When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet • Hacker News Board

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#411

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

reason-mr wrote: post #37

croes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a take off but still a niche. The Quest 2 is more likely to just replace other VR headsets.

Still on the same old tired track with this. Stores can't keep Quest2s in stock and have you tried to actually buy an HP Reverb2 lately? Developers are making decent amounts of money out of VR titles. Users who have the headsets love them, and the various reddit VR groups are extremely active. Still, nothing to see, and it's not getting adoption. Pls ..

The inability to keep a specific tech product in stock, especially in 2020, doesn't say much about total industry sales.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#412

Post by SulfurHexaFluri » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

asiachick wrote: post #365

vtange wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's true it's larger than books and movies, but games in the end just compete with other forms of media for customers' entertainment dollars. Unless we can come up with a use case for VR beyond gaming and fulfilling escapist fantasies. It will likely just be another contender for entertainment dollars. Smartphones on the other hand essentially made it possible to do anything a general desktop pc could do for peo…

This is true but I think this is mostly irrelevant to the topic at hand. If VR was as popular as PS4 then we'd have said "VR took off". It doesn't need to be as popular as smartphones to be called successful but it's arguably not successful yet by many definitions. It certainly hasn't "taken off"

Most gaming accessories never took off. The racing wheel has been available for decades now and never "took off" and yet it never went away either. Racing wheels have a market and will continue to forever.

I predict VR will be slightly larger than the racing wheel market but they will not become super common in the next decade because they require a large amount of space. This doesn't matter at all because even today VR games and hardware are great fun to use.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

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Post by Shorel » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 3:52 AM UTC

binarymax wrote: post #7

Technology is not the problem. Flashback to 1995. I'm a 17 year old PFY invited to beta test a VR headset from a local company. My Uncle was an investor and I was technically savvy and the target market. I had a copy of Descent that supported VR, and while it was a bit of a hassle to get setup, I got it working. The experience was incredible. After the first use I said to myself "this is the future". I had permission…

Part of the problem is thinking in "all or nothing" terms. Don't be a Sith.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

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Post by jobigoud » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

auganov wrote: post #390

jobigoud wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming is a only small part of what VR can do. Education (language learning, geography, biology, engineering...), real estate, porn, psychology, situational training (firemen), scientific visualization and collaboration, spatial painting and other artforms, social interaction, movie shots planning, etc.

All of the things mentioned are already being done without VR headsets. People can go through their entire lives not realizing they've been stereoblind. The world seems as real to them as to anybody else. It's not obvious to me VR is such a huge game changer. Suppose we had 2 computer games. One that perfectly reproduced real world "graphics" and "gameplay", looks like a real life high resolution video. Everything is…

> All of the things mentioned are already being done without VR headsets.

Not all, no.

You can't lay paint strokes in mid-air around you if you are not in a virtual reality with different physics. That art form simply did not exist before.

You can't understand whether the dimensions and arrangement of a not-yet-built house or movie set is appropriate if you can't visit it in person. It's a threshold change from seeing a model or a 2d tour.

If you are a burn victim, you can't "escape" your thoughts unless your visual cortex is completely flooded by imagery. Similarly, researchers trick the brain of people with spinal cord injuries to reconnect or regrow neurons. Again the "headphones-for-your-eyes" aspect that floods your input channels is used to trick the brain, and this was simply not imaginable before.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

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Post by noir_lord » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #235

noir_lord wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it might be because I don’t want to be standing and moving around when playing a game and if you’re not doing that, the motion is kind of unpleasant. Project Cars 2 and DCS make it worth the headset alone - throw in Elite Dangerous and No Man Sky and I have enough VR entertainment to keep me busy for the foreseeable.

I'm dying for gaming PC parts to become more available to build a new rig. I hacked together my OG Pixel XL to play E:D on my current potato via the Daydream headset and Riftcat and got to enjoy a very pixelated experience for all of 10 min before my phone rebooted so it wouldn't melt. It was still night and day. How are both those games with the Quest 2? Those two are my primary interested for VR but I worry about t…

Currently use a Rift S but I have two Oculus Quests on the way one for the boy and one for me (it was originally just one for him but then amazon/hermes dropped me in the shit so I went and bought one for him so I'd have it for xmas and am still waiting for the other to turn up at some point).

In the Rift S on a 2080 it's jaw dropping, I'm hoping the 50% res boost on the Quest 2 will make it more so.

I also have a T16000M on the way because of the limitations of VR is you can't see the keyboard so I need more buttons to map everything plus it's a full HOTAS so will work great for DCS.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

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Post by blackearl » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

lucasmullens wrote: post #170

blackearl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I'll play a 2d rhythm game after beat saber

Aren't most successful rhythm games already 3d? I guess I'm agreeing with you, DDR, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band all are sort of 3d, just not VR.

I mean 3d as in a screen being 2d and VR being 3d

The mod community have made beat saber incredibly immersive in the way of light shows and "wall maps" which go beyond just hitting blocks with your sabers. I'd recommend checking out an example like this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZd_I86i8eQ - which is like being inside your own personal rave

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

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Post by CyberDildonics » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #105

I don't think VR is every going to take off - it is just too isolating and most people don't want a completely new world. They want to socialize in this one. But AR - that's different - and I think it will happen the second we can get a full day of use out of it in a normal glasses form factor. (With enterprise scenarios driving earlier larger form factors)

That reasoning is contradicted by IRC, online video games, offline video games and every internet forum, including this one.

Re: When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet

#418

Post by istorical » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

insert_coin wrote: post #61

istorical wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And color film doesn't solve anything that black and white film can't do. Besides, why watch film at all when you can look around the real world instead of looking at a moving picture on a screen.

What? Color film can do color, and took off because a lot of people wanted to see their memories in color. Infrared film can do infrared colors, and people who need to see those colors use it and to them is invaluable, but that need is not a mainstream need. VR is infrared film.

Well if we're gonna use that analogy, VR is spatial film or 3d film.