5 ms·

One thing that I haven't seen discussed, but I think is something that may be a factor in the site selection, is the future of online presence. Specifically, I

One thing that I haven't seen discussed, but I think is something that may be a factor in the site selection, is the future of online presence. Specifically, I think it's plausible that advancements in VR over the next 20 years will drastically enhance the ability of people to work remotely; I believe that was one of the justifications provided by Facebook for their purchase of Oculus, and may also be one of the reasons behind Microsoft's push into "Mixed Reality". A major factor for housing desirability currently is its physical proximity to jobs (SF, NYC, etc.); this could be a way to hedge a bet against that trend. And at $80M, it's really not a huge investment in the grand scheme of things. The biggest question is if VR can bridge the "uncanny valley" of video chat and other current technologies, and make virtual interaction/communication as seamless as in-person communication (or at least, within some acceptable margin). If you're going to be sitting in what's essentially an air-conditioned VR cocoon for 8-10 hours a day, it probably doesn't matter where that's located, provided that the infrastructure is good. Since infrastructure seems to be one of the stated priorities, it could serve as a prototype for a "virtual outpost".

matt4077 9y ago
One thing that I haven't seen discussed, but I think is something that may be a factor in your comment is that you have lost all that is human within you. Why would we need prototypes for a "virtual outpost"? If you want to connect your spine to your company's backbone, fine. But you can do that anywhere, right? That's the point, isn't it? Then why do it in the middle of the desert? We already have these "virtual outposts". They're called "city". Or "town". It's where people "live" and have fun, "with some acceptable margin".
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  >Then why do it in the middle of the desert? Because land in the desert is cheap. > They're called "city". Or "town". It's where people "live" and have fun, "with some acceptable margin". Some people hate "cities" and don't think being forced to be in one is "living" or any kind of "fun".
  - matt4077 9y ago
    I really want to meet this intersection of people that "hate cities", yet hear about a Bill Gates venture in the Arizona desert with "80,000 residential units" and think: "Yep, that's me!" Or, more broadly, my point to OP was: assuming we have perfect telecommuting and the era of the city is coming to an end: Why build a city??
    - yazr 9y ago
      I am not taking sides here. But maybe a university-campus-size city is beneficial for human interaction and symbiosis. And a 1M people metropolis with an abused under-class , squeezed middle-class and entrench NIMBY land owners is not ?!
    - mathgeek 9y ago
      That intersection may be the same people who are attracted to anything new that promises something different from what we currently do.
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      Because existing cities are poorly designed and expensive to refurbish.
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      The proposed Gates development has about 1/3 acre per residential unit. That's a lot closer to "suburb" than the "cities" you were talking about.
    - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
      Many people want to be near other people, restaurants, stores, etc. If I could live anywhere I want, I wouldn't live in cramped, overpriced housing clustered around major employers, but I wouldn't live in the wilderness either.
- rokhayakebe 9y ago
  If you build your own city you "may" be able to have regulations allowing you to do things you couldn't do in, say, LA or SF or anywhere else.
  - piyush_soni 9y ago
    You can't go beyond the state laws anyway, so I don't think that would help much.
    - lttlrck 9y ago
      Not having to fight NIMBY is a huge advantage.
    - closeparen 9y ago
      Zoning isn’t state law.
hyperpallium 9y ago
The VR problem is latency. We should be able to get sense/computation/display down to the 10-15ms required, but distance introduces additional latency, due to c. If a ns is roughly a foot, 15ms is 15000 feet, gives a theoretical maximum diameter (not radius) for remote "city limits".
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  > The VR problem is latency. We should be able to get sense/computation/display down to the 10-15ms required, but distance introduces additional latency, due to c. If a ns is roughly a foot, 15ms is 15000 feet, gives a theoretical maximum diameter (not radius) for remote "city limits". Wow, the VR problem is latency? Have you ever had a real-time conversation with anyone outside your hemisphere? If 15ms is 15,000 feet then 1/0.015 = 66 times that should be the speed of light, i.e. 300,000 km/s. Does that (66 x 15,000 ft = 300,000 km) seem even vaguely in the right ballpark to you? You're off by a factor of 1000. It's 15 microseconds, not milliseconds. And incidentally, this might be a good excuse to go travel outside the country and meet people from elsewhere on the planet... you never know what you might learn about the world around you.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    His math is way off, but the point still stands. The additional lag due to distance is noticeable above 5.000 km or so. Maybe it's good enough - but in VR, it might be jarring.
    - abetusk 9y ago
      For context, the diameter of the earth is 12,742 km. So it would take roughly 30ms to make a round trip. Assuming that a signal need only traverse half the diameter as you can take the shortest arc, you get down to ~6371km which brings you back down in the range of 15ms. I assume the 15ms was chosen for the 60fps that VR needs to run at to be considered reasonable. If so, having a local machine handle redraws would be reasonable and requiring a 30fps update on all "agents" and other world elements would probably be pretty unnoticeable by most people.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
> The biggest question is if VR can bridge the "uncanny valley" of video chat and other current technologies If they hit uncanny valley they’ve already put too much realism in. Realism isn’t the issue... video chat fully photorealistic already and it doesn’t work. The issue is conversational cues. You need to be able to see where other people are looking. You need to be able to hear their breath and the non-word mouth sounds they make. You need to see gestures and posture changes. And you need to be able to see them for every person in the meeting simultaneously in 3D space. These are all well documented tells that we need in order to carry on a group conversation. The science on this subject is thoroughly studied. Getting an MVP in place doesn’t require photo realism. It probably does require full body tracking, more like Leap motion than Oculus Touch. It probably does require mics and headphones that are calibrated together and it probably does require specifically tuned audio codecs. It probably requires eye and face tracking equivalent to what Apple has on the iPhone X. But I doubt the uncanny valley will come into play. Animal heads like Apple already has might already be enough. None of the announced headsets will be able to do VR conferencing well, but I doubt we’re more than 5 years away from one that can. It’s mostly an integration problem at this point. With a lot of iterative design until people are like “yeah, that was a comfortable conversation! Weird but comfortable.”

matt4077 9y ago

One thing that I haven't seen discussed, but I think is something that may be a factor in your comment is that you have lost all that is human within you. Why would we need prototypes for a "virtual outpost"? If you want to connect your spine to your company's backbone, fine. But you can do that anywhere, right? That's the point, isn't it? Then why do it in the middle of the desert? We already have these "virtual outposts". They're called "city". Or "town". It's where people "live" and have fun, "with some acceptable margin".

Turing_Machine 9y ago
>Then why do it in the middle of the desert? Because land in the desert is cheap. > They're called "city". Or "town". It's where people "live" and have fun, "with some acceptable margin". Some people hate "cities" and don't think being forced to be in one is "living" or any kind of "fun".
- matt4077 9y ago
  I really want to meet this intersection of people that "hate cities", yet hear about a Bill Gates venture in the Arizona desert with "80,000 residential units" and think: "Yep, that's me!" Or, more broadly, my point to OP was: assuming we have perfect telecommuting and the era of the city is coming to an end: Why build a city??
  - yazr 9y ago
    I am not taking sides here. But maybe a university-campus-size city is beneficial for human interaction and symbiosis. And a 1M people metropolis with an abused under-class , squeezed middle-class and entrench NIMBY land owners is not ?!
  - mathgeek 9y ago
    That intersection may be the same people who are attracted to anything new that promises something different from what we currently do.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Because existing cities are poorly designed and expensive to refurbish.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    The proposed Gates development has about 1/3 acre per residential unit. That's a lot closer to "suburb" than the "cities" you were talking about.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    Many people want to be near other people, restaurants, stores, etc. If I could live anywhere I want, I wouldn't live in cramped, overpriced housing clustered around major employers, but I wouldn't live in the wilderness either.
rokhayakebe 9y ago
If you build your own city you "may" be able to have regulations allowing you to do things you couldn't do in, say, LA or SF or anywhere else.
- piyush_soni 9y ago
  You can't go beyond the state laws anyway, so I don't think that would help much.
  - lttlrck 9y ago
    Not having to fight NIMBY is a huge advantage.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Zoning isn’t state law.

hyperpallium 9y ago

The VR problem is latency. We should be able to get sense/computation/display down to the 10-15ms required, but distance introduces additional latency, due to c. If a ns is roughly a foot, 15ms is 15000 feet, gives a theoretical maximum diameter (not radius) for remote "city limits".

throwaway613834 9y ago
> The VR problem is latency. We should be able to get sense/computation/display down to the 10-15ms required, but distance introduces additional latency, due to c. If a ns is roughly a foot, 15ms is 15000 feet, gives a theoretical maximum diameter (not radius) for remote "city limits". Wow, the VR problem is latency? Have you ever had a real-time conversation with anyone outside your hemisphere? If 15ms is 15,000 feet then 1/0.015 = 66 times that should be the speed of light, i.e. 300,000 km/s. Does that (66 x 15,000 ft = 300,000 km) seem even vaguely in the right ballpark to you? You're off by a factor of 1000. It's 15 microseconds, not milliseconds. And incidentally, this might be a good excuse to go travel outside the country and meet people from elsewhere on the planet... you never know what you might learn about the world around you.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  His math is way off, but the point still stands. The additional lag due to distance is noticeable above 5.000 km or so. Maybe it's good enough - but in VR, it might be jarring.
  - abetusk 9y ago
    For context, the diameter of the earth is 12,742 km. So it would take roughly 30ms to make a round trip. Assuming that a signal need only traverse half the diameter as you can take the shortest arc, you get down to ~6371km which brings you back down in the range of 15ms. I assume the 15ms was chosen for the 60fps that VR needs to run at to be considered reasonable. If so, having a local machine handle redraws would be reasonable and requiring a 30fps update on all "agents" and other world elements would probably be pretty unnoticeable by most people.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

> The biggest question is if VR can bridge the "uncanny valley" of video chat and other current technologies If they hit uncanny valley they’ve already put too much realism in. Realism isn’t the issue... video chat fully photorealistic already and it doesn’t work. The issue is conversational cues. You need to be able to see where other people are looking. You need to be able to hear their breath and the non-word mouth sounds they make. You need to see gestures and posture changes. And you need to be able to see them for every person in the meeting simultaneously in 3D space. These are all well documented tells that we need in order to carry on a group conversation. The science on this subject is thoroughly studied. Getting an MVP in place doesn’t require photo realism. It probably does require full body tracking, more like Leap motion than Oculus Touch. It probably does require mics and headphones that are calibrated together and it probably does require specifically tuned audio codecs. It probably requires eye and face tracking equivalent to what Apple has on the iPhone X. But I doubt the uncanny valley will come into play. Animal heads like Apple already has might already be enough. None of the announced headsets will be able to do VR conferencing well, but I doubt we’re more than 5 years away from one that can. It’s mostly an integration problem at this point. With a lot of iterative design until people are like “yeah, that was a comfortable conversation! Weird but comfortable.”