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The hardware companies investing in VR understand that this is the beginning of a new market, and success will take a long time (e.g., see Zuckerberg's statemen

by agar 9y ago

The hardware companies investing in VR understand that this is the beginning of a new market, and success will take a long time (e.g., see Zuckerberg's statements during investor calls). They also recognize that initial efforts like today's headsets are required V1's to begin the technical evolution that will result in a mass-market product. To look at today's initial products and call the industry dead, or disappointing, is like looking at an MVP app release and deciding that an entire market does not exist because the initial solution is not perfect. This type of contrarianism is seductive, and often results in many clicks for the media and the reinforcement of curmudgeonly opinions by those with unrealistic expectations for short-term change (and often who underestimate long-term impacts). But it's important to evaluate today's VR with the same eyes as when looking at an MVP: does it meet its goals? Does it provide value? Does it show potential if developed further? Is there a product-market fit? The answer to all of the above is a resounding "yes." Try it if you haven't. VR and AR have the potential to be truly revolutionary technologies. Yes, there is some distance to the goal, but it's eminently achievable - if the tech is not killed off by mis-set expectations, tribalism, paranoia, pessimism, and negativity.

tptacek 9y ago
The problem with this rebuttal is there's no argument you can't apply it to. Try making it falsifiable. The first Rift Dev Kits landed in 2013. At what point can we look at uptake of these products and conclude that they're not catching on? I have no trouble with the argument that 2017 is too early. But what year won't be too early? 2020? As for investors, it's important to remember that when you're swinging at a pitch, it's no more productive to swing too early than to swing too late. They're both strikes.
- DenisM 9y ago
  What about pocketable computers? They have been envisioned decades before they became possible and then usable. It wouldn't have served any purpose to have designated an expiry data on the whole idea back in seventies. VR may take 4 year or 40 years to mature, or it may never take off at all, it's not something we can judge either way.
  - vhold 9y ago
    I think that's a good comparison. The difference between the first portable computers and what we have today is massive. If AR/VR technologies evolve that way then what we'll have 30 years from now will be almost totally unrecognizable. It may not even involve a headset, or even glasses.
- arielweisberg 9y ago
  The dev kits were dev kits. For developers. Just because you could go onto a web site and buy them doesn't mean that VR was released. I think we can conclude it's not going to catch on once they have delivered on the promise of VR and then the market goes meh. The Rift and Vive (the only VR worth anything) are both very far towards the early adopter side of the spectrum and I think everything follows from that. They are expensive, difficult to set up and keep working, and have expensive dependencies. Prototype hardware already exists that shows all those problems are tractable. So to me the question is only does VR run out of money before it develops a viable product. Sure there is some small question of what the market will think of what VR has to offer, but when you offer it to people for "free" the reaction is uniformly positive. The only barrier is cost and convenience and whether those lines intersect with the cost to produce VR in time (or ever). I think those lines will intersect as you can do it on hardware that is O(mobile phone) in cost. Just not actual mobile phones. Those are trash for VR. I think it's really unlikely that the in four years the market will be so small as to support zero VR. I think it's comparable to the first iPhone which was really not that great. I know I will use and keep buying VR displays forever even if they freeze at the current level of technology. Even when someone is offering me 16k OLED 2d displays with 240hz refresh rates. There is no substitute for a fully tracked POV and proper depth perception.
  - toddmorey 9y ago
    The first iPhone was expensive and limited, but it inarguably caught fire with a group way bigger than early adopters. No comparison. They sold 1 million in 74 days.
    - EthanHeilman 9y ago
      The iPhone was the point at which the mobile computer finally got traction after 30+ years of prototypes and product sold to early adopters (palm pilot, windows ce, danger hiptop, etc...). Furthermore the iPhone was significantly cheaper than a VR setup is today and the iPhone was heavily subsidized.
  - petra 9y ago
    What type of hardware enables VR at a similar cost to a phone?
- agar 9y ago
  We have a gen 1 technology that you strap on your face and you literally feel like you're somewhere else. You look down and see your hands; glance across the table and see, and talk to, and interact with, another person that's really across the globe; you can build a world and inhabit it. And we're discussing when to call it a failure. On a site called Hacker News. OK. But that's kind of my point - people can be so focused on "calling failure" that they miss the incredibly transformative development that's right in front of them. Regarding a "timeline for calling failure" - who knows? Sometimes success comes to the sole believer who labors on long after everyone else abandoned hope. But how often in tech is something truly a failure? Was AI a failure in the 60's? It brought us LISP and defined the space. The 80's? It brought important foundational work to CNNs. The 90's? Would we be here without Deep Blue? Was mobile a failure with WAP? Palm? Newton? Was Internet 1.0 a failure when the bubble burst in 2000? All were important steps that got us to our ubiquitously interconnected, AI-enabled, device-driven present. So why the focus on identifying something as a failure, or tagging the moment that "they're not catching on"? How are you defining success? Adoption? If so, based on what metric - and at what ramp - and based on whose expectations? Investment success? For whom? Even if this generation of VR fails to gain traction, I truly believe it will be viewed as just one more step towards the inevitable. It's that good. But my point is that such failure will be due more to social issues than technical ones.
  - droopyEyelids 9y ago
    Do you have any VR gear? How often would you honestly say you use it?
    - escherize 9y ago
      Do you have a fliphone? How often would you honestly say you check the weather with it?
      - coldtea 9y ago
        Not really a counter-argument. Flip-flops had tons of adoption (literally billions of people used them) when they were the state of the art.
- jgh 9y ago
  2003 is the year of Linux desktop!
- gfodor 9y ago
  Here are the qualities (IMHO) that will need to be met for a consumer grade VR device to become widely successful: - It needs to be at a price point akin to a tablet computer - It needs to be able to run for more than an hour without overheating - It needs full 6dof head tracking and ideally 6dof controller tracking with motion to photon latency comparable to vive/rift - It needs to be comfortable to wear for an hour for most people - It needs to deliver a graphical experience on par with something like a PS2 or PS3 - It needs to be portable and wireless so it can be passed around and shown off to others easily - Most importantly, it needs to be simple to set up and use. Ie, no external computer, no wires, no mounting of sensors on walls, no need to plug or unplug devices before/after use, etc. No such device exists on the market today but many of them will exist soon. Choose any one VR device out there today and it will meet a subset of these but not all of them. If devices meeting these specs don't have some form of mainstream appeal a year of the first release then I'll be revisiting my assumptions about VR. (I have been working in VR for the last 3 years)
- posterboy 9y ago
  I've seen enough positive comments by users to believe it has potential for gaming, even if I have not convinced myself. Half the comments only were by prospective devs.
gcb0 9y ago
no matter how well you improve the headset, it will still be a headset. it is not like a futuristic product that for now is too big or battery doesn't last, etc. it is by definition something nobody wants because it is exclusive, in the sense that only one person at a time can experience it and be completely cut off from the surroundings. and there is no way to solve that even in infinite interactions. it migth work for teenager gamers and porn. who knows. but definitely will never see a huge adoption because it is inherently anti-social.
- yorwba 9y ago
  The same could be said about mobile phones. Take public transport and look around. Odds are most everyone is staring at their phone screen. Antisocial technology. You think if they could strap on a headset, ignore the strangers around them, and be in a virtual room together with their friends, they wouldn't do it? If quality VR were available at a price point similar to a phone, comfortable to wear for hours at a time, I have no doubt many people would get one. If it also comes with quality AR, most will probably never take them off.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    > Odds are most everyone is staring at their phone screen. Antisocial technology. Except many of these people are using their phones to connect with other people. Literally the opposite of "antisocial technology".
    - chimprich 9y ago
      There's no reason why VR experiences shouldn't be social inside VR. Many of the available games are.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      That was kind of my point. Phones and VR are anti-social in that they allow you to ignore your current surroundings; but they are also pro-social in that they allow you to virtually interact with other people. That's why I believe VR will become mainstream as soon as the technical challenges are solved, just like phones.
coldtea 9y ago
>To look at today's initial products and call the industry dead, or disappointing, is like looking at an MVP app release and deciding that an entire market does not exist because the initial solution is not perfect. Maybe, but most MVPs also don't go anywhere, and lots of markets are fads and die. The question is why this is different for VR? (And I've lived the previous VR fad, when it was going to revolutionize stuff back in early/mid 90s. What we have left from that era is the Lawnmower Man).
empath75 9y ago
I've said all along that vr is closer to soundcards and 3D video cards than a new gaming platform. They're going to be toys for the rich and hobbyists until pcs just start being shipped with vr headsets out of the box.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > I've said all along that vr is closer to soundcards and 3D video cards than a new gaming platform. They're going to be toys for the rich and hobbyists Lots of hobbyists (or rather say: gamers) were keen on getting a decent soundcard or 3D acceleration card - until it became very mainstream.

by agar 9y ago

tptacek 9y ago

The problem with this rebuttal is there's no argument you can't apply it to. Try making it falsifiable. The first Rift Dev Kits landed in 2013. At what point can we look at uptake of these products and conclude that they're not catching on? I have no trouble with the argument that 2017 is too early. But what year won't be too early? 2020? As for investors, it's important to remember that when you're swinging at a pitch, it's no more productive to swing too early than to swing too late. They're both strikes.

DenisM 9y ago
What about pocketable computers? They have been envisioned decades before they became possible and then usable. It wouldn't have served any purpose to have designated an expiry data on the whole idea back in seventies. VR may take 4 year or 40 years to mature, or it may never take off at all, it's not something we can judge either way.
- vhold 9y ago
  I think that's a good comparison. The difference between the first portable computers and what we have today is massive. If AR/VR technologies evolve that way then what we'll have 30 years from now will be almost totally unrecognizable. It may not even involve a headset, or even glasses.
arielweisberg 9y ago
The dev kits were dev kits. For developers. Just because you could go onto a web site and buy them doesn't mean that VR was released. I think we can conclude it's not going to catch on once they have delivered on the promise of VR and then the market goes meh. The Rift and Vive (the only VR worth anything) are both very far towards the early adopter side of the spectrum and I think everything follows from that. They are expensive, difficult to set up and keep working, and have expensive dependencies. Prototype hardware already exists that shows all those problems are tractable. So to me the question is only does VR run out of money before it develops a viable product. Sure there is some small question of what the market will think of what VR has to offer, but when you offer it to people for "free" the reaction is uniformly positive. The only barrier is cost and convenience and whether those lines intersect with the cost to produce VR in time (or ever). I think those lines will intersect as you can do it on hardware that is O(mobile phone) in cost. Just not actual mobile phones. Those are trash for VR. I think it's really unlikely that the in four years the market will be so small as to support zero VR. I think it's comparable to the first iPhone which was really not that great. I know I will use and keep buying VR displays forever even if they freeze at the current level of technology. Even when someone is offering me 16k OLED 2d displays with 240hz refresh rates. There is no substitute for a fully tracked POV and proper depth perception.
- toddmorey 9y ago
  The first iPhone was expensive and limited, but it inarguably caught fire with a group way bigger than early adopters. No comparison. They sold 1 million in 74 days.
  - EthanHeilman 9y ago
    The iPhone was the point at which the mobile computer finally got traction after 30+ years of prototypes and product sold to early adopters (palm pilot, windows ce, danger hiptop, etc...). Furthermore the iPhone was significantly cheaper than a VR setup is today and the iPhone was heavily subsidized.
- petra 9y ago
  What type of hardware enables VR at a similar cost to a phone?
agar 9y ago
We have a gen 1 technology that you strap on your face and you literally feel like you're somewhere else. You look down and see your hands; glance across the table and see, and talk to, and interact with, another person that's really across the globe; you can build a world and inhabit it. And we're discussing when to call it a failure. On a site called Hacker News. OK. But that's kind of my point - people can be so focused on "calling failure" that they miss the incredibly transformative development that's right in front of them. Regarding a "timeline for calling failure" - who knows? Sometimes success comes to the sole believer who labors on long after everyone else abandoned hope. But how often in tech is something truly a failure? Was AI a failure in the 60's? It brought us LISP and defined the space. The 80's? It brought important foundational work to CNNs. The 90's? Would we be here without Deep Blue? Was mobile a failure with WAP? Palm? Newton? Was Internet 1.0 a failure when the bubble burst in 2000? All were important steps that got us to our ubiquitously interconnected, AI-enabled, device-driven present. So why the focus on identifying something as a failure, or tagging the moment that "they're not catching on"? How are you defining success? Adoption? If so, based on what metric - and at what ramp - and based on whose expectations? Investment success? For whom? Even if this generation of VR fails to gain traction, I truly believe it will be viewed as just one more step towards the inevitable. It's that good. But my point is that such failure will be due more to social issues than technical ones.
- droopyEyelids 9y ago
  Do you have any VR gear? How often would you honestly say you use it?
  - escherize 9y ago
    Do you have a fliphone? How often would you honestly say you check the weather with it?
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Not really a counter-argument. Flip-flops had tons of adoption (literally billions of people used them) when they were the state of the art.
jgh 9y ago
2003 is the year of Linux desktop!
gfodor 9y ago
Here are the qualities (IMHO) that will need to be met for a consumer grade VR device to become widely successful: - It needs to be at a price point akin to a tablet computer - It needs to be able to run for more than an hour without overheating - It needs full 6dof head tracking and ideally 6dof controller tracking with motion to photon latency comparable to vive/rift - It needs to be comfortable to wear for an hour for most people - It needs to deliver a graphical experience on par with something like a PS2 or PS3 - It needs to be portable and wireless so it can be passed around and shown off to others easily - Most importantly, it needs to be simple to set up and use. Ie, no external computer, no wires, no mounting of sensors on walls, no need to plug or unplug devices before/after use, etc. No such device exists on the market today but many of them will exist soon. Choose any one VR device out there today and it will meet a subset of these but not all of them. If devices meeting these specs don't have some form of mainstream appeal a year of the first release then I'll be revisiting my assumptions about VR. (I have been working in VR for the last 3 years)
posterboy 9y ago
I've seen enough positive comments by users to believe it has potential for gaming, even if I have not convinced myself. Half the comments only were by prospective devs.

gcb0 9y ago

no matter how well you improve the headset, it will still be a headset. it is not like a futuristic product that for now is too big or battery doesn't last, etc. it is by definition something nobody wants because it is exclusive, in the sense that only one person at a time can experience it and be completely cut off from the surroundings. and there is no way to solve that even in infinite interactions. it migth work for teenager gamers and porn. who knows. but definitely will never see a huge adoption because it is inherently anti-social.

yorwba 9y ago
The same could be said about mobile phones. Take public transport and look around. Odds are most everyone is staring at their phone screen. Antisocial technology. You think if they could strap on a headset, ignore the strangers around them, and be in a virtual room together with their friends, they wouldn't do it? If quality VR were available at a price point similar to a phone, comfortable to wear for hours at a time, I have no doubt many people would get one. If it also comes with quality AR, most will probably never take them off.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  > Odds are most everyone is staring at their phone screen. Antisocial technology. Except many of these people are using their phones to connect with other people. Literally the opposite of "antisocial technology".
  - chimprich 9y ago
    There's no reason why VR experiences shouldn't be social inside VR. Many of the available games are.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    That was kind of my point. Phones and VR are anti-social in that they allow you to ignore your current surroundings; but they are also pro-social in that they allow you to virtually interact with other people. That's why I believe VR will become mainstream as soon as the technical challenges are solved, just like phones.

coldtea 9y ago

>To look at today's initial products and call the industry dead, or disappointing, is like looking at an MVP app release and deciding that an entire market does not exist because the initial solution is not perfect. Maybe, but most MVPs also don't go anywhere, and lots of markets are fads and die. The question is why this is different for VR? (And I've lived the previous VR fad, when it was going to revolutionize stuff back in early/mid 90s. What we have left from that era is the Lawnmower Man).

empath75 9y ago

I've said all along that vr is closer to soundcards and 3D video cards than a new gaming platform. They're going to be toys for the rich and hobbyists until pcs just start being shipped with vr headsets out of the box.

wolfgke 9y ago
> I've said all along that vr is closer to soundcards and 3D video cards than a new gaming platform. They're going to be toys for the rich and hobbyists Lots of hobbyists (or rather say: gamers) were keen on getting a decent soundcard or 3D acceleration card - until it became very mainstream.