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Placing a video call from the outside world into VR is pretty amazing. Besides that, you can do many of the things demoed even now on AltspaceVR. I tested it o

by bemmu 10y ago

Placing a video call from the outside world into VR is pretty amazing. Besides that, you can do many of the things demoed even now on AltspaceVR. I tested it out for a few nights, and turns out hanging around in an interactive VR space with random strangers is ruined by trolls and people constantly quitting and joining. We never got successfully through an entire game of "Cards Against Humanity". Another interesting one was vTime, which focuses more on chatting. You can move your head around and sit around virtual spaces with others, but you cannot move. That felt much like grabbing coffee in real life with someone and we got into deeper conversations this way. I would rate it as perhaps the most interesting experience I had before selling my Oculus to wait another year or two to see things improve.

alphonsegaston 10y ago
I tested it out for a few nights, and turns out hanging around in an interactive VR space with random strangers is ruined by trolls and people constantly quitting and joining. I can't help but wonder what the revelations about Palmer Lucky's ties to racist "shitposting" brigades bode for the future of collaborative VR spaces. I guess at least this time we know we're wading into a cesspool, all utopian forecasting aside.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  Is there some relationship between technology and the people who make it that isn't evident to normal senses? Perhaps something that would carry this taint you call out? I don't find myself noticing the politics of the people who make the things I use, but I admit to having a low amount of worry for moral standing.
  - alphonsegaston 10y ago
    No, quite the contrary. I think most technology is just an amoral multiplier of its users' intentions. But does the social and moral context in which it's created hold some predictive power about how it will be used? I think so. We can look back at the industrial revolution and see that, occuring in a time of extreme tribalism, political upheaval, and acceptability of violence, its use in war and genocide was sure to be horrific. Before, we needed historians to tie together all the disparate threads of the record to make sense of these kinds of things, with all the time and work that entailed. But in an our era, where so much of life is lived in public, digital spaces, the time between the message and what it telegraphs is much shorter, and maybe more clear.
thwarted 10y ago
Being able to place a video call from the outside world into VR is pretty amazing. Youtube and twitch are capable of doing the conference call equivalent, streaming live video of content that doesn't actually exist, such as a video game, to a video receiving device. The ability to dynamically create live video is more than a few years old, even in live chat systems, from the capability to alter the background behind you while you video chat, to being able to wear virtual hats. There's a lot in here that is interesting, but so much of it is a different form factor and UI/UX on technology that already exists.
- natrius 10y ago
  You're saying it's just a user experience shift, but that's exactly what the comment you're responding to is saying. User experience changes can be earth-shattering.
  - thwarted 10y ago
    Yes, I said there's a lot here that is interesting, and I think the actual interesting stuff was seriously downplayed. I don't find the stuff that was presented as "earth-shattering". The ability to show a moving video in a 2d square in a 3d environment is as old as hardware accelerated first person shooters. We saw swimming among sharks and walking on Mars, both having potential for highly informative and educational experiences. The rhetoric wasn't about how much richer viewing Mars is interactively vs with flat, composite panoramas. The Mars bit was about ~12 seconds with talk about how it was desolate and they wouldn't want to live there… quick, get us out and here and lets move on to… the Facebook offices (a more uninspired location for Zuckerberg to choose I can not imagine). Oh, let's play a card game and let's draw a sword for sword fights! The ability to draw in midair and interact with the thing drawn is the real interesting stuff, stuff that we haven't been able to do before, and this was a demo that said, to me, "Farmville is coming to virtual reality". Where was showing us things we can't currently, easily do without virtual reality? The live walk through of a building yet to be built? The facilities engineer working with plumbers and electricians on a live, interactive 3d model of a building? The interior designer doing interactive, full-size test fits of furniture? The student walking on the surface of other planets for study prep? The inclusiveness and team building of a remote team working in the same virtual space (this was mentioned briefly in the face expressions portion)? The ability to create and dynamically reconfigure complex user interfaces that would be otherwise impossible to create in reality? Leveraging the facial expressions to read people while playing poker would have been more interesting and a step above current on-line poker playing, more so than "look, we can throw around these cards". Most of this bit looked like it was scripted. It could have been scripted better to showcase actual advances VR enables, kept the "ooh ahh", maintained the conversational tone and gotten rid of the mundane stuff. I don't think "placing a video call from the outside world into VR" is "pretty amazing".
jsemrau 10y ago
Does anyone remember Playstation Home. A social 3D environment with in-world purchases, in-world movies, etc.? The experience were similar. People discovery was hard.
- beamatronic 10y ago
  Yes, it was really fun, just running around the square and having conversations with strangers. I loved my Playstation 3, but Sony took away all the things I loved about it, one-by-one: 1. Folding at home. I loved letting it run and getting points and looking at the cool night time map of the world with all the yellow dots showing others running Folding at home. I felt like part of something! 2. Playstation Home went away 3. The ability to install Linux went away. There's a class action lawsuit, if I join I could get $7. Wheee. 4. They sent a firmware update that bricked it. I was never able to recover it.
Taylor_OD 10y ago
I've had a great time playing with groups in BigScreen (Beta). I spent three hours playing with a free to plat smash bros style game within big screen beta. It felt like I was back in college but my roommates were from Estonia, England, and Michigan. http://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/ Try it out. The rooms are smaller so less people jumping in and out.
rapind 10y ago
I remember back when Skype first launched. Very few of us were using it (few hundred, maybe a thousand?). Many of us were just calling people randomly, myself included. Trolls weren't even a thing yet thank god, and all of us early adopters were very pleasant with each other.
- wincy 10y ago
  Oh man I have great memories of that. I made friends with some girl in California and we spent hours talking to an old man in South Africa who had hunted lions when he was younger! It really made the world feel small and we felt special. It's really hard to find connections like that. Spending a little bit of time in AltspaceVR did sort of feel like this. Within a few minutes I was talking to some kid about his life and how he was feeling that day. I hope we can preserve these anonymous experiences without trolls ruining everything. In Second Life there was gating and banning (so there would be a private owned 'night club' that you could be kicked out of, you'd literally be launched away) which seemed fairly effective. 100% public spaces with no policing don't seem to work online, unfortunately.

by bemmu 10y ago

alphonsegaston 10y ago

I tested it out for a few nights, and turns out hanging around in an interactive VR space with random strangers is ruined by trolls and people constantly quitting and joining. I can't help but wonder what the revelations about Palmer Lucky's ties to racist "shitposting" brigades bode for the future of collaborative VR spaces. I guess at least this time we know we're wading into a cesspool, all utopian forecasting aside.

oldmanjay 10y ago
Is there some relationship between technology and the people who make it that isn't evident to normal senses? Perhaps something that would carry this taint you call out? I don't find myself noticing the politics of the people who make the things I use, but I admit to having a low amount of worry for moral standing.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago
  No, quite the contrary. I think most technology is just an amoral multiplier of its users' intentions. But does the social and moral context in which it's created hold some predictive power about how it will be used? I think so. We can look back at the industrial revolution and see that, occuring in a time of extreme tribalism, political upheaval, and acceptability of violence, its use in war and genocide was sure to be horrific. Before, we needed historians to tie together all the disparate threads of the record to make sense of these kinds of things, with all the time and work that entailed. But in an our era, where so much of life is lived in public, digital spaces, the time between the message and what it telegraphs is much shorter, and maybe more clear.

thwarted 10y ago

Being able to place a video call from the outside world into VR is pretty amazing. Youtube and twitch are capable of doing the conference call equivalent, streaming live video of content that doesn't actually exist, such as a video game, to a video receiving device. The ability to dynamically create live video is more than a few years old, even in live chat systems, from the capability to alter the background behind you while you video chat, to being able to wear virtual hats. There's a lot in here that is interesting, but so much of it is a different form factor and UI/UX on technology that already exists.

natrius 10y ago
You're saying it's just a user experience shift, but that's exactly what the comment you're responding to is saying. User experience changes can be earth-shattering.
- thwarted 10y ago
  Yes, I said there's a lot here that is interesting, and I think the actual interesting stuff was seriously downplayed. I don't find the stuff that was presented as "earth-shattering". The ability to show a moving video in a 2d square in a 3d environment is as old as hardware accelerated first person shooters. We saw swimming among sharks and walking on Mars, both having potential for highly informative and educational experiences. The rhetoric wasn't about how much richer viewing Mars is interactively vs with flat, composite panoramas. The Mars bit was about ~12 seconds with talk about how it was desolate and they wouldn't want to live there… quick, get us out and here and lets move on to… the Facebook offices (a more uninspired location for Zuckerberg to choose I can not imagine). Oh, let's play a card game and let's draw a sword for sword fights! The ability to draw in midair and interact with the thing drawn is the real interesting stuff, stuff that we haven't been able to do before, and this was a demo that said, to me, "Farmville is coming to virtual reality". Where was showing us things we can't currently, easily do without virtual reality? The live walk through of a building yet to be built? The facilities engineer working with plumbers and electricians on a live, interactive 3d model of a building? The interior designer doing interactive, full-size test fits of furniture? The student walking on the surface of other planets for study prep? The inclusiveness and team building of a remote team working in the same virtual space (this was mentioned briefly in the face expressions portion)? The ability to create and dynamically reconfigure complex user interfaces that would be otherwise impossible to create in reality? Leveraging the facial expressions to read people while playing poker would have been more interesting and a step above current on-line poker playing, more so than "look, we can throw around these cards". Most of this bit looked like it was scripted. It could have been scripted better to showcase actual advances VR enables, kept the "ooh ahh", maintained the conversational tone and gotten rid of the mundane stuff. I don't think "placing a video call from the outside world into VR" is "pretty amazing".

jsemrau 10y ago

Does anyone remember Playstation Home. A social 3D environment with in-world purchases, in-world movies, etc.? The experience were similar. People discovery was hard.

beamatronic 10y ago
Yes, it was really fun, just running around the square and having conversations with strangers. I loved my Playstation 3, but Sony took away all the things I loved about it, one-by-one: 1. Folding at home. I loved letting it run and getting points and looking at the cool night time map of the world with all the yellow dots showing others running Folding at home. I felt like part of something! 2. Playstation Home went away 3. The ability to install Linux went away. There's a class action lawsuit, if I join I could get $7. Wheee. 4. They sent a firmware update that bricked it. I was never able to recover it.

Taylor_OD 10y ago

I've had a great time playing with groups in BigScreen (Beta). I spent three hours playing with a free to plat smash bros style game within big screen beta. It felt like I was back in college but my roommates were from Estonia, England, and Michigan. http://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/ Try it out. The rooms are smaller so less people jumping in and out.

rapind 10y ago

I remember back when Skype first launched. Very few of us were using it (few hundred, maybe a thousand?). Many of us were just calling people randomly, myself included. Trolls weren't even a thing yet thank god, and all of us early adopters were very pleasant with each other.

wincy 10y ago
Oh man I have great memories of that. I made friends with some girl in California and we spent hours talking to an old man in South Africa who had hunted lions when he was younger! It really made the world feel small and we felt special. It's really hard to find connections like that. Spending a little bit of time in AltspaceVR did sort of feel like this. Within a few minutes I was talking to some kid about his life and how he was feeling that day. I hope we can preserve these anonymous experiences without trolls ruining everything. In Second Life there was gating and banning (so there would be a private owned 'night club' that you could be kicked out of, you'd literally be launched away) which seemed fairly effective. 100% public spaces with no policing don't seem to work online, unfortunately.