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What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

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Re: What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

#241

Post by GuB-42 »

lodovic wrote: post #184

I'd be very afraid to fry my eyes. I can't imagine strapping a bright display at 10cm from your eyes, for hours on end, won't lead to eye issues later on in life. I already feel strained after using a headset for an hour.

While it is physically 10cm from your eyes, there are collimating lenses, resulting in a picture that is apparently much further away from you, I think 1.3m is a typical distance, but it can vary by headset. It is much further away than a typical monitor. As for the light itself, it is light, no UV, not overly bright, sunlight is orders of magnitude brighter (which is a problem for AR btw). The image is also in front of you so no weird eye movement. I don't really see how it can damage your eyes though maybe some people know better, maybe the low resolution/screendoor effect can be a problem on current-gen headsets.

There are things that can cause strain. For example, items too close to you can be out of focus, the low FOV makes you move your head a lot more, and it has extra weight strapped to it, there is the heat, the motion, etc... But a well designed desktop setting like in the article avoids many of these problems.

Re: What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

#242

Post by danielbln »

teekert wrote: post #207
lodovic wrote: post #184

I'd be very afraid to fry my eyes. I can't imagine strapping a bright display at 10cm from your eyes, for hours on end, won't lead to eye issues later on in life. I already feel strained after using a headset for an hour.

One nice thing is that (next to being able to dim the screen as there is no background), the eyes actually focus on infinity with the lenses in a VR headset. This is the eye's natural state (staring in the distance, relaxed circular muscles around the lenses, which then flatten), and should be much better in the long term that staring at a screen 50 cm away from you.

Generation 1 headsets were focused at infinity, these days they're focused around 2 meters[1].

[1] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1130973138362294272

Re: What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

#243

Post by dougmwne »

nicoffeine wrote: post #109
hellbannedguy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mark is ruining it for every upcoming nerd. It's almost like he's working on being disliked? Maybe it's his a way of get back at the world for being invisible on so many levels, until financial success?

Deep down he knows that all he did was create a cleaner version of MySpace at the perfect moment. He's used that lottery ticket to acquire companies built by people smarter than he is, and he'll keep trying to tie their genuine innovation back to FB to soothe his fragile ego.

I would have said so too before his investments in VR. Instead of Google's pie in the sky moonshot projects, he picked a tech that was just out of reach and focused an enormous percent of the company on bringing it into the present. He will be hailed as a Jobsian genius if he actually pulls off the next general computing platform, but even if not, certainly caught my attention.

Re: What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

#244

Post by dougmwne »

the_af wrote: post #69
jjcm wrote: post #26

This is a great breakdown of the early state of VR productivity. There are still a few key items that are barriers for me personally: 1. Eye and face tracking. The author mentions lip syncing and hand tracking. That goes a long way, but it doesn't recreate the video experience to me. There are a few vtubers out there that are doing some seriously impressive tracking, but it requires tons of special equipment at the m…

Your last paragraph reminded me of Isaac Asimov's novel "The Naked Sun" and his fictional world of Solaria, where people have grown used to living far from each other and only "meet" in VR, and this has happened long enough that people feel repulsed by other people and feel sick if they believe they are in the actual presence of another person.

Well that one certainly came to pass, didn't it?

The pandemic is the best opportunity FB will ever have to push VR into the mainstream. Zuck has also been playing up that it could replace business travel post pandemic and there have been leaked specs for a Quest Pro that would deliver a very cutting edge productivity experience.

Re: What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

#245

Post by anentropic »

azinman2 wrote: post #8

Having a screen blast your eyes 2” away is only ok for so long. Perhaps some can handle this but I cannot possibly imagine this is good for most people at scale. There’s already concern about eye problems due to cell phones in youth, and that’s at least 6-10” away from one’s eyes and with other light coming in. The resolution isn’t there yet compared to my 4-5k monitors for text, but clearly will get there in the fut…

Seems like you'd have to be able to touch type to do this

Re: What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

#246

Post by throwaway_2047 »

amelius wrote: post #238
georgewsinger wrote: post #50

This is such a great post, and really covers the spiritual aspects of what it's like to work for prolonged periods in VR. Glad to see Immersed getting traction, and taking VR forward. We all benefit from this. For Linux enthusiasts (possibly the OP as as well): SimulaVR (www.simulavr.com) is working on a portable Linux VR headset with office/programmer productivity as the #1 goal. It will offer the following advantag…

Question: what happens when you open a webpage that shows 3D content?

Would be great if there is support between navigation of 3D content and VR headset.

If no support between them, there will be a virtual window embedding e.g https://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_decals , which is weird

Re: What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

#247

Post by dougmwne »

foxes wrote: post #37

There is a part of me that is disturbed. I like working at my big wooden table overlooking the city, nice natural light filtering in, the ability to detach from the screen and pace around to take a break. VR for work seems like a trap, you'll be consumed, ensnared by something that demands all your attention. You won't know freedom. Maybe this is the current state of headsets, clunky, like a chain with cables, bad tr…

I hear you, but there are layers to this. In a way, VR is like a hyper realistic lucid dream, and so actually gives a sort of freedom. VR is like a protective bubble of reality, you can substitute an unpleasant, ugly, and claustrophobic room for a big wooden table overlooking the city. Also there is something strangely anti-materialistic about VR. Why have all this big bulky, expensive equipment, furnishings, decorations around when all it takes is to slip on the glasses. It may be pseudo-dystopian, but I'm really interested in VR on planes so I can cross the continent while watching movies in my ski chalet.

Re: What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

#248

Post by erikbye »

Diggsey wrote: post #23

Maybe things have improved a lot since I last tried VR, but the combination of low effective resolution and distortion from the fresnel lens (which also produces a kind of discretization effect similar to visible pixels) meant it was very unsuited to productivity tasks. (Gaming was amazing though...)

Not to mention the terrible lens glare.

Re: What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

#249

Post by _flux »

azinman2 wrote: post #236
caslon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally it makes me feel a bit nauseous, particularly if there’s any movement (I get motion sick easily in VR but not normally in real life). My understanding is that about 20% of the population is like this and nothing is known to prevent it. This is almost always one of two things: * A low or unsteady framerate or tracking * Lack of spending twenty minutes in it to teach your body to cope with the aforemention…

I have a quest 2, and have put it at 120hz. I still get motion sick. It’s not just frame rate. Movement in real life involves more inputs than just eyes.. you feel it in your vestibular system for example. Here we have a disconnect between motion in the eyes and the rest of your body. And for many, such as myself, that results in motion sickness.

Do I understand correct that you don't get motion sickness if standing still but looking around—when there is no disconnect in motion? This is the use case for productivity apps.

In my understanding it is extremely rare to experience VR motion sickness if the motion in VR matches the motion in IRL.

Re: What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

#250

Post by dougmwne »

nbzso wrote: post #231

This is cool. As a experimental experience. I will wait fro a hologram solution to remove the Eizo's from my workflow. Reasons: I don't like to be totally disconnected from reality/physical world. I work in a room with balanced natural light. Removing this is not productive for me. In recent years I developed a technique to refresh cyclically my brain by making timely stops away from my computer. Example: In the brea…

My timely steps away from my desk have been VR boxing, table tennis, and mini golf. There's no better way to destress after a meeting than 3 rounds and a knockout. I think it taps deep into the limbic system and evaporates stress through a full activation then resolution of the fight or flight response.
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