4 ms·

The biggest issue for VR is similar to that of Second Life: outside of gaming, it needs to seamlessly augment reality. If the pervasive influence of social med

by arcanus 10y ago

The biggest issue for VR is similar to that of Second Life: outside of gaming, it needs to seamlessly augment reality. If the pervasive influence of social media in our times has taught us anything, it is that a platform that does interface with our everyday existence will never be more than a cool tech demo. Off the top of my head, for success VR needs to provide: * Virtual Conferences * Remote Home Sale Walk-throughs * Credit for remote class attendence. * Remotely Shared Sports Viewing with Friends Until the VR experience can supplant some of the activities above, I doubt it will take off.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
I hear "Virtual Conferences" as a big VR application. But how about we solve videoconferences first? Skype/Hangouts etc. hasn't improved noticeably in the last ten years. Videocalls still suffer from latency and poor image quality.
- tlarkworthy 10y ago
  really? I frequently video conference to places will 11 hour time differences, and I am constantly amazed how well it works. I am pretty sure 10 years ago this wasn't practical.
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    It definitely wasn't. I worked at a web conferencing company in 2007 and my sense was that video conferencing was limited to big entities with deep pockets and dedicated setups. Now anybody can do it and it works pretty well. It would be nice to get from "pretty well" to "so close to perfect that everyone forgets this was ever a hard thing", and it does seem like progress has been a bit slow on that front, but it seems like we're at the point where it will continuously improve constantly but almost imperceptibly.
    - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
      I remember skyping my girlfriend over shitty satellite internet from an island off Brazil in 2009, on an Atom-powered netbook running Linux. It worked (barely), but on regular internet it was not worse than the low end quality of today.
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    I did a Hangout a few weeks ago from Europe to a startup in TX. At least on my end I was on a 1Gbps fat academic ISP; can't speak for the other guy, but he was in his office. Still, voice and video quality was poor and we had to restart everything once. Also have had many poor quality video conferences on Lync/Skype for Business where all participants have been on the same fat academic ISP.
    - tlarkworthy 10y ago
      Yeah it happens. I still have both Skype and hangouts and swap depending on who is having a bad day. Still, it used to be much worse, but it's nowhere near perfect yet

by arcanus 10y ago

semi-extrinsic 10y ago

I hear "Virtual Conferences" as a big VR application. But how about we solve videoconferences first? Skype/Hangouts etc. hasn't improved noticeably in the last ten years. Videocalls still suffer from latency and poor image quality.

tlarkworthy 10y ago
really? I frequently video conference to places will 11 hour time differences, and I am constantly amazed how well it works. I am pretty sure 10 years ago this wasn't practical.
- sanderjd 10y ago
  It definitely wasn't. I worked at a web conferencing company in 2007 and my sense was that video conferencing was limited to big entities with deep pockets and dedicated setups. Now anybody can do it and it works pretty well. It would be nice to get from "pretty well" to "so close to perfect that everyone forgets this was ever a hard thing", and it does seem like progress has been a bit slow on that front, but it seems like we're at the point where it will continuously improve constantly but almost imperceptibly.
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    I remember skyping my girlfriend over shitty satellite internet from an island off Brazil in 2009, on an Atom-powered netbook running Linux. It worked (barely), but on regular internet it was not worse than the low end quality of today.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  I did a Hangout a few weeks ago from Europe to a startup in TX. At least on my end I was on a 1Gbps fat academic ISP; can't speak for the other guy, but he was in his office. Still, voice and video quality was poor and we had to restart everything once. Also have had many poor quality video conferences on Lync/Skype for Business where all participants have been on the same fat academic ISP.
  - tlarkworthy 10y ago
    Yeah it happens. I still have both Skype and hangouts and swap depending on who is having a bad day. Still, it used to be much worse, but it's nowhere near perfect yet