6 ms·

Want to Know What Virtual Reality Might Become? Look to the Past

63 points by prismatic 10y ago

Allower 10y ago
So this is what it looks like when the NYT hits rock bottom.
forthefuture 10y ago
Clicking this link takes me to a login page with no ability to access the content in any way. I screen shotted it because I've actually never seen something like this before: http://i.imgur.com/1YBFuiU.png http://i.imgur.com/1YBFuiU.png Also, doing the web link brings me to the same login page.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  Try substituting "www." in the URL with "mobile."
  - pmlnr 10y ago
    Nope, it does not help. I've tried with lynx ( console browser ), with archive.org; I keep getting the login as well. If I disable cookies, I get a redirect loop. Edit: Hah! Workaround: wget -O- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/magazine/want-to-know-what-virtual-reality-might-become-look-to-the-past.html > /tmp/x.html && dillo /tmp/x.html ( note: dillo is a dead simple little browser )
    - giacomone 10y ago
      Cool! Terminal version, piping directly into w3m: wget -O- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/magazine/want-to-know-what-virtual-reality-might-become-look-to-the-past.html | w3m -T text/html
- empath75 10y ago
  It's getting to the point where i don't even bother clicking links from the times or the post anymore.
- Yen 10y ago
  At the moment, opening nytimes links in an incognito session works for me.
- Raphmedia 10y ago
  "Want to Know What Virtual Reality Might Become? Look to the Past No doubt some future V.R. creators will figure out how to tell cinematic stories or make compelling game experiences. The director Chris Milk, in a widely circulated TED talk, called V.R. systems "Empathy machines," a description echoed by other V.R. auteurs. The paradox of V.R. is that when you see the world through someone else's eyes, you can't actually see the person's eyes. Donning V.R. goggles, visitors entered a parallel version of the forest, where they could shift in and out of the perspectives of different creatures, from midges to frogs to owls. "This isn't storytelling." If V.R. allows you to project yourself onto the deck of the Titanic, I suspect we won't want the entire James Cameron-style back story about a dashing artist and his fleeting romance with a wealthy young woman facing an arranged marriage. "We weren't expecting it really," Steel says about the process of creating "In the Eyes of the Animal," "But by the end of it, we were all thinking, If you'd had a stressful day, it's super nice to just put it on and just explore. You always find new perspectives and angles. With these bigger trees, you're scanning so much detail that you notice stuff in V.R. that you wouldn't notice in real life. We're stuck at five to six feet high, and so you rarely go down and put your chin on the floor. But in V.R., you just stick yourself down there, and you're like: 'I love it down here! Look at all these pine cones!' ". In an age when action movies have acclimated our eyes to multiple cuts per second, and in which video games bombard us with nonstop carnage, there turns out to a surprisingly meditative quality to the world we inhabit with V.R. goggles on." 89% reduction using http://smmry.com/ http://smmry.com/
- BEEdwards 10y ago
  Something about blocking cookies or javascript stops the web search from working, or technically keeps their block working. I just search it in IE.
- jokermatt999 10y ago
  Because I have a habit of browsing NYT first thing in the morning, I tend to use Incognito mode. Never had it go through the nag screens then, but part of it may be ublock origin.
pmoriarty 10y ago
"It is a delightful characteristic of these times, that new and cheap means are continuously being devised, for conveying the results of actual experience to those who are unable to obtain such experiences for themselves; and to bring them within the reach of the people ... New worlds open out to them, beyond their little worlds, and widen their range of reflection, information, sympathy and interest." For the origin of this technology, we can look much further back in time than the 19th or even 17th century... back to pre-historic times at the origin of storytelling. Storytelling was the first technology for "conveying the results of actual experience to those who are unable to obtain such experiences for themselves".
kordless 10y ago
When your technology can modify someone's mind's eye view, call me. I will give you all my money if it works for me.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  Would you have similarly avoided or not been impressed by photography or film when they were invented? How about writing?
  - kordless 10y ago
    I am not stating I would avoid this technology, so asking me if I would avoid similar technology isn't logical. I would take no action to avoid technologies, but I would limit them if I felt they were harmful to my well being. I do not visualize (Aphantasia), so I would be much more excited if I could both see what is going on here AND have a mind's eye, even if it were artificial.
- goldfeld 10y ago
  Welcome books and songs, our parents' technology that's been stable for a while and is always built to fit users' particular needs. Spend all your money on working less and enjoying these sensibilities; wind down to give them your full undivided mind. Imagination needs cultivation and the more you use (i.e. restrict it) the sharper it gets.
egypturnash 10y ago
> The most surprising twist in the evolution of V.R. may turn out to be the pace of the new medium. Quick cuts are an almost physical act of violence in V.R.; jumping from one perspective to another can create a literal sense of nausea. But more telling, perhaps, is the fact that people don’t want to move on to another experience once they’ve put the headset on. They want to linger. “I want to just put you in a field,” Mooser told me, “and you just do what you want to do in that field.” Quick cuts were seen as violent and jarring when film was new, too. We will get used to VR cuts just as we got used to film cuts. It may take a few generations; right now VR is still a novelty.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  We will get used to VR cuts just as we got used to film cuts. I don't think that the "cut" automatically applies to VR. Film is fundamentally more indirectly immersive. You are looking through a window into another world, and the immersion is also largely through involvement via plot/characters/interest. VR will also (hopefully) have this, but the jump up in immediacy from film is like the one film has from books. Instead of a "cut" I think other tools and vocabulary will arise that are much more interactive. People like looking through a window into another world. I don't think slaving your POV to the level where it's strapped to your head is fundamentally viable. Looking through the magic window of cinema is an active choice to delve into that POV, moment by moment -- for you can always close your eyes or look away in an instant. With VR, it's more like you have the choice the moment you strap on the goggles, you give it up for the experience, then have the "safe word" of being able to take the goggles off. Many more people will like looking at stuff than they will like being strapped to it.
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    Day 1 Vive owner. It really isn't a big deal. Immersion gets overplayed a lot in the click-baity tech press. Sure it feels 'real' but about 3-4 steps removed from reality and where traditional 2D gaming is 5-6 steps away from reality. We are nowhere near anything that be can considered 0-2 steps from reality. There will always be an uncanny valley effect here and a sense of falseness. Humans aren't that easily fooled, unfortunately. My Vive had performance issues where my background environment would randomly pop-up during games. It was kinda annoying the first time, but is no big deal. Sharp cuts are pretty meaningless. This stuff isn't exactly the Matrix. You're not going to be in constant amazement or think you're in some new reality with a new body. It still a screen pasted to your face and your mind knows this the whole time.
stcredzero 10y ago
I think some Steve Jobs-ian thinking about the experience as a whole is called for at this point. VR/AR equipment needs to be friendly to the social experience and to social experiences, otherwise it's going to be out-competed through network effects by other equipment that has an advantage there. Current VR "room-scale" equipment seems to be optimal for 1) god-like player experiences, where you can survey a world, teleport within it, and command/change/tinker/destroy what's within it or 2) the highly immersed "stage." By "stage" I literally mean it's like you are standing on a stage. It's about the same amount of space, and the immersive feeling is very much like being on the set of a movie or show.
- crooked-v 10y ago
  I personally think the things that have the biggest potential in VR are games like Tabletop Simulator, where both the game itself and the context of "being with other people playing a game" are part of the experience.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    Being at the same table with others playing a tabletop game is like being gods in a competitive pantheon playing with a world. I think we're essentially talking about the same "thing" -- it's just that our culture's level of understanding of it is still nascent. Most of our experience of this thing is through tabletop games. Now, we are just getting into the possibilities of VR for the "thing."
    - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
      A multiplayer Populous is what I am thinking.
  - jsemrau 10y ago
    Wouldn't that be more of an AR experience? Similar to the game in the original Star Wars on board the Falcon?
    - 10y ago
Animats 10y ago
Those reports of the past describe one-off location-based entertainment systems which didn't scale, and novelty devices which didn't last. That may be the future of VR headsets.

63 points by prismatic 10y ago

So this is what it looks like when the NYT hits rock bottom.

Clicking this link takes me to a login page with no ability to access the content in any way. I screen shotted it because I've actually never seen something like this before: http://i.imgur.com/1YBFuiU.png http://i.imgur.com/1YBFuiU.png Also, doing the web link brings me to the same login page.

pmoriarty 10y ago
Try substituting "www." in the URL with "mobile."
- pmlnr 10y ago
  Nope, it does not help. I've tried with lynx ( console browser ), with archive.org; I keep getting the login as well. If I disable cookies, I get a redirect loop. Edit: Hah! Workaround: wget -O- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/magazine/want-to-know-what-virtual-reality-might-become-look-to-the-past.html > /tmp/x.html && dillo /tmp/x.html ( note: dillo is a dead simple little browser )
  - giacomone 10y ago
    Cool! Terminal version, piping directly into w3m: wget -O- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/magazine/want-to-know-what-virtual-reality-might-become-look-to-the-past.html | w3m -T text/html
empath75 10y ago
It's getting to the point where i don't even bother clicking links from the times or the post anymore.
Yen 10y ago
At the moment, opening nytimes links in an incognito session works for me.
Raphmedia 10y ago
"Want to Know What Virtual Reality Might Become? Look to the Past No doubt some future V.R. creators will figure out how to tell cinematic stories or make compelling game experiences. The director Chris Milk, in a widely circulated TED talk, called V.R. systems "Empathy machines," a description echoed by other V.R. auteurs. The paradox of V.R. is that when you see the world through someone else's eyes, you can't actually see the person's eyes. Donning V.R. goggles, visitors entered a parallel version of the forest, where they could shift in and out of the perspectives of different creatures, from midges to frogs to owls. "This isn't storytelling." If V.R. allows you to project yourself onto the deck of the Titanic, I suspect we won't want the entire James Cameron-style back story about a dashing artist and his fleeting romance with a wealthy young woman facing an arranged marriage. "We weren't expecting it really," Steel says about the process of creating "In the Eyes of the Animal," "But by the end of it, we were all thinking, If you'd had a stressful day, it's super nice to just put it on and just explore. You always find new perspectives and angles. With these bigger trees, you're scanning so much detail that you notice stuff in V.R. that you wouldn't notice in real life. We're stuck at five to six feet high, and so you rarely go down and put your chin on the floor. But in V.R., you just stick yourself down there, and you're like: 'I love it down here! Look at all these pine cones!' ". In an age when action movies have acclimated our eyes to multiple cuts per second, and in which video games bombard us with nonstop carnage, there turns out to a surprisingly meditative quality to the world we inhabit with V.R. goggles on." 89% reduction using http://smmry.com/ http://smmry.com/
BEEdwards 10y ago
Something about blocking cookies or javascript stops the web search from working, or technically keeps their block working. I just search it in IE.
jokermatt999 10y ago
Because I have a habit of browsing NYT first thing in the morning, I tend to use Incognito mode. Never had it go through the nag screens then, but part of it may be ublock origin.

pmoriarty 10y ago

"It is a delightful characteristic of these times, that new and cheap means are continuously being devised, for conveying the results of actual experience to those who are unable to obtain such experiences for themselves; and to bring them within the reach of the people ... New worlds open out to them, beyond their little worlds, and widen their range of reflection, information, sympathy and interest." For the origin of this technology, we can look much further back in time than the 19th or even 17th century... back to pre-historic times at the origin of storytelling. Storytelling was the first technology for "conveying the results of actual experience to those who are unable to obtain such experiences for themselves".

kordless 10y ago

When your technology can modify someone's mind's eye view, call me. I will give you all my money if it works for me.

pmoriarty 10y ago
Would you have similarly avoided or not been impressed by photography or film when they were invented? How about writing?
- kordless 10y ago
  I am not stating I would avoid this technology, so asking me if I would avoid similar technology isn't logical. I would take no action to avoid technologies, but I would limit them if I felt they were harmful to my well being. I do not visualize (Aphantasia), so I would be much more excited if I could both see what is going on here AND have a mind's eye, even if it were artificial.
goldfeld 10y ago
Welcome books and songs, our parents' technology that's been stable for a while and is always built to fit users' particular needs. Spend all your money on working less and enjoying these sensibilities; wind down to give them your full undivided mind. Imagination needs cultivation and the more you use (i.e. restrict it) the sharper it gets.

egypturnash 10y ago

> The most surprising twist in the evolution of V.R. may turn out to be the pace of the new medium. Quick cuts are an almost physical act of violence in V.R.; jumping from one perspective to another can create a literal sense of nausea. But more telling, perhaps, is the fact that people don’t want to move on to another experience once they’ve put the headset on. They want to linger. “I want to just put you in a field,” Mooser told me, “and you just do what you want to do in that field.” Quick cuts were seen as violent and jarring when film was new, too. We will get used to VR cuts just as we got used to film cuts. It may take a few generations; right now VR is still a novelty.

stcredzero 10y ago
We will get used to VR cuts just as we got used to film cuts. I don't think that the "cut" automatically applies to VR. Film is fundamentally more indirectly immersive. You are looking through a window into another world, and the immersion is also largely through involvement via plot/characters/interest. VR will also (hopefully) have this, but the jump up in immediacy from film is like the one film has from books. Instead of a "cut" I think other tools and vocabulary will arise that are much more interactive. People like looking through a window into another world. I don't think slaving your POV to the level where it's strapped to your head is fundamentally viable. Looking through the magic window of cinema is an active choice to delve into that POV, moment by moment -- for you can always close your eyes or look away in an instant. With VR, it's more like you have the choice the moment you strap on the goggles, you give it up for the experience, then have the "safe word" of being able to take the goggles off. Many more people will like looking at stuff than they will like being strapped to it.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Day 1 Vive owner. It really isn't a big deal. Immersion gets overplayed a lot in the click-baity tech press. Sure it feels 'real' but about 3-4 steps removed from reality and where traditional 2D gaming is 5-6 steps away from reality. We are nowhere near anything that be can considered 0-2 steps from reality. There will always be an uncanny valley effect here and a sense of falseness. Humans aren't that easily fooled, unfortunately. My Vive had performance issues where my background environment would randomly pop-up during games. It was kinda annoying the first time, but is no big deal. Sharp cuts are pretty meaningless. This stuff isn't exactly the Matrix. You're not going to be in constant amazement or think you're in some new reality with a new body. It still a screen pasted to your face and your mind knows this the whole time.

stcredzero 10y ago

I think some Steve Jobs-ian thinking about the experience as a whole is called for at this point. VR/AR equipment needs to be friendly to the social experience and to social experiences, otherwise it's going to be out-competed through network effects by other equipment that has an advantage there. Current VR "room-scale" equipment seems to be optimal for 1) god-like player experiences, where you can survey a world, teleport within it, and command/change/tinker/destroy what's within it or 2) the highly immersed "stage." By "stage" I literally mean it's like you are standing on a stage. It's about the same amount of space, and the immersive feeling is very much like being on the set of a movie or show.

crooked-v 10y ago
I personally think the things that have the biggest potential in VR are games like Tabletop Simulator, where both the game itself and the context of "being with other people playing a game" are part of the experience.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Being at the same table with others playing a tabletop game is like being gods in a competitive pantheon playing with a world. I think we're essentially talking about the same "thing" -- it's just that our culture's level of understanding of it is still nascent. Most of our experience of this thing is through tabletop games. Now, we are just getting into the possibilities of VR for the "thing."
  - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
    A multiplayer Populous is what I am thinking.
- jsemrau 10y ago
  Wouldn't that be more of an AR experience? Similar to the game in the original Star Wars on board the Falcon?
  - 10y ago

Animats 10y ago

Those reports of the past describe one-off location-based entertainment systems which didn't scale, and novelty devices which didn't last. That may be the future of VR headsets.