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Well, in accordance with tradition I will now lay my thoughts down and be down-voted into oblivion for it. VR will flounder. I was a VR evangelist from 2012 to

by bronz 11y ago

Well, in accordance with tradition I will now lay my thoughts down and be down-voted into oblivion for it. VR will flounder. I was a VR evangelist from 2012 to around 2014. I owned a DK2 -- I followed every shred of VR news like a fanatic. And what I learned from being so involved with VR was that it is not ready for mass adoption and probably never will be. People in the VR community drastically underplay nausea and discomfort. The main flaw is that if you move in the virtual world but not in the real world, your body does not like it. Thanks to head tracking, you can move the camera wherever you can move your head without sickness because the movement in the real world and virtual world are the same. But if you want to move around in any greater capacity than that without making 50% of people sick immediately, and perhaps 80% sick after just a few hours, then you have to do full body tracking. We are talking about 3/4 of games, easily. Games where you are a character and you run around in virtual space. Even if you do full body tracking in your home, you are going to be extremely limited. You'll be running into the boundaries of your play space constantly. Those tricks of perception that allow you to walk along a curve instead of a straight line and thus never hit a boundary require very large amounts of space, especially if it is done in a way that is not detectable at all by the user. "What about omni-directional treadmills?" At this point I think we are getting crazy. Not only are you buying a hugely expensive VR headset, but you are setting aside a huge space in your home and buying a fucking gigantic omni-directional treadmill. Plus, the treadmill also does not provide the bodily acceleration required to prevent sickness because you are stationary relative to the earth while you use it. And all of this is assuming that VR headsets reach a place where we have full FOV, perfect resolution and extremely high refresh rates. And VR headsets that have all of that will never be affordable unless they become popular. And they probably won't because of the reasons that I have just explained to you. The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement. Other than that, when I look at the future of this kind of technology I see AR. Not VR. I am sorry Rift fans, it was painful for me too.

gpm 11y ago
A lot of Vive games are solving movement by a combination of 1-1 mapped in the limited floorspace, combined with teleportation. It sounds like it is a pretty much nausea free solution.
- hbosch 11y ago
  Yes, I've demoed this type of locomotion with a Vive. Teleportation is the de facto method, and causes no sickness. Try this in games like The Gallery, Budget Cuts, etc.
- iaml 11y ago
  Yep, Vive devs all agree that 1:1 motion solves nausea, that's why it is a main Vive's feature. I think, I've heard it in the round table video on valve's youtube channel.
  - imtringued 11y ago
    I watched half a dozen vive videos and I've never seen anyone complain about nausea. In my opinion the biggest obstacle is the lack of games or at the very least a killer app that justifies the pricetag.
bobajeff 11y ago
Plus it's expensive both the goggles and the hardware it takes to run the software that takes full advantage of said goggles. And that's also without the sense of touch, smell, balance, temperature etc. So it's only slightly better than watching a film in 3D and way more expensive.
6stringmerc 11y ago
Well if your comment gets buried I do want to note that your perspective at least sounds reasonable, and your personal experience is worth extrapolating to a more broad experience or market potential. I've got my reservations about the 'revolution' that VR will be able to bring in the mainstream sense. I think the physical discomforts you mention are absolutely worth noting as a caution. I'm not saying it's a great correlation, but some of the excitement regarding VR reminds me of other fancy, tech-oriented entertainment innovations that sounded interesting, but didn't quite pan out. Specifically the one where the movie audience was supposed to be able to have an effect on the story[1]. >"In another year, you'll see the pistol grip plus a seat with gyroscope motion control," Mr. Bejan said. "Two years after that, it will be virtual reality, with the goggles and gloves." (1993) The purpose of mentioning such a whiff is as a reference point for my personal belief that people tend to like their entertainment simple and relatively easy to access. Great advancements in tech and media - successful ones/profitable/etc - seem to have been more about delivering traditional content in an 'easier' method of convenience. Netflix didn't revolutionize the business of making films, but rather the distribution. People are funny when it comes to art, no doubt. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/13/movies/when-the-film-audience-controls-the-plot.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/13/movies/when-the-film-audie...
- muglug 11y ago
  Though, if we're to quote the Times, this review[1] of Gone with the Wind is also notable vis-a-vis contemporaneous attitudes towards new media: > we still feel that color is hard on the eyes for so long a picture [1] http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9807E2DA153EE432A25753C2A9649D946894D6CF http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9807E2DA153EE432A257...
  - MattHeard 11y ago
    To be honest, it _was_ a long picture.
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    Well I think the reference you're citing is more about the length of the film - 3 hours and 45 minutes - moreso than the fact that it's in Technicolor. A closer parallel would be comparing Gone With the Wind to a Michael Bay Transformers film, in that almost 3 hours of cinema is typically hard on the viewer, and moreso when there are tons of visual explosions and loud sounds that wear down on an audience. I love THX theater sound. SDDS. All of them. However, those tools can be very much abused by certain practitioners, and that's not the tech's fault. Basically I think that improvements are welcomed but gimmicks never last. Is VR a new gimmick in the grand context of entertainment? We're about to find out it seems.
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muglug 11y ago
Absolutely agree on the nausea front – Windlands (controlled via a trackpad and swinging from tree to tree) takes a lot of getting used to. Experiences designed around the limitations of room scale VR with tracked controllers, though, address that issue pretty effectively. I've spent hours playing Fantastic Contraption on the Vive Pre, and it's an amazing and immersive experience. VR also makes 2D content much more cinematic in nature, despite the (for the moment noticeable) reduced resolution. And the resolution will likely be the first thing to improve in the next generation of headsets (using foveated rendering to reduce the onus on graphics cards)
clort 11y ago
Your comments about nausea are interesting, because I am a sailor and I know about motion sickness a little. I know that some people never get it for instance, and I know that I do get sick but only really on the first day of the season or whenever the movement first starts - normally I am ok for the rest of the year if I stay a lot of time on board. Very few people will be sick all the time, but I have heard of people who get sick all the time and still go sailing because they do enjoy something after all (meh, I don't think I would) does the motion sickness of VR not wear off?
- pen2l 11y ago
  I would like to go sailing, but don't because I get motion sickness easily (I can prevent it though by 1) keeping my eyes fixed on horizon and 2) taking dramamine). Do you think using techniques 1 and 2 I'll be able to manage symptoms of motion sickness when sailing? Is dramamine popular in sailing circles to prevent motion sickness?
  - ghaff 11y ago
    AFAIK, dramamine is still pretty popular for sea sickness. It's what I use if I need it. Like other antihistamines, though, it makes me really groggy so that may be the effect as much anything. Other things I hear people using are Scolpamine patches and just wristbands; no personal experience in either case. I find being on deck and actively engaged helps me a lot too. For this reason, I suspect that I wouldn't be particularly bothered by VR but I've never had an opportunity to check it out thoroughly. You get to just sitting and going to yourself "I will not get seasick" tends to lead to problems.
  - clort 11y ago
    as ghaff says, dramamine is used by many though I think the side effects can be harsh. I've heard good things about the patches and especially using a smaller dose (cutting the patch in half) to reduce the side effects. I've also heard that it can take a while for the drugs to pass through the blood/brain barrier and therefore its useful to actually take the drugs the day before you go on board. We have a different drug over here in general use in the UK (Stugeron) which is cinnarizine which is an antihistamine. I am dubious about the pressure bands but then I have used them and was not sick and when I took them off I didn't feel very good for a while so perhaps they do something I don't know. I know of many people who join a sailing club and sail all size boats in the evening/weekend races but never really go out into the sea - for some of them, the whole social scene at the sailing club afterwards is important, perhaps some of them because its actually pretty exciting to be sailing in close quarters in that way. Some might do it for nausea related reasons I don't know. I am more of a cruiser though, I like to spend some weeks on board poking around in little coves, etc. In my experience of sea sickness, I may feel funny the first day and not want to eat or drink, then (especially if cold and bumpy) would be sick overnight or the next day - then I would be feeling strange for a day but mainly I think because I was low blood sugar and dehydrated but I would eat some, then the next day I would be ravenous but having bowel problems probably because the food I ate the day before was having difficulty digesting as my stomach had been cleansed. after that I would be fine. Also around the 4 day mark (I have done a 29 day passage) you become much more attuned to the movement of the boat, you become much more comfortable with everything swaying around, you have started to tidy away all the bits and pieces that keep falling on the floor or clanking in the lockers and the whole experience can turn very pleasant. I think people work out their own method for dealing with sea sickness, but I think that often its just denial that its happening and trying to stave off the inevitable (lying on a bunk down below, clutching the bucket works well). If you work out a technique for vomiting (head well back, mouth well open) that doesn't leave any residue washing around in your sinuses then thats probably best. I always feel better immediately after getting something out, though I pity anybody else around as I can't silence the hideous choking sounds. In order to treat the secondary problems I have some high sugar high caffeine drink handy (flat coke) and some high sugar biscuits (gingers are great - supposedly ginger is good for nausea too) and keep getting it in. I don't care if it will come out again in 2 minutes because you absorb that stuff into your blood pretty quickly, and you can eat healthily once you get over it.
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coldpie 11y ago
> Well, in accordance with tradition I will now lay my thoughts down and be down-voted into oblivion for it. I downvoted you because of your snooty "ugh, I'm going to be downvoted just for posting my opinions" crap. Either post your comment and join the discussion or don't. Don't beg for upvotes.
- Bjartr 11y ago
  It's a small distinction but I think he's actually saying don't downvote if you disagree, not asking for upvotes. For another point of view, I personally appreciate the heads up that the opinion being voiced is believed to be unpopular so I can be careful to ensure conclusions I draw are informed ones since there are a variety of easy to make fallacies associated with unintentional groupthink.
  - zipppy 11y ago
    Sure, but ironically a different kind of unintentional groupthink happens in this case. Some people read "I'm going to be downvoted" and...consciously or not...want to upvote it.
    - Bjartr 11y ago
      How could we tell if such a disclaimer results in more upvotes or merely fewer downvotes?
  - Mahn 11y ago
    I also read it that way, but "What I'm about to say will be controversial, but bear with me for a second..." is probably a better alternative.
    - blisse 11y ago
      I think nowadays all the different types of disclaimers are all the same, and how receptive audiences are just depends on whether the audience read something similar or not 10 pages ago. It's weird.
highCs 11y ago
> VR will flounder To second your arguments, from a pure business perspective, VR would be already growing its user base and showing pretty nice retention rate if it was any close to be something people really want.
gdubs 11y ago
Fair points. There are definitely a lot of use-cases beyond ones that require moving around your body though: Zuckerberg's talk of court-side seats sounds pretty neat. For parents that can't get a baby sitter, or just don't want to spend a thousand bucks, getting to see a Warriors game virtually, from court-side, does sound appealing. I found the least nauseating experiences to be ones where I'm sitting in a spaceship, flying around. Perhaps enough of these types of experiences will carry the platform long enough for people to be willing to dedicate more of their home space to more advanced equipment.
frik 11y ago
It's like with 3D movies, now we have 4k LCD TVs that support 3D glasses. But how often does one watch a 3D film at home or at a cinema? Beside Avatar and a few Pixar CGI movies, most weren't that great (often filmed in 2D and rehashed later for 3D). Virtual reality glasses are ready (and were ready several years ago, but quite heavy with two CRT monitors in the helmet), but many people are sensitive to motion sickness - so this will be less popular than 3D glasses we know from 3D TVs/cinema. Plus it is more expensive. Certain games lend themselves to VR like racing/space games, were you sit and can move your head. But many other traditional games feel strange, at least for new users and sensitive individuals. Augmented reality (Google Glass, Hololens) is further away and not ready yet. It will take 3-5 more years until we will see the first consumer products. At the moment the graphic quality is low and the POV is far too small - the graphics overlay area is very small. Some games lend to that technique, but many others won't be that great if you always see your own walls as background. More promising is glasses-less 3D (aka autostereoscopy), known from the Nintendo 3DS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_3DS#Hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_3DS#Hardware . It's friction free, no additional equipment is required, it can be used by more than one person.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Perhaps autostereoscopic displays can be theoretically used by multiple people simultaneously, but it's not how the 3DS is currently implemented. The original versions of the 3DS required the player to keep the screen at the right angle to get the 3D effect; without doing that, it's just a blurry image, much like taking off the 3D glasses at a movie theater. The New 3DS (yes, it's actually called "New 3DS") has built-in face tracking so the display automatically adjusts to the eyes of the SINGLE person it believes to be playing, which is much more convenient, but still not perfect as it can lose track sometimes and takes a little jiggle to get back into place. On both devices, any time more than one person is looking at the screen, the display has to be set to 2D mode or it will be blurry for at least one person. Nintendo also puts a disclaimer in place that states 3D mode should not be used by individuals under 7 years of age. From what I've read, this is just out of an abundance of caution and there's no real evidence that the 3DS's autostereoscopy can harm developing eyes.
dsugarman 11y ago
you're right on all of this, except I disagree with your conclusion that VR is not close to being ready for mass market adoption. I was getting my PhD in VR before dropping out to start a YC backed company in 2011. It wasn't glorious at the time, I would just say I was pursuing a PhD in Computer Graphics so that people didn't write me off immediately. I am really happy that VR is getting a lot of attention, but the entire focus is on general purpose headsets which will likely not work due to two main reasons. -The virtual world needs to match the physical world, if the haptic feedback isn't there, it is extremely discomforting and the closer you get in visuals, the worse the sickness will be. -Headsets take too much set up, anything that requires you to deal with that many cords is going to eventually collect dust. I loved playing games in 3d using nvidias shutter eye glasses, but even that was too much set up to continue using for 6 months or longer. All this is true, but I think there is still a huge opportunity for VR in the near future. To get it right, people need carefully crafted experiences where they can match the virtual world with the physical world using haptic feedback. You could use headsets or not, you can also just use stereoscopic monitors or projectors in a carefully crafted experience. I can envision an arcade that let's you play a 5v5 robot fighting MOBA, with the monitors not right up on your eye, but surrounding your cockpit. You can have visual acuity matching the real world (retina displays). You can match every physical stimulus with real world stimulus.
thearn4 11y ago
I own a DK1, and agree with you on a lot of these points. I would add that while first-person shooters universally made me sick to my stomach within about 5 minutes, flight sims generally never did. My guess is that being seated in a virtual cockpit and flying around seems a lot less wrong to my vestibular system. Unfortunately, the flight/space sim market is a rather small one within gaming as a whole. Though it does tend to be one full of people generally more willing to buy dedicated sim hardware than most.
- phoboslab 11y ago
  The DK1 is just awful in comparison to the DK2, though. Positional tracking and reduced latency of the DK2 improve the nausea situation a whole lot. I haven't had a chance to try the CV1 yet, but it's supposed to be an equally big jump.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    I got a DK1 a few years back and was ridiculously excited to try it out. I had blocked out the whole weekend to mess with it. I tried it for under an hour, took it off, and didn't use it again for a week. It made me nauseous and gave a killer headache. My wife and brother had similar experiences -- both expected to be thrilled and have difficulty putting it down, but both ended up keeping their distance after the initial experience. I haven't tried any other VR devices yet (skipped the DK2), but I look forward to demoing the CV1 at some point. Since Linux support has been killed, it will probably be a while, whenever I get around to building the separate free-standing Windows machine I've been intending to get for the last year or so (with dual-boot, I find I boot up Windows once a year, or twice if MS is lucky that year; I just have too much stuff running on my primary workstation to let it go powered off for very long).
Htsthbjig 11y ago
I disagree. I also had been following VR closely. Studying what happened to photography cinema or radio we can predict VR as the new media having a great success over time. Today VR lacks media designed for VR. Right now, VR is opening to thousands or tens of thousands of people, probably millions, including creative, smart developers and artists. Before, patents made VR limited to a handful of people. Artist will adapt to VR limitations like they did to cinema. Someone had to invent travelings, or cuts, and blendings. At first, cinema was just theater. Do you know that if you record video without motion stabilization for some time people experience nausea and disconfort? That is the reason virtually every film uses steady cams or rails or tripods with panning on each axis. That you can't replace reality totally with VR does not mean that VR is not useful with their limitations. We had been using VR in our company for CAD for a long time now, and for this application is extremely useful, better than anything else. No doubt they will discover great new applications for VR even within their limitations. Artist will learn how to minimize their drawbacks just like they do in radio, cinema, or TV.
rhaps0dy 11y ago
There is a certain niche of games that will be great in oculus-rift-style VR. Your comment reminded me of these two articles about a game where the main character is sitting down and thus, you do not get that kind of sickness: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/Making_Great_VR_Six_Lessons_Learned_From_I_Expect_You_To_Die.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/M... http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/254432/Jesse_Schells_six_lessons_for_making_VR_games.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/254432/Jesse_Schells_six_...
amenghra 11y ago
I'm better at reading in a car than my parents are. I bet the next generation who grows up with VR headsets around them will adapt and not have any of the nausea feeling we currently have.
- paublyrne 11y ago
  I have my doubts that you're part of a generation that has evolved the ability to read comfortably in cars. I get nausea reading in a car but I don't think my dad does. Evolution works a bit more slowly than that.
  - elif 11y ago
    I don't think the case is being made for genetic evolution but instead for neuroplasticity. The visual cortex in humans is capable of very significant adaptations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1-TaR5ToKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1-TaR5ToKw
codecurve 11y ago
It's interesting to see games for the HTC Vive tackling this problem by forcing players to be static, or move around the environment with a sort of point-and-click style teleport. From what I've seen, players pick it up fairly naturally and it doesn't seem to impede gameplay. The major drawback would be that games need to be designed specifically with this in mind.
shkkmo 11y ago
I do not own a Rift, but I do fly FPV quad-copters using video goggles. There is no binoccular vision, no headtracking and the FOV/resolution are pretty limited. I have never experienced ANY nausea and I'll do flying sessions several hours long (though I do take the googles off repeatedly inside that window.) Given my experience with sea faring ships, I doubt that I am one of those who will not get nausea, so why is my use case not a problem? Is the nausea just due to an uncanny valley of which my setup falls short?
- bencoder 11y ago
  Most video glasses have quite a small field of view... Are yours the same? So it's kind of like seeing a screen floating somewhere in front of you, whereas with the vr headsets you basically can't see the edge so it's a lot more immersive. I expect that's the main reason you don't get nausea.
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    If it is indeed the FOV that makes the difference, this implies a potential solution for when a game needs to move the camera independently of your body: limit the FOV as the camera moves.
nilkn 11y ago
I'm a big fan of how the Vive is approaching VR. I think Budget Cuts is a great example of what's possible with VR if you're willing to take these problems head-on and treat them seriously rather than ignoring them and just slapping VR onto normal games. I also think there are many games where room-scale tracking is entirely sufficient with no need for any artificial locomotion. Strategy/RTS games are a great example. Just walk around the map. When you need to move further than you can, just move the map itself. Easy. You could even make the map into a hologram, so that rather than walking on it you're walking in it, with it floating at waist height. Now you don't even need to bend over to interact with it.
Tuna-Fish 11y ago
> We are talking about 3/4 of games, easily. Games where you are a character and you run around in virtual space. Then don't make those games for VR. This might be cliche, but VR is not just a new accessory for an existing platform. It's a completely new platform. It needs new content that fits it -- shoehorning existing content into it will generally suck. Wandering around Skyrim sounds cool but will not work. Sorry. As an example I've tried a lot, sim games (car, plane) work really well with VR. If there clearly is a cockpit around you and a seat you are sitting in inside the virtual world, your brain is fine with you sitting in your comfy chair. Of course, not everyone will enjoy sim games. However, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that there are and will be more new games that fit VR well. These will probably include entirely new genres of content that are not compelling or interesting on a monitor but work well on VR. Conversely, some genres will never translate well into VR.
- Alupis 11y ago
  > Then don't make those games for VR. We're talking about big-budget "AAA" games, which drive console and pc sales alike. Excluding them, immediately destroys any notion that VR may become anything more than a niche product and go fully "mainstream". > As an example I've tried a lot, sim games I enjoy these games as well, but recognize their market appeal is very narrow. These games don't drive sales of consoles or PC's. > I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that there are and will be more new games that fit VR well Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen until VR becomes mainstream, which it probably will not for the reasons listed in the GP post. In order for a studio to take the enormous risk of developing something entirely new, they need as close to a guarantee as possible to get back at least their investment. With VR poised to be nothing more than a niche product, this becomes a huge risk. Now, maybe Facebook and their deep pockets could subsidize development of these games (effectively pay "AAA" studios to natively support VR), but that doesn't appear to be happening... otherwise they would have done that before the flagship product launched, and "AAA" studios are not in a "release cycle" at the moment (which tends to be October-November for the really big "AAA" projects).
  - TillE 11y ago
    Again, you're looking at this from the perspective of what the industry looks like now, not what VR enables. AAA games are generally of a certain type now, but that is not a universal law which will remain true forever.
intrasight 11y ago
If the VR marketplace is going to depend merely on gamers who don't get sick, then you are spot-on - this will be a failed business model. But just as early PC tinkerers couldn't imagine what would be created when it went mainstream, we too lack the imagination to see what people will do with VR. The good news is that we won't have to wait long now that hardware is getting out into the wild. There are MANY applications that don't require moving around or that only require moving around in a small space.
x0054 11y ago
> The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement. I don't see it as a good monitor replacement technology. In limited applications, such as for AutoCAD and 3D design, I can see it as a good option. It would be very useful for 3D visualization or model examination. But for normal, every day, web browsing / computer use, I don't see VR to be very viable. Goggles with high res screen and AR are going to happen, and are going to be very useful. I can see the day where your cellphone will also be your laptop, and you just connect goggles to it to do some work. But that's not VR, that's just evolution of cinema goggles. I do agree though that VR does make a lot of people sick, including people who have been flying FPV drones with goggles for a while. There is something about completely filling your field of view that just makes people sick if it doesn't track just perfect, and matches to your vestibular system. There are efforts to hack the vestibular system to make you fee what you are seeing, but it's a little scary, and I think many people would be creeped out by electrodes and such connected to their heads.
phoboslab 11y ago
I strongly disagree. Yes, nausea is a big problem but there are a lot of scenarios/games where you don't need locomotion or can comfortably work around it (warping, a cockpit of some sorts etc.). Also we might be closer to solving the eye vs. inner ear discrepancy completely rather sooner than later. Samsung is working on a headset that stimulates your vestibular system to make you sense motion & acceleration: http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/14/11220836/samsung-etrim-4d-headphones-movement-vr-inner-ear http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/14/11220836/samsung-etrim-4d-...
ksk 11y ago
Sure, it has limitations but do you not see any applications of VR besides games? I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of games are not first person shooters, or ones that require you to control the movement of a character.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  I can see plenty of applications of VR besides games. In fact I'm fairly sure that if takes off, it will be the other applications that break it open. But right now it's too heavy, too low-res, and far too expensive to appeal to non-gamers. I'm not sure that even if it cost $50 for all the hardware, fully complete, you'd get a stampede of new users - yet. Most people need a reason to use it, and games are not the reason.
vigo7 11y ago
Yup lots of work ahead. But read some Vernor Vinge and think Disneyland. And Arcades. No treadmills necessary.
rdtsc 11y ago
> "What about omni-directional treadmills?" Maybe not for home users but I think for military training, rescue training other such applications those could be viable. I don't see anything wrong with this technology being professional/luxury first then becoming more affordable to regular users. We had a DK (or maybe DK2, don't remember) as well and yeah we played with it but I ended up not liking it. The resolution was too low, I could see individual pixels and it was like looking through a screen-door. We played with it for a while, ran some demos, everyone had fun. Then put it on a shelf and hadn't touched it since.
manachar 11y ago
I get horridly and painfully seasick, others don't. Most that don't were "raised on the sea". I suspect younger generations could adapt to VR the way my generation adapted to the spatial awareness required for 3D gaming. On a side note, this makes me think VR could possibly be used therapeutically to "cure" motion sickness. Something like the 3D gaming tutorials in early 3D games.
SapphireSun 11y ago
Give the HTC Vive a try. I played with it in a reasonably sized room and it was a lot of fun and there was no motion sickness to speak of. It does positional tracking. The tilt brush app is amazing.
LCDninja 11y ago
Nausea is not the problem from my perspective. At present I have my own small business creating VR experiences, I've managed to do about Euro 80k in business in the last six months. I have three large clients and have probably personally ushered more that 2,000 people through the Oculus based experiences at trade shows. Perhaps 1 in 100 people "bug-out" of the experience within the first 30 seconds. One executive I work with won't put the Oculus on anymore to approve work, he instead gets colleagues to try it and gauges their opinion. However, it's been a learning curve avoiding 100% nausea inducing experiences. Certain camera moves and experiments have made me so ill I had to sleep it off for a few hours. So in my opinion, it's not the display tech, it's up to the experience of the application developer to know what works - and what will make you seriously ill. It's a strange job actually, programming that will make you sick if you get it wrong. :-) At present, the big problem as a developer with a business like my own is that we can't get headsets. There is no VAR program. I feel that Oculus & HTC doesn't take developers of business applications seriously, or at least, I don't have any contacts there. I've been involved with VR since the VRML hype of the dot com boom and the technology has come so incredibly far - my sense it that it will continue to progress and become a new display technology that's pretty much on everyones desk.
- mattnewport 11y ago
  I'm working on non games VR applications too but my background is in the games industry and contacts from my games past have made it easier for me to get my hands on early hardware. If you don't have those contacts it's definitely harder to get an 'in' but I can tell you that Oculus is interested in non games applications it just hasn't been their focus for launch. Feel free to email me at matt@virtuallightsoftware.com - I'm interested to talk to other people working on non games VR applications and may be able to help you with some contacts.
  - LCDninja 11y ago
    Hi Matt, thanks very much! I'll shoot you an email.
shamino 11y ago
> Plus, the treadmill also does not provide the bodily acceleration required to prevent sickness because you are stationary relative to the earth while you use it. I didn't really get this point. So what if the treadmill is stationary relative to the Earth ? And what do you mean by "bodily acceleration" ? I honestly do think the "omni-directional" treadmills would solve all the problems you bring up here. And it doesn't even have to be that big.
- bronz 11y ago
  Thanks for editing out your suggestion for me to "read a high-school physics textbook." The earth is the frame of reference when considering free body diagrams of objects moving around on its surface for all practical purposes. Neither the treadmill nor the person using the treadmill moves with respect to the earth and therefore no bodily acceleration is experienced by the user. In the virtual world, however, the user does move and bodily acceleration is expected. Therefore, a treadmill cannot alleviate the problems caused by acceleration mismatching.
  - shamino 11y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to reply to my comment - I still don't understand your point. It's as if you're saying, "because the treadmill (or you) don't move with respect to the ground, you don't experience movement." If this were the case, you wouldn't be able to exercise on a treadmill since no energy would be spent (Energy = Force * distance), where distance would be 0 in your argument. I think the difference here is that the treadmill moves you, vs you moving yourself. Even still, there are machines that can move using the friction between your feet and the treadmill surface - and they are starting to make their way into some of the local 24-hour gyms. I'm not arguing with your point that "VR will flounder", but I just want to keep everything honest. And honestly, your physics doesn't check out.
    - bronz 11y ago
      Yes, this is only about physics for me too. My physics does check out though. If you are in a car and it accelerates from 0 to 30 mph you will experience the symptoms of acceleration. For example, an object that is hanging from a string in your frame of reference, such as a fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror, will appear to move backwards on its own. Try holding the fuzzy dice while running on a treadmill. I guarantee you won't see anything like that happen. Because you are not accelerating.
smacktoward 11y ago
The thing that stood out to me in following the community around Oculus over the same period of time was how consistently insiders responded to complaints that it just wasn't quite there yet with statements that it was the next version of VR that would really blow you away. The one that people could actually get in their hands at any given moment was never the True Realization of the ideal. That was always just a little bit farther down the road -- conveniently distant enough that you couldn't actually put it to the test. DK1? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is DK2." DK2? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is Crescent Bay." Crescent Bay? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is the Rift consumer release." Now we actually have the consumer release. And what's the message? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR includes controls like Oculus Touch." And so the can gets kicked down the road another few months. The continual response to underwhelmed users with "oh, you just wait till the next version!" made the whole thing start to feel less like a revolution-in-waiting and more like a faith-based enterprise. True Believers can help a company through the hard times, but they do not a mass market make.
- gfodor 11y ago
  Pretty sure people will agree that the Vive (which includes touch controllers and room scale tracking) is "Real VR" -- if the Vive fails to deliver amazing experiences, then yes 2016 VR is a dud. The Oculus CV1 by not including hand controllers, and secondarily by having a limited tracking range, while amazing visually, is a very stunted experience when it comes to really being able to deliver good made for VR content. The Oculus Touch controllers are amazing, and can't arrive fast enough.
outworlder 11y ago
That is an interesting comment. I have limited, hands on, VR experience. However, last week I went to the California Academy of Sciences, and they had this show called "Impact" going on. Due to the way their spherical projector in the planetarium is setup, it takes most of your field of view. That particular show had a camera that moved smoothly, but seldom in sudden movements. Instead, it had would accelerate to a given speed, and that gives you the impression you are moving. I though it was a little bit disconcerting for the first couple of minutes, then I adjusted just fine. My wife was sick for half an hour afterwards. Her son was so-so during the show, perfectly fine afterwards. The feel is exactly as you described, you feel that you should be moving, but aren't. That was an eye opener for me. I didn't think that a stationary display would ever make me feel anything (I used to be a flight sim fan, and nowadays I play a lot of Elite: Dangerous). I haven't reached any conclusions about VR tech yet, other than it is probably not suited for my wife.
- deathanatos 11y ago
  I worked at a museum with a planetarium. The way it was explained to me was that if the stars move — as far as your brain's visual processing is concerned — you must be moving. After all, the stars are fixed points of light; they never move unless you are yourself spinning in some manner — except, of course, in a planetarium. We also had a flight simulator; but with that, the movements of your body mostly matched the movement of the plane (you couldn't feel forward/backward acceleration, i.e., acceleration on an axis perpendicular to your chest, as otherwise, you'd be actually moving around in the building). This never made anyone sick. The planetarium, however, regularly made people feel ill, and occasionally I'm told, actually lost their lunch, whereas nobody ever lost their lunch in the flight sim AFAIK.
baby 11y ago
> People in the VR community drastically underplay nausea and discomfort. You must have never tried the HTC Vive, I never had any of these problems with it. Limited amount of space as well, as long as your game doesn't move you everywhere around.
whatever_dude 11y ago
That is all true, but you are assuming the content created will always try to have full body movements, or that people will always want to move around. It's like complaining about movies when they came out because they were not 360", or didn't have colors, or didn't have sound. Some of these came in time, some turned out not to be required. What I think will happen instead is that the content created for the Rift (and others) will be shaped by what the medium does well. Games like driving or flying simulators play perfect well within the limitations of most HMD devices, and actually shine in comparison to the current alternative (monitors). To me this is just one of many examples of things that work better in the Rift than anywhere else.
- bronz 11y ago
  You're absolutely right about flight sims. They are definitely the least sickening non-stationary experiences. The reason that not being able to move around is such a big deal in my eyes is because that is what I always fantasized about. I think that first person experiences are what most VR fans fantasized about. But you and many other people in this thread have made the very good point that VR can create new genres. Genres that are well suited for VR.
  - whatever_dude 11y ago
    I've too been very enthusiastic about VR (supported the original kickstarter in the 1st hour it went live) and have had a little bit of an awakening after the initial enthusiasm. When Team Fortress 2 came out with Rift DK1 support I installed it and immediately realized that would NOT work. It was instant nausea, and it was not fun in any way. But other people realized the same. Since then, indie and amateur developers (as well as some professional ones) started properly exploring the medium, instead of just trying to re-purpose content. There's many new subgenres better fit to VR that are emerging and, I believe, will get more visibility. The vast majority of those are "seating" experiences, but still ones that can easily blow people away, and continue to amaze me to this day. Which is just as well - getting a new blockbuster FPSs every month was starting to get boring. VR won't be for everything or everyone but it'll be great for what it does well.
namuol 11y ago
> VR will flounder. I think you mean: > VR First-Person-Shooters will flounder. There are plenty of really amazing non-nausea-inducing applications of VR - and especially AR. So what if traditional games don't map 1-to-1 with VR? It's an entirely new medium, and we've barely begun to work with it. Hell, even "traditional" non-VR games are still a very new medium.
- dhagz 11y ago
  I really think EVE Valkyrie is going to be the defining game for the beginning of this round of VR. Any sort of sim game is going to be a perfect fit for VR, and I'm sure there's games we haven't even thought of yet that will get released and really make the platform shine.
  - namuol 11y ago
    I've spent a couple months using VR (used to own a DK2) and hands-down the best experiences were "cockpit" style games. I bought a joystick and Elite: Dangerous was the most incredible gaming experience I've ever had, if only for the sheer immersion.
atarian 11y ago
I think what you're talking about is tolerance, which is going to be different for everyone. The same could be said about being on a roller-coaster for several hours.
amelius 11y ago
> The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement. Does this include watching a sports match from a perfect spot within the stadium? Anyway, I sure hope they will increase the resolution so that I can have a virtual monitor on a virtual beach in my office.
antaviana 11y ago
Is VR a viable platform for porn? If it were, there'd likely be a sizeable market opportunity for it.
- ihowlatthemoon 11y ago
  As with any new technology, the adult entertainment industry has already embraced VR. [1][2] Links obviously VERY NSFW. [1] http://naughtyamericavr.com/ http://naughtyamericavr.com/ [2] https://virtualrealporn.com/ https://virtualrealporn.com/
- clevernickname 11y ago
  Came here to post about this. The elephant in the VR room is that porn, both recorded and semi-interactive 3DCG, is easily the most immediately interesting use of the technology to the vast majority of consumers. It's also a huge part of why everyone lost their shit when Facebook bought Occulus, as early adopters feared that Facebook would either implement a closed platform or track what "applications" people used.
Shorel 11y ago
The rift and VR in general have strong parallels with steering wheels for computers from a market standpoint. The racing games actually drive console and pc sales, at the very least GT does. At the same time, it is a normal game with the controller, and a fantastic experience with a good wheel. The best racing game/sim IMO, called iRacing fully supports all wheels, and it has a profitable service. Some people like you may not know about it, not being 'mainstream', but that is not really needed for the product to be successful and to have a rabid fanbase of active subscribers. So, if steering wheels are a product with good margins, and also, making games for them is profitable which it is, then the same will apply for VR. Welcome to the era of the long tail.
pitchka 11y ago
CastAR is pretty good. Better than Oculus. Has no sickness problems. http://castar.com/ http://castar.com/
elif 11y ago
From what I've seen, the problem as you describe it is 100% the problem the Oculus team set out to solve. Their solution wasn't the DK2. I think it's sheer pessimism to suggest that they failed before you've tried their solution. Regarding sickness: Doesn't stop mountaineers. Doesn't stop sailors. Humans adapt remarkably.
- justinator 11y ago
  > Regarding sickness: Doesn't stop mountaineers. Doesn't stop sailors. Humans adapt remarkably. I'm a mountaineer. Feeling ill at altitude isn't the same as motion sickness. People can die of HAPE - it's not something to brush off and say, "humans can adapt". The great majority don't at high altitude. That's why you see tourists on Everest with oxygen masks and dexamethasone in tow. It's not to be a little more comfortable, it's to be a little less likely to be dead. I also get motion sickness for weeks on end. Trying VR isn't exactly appealing to me, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to die from it. I grew up on a sailboat - other than feeling weird for the first coupla hours after sailing, it wasn't a big deal. People are complicated, I guess.
randomacct44 11y ago
I don't quite understand it when people say that VR won't succedd but AR will. They're two points on a single technological continuum. One will enable the other. If AR does massively take off, all of that tech will benefit VR. Alternatively you can view AR as just a special case of VR, where display of the real world is passed through and where there's more sensing of the real-world environment for use in constructing the virtual parts of the environment. In that sense, VR is just a step towards more general AR; in that case the VR tech benefits AR applications. Why do people insist that it can only be one OR the other? The technology is all converging to the one point. In fact I'd argue it's mostly the same technology. It's irrelevant as to whether it's AR or VR applications that break the technology into the mainstream. Once it's there, both AR and VR will have broken through.
diskcat 11y ago
None of the issues you mentioned is a problem with porn, which will be the reason why 99.9999999999999999999% of VR headsets are purchased.
- bronz 11y ago
  If you are going to spend 600 dollars you might as well get a hooker.
  - diskcat 11y ago
    But a hooker won't look like taylor swift while your VR CG GF will look like whoever you want.
lewisl9029 11y ago
> The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement. Other than that, when I look at the future of this kind of technology I see AR. Not VR. I am sorry Rift fans, it was painful for me too. VR/AR as monitor replacement is actually the application I'm most excited about personally. I'd love to see a Google Glass/Hololens type device that functions as a wireless Miracast/WiGig monitor and nothing else, which could hopefully bring the product into the realms of affordability.
- TylerE 11y ago
  Will that not be fatigue issues with this? Ignoring the actual weight of the headset, isn't it really bad/tiring on the eyes to be constantly focused at the same distance?
  - lewisl9029 11y ago
    That's definitely true for VR headsets like the Rift or Vive. I was thinking more along the lines of the Google Glass/Hololens form factor, which probably won't pose any problems with respect to weight. In terms of focus, I don't think it will be much different compared to using stationary physical monitors since those usually stay at the same focal distance as well. The Glass/Hololens form factor only occupies a tiny part of your field of vision, allowing you to freely look elsewhere as you see fit (and AFAIK the Hololens, at least, has the ability to simulate different focal distances). I'm picturing this as more of a supplement to physical monitors as opposed to a complete replacement in a typical workspace setting. What really excites me are the possible applications of something like this in mobile (an always-on, wireless second screen/HUD for your phone that takes voice commands or some other new control mechanism, for instance).
pmoriarty 11y ago
I've personally demoed the Gear VR to about 70 to 80 people, and in my experience nausea/vr-sickness is a problem for a tiny minority of people (maybe 2 or 3 out of 70 or 80 for properly designed experiences). With the consumer version of the Oculus Rift, that should be even less of a problem, due to the higher specs. Much more of a problem is physical comfort of the headset itself. After the novelty wears off, few but the most dedicated want to stay in VR for extended periods of time, or even bother with putting the headset on anymore. Headsets are just too bulky and uncomfortable. Even regular glasses are too much of a hassle for a lot of people. VR headsets have the uncomfort of regular glasses multiplied by a hundred. I don't think VR will fully take off until you can experience VR with something as comfortable and unobtrusive as contact lenses. Until then, it will remain a novelty or used for purposes where it really does not have much competition, like tele-surgery. There are some other niches where people will likely use a headset, like to play an occasional game or for videoconferencing, but then they'll take off the headset and go back to monitors for more mundane tasks that don't benefit from immersion, like word processing, web surfing, etc. Even for movies, current headsets are a bit too much, when you could just as easily watch a movie unencumbered by the bulk. That's not to say VR isn't impressive. It is. I was blown away by it when I first experienced it, despite being spoiled and knowing what to expect by watching videos and reading about it. There's nothing like the real thing, though. But eventually all that wears off, and then you have to deal with the day-to-day choice of whether to put on the headset again.. and that's where I think for now headsets are too uncomfortable for regular, casual use.
chaostheory 11y ago
Most of your negative points are valid, except for this one: "VR will flounder" Your sentiments echo detractors of revolutionary inventions such as automobiles (eg. there are no paved roads, it breaks down too often, there are no gas stations, ...) and even the iPhone (e.g. there are no apps, it's too slow, the keyboard has not tactile feedback, ...). What you have in common with them is that you treat temporary obstacles as permanent unsolvable problems while overlooking the long term potential. As a counter argument for your omnidirectional treadmill point, this is much cheaper, takes up a lot less space, and has already been released: http://www.virtuix.com/ http://www.virtuix.com/
BuckRogers 11y ago
What about a full experience like the Vive? Yeah I know it only does roomscale, but it should prevent a lot of the nausea you talk about. I think it would work out well, you would have "rooms" like old school adventure games that you mess around in, and then kinda hit go north, south, east, west etc to go to another area. I have a heard time seeing how that wouldn't be flat out amazing. I'm not a huge fan of the Rift, which sounds like your experience is based on. But SteamVR looks really good to me. Other than SteamVR, I see mobile VR being where it really hits. I think roomscale + mobile VR will work out together. The Rift should and will die, I'd hope for all the reasons you mentioned.
rocky1138 11y ago
What if we popped a pill that disabled motion sickness? Or could modify our body to disable motion sickness?

by bronz 11y ago

gpm 11y ago

A lot of Vive games are solving movement by a combination of 1-1 mapped in the limited floorspace, combined with teleportation. It sounds like it is a pretty much nausea free solution.

hbosch 11y ago
Yes, I've demoed this type of locomotion with a Vive. Teleportation is the de facto method, and causes no sickness. Try this in games like The Gallery, Budget Cuts, etc.
iaml 11y ago
Yep, Vive devs all agree that 1:1 motion solves nausea, that's why it is a main Vive's feature. I think, I've heard it in the round table video on valve's youtube channel.
- imtringued 11y ago
  I watched half a dozen vive videos and I've never seen anyone complain about nausea. In my opinion the biggest obstacle is the lack of games or at the very least a killer app that justifies the pricetag.

bobajeff 11y ago

Plus it's expensive both the goggles and the hardware it takes to run the software that takes full advantage of said goggles. And that's also without the sense of touch, smell, balance, temperature etc. So it's only slightly better than watching a film in 3D and way more expensive.

6stringmerc 11y ago

Well if your comment gets buried I do want to note that your perspective at least sounds reasonable, and your personal experience is worth extrapolating to a more broad experience or market potential. I've got my reservations about the 'revolution' that VR will be able to bring in the mainstream sense. I think the physical discomforts you mention are absolutely worth noting as a caution. I'm not saying it's a great correlation, but some of the excitement regarding VR reminds me of other fancy, tech-oriented entertainment innovations that sounded interesting, but didn't quite pan out. Specifically the one where the movie audience was supposed to be able to have an effect on the story[1]. >"In another year, you'll see the pistol grip plus a seat with gyroscope motion control," Mr. Bejan said. "Two years after that, it will be virtual reality, with the goggles and gloves." (1993) The purpose of mentioning such a whiff is as a reference point for my personal belief that people tend to like their entertainment simple and relatively easy to access. Great advancements in tech and media - successful ones/profitable/etc - seem to have been more about delivering traditional content in an 'easier' method of convenience. Netflix didn't revolutionize the business of making films, but rather the distribution. People are funny when it comes to art, no doubt. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/13/movies/when-the-film-audience-controls-the-plot.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/13/movies/when-the-film-audie...

muglug 11y ago
Though, if we're to quote the Times, this review[1] of Gone with the Wind is also notable vis-a-vis contemporaneous attitudes towards new media: > we still feel that color is hard on the eyes for so long a picture [1] http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9807E2DA153EE432A25753C2A9649D946894D6CF http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9807E2DA153EE432A257...
- MattHeard 11y ago
  To be honest, it _was_ a long picture.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  Well I think the reference you're citing is more about the length of the film - 3 hours and 45 minutes - moreso than the fact that it's in Technicolor. A closer parallel would be comparing Gone With the Wind to a Michael Bay Transformers film, in that almost 3 hours of cinema is typically hard on the viewer, and moreso when there are tons of visual explosions and loud sounds that wear down on an audience. I love THX theater sound. SDDS. All of them. However, those tools can be very much abused by certain practitioners, and that's not the tech's fault. Basically I think that improvements are welcomed but gimmicks never last. Is VR a new gimmick in the grand context of entertainment? We're about to find out it seems.

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muglug 11y ago

Absolutely agree on the nausea front – Windlands (controlled via a trackpad and swinging from tree to tree) takes a lot of getting used to. Experiences designed around the limitations of room scale VR with tracked controllers, though, address that issue pretty effectively. I've spent hours playing Fantastic Contraption on the Vive Pre, and it's an amazing and immersive experience. VR also makes 2D content much more cinematic in nature, despite the (for the moment noticeable) reduced resolution. And the resolution will likely be the first thing to improve in the next generation of headsets (using foveated rendering to reduce the onus on graphics cards)

clort 11y ago

Your comments about nausea are interesting, because I am a sailor and I know about motion sickness a little. I know that some people never get it for instance, and I know that I do get sick but only really on the first day of the season or whenever the movement first starts - normally I am ok for the rest of the year if I stay a lot of time on board. Very few people will be sick all the time, but I have heard of people who get sick all the time and still go sailing because they do enjoy something after all (meh, I don't think I would) does the motion sickness of VR not wear off?

pen2l 11y ago
I would like to go sailing, but don't because I get motion sickness easily (I can prevent it though by 1) keeping my eyes fixed on horizon and 2) taking dramamine). Do you think using techniques 1 and 2 I'll be able to manage symptoms of motion sickness when sailing? Is dramamine popular in sailing circles to prevent motion sickness?
- ghaff 11y ago
  AFAIK, dramamine is still pretty popular for sea sickness. It's what I use if I need it. Like other antihistamines, though, it makes me really groggy so that may be the effect as much anything. Other things I hear people using are Scolpamine patches and just wristbands; no personal experience in either case. I find being on deck and actively engaged helps me a lot too. For this reason, I suspect that I wouldn't be particularly bothered by VR but I've never had an opportunity to check it out thoroughly. You get to just sitting and going to yourself "I will not get seasick" tends to lead to problems.
- clort 11y ago
  as ghaff says, dramamine is used by many though I think the side effects can be harsh. I've heard good things about the patches and especially using a smaller dose (cutting the patch in half) to reduce the side effects. I've also heard that it can take a while for the drugs to pass through the blood/brain barrier and therefore its useful to actually take the drugs the day before you go on board. We have a different drug over here in general use in the UK (Stugeron) which is cinnarizine which is an antihistamine. I am dubious about the pressure bands but then I have used them and was not sick and when I took them off I didn't feel very good for a while so perhaps they do something I don't know. I know of many people who join a sailing club and sail all size boats in the evening/weekend races but never really go out into the sea - for some of them, the whole social scene at the sailing club afterwards is important, perhaps some of them because its actually pretty exciting to be sailing in close quarters in that way. Some might do it for nausea related reasons I don't know. I am more of a cruiser though, I like to spend some weeks on board poking around in little coves, etc. In my experience of sea sickness, I may feel funny the first day and not want to eat or drink, then (especially if cold and bumpy) would be sick overnight or the next day - then I would be feeling strange for a day but mainly I think because I was low blood sugar and dehydrated but I would eat some, then the next day I would be ravenous but having bowel problems probably because the food I ate the day before was having difficulty digesting as my stomach had been cleansed. after that I would be fine. Also around the 4 day mark (I have done a 29 day passage) you become much more attuned to the movement of the boat, you become much more comfortable with everything swaying around, you have started to tidy away all the bits and pieces that keep falling on the floor or clanking in the lockers and the whole experience can turn very pleasant. I think people work out their own method for dealing with sea sickness, but I think that often its just denial that its happening and trying to stave off the inevitable (lying on a bunk down below, clutching the bucket works well). If you work out a technique for vomiting (head well back, mouth well open) that doesn't leave any residue washing around in your sinuses then thats probably best. I always feel better immediately after getting something out, though I pity anybody else around as I can't silence the hideous choking sounds. In order to treat the secondary problems I have some high sugar high caffeine drink handy (flat coke) and some high sugar biscuits (gingers are great - supposedly ginger is good for nausea too) and keep getting it in. I don't care if it will come out again in 2 minutes because you absorb that stuff into your blood pretty quickly, and you can eat healthily once you get over it.

deleted 11y ago

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coldpie 11y ago

> Well, in accordance with tradition I will now lay my thoughts down and be down-voted into oblivion for it. I downvoted you because of your snooty "ugh, I'm going to be downvoted just for posting my opinions" crap. Either post your comment and join the discussion or don't. Don't beg for upvotes.

Bjartr 11y ago
It's a small distinction but I think he's actually saying don't downvote if you disagree, not asking for upvotes. For another point of view, I personally appreciate the heads up that the opinion being voiced is believed to be unpopular so I can be careful to ensure conclusions I draw are informed ones since there are a variety of easy to make fallacies associated with unintentional groupthink.
- zipppy 11y ago
  Sure, but ironically a different kind of unintentional groupthink happens in this case. Some people read "I'm going to be downvoted" and...consciously or not...want to upvote it.
  - Bjartr 11y ago
    How could we tell if such a disclaimer results in more upvotes or merely fewer downvotes?
- Mahn 11y ago
  I also read it that way, but "What I'm about to say will be controversial, but bear with me for a second..." is probably a better alternative.
  - blisse 11y ago
    I think nowadays all the different types of disclaimers are all the same, and how receptive audiences are just depends on whether the audience read something similar or not 10 pages ago. It's weird.

highCs 11y ago

> VR will flounder To second your arguments, from a pure business perspective, VR would be already growing its user base and showing pretty nice retention rate if it was any close to be something people really want.

gdubs 11y ago

Fair points. There are definitely a lot of use-cases beyond ones that require moving around your body though: Zuckerberg's talk of court-side seats sounds pretty neat. For parents that can't get a baby sitter, or just don't want to spend a thousand bucks, getting to see a Warriors game virtually, from court-side, does sound appealing. I found the least nauseating experiences to be ones where I'm sitting in a spaceship, flying around. Perhaps enough of these types of experiences will carry the platform long enough for people to be willing to dedicate more of their home space to more advanced equipment.

frik 11y ago

It's like with 3D movies, now we have 4k LCD TVs that support 3D glasses. But how often does one watch a 3D film at home or at a cinema? Beside Avatar and a few Pixar CGI movies, most weren't that great (often filmed in 2D and rehashed later for 3D). Virtual reality glasses are ready (and were ready several years ago, but quite heavy with two CRT monitors in the helmet), but many people are sensitive to motion sickness - so this will be less popular than 3D glasses we know from 3D TVs/cinema. Plus it is more expensive. Certain games lend themselves to VR like racing/space games, were you sit and can move your head. But many other traditional games feel strange, at least for new users and sensitive individuals. Augmented reality (Google Glass, Hololens) is further away and not ready yet. It will take 3-5 more years until we will see the first consumer products. At the moment the graphic quality is low and the POV is far too small - the graphics overlay area is very small. Some games lend to that technique, but many others won't be that great if you always see your own walls as background. More promising is glasses-less 3D (aka autostereoscopy), known from the Nintendo 3DS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_3DS#Hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_3DS#Hardware . It's friction free, no additional equipment is required, it can be used by more than one person.

cookiecaper 11y ago
Perhaps autostereoscopic displays can be theoretically used by multiple people simultaneously, but it's not how the 3DS is currently implemented. The original versions of the 3DS required the player to keep the screen at the right angle to get the 3D effect; without doing that, it's just a blurry image, much like taking off the 3D glasses at a movie theater. The New 3DS (yes, it's actually called "New 3DS") has built-in face tracking so the display automatically adjusts to the eyes of the SINGLE person it believes to be playing, which is much more convenient, but still not perfect as it can lose track sometimes and takes a little jiggle to get back into place. On both devices, any time more than one person is looking at the screen, the display has to be set to 2D mode or it will be blurry for at least one person. Nintendo also puts a disclaimer in place that states 3D mode should not be used by individuals under 7 years of age. From what I've read, this is just out of an abundance of caution and there's no real evidence that the 3DS's autostereoscopy can harm developing eyes.

dsugarman 11y ago

you're right on all of this, except I disagree with your conclusion that VR is not close to being ready for mass market adoption. I was getting my PhD in VR before dropping out to start a YC backed company in 2011. It wasn't glorious at the time, I would just say I was pursuing a PhD in Computer Graphics so that people didn't write me off immediately. I am really happy that VR is getting a lot of attention, but the entire focus is on general purpose headsets which will likely not work due to two main reasons. -The virtual world needs to match the physical world, if the haptic feedback isn't there, it is extremely discomforting and the closer you get in visuals, the worse the sickness will be. -Headsets take too much set up, anything that requires you to deal with that many cords is going to eventually collect dust. I loved playing games in 3d using nvidias shutter eye glasses, but even that was too much set up to continue using for 6 months or longer. All this is true, but I think there is still a huge opportunity for VR in the near future. To get it right, people need carefully crafted experiences where they can match the virtual world with the physical world using haptic feedback. You could use headsets or not, you can also just use stereoscopic monitors or projectors in a carefully crafted experience. I can envision an arcade that let's you play a 5v5 robot fighting MOBA, with the monitors not right up on your eye, but surrounding your cockpit. You can have visual acuity matching the real world (retina displays). You can match every physical stimulus with real world stimulus.

thearn4 11y ago

I own a DK1, and agree with you on a lot of these points. I would add that while first-person shooters universally made me sick to my stomach within about 5 minutes, flight sims generally never did. My guess is that being seated in a virtual cockpit and flying around seems a lot less wrong to my vestibular system. Unfortunately, the flight/space sim market is a rather small one within gaming as a whole. Though it does tend to be one full of people generally more willing to buy dedicated sim hardware than most.

phoboslab 11y ago
The DK1 is just awful in comparison to the DK2, though. Positional tracking and reduced latency of the DK2 improve the nausea situation a whole lot. I haven't had a chance to try the CV1 yet, but it's supposed to be an equally big jump.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  I got a DK1 a few years back and was ridiculously excited to try it out. I had blocked out the whole weekend to mess with it. I tried it for under an hour, took it off, and didn't use it again for a week. It made me nauseous and gave a killer headache. My wife and brother had similar experiences -- both expected to be thrilled and have difficulty putting it down, but both ended up keeping their distance after the initial experience. I haven't tried any other VR devices yet (skipped the DK2), but I look forward to demoing the CV1 at some point. Since Linux support has been killed, it will probably be a while, whenever I get around to building the separate free-standing Windows machine I've been intending to get for the last year or so (with dual-boot, I find I boot up Windows once a year, or twice if MS is lucky that year; I just have too much stuff running on my primary workstation to let it go powered off for very long).

Htsthbjig 11y ago

I disagree. I also had been following VR closely. Studying what happened to photography cinema or radio we can predict VR as the new media having a great success over time. Today VR lacks media designed for VR. Right now, VR is opening to thousands or tens of thousands of people, probably millions, including creative, smart developers and artists. Before, patents made VR limited to a handful of people. Artist will adapt to VR limitations like they did to cinema. Someone had to invent travelings, or cuts, and blendings. At first, cinema was just theater. Do you know that if you record video without motion stabilization for some time people experience nausea and disconfort? That is the reason virtually every film uses steady cams or rails or tripods with panning on each axis. That you can't replace reality totally with VR does not mean that VR is not useful with their limitations. We had been using VR in our company for CAD for a long time now, and for this application is extremely useful, better than anything else. No doubt they will discover great new applications for VR even within their limitations. Artist will learn how to minimize their drawbacks just like they do in radio, cinema, or TV.

rhaps0dy 11y ago

There is a certain niche of games that will be great in oculus-rift-style VR. Your comment reminded me of these two articles about a game where the main character is sitting down and thus, you do not get that kind of sickness: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/Making_Great_VR_Six_Lessons_Learned_From_I_Expect_You_To_Die.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/M... http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/254432/Jesse_Schells_six_lessons_for_making_VR_games.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/254432/Jesse_Schells_six_...

amenghra 11y ago

I'm better at reading in a car than my parents are. I bet the next generation who grows up with VR headsets around them will adapt and not have any of the nausea feeling we currently have.

paublyrne 11y ago
I have my doubts that you're part of a generation that has evolved the ability to read comfortably in cars. I get nausea reading in a car but I don't think my dad does. Evolution works a bit more slowly than that.
- elif 11y ago
  I don't think the case is being made for genetic evolution but instead for neuroplasticity. The visual cortex in humans is capable of very significant adaptations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1-TaR5ToKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1-TaR5ToKw

codecurve 11y ago

It's interesting to see games for the HTC Vive tackling this problem by forcing players to be static, or move around the environment with a sort of point-and-click style teleport. From what I've seen, players pick it up fairly naturally and it doesn't seem to impede gameplay. The major drawback would be that games need to be designed specifically with this in mind.

shkkmo 11y ago

I do not own a Rift, but I do fly FPV quad-copters using video goggles. There is no binoccular vision, no headtracking and the FOV/resolution are pretty limited. I have never experienced ANY nausea and I'll do flying sessions several hours long (though I do take the googles off repeatedly inside that window.) Given my experience with sea faring ships, I doubt that I am one of those who will not get nausea, so why is my use case not a problem? Is the nausea just due to an uncanny valley of which my setup falls short?

bencoder 11y ago
Most video glasses have quite a small field of view... Are yours the same? So it's kind of like seeing a screen floating somewhere in front of you, whereas with the vr headsets you basically can't see the edge so it's a lot more immersive. I expect that's the main reason you don't get nausea.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  If it is indeed the FOV that makes the difference, this implies a potential solution for when a game needs to move the camera independently of your body: limit the FOV as the camera moves.

nilkn 11y ago

I'm a big fan of how the Vive is approaching VR. I think Budget Cuts is a great example of what's possible with VR if you're willing to take these problems head-on and treat them seriously rather than ignoring them and just slapping VR onto normal games. I also think there are many games where room-scale tracking is entirely sufficient with no need for any artificial locomotion. Strategy/RTS games are a great example. Just walk around the map. When you need to move further than you can, just move the map itself. Easy. You could even make the map into a hologram, so that rather than walking on it you're walking in it, with it floating at waist height. Now you don't even need to bend over to interact with it.

Tuna-Fish 11y ago

> We are talking about 3/4 of games, easily. Games where you are a character and you run around in virtual space. Then don't make those games for VR. This might be cliche, but VR is not just a new accessory for an existing platform. It's a completely new platform. It needs new content that fits it -- shoehorning existing content into it will generally suck. Wandering around Skyrim sounds cool but will not work. Sorry. As an example I've tried a lot, sim games (car, plane) work really well with VR. If there clearly is a cockpit around you and a seat you are sitting in inside the virtual world, your brain is fine with you sitting in your comfy chair. Of course, not everyone will enjoy sim games. However, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that there are and will be more new games that fit VR well. These will probably include entirely new genres of content that are not compelling or interesting on a monitor but work well on VR. Conversely, some genres will never translate well into VR.

Alupis 11y ago
> Then don't make those games for VR. We're talking about big-budget "AAA" games, which drive console and pc sales alike. Excluding them, immediately destroys any notion that VR may become anything more than a niche product and go fully "mainstream". > As an example I've tried a lot, sim games I enjoy these games as well, but recognize their market appeal is very narrow. These games don't drive sales of consoles or PC's. > I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that there are and will be more new games that fit VR well Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen until VR becomes mainstream, which it probably will not for the reasons listed in the GP post. In order for a studio to take the enormous risk of developing something entirely new, they need as close to a guarantee as possible to get back at least their investment. With VR poised to be nothing more than a niche product, this becomes a huge risk. Now, maybe Facebook and their deep pockets could subsidize development of these games (effectively pay "AAA" studios to natively support VR), but that doesn't appear to be happening... otherwise they would have done that before the flagship product launched, and "AAA" studios are not in a "release cycle" at the moment (which tends to be October-November for the really big "AAA" projects).
- TillE 11y ago
  Again, you're looking at this from the perspective of what the industry looks like now, not what VR enables. AAA games are generally of a certain type now, but that is not a universal law which will remain true forever.

intrasight 11y ago

If the VR marketplace is going to depend merely on gamers who don't get sick, then you are spot-on - this will be a failed business model. But just as early PC tinkerers couldn't imagine what would be created when it went mainstream, we too lack the imagination to see what people will do with VR. The good news is that we won't have to wait long now that hardware is getting out into the wild. There are MANY applications that don't require moving around or that only require moving around in a small space.

x0054 11y ago

> The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement. I don't see it as a good monitor replacement technology. In limited applications, such as for AutoCAD and 3D design, I can see it as a good option. It would be very useful for 3D visualization or model examination. But for normal, every day, web browsing / computer use, I don't see VR to be very viable. Goggles with high res screen and AR are going to happen, and are going to be very useful. I can see the day where your cellphone will also be your laptop, and you just connect goggles to it to do some work. But that's not VR, that's just evolution of cinema goggles. I do agree though that VR does make a lot of people sick, including people who have been flying FPV drones with goggles for a while. There is something about completely filling your field of view that just makes people sick if it doesn't track just perfect, and matches to your vestibular system. There are efforts to hack the vestibular system to make you fee what you are seeing, but it's a little scary, and I think many people would be creeped out by electrodes and such connected to their heads.

phoboslab 11y ago

I strongly disagree. Yes, nausea is a big problem but there are a lot of scenarios/games where you don't need locomotion or can comfortably work around it (warping, a cockpit of some sorts etc.). Also we might be closer to solving the eye vs. inner ear discrepancy completely rather sooner than later. Samsung is working on a headset that stimulates your vestibular system to make you sense motion & acceleration: http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/14/11220836/samsung-etrim-4d-headphones-movement-vr-inner-ear http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/14/11220836/samsung-etrim-4d-...

ksk 11y ago

Sure, it has limitations but do you not see any applications of VR besides games? I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of games are not first person shooters, or ones that require you to control the movement of a character.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
I can see plenty of applications of VR besides games. In fact I'm fairly sure that if takes off, it will be the other applications that break it open. But right now it's too heavy, too low-res, and far too expensive to appeal to non-gamers. I'm not sure that even if it cost $50 for all the hardware, fully complete, you'd get a stampede of new users - yet. Most people need a reason to use it, and games are not the reason.

vigo7 11y ago

Yup lots of work ahead. But read some Vernor Vinge and think Disneyland. And Arcades. No treadmills necessary.

rdtsc 11y ago

> "What about omni-directional treadmills?" Maybe not for home users but I think for military training, rescue training other such applications those could be viable. I don't see anything wrong with this technology being professional/luxury first then becoming more affordable to regular users. We had a DK (or maybe DK2, don't remember) as well and yeah we played with it but I ended up not liking it. The resolution was too low, I could see individual pixels and it was like looking through a screen-door. We played with it for a while, ran some demos, everyone had fun. Then put it on a shelf and hadn't touched it since.

manachar 11y ago

I get horridly and painfully seasick, others don't. Most that don't were "raised on the sea". I suspect younger generations could adapt to VR the way my generation adapted to the spatial awareness required for 3D gaming. On a side note, this makes me think VR could possibly be used therapeutically to "cure" motion sickness. Something like the 3D gaming tutorials in early 3D games.

SapphireSun 11y ago

Give the HTC Vive a try. I played with it in a reasonably sized room and it was a lot of fun and there was no motion sickness to speak of. It does positional tracking. The tilt brush app is amazing.

LCDninja 11y ago

Nausea is not the problem from my perspective. At present I have my own small business creating VR experiences, I've managed to do about Euro 80k in business in the last six months. I have three large clients and have probably personally ushered more that 2,000 people through the Oculus based experiences at trade shows. Perhaps 1 in 100 people "bug-out" of the experience within the first 30 seconds. One executive I work with won't put the Oculus on anymore to approve work, he instead gets colleagues to try it and gauges their opinion. However, it's been a learning curve avoiding 100% nausea inducing experiences. Certain camera moves and experiments have made me so ill I had to sleep it off for a few hours. So in my opinion, it's not the display tech, it's up to the experience of the application developer to know what works - and what will make you seriously ill. It's a strange job actually, programming that will make you sick if you get it wrong. :-) At present, the big problem as a developer with a business like my own is that we can't get headsets. There is no VAR program. I feel that Oculus & HTC doesn't take developers of business applications seriously, or at least, I don't have any contacts there. I've been involved with VR since the VRML hype of the dot com boom and the technology has come so incredibly far - my sense it that it will continue to progress and become a new display technology that's pretty much on everyones desk.

mattnewport 11y ago
I'm working on non games VR applications too but my background is in the games industry and contacts from my games past have made it easier for me to get my hands on early hardware. If you don't have those contacts it's definitely harder to get an 'in' but I can tell you that Oculus is interested in non games applications it just hasn't been their focus for launch. Feel free to email me at matt@virtuallightsoftware.com - I'm interested to talk to other people working on non games VR applications and may be able to help you with some contacts.
- LCDninja 11y ago
  Hi Matt, thanks very much! I'll shoot you an email.

shamino 11y ago

> Plus, the treadmill also does not provide the bodily acceleration required to prevent sickness because you are stationary relative to the earth while you use it. I didn't really get this point. So what if the treadmill is stationary relative to the Earth ? And what do you mean by "bodily acceleration" ? I honestly do think the "omni-directional" treadmills would solve all the problems you bring up here. And it doesn't even have to be that big.

bronz 11y ago
Thanks for editing out your suggestion for me to "read a high-school physics textbook." The earth is the frame of reference when considering free body diagrams of objects moving around on its surface for all practical purposes. Neither the treadmill nor the person using the treadmill moves with respect to the earth and therefore no bodily acceleration is experienced by the user. In the virtual world, however, the user does move and bodily acceleration is expected. Therefore, a treadmill cannot alleviate the problems caused by acceleration mismatching.
- shamino 11y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to reply to my comment - I still don't understand your point. It's as if you're saying, "because the treadmill (or you) don't move with respect to the ground, you don't experience movement." If this were the case, you wouldn't be able to exercise on a treadmill since no energy would be spent (Energy = Force * distance), where distance would be 0 in your argument. I think the difference here is that the treadmill moves you, vs you moving yourself. Even still, there are machines that can move using the friction between your feet and the treadmill surface - and they are starting to make their way into some of the local 24-hour gyms. I'm not arguing with your point that "VR will flounder", but I just want to keep everything honest. And honestly, your physics doesn't check out.
  - bronz 11y ago
    Yes, this is only about physics for me too. My physics does check out though. If you are in a car and it accelerates from 0 to 30 mph you will experience the symptoms of acceleration. For example, an object that is hanging from a string in your frame of reference, such as a fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror, will appear to move backwards on its own. Try holding the fuzzy dice while running on a treadmill. I guarantee you won't see anything like that happen. Because you are not accelerating.

smacktoward 11y ago

The thing that stood out to me in following the community around Oculus over the same period of time was how consistently insiders responded to complaints that it just wasn't quite there yet with statements that it was the next version of VR that would really blow you away. The one that people could actually get in their hands at any given moment was never the True Realization of the ideal. That was always just a little bit farther down the road -- conveniently distant enough that you couldn't actually put it to the test. DK1? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is DK2." DK2? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is Crescent Bay." Crescent Bay? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is the Rift consumer release." Now we actually have the consumer release. And what's the message? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR includes controls like Oculus Touch." And so the can gets kicked down the road another few months. The continual response to underwhelmed users with "oh, you just wait till the next version!" made the whole thing start to feel less like a revolution-in-waiting and more like a faith-based enterprise. True Believers can help a company through the hard times, but they do not a mass market make.

gfodor 11y ago
Pretty sure people will agree that the Vive (which includes touch controllers and room scale tracking) is "Real VR" -- if the Vive fails to deliver amazing experiences, then yes 2016 VR is a dud. The Oculus CV1 by not including hand controllers, and secondarily by having a limited tracking range, while amazing visually, is a very stunted experience when it comes to really being able to deliver good made for VR content. The Oculus Touch controllers are amazing, and can't arrive fast enough.

outworlder 11y ago

That is an interesting comment. I have limited, hands on, VR experience. However, last week I went to the California Academy of Sciences, and they had this show called "Impact" going on. Due to the way their spherical projector in the planetarium is setup, it takes most of your field of view. That particular show had a camera that moved smoothly, but seldom in sudden movements. Instead, it had would accelerate to a given speed, and that gives you the impression you are moving. I though it was a little bit disconcerting for the first couple of minutes, then I adjusted just fine. My wife was sick for half an hour afterwards. Her son was so-so during the show, perfectly fine afterwards. The feel is exactly as you described, you feel that you should be moving, but aren't. That was an eye opener for me. I didn't think that a stationary display would ever make me feel anything (I used to be a flight sim fan, and nowadays I play a lot of Elite: Dangerous). I haven't reached any conclusions about VR tech yet, other than it is probably not suited for my wife.

deathanatos 11y ago
I worked at a museum with a planetarium. The way it was explained to me was that if the stars move — as far as your brain's visual processing is concerned — you must be moving. After all, the stars are fixed points of light; they never move unless you are yourself spinning in some manner — except, of course, in a planetarium. We also had a flight simulator; but with that, the movements of your body mostly matched the movement of the plane (you couldn't feel forward/backward acceleration, i.e., acceleration on an axis perpendicular to your chest, as otherwise, you'd be actually moving around in the building). This never made anyone sick. The planetarium, however, regularly made people feel ill, and occasionally I'm told, actually lost their lunch, whereas nobody ever lost their lunch in the flight sim AFAIK.

baby 11y ago

> People in the VR community drastically underplay nausea and discomfort. You must have never tried the HTC Vive, I never had any of these problems with it. Limited amount of space as well, as long as your game doesn't move you everywhere around.

whatever_dude 11y ago

That is all true, but you are assuming the content created will always try to have full body movements, or that people will always want to move around. It's like complaining about movies when they came out because they were not 360", or didn't have colors, or didn't have sound. Some of these came in time, some turned out not to be required. What I think will happen instead is that the content created for the Rift (and others) will be shaped by what the medium does well. Games like driving or flying simulators play perfect well within the limitations of most HMD devices, and actually shine in comparison to the current alternative (monitors). To me this is just one of many examples of things that work better in the Rift than anywhere else.

bronz 11y ago
You're absolutely right about flight sims. They are definitely the least sickening non-stationary experiences. The reason that not being able to move around is such a big deal in my eyes is because that is what I always fantasized about. I think that first person experiences are what most VR fans fantasized about. But you and many other people in this thread have made the very good point that VR can create new genres. Genres that are well suited for VR.
- whatever_dude 11y ago
  I've too been very enthusiastic about VR (supported the original kickstarter in the 1st hour it went live) and have had a little bit of an awakening after the initial enthusiasm. When Team Fortress 2 came out with Rift DK1 support I installed it and immediately realized that would NOT work. It was instant nausea, and it was not fun in any way. But other people realized the same. Since then, indie and amateur developers (as well as some professional ones) started properly exploring the medium, instead of just trying to re-purpose content. There's many new subgenres better fit to VR that are emerging and, I believe, will get more visibility. The vast majority of those are "seating" experiences, but still ones that can easily blow people away, and continue to amaze me to this day. Which is just as well - getting a new blockbuster FPSs every month was starting to get boring. VR won't be for everything or everyone but it'll be great for what it does well.

namuol 11y ago

> VR will flounder. I think you mean: > VR First-Person-Shooters will flounder. There are plenty of really amazing non-nausea-inducing applications of VR - and especially AR. So what if traditional games don't map 1-to-1 with VR? It's an entirely new medium, and we've barely begun to work with it. Hell, even "traditional" non-VR games are still a very new medium.

dhagz 11y ago
I really think EVE Valkyrie is going to be the defining game for the beginning of this round of VR. Any sort of sim game is going to be a perfect fit for VR, and I'm sure there's games we haven't even thought of yet that will get released and really make the platform shine.
- namuol 11y ago
  I've spent a couple months using VR (used to own a DK2) and hands-down the best experiences were "cockpit" style games. I bought a joystick and Elite: Dangerous was the most incredible gaming experience I've ever had, if only for the sheer immersion.

atarian 11y ago

I think what you're talking about is tolerance, which is going to be different for everyone. The same could be said about being on a roller-coaster for several hours.

amelius 11y ago

> The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement. Does this include watching a sports match from a perfect spot within the stadium? Anyway, I sure hope they will increase the resolution so that I can have a virtual monitor on a virtual beach in my office.

antaviana 11y ago

Is VR a viable platform for porn? If it were, there'd likely be a sizeable market opportunity for it.

ihowlatthemoon 11y ago
As with any new technology, the adult entertainment industry has already embraced VR. [1][2] Links obviously VERY NSFW. [1] http://naughtyamericavr.com/ http://naughtyamericavr.com/ [2] https://virtualrealporn.com/ https://virtualrealporn.com/
clevernickname 11y ago
Came here to post about this. The elephant in the VR room is that porn, both recorded and semi-interactive 3DCG, is easily the most immediately interesting use of the technology to the vast majority of consumers. It's also a huge part of why everyone lost their shit when Facebook bought Occulus, as early adopters feared that Facebook would either implement a closed platform or track what "applications" people used.

Shorel 11y ago

The rift and VR in general have strong parallels with steering wheels for computers from a market standpoint. The racing games actually drive console and pc sales, at the very least GT does. At the same time, it is a normal game with the controller, and a fantastic experience with a good wheel. The best racing game/sim IMO, called iRacing fully supports all wheels, and it has a profitable service. Some people like you may not know about it, not being 'mainstream', but that is not really needed for the product to be successful and to have a rabid fanbase of active subscribers. So, if steering wheels are a product with good margins, and also, making games for them is profitable which it is, then the same will apply for VR. Welcome to the era of the long tail.

pitchka 11y ago

CastAR is pretty good. Better than Oculus. Has no sickness problems. http://castar.com/ http://castar.com/

elif 11y ago

From what I've seen, the problem as you describe it is 100% the problem the Oculus team set out to solve. Their solution wasn't the DK2. I think it's sheer pessimism to suggest that they failed before you've tried their solution. Regarding sickness: Doesn't stop mountaineers. Doesn't stop sailors. Humans adapt remarkably.

justinator 11y ago
> Regarding sickness: Doesn't stop mountaineers. Doesn't stop sailors. Humans adapt remarkably. I'm a mountaineer. Feeling ill at altitude isn't the same as motion sickness. People can die of HAPE - it's not something to brush off and say, "humans can adapt". The great majority don't at high altitude. That's why you see tourists on Everest with oxygen masks and dexamethasone in tow. It's not to be a little more comfortable, it's to be a little less likely to be dead. I also get motion sickness for weeks on end. Trying VR isn't exactly appealing to me, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to die from it. I grew up on a sailboat - other than feeling weird for the first coupla hours after sailing, it wasn't a big deal. People are complicated, I guess.

randomacct44 11y ago

I don't quite understand it when people say that VR won't succedd but AR will. They're two points on a single technological continuum. One will enable the other. If AR does massively take off, all of that tech will benefit VR. Alternatively you can view AR as just a special case of VR, where display of the real world is passed through and where there's more sensing of the real-world environment for use in constructing the virtual parts of the environment. In that sense, VR is just a step towards more general AR; in that case the VR tech benefits AR applications. Why do people insist that it can only be one OR the other? The technology is all converging to the one point. In fact I'd argue it's mostly the same technology. It's irrelevant as to whether it's AR or VR applications that break the technology into the mainstream. Once it's there, both AR and VR will have broken through.

diskcat 11y ago

None of the issues you mentioned is a problem with porn, which will be the reason why 99.9999999999999999999% of VR headsets are purchased.

bronz 11y ago
If you are going to spend 600 dollars you might as well get a hooker.
- diskcat 11y ago
  But a hooker won't look like taylor swift while your VR CG GF will look like whoever you want.

lewisl9029 11y ago

> The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement. Other than that, when I look at the future of this kind of technology I see AR. Not VR. I am sorry Rift fans, it was painful for me too. VR/AR as monitor replacement is actually the application I'm most excited about personally. I'd love to see a Google Glass/Hololens type device that functions as a wireless Miracast/WiGig monitor and nothing else, which could hopefully bring the product into the realms of affordability.

TylerE 11y ago
Will that not be fatigue issues with this? Ignoring the actual weight of the headset, isn't it really bad/tiring on the eyes to be constantly focused at the same distance?
- lewisl9029 11y ago
  That's definitely true for VR headsets like the Rift or Vive. I was thinking more along the lines of the Google Glass/Hololens form factor, which probably won't pose any problems with respect to weight. In terms of focus, I don't think it will be much different compared to using stationary physical monitors since those usually stay at the same focal distance as well. The Glass/Hololens form factor only occupies a tiny part of your field of vision, allowing you to freely look elsewhere as you see fit (and AFAIK the Hololens, at least, has the ability to simulate different focal distances). I'm picturing this as more of a supplement to physical monitors as opposed to a complete replacement in a typical workspace setting. What really excites me are the possible applications of something like this in mobile (an always-on, wireless second screen/HUD for your phone that takes voice commands or some other new control mechanism, for instance).

pmoriarty 11y ago

I've personally demoed the Gear VR to about 70 to 80 people, and in my experience nausea/vr-sickness is a problem for a tiny minority of people (maybe 2 or 3 out of 70 or 80 for properly designed experiences). With the consumer version of the Oculus Rift, that should be even less of a problem, due to the higher specs. Much more of a problem is physical comfort of the headset itself. After the novelty wears off, few but the most dedicated want to stay in VR for extended periods of time, or even bother with putting the headset on anymore. Headsets are just too bulky and uncomfortable. Even regular glasses are too much of a hassle for a lot of people. VR headsets have the uncomfort of regular glasses multiplied by a hundred. I don't think VR will fully take off until you can experience VR with something as comfortable and unobtrusive as contact lenses. Until then, it will remain a novelty or used for purposes where it really does not have much competition, like tele-surgery. There are some other niches where people will likely use a headset, like to play an occasional game or for videoconferencing, but then they'll take off the headset and go back to monitors for more mundane tasks that don't benefit from immersion, like word processing, web surfing, etc. Even for movies, current headsets are a bit too much, when you could just as easily watch a movie unencumbered by the bulk. That's not to say VR isn't impressive. It is. I was blown away by it when I first experienced it, despite being spoiled and knowing what to expect by watching videos and reading about it. There's nothing like the real thing, though. But eventually all that wears off, and then you have to deal with the day-to-day choice of whether to put on the headset again.. and that's where I think for now headsets are too uncomfortable for regular, casual use.

chaostheory 11y ago

Most of your negative points are valid, except for this one: "VR will flounder" Your sentiments echo detractors of revolutionary inventions such as automobiles (eg. there are no paved roads, it breaks down too often, there are no gas stations, ...) and even the iPhone (e.g. there are no apps, it's too slow, the keyboard has not tactile feedback, ...). What you have in common with them is that you treat temporary obstacles as permanent unsolvable problems while overlooking the long term potential. As a counter argument for your omnidirectional treadmill point, this is much cheaper, takes up a lot less space, and has already been released: http://www.virtuix.com/ http://www.virtuix.com/

BuckRogers 11y ago

What about a full experience like the Vive? Yeah I know it only does roomscale, but it should prevent a lot of the nausea you talk about. I think it would work out well, you would have "rooms" like old school adventure games that you mess around in, and then kinda hit go north, south, east, west etc to go to another area. I have a heard time seeing how that wouldn't be flat out amazing. I'm not a huge fan of the Rift, which sounds like your experience is based on. But SteamVR looks really good to me. Other than SteamVR, I see mobile VR being where it really hits. I think roomscale + mobile VR will work out together. The Rift should and will die, I'd hope for all the reasons you mentioned.

rocky1138 11y ago

What if we popped a pill that disabled motion sickness? Or could modify our body to disable motion sickness?