and headset) and complexity if you’re not using Oculus / Meta. Then there’s also Facebook’s toxic brand, which drives away many early tech adopters; but what if we were able to take them out of the equation? Anyways, I did an experimen…

You’re assuming VR is a paradigm shift and not just a gimmicky console like the Wii. There’s nothing particularly interesting in VR, at least not yet. Most games suck. The ones that don’t are largely stationary with little rotation if at all. There’s a fundamental problem that humans, even when not constrained by space, aren’t very agile, and much less so wearing a vr headset. It still sucks. I have an index.

Do you really have an Index? The reason I ask is because I highly disagree with your statement about games being “largely stationary with little rotation at all”. It’s the exact opposite, which is why having a wire is so annoying.

VR is a huge paradigm shift. It’s just still in its infancy. Similar to the internet in the mid 1990s.

Re: David Chalmers considers the possibilities of VR

#29

Post by chaostheory »

mwattsun wrote: post #18
Animats wrote: post #3

Oh, another philosopher discovers VR. I asked the people who moderate r/metaverse to create a tag, "MYFIRSTMETAVERSEARTICLE", for this sort of thing, and they did. I've read about a hundred such articles in the last three months. They're rather similar. For a view from the other direction, "How to be a God", by Battle. This is a game dev who became an academic and spent too much time thinking about philosophy. If you…

Your comment(s) really nails my reservations about VR with my Oculus. After the Wow! factor of a sense immersion, you're in kind of a dead zone trying to think of something interesting to do just like in real life. You went from your real living room to your virtual living room. Big deal. You could play a game in either, but the screen is going to be much better back in your real living room. You don't want to watch…

The Quest 2 largely eliminated the screen door effect. I think what you’re seeing in Netflix is that the stream is only 480P because Netflix refuses to update their app.

The big issue is that VR is meant to be social. I find multiplayer VR a lot more enjoyable than single player VR or multiplayer on other video game platforms.

Re: David Chalmers considers the possibilities of VR

#30

Post by oneoff786 »

chaostheory wrote: post #28
oneoff786 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re assuming VR is a paradigm shift and not just a gimmicky console like the Wii. There’s nothing particularly interesting in VR, at least not yet. Most games suck. The ones that don’t are largely stationary with little rotation if at all. There’s a fundamental problem that humans, even when not constrained by space, aren’t very agile, and much less so wearing a vr headset. It still sucks. I have an index.

Do you really have an Index? The reason I ask is because I highly disagree with your statement about games being “largely stationary with little rotation at all”. It’s the exact opposite, which is why having a wire is so annoying. VR is a huge paradigm shift. It’s just still in its infancy. Similar to the internet in the mid 1990s.

Like what games?
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