4 ms·

I'm still waiting for VR pixel density to get high enough to have an actually 3D window manager. No more buying monitors, just buy one headset and I'm done.

diggan 8y ago
Is there any modern prototypes/demos/products doing a code explorer/editor in a VR environment? The vision of 360 navigation and lots of screen space, with added Z depth, is very enticing, but have yet to found anything in this direction.
- jerf 8y ago
  I recall some tentative stabs at it, but I think the hardware's unreadiness really puts a damper on development efforts. There isn't much point jumping out years in advance, with the way display managers have gone over the past decade it's pretty much a trivial problem now. (Or at least, trivial as such problems go. Still a lot of coding and I'm sure a lot of fresh new corner cases, but nothing fundamentally unknown or impossible.) We know that if the hardware was there, we could create such a desktop environment now. Anything you did now would run the risk of being completely obsolete before the hardware got there.
  - mncharity 8y ago
    > the hardware's unreadiness really puts a damper on development efforts And regrettably it means that now, when COTS hardware components are arguably sufficient for HMDs to start competing with screens, there's no code, no widespread perception of need, and thus no clear market to target. And thus no hardware for sale. Bootstrap deadlock. Given the effect Minority Report's UI footage seemed to have on popular imagination, perhaps it might be helpful to have some nice demos? So say software devs can have a "I want that!" moment. And industry can have a "oh, well that, that we can build for you now" head-out-of- err, heads-up moment. Sent from my Lenovo Explorer WMR HMD running on an old laptop's integrated graphics. Simple custom stack. (But only briefly, so I could say that.)
    - jerf 8y ago
      "Given the effect Minority Report's UI footage seemed to have on popular imagination, perhaps it might be helpful to have some nice demos?" Well, I think that might be a more minor contributor to the problem, but definitely a contributor. The Minority Report interface is utter garbage and I seriously doubt anything we build is going to look like that in the end. Vague gestures that even strong AI is unlikely to be able to correctly determine the target for reliably, arms held in positions that are completely impossible to be held in for any period of time, the entire "interface" is a usability nightmare. Screens far more separated than they should be... just because I can spread my workspace out over 210 degrees doesn't mean that's actually going to be a good idea. But it's not as cool if you have anything conventional in it. I'm playing the recent Switch The World Ends With You re-release. It has a mode where you nominally point the controller at the screen to control a cursor. But there's no optical component to it; it just centers when you hit a button and uses the accelerometer. So of course I don't sit there like a dope trying to point at the screen. The controller just sits in my hand where ever it is comfortable, and I twitch in the appropriate manner. It may be "pointed" 60 degrees off the actual screen, but it works fine. I have some similar stories for the Wii, where I still may have had to point the remote at the screen, but I certainly didn't play the games like the commercials. I played them in a much less awesome manner... but a much more comfortable one. The first Wii Golf was the funniest... eventually I settled on holding the remote pointing straight up, and wiggling it back and then forward again for my stroke. It was not exactly a realistic interpretation of how one swings a golf club. Exquisite control compared to trying to do it the "right" way, though. The second Wii Golf got smart enough that didn't work anymore. What's a real pity is that there probably is a really cool demo waiting for this. It just involves thinking a bit more creatively.
      - mncharity 8y ago
        I'm sorry, I was unclear. I agree the Minority Report UI was poor. But seeing it, seemed to get people talking. People who normally wouldn't think about possibilities for future UIs. It seemed to fire imagination, to create anticipation. It had random TV news people talking about UI design. My impression is an "Iron Man" UI was similar. So UI demos, at least in blockbuster movies, can create popular interest. There currently seems an absence of anticipation for VR/AR "office work" screen-replacement UIs. And there is currently a failure to market VR hardware with tradeoffs made with that focus, rather than for gaming. I was speculating that we might get such hardware sooner, by creating a perception of a market worth attending to, by increasing popular anticipation, by making demos. Because waiting to get it as a side-effect of gaming tech has already cost a year or few, and seems likely to cost more than a couple more. I'd rather not lose a decade unnecessarily waiting. I can't spare one, and it's not clear society can either. Regards controllers, oh yes. Remember skeuomorphic design for user interfaces? Things should look like their physical counterparts? A calendar app should have a worn leather border? To ease on-boarding of all the new users not yet trained on phones? I suggest VR is in its skeuomorphic design phase. In contrast, my own interest is in expert UIs for all-day every-day use. So as you say, they are minimum-viable-twitch ergonomics. And any resemblance to the physical world, with its many and unmotivated constraints, is a design smell. But people are focused on gaming, training, CAD, and tours, and Reality is even part of the name. While aphysical UIs seem clearly the way to go, for much non-novice use.
- dharma1 8y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/HMDprogramming https://www.reddit.com/r/HMDprogramming Doesn't really compete with a regular keyboard+monitor in terms of ergonomics/eye health/fatigue/input methods right now. Maybe in 5 years
- crazyloglad 8y ago
  you have a tiling++ WM in 3D/VR. https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr-desktop/ https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr...
Memosyne 8y ago
On a similar note, I'm looking forward to innovations relating to keyboard/mouse input. Without the restriction of a monitor, various advancements could be made to improve how information is entered.
tapoxi 8y ago
Motorcar is a cool demo of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgtba_GpG-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgtba_GpG-U I think we may actually be there with the Vive Pro, but that's around $1000 for the HMD + tracking gear alone, and I can imagine that using a keyboard isn't going to be easy, even for touch typists.
- mncharity 8y ago
  >> No more buying monitors > I think we may actually be there with the Vive Pro Perhaps if ones work environment is green terminals. I once heard rumor of an ops person being happy. 1600px sounds like a lot. But Vive's PenTile subpixel layout means only green is full resolution. And at least with Vive and WMR lenses, there's only a small region a few hundred pixels across where pixels aren't blurred together. Non-PenTile (non-Odyssey) WMR gets you color and subpixel rendering. But most devs will likely be unhappy peering through a VGA portal, even if you minimize head sloshing by remapping it. So basically no, current HMDs are far from competitive with screens. With better lenses and a larger panel, maybe. But the market seems mistakenly blocked on a misconception of "need immersion -> need high fps -> need next-gen GPU and game/cad support". Not "you can run existing HMDs on old laptop integrated graphics" (I do), and at least some people will buy an HMD with 4K panels, and even use them with laptop low-end integrated graphics, as soon as someone gets around to selling them. Perhaps even with the same blurry lenses. Desktop-ish screen replacement is very different than gaming. Gaming has lots of severe constraints. Which was nice for pushing some tech progress, but now it's causing a stall.

diggan 8y ago

Is there any modern prototypes/demos/products doing a code explorer/editor in a VR environment? The vision of 360 navigation and lots of screen space, with added Z depth, is very enticing, but have yet to found anything in this direction.

jerf 8y ago
I recall some tentative stabs at it, but I think the hardware's unreadiness really puts a damper on development efforts. There isn't much point jumping out years in advance, with the way display managers have gone over the past decade it's pretty much a trivial problem now. (Or at least, trivial as such problems go. Still a lot of coding and I'm sure a lot of fresh new corner cases, but nothing fundamentally unknown or impossible.) We know that if the hardware was there, we could create such a desktop environment now. Anything you did now would run the risk of being completely obsolete before the hardware got there.
- mncharity 8y ago
  > the hardware's unreadiness really puts a damper on development efforts And regrettably it means that now, when COTS hardware components are arguably sufficient for HMDs to start competing with screens, there's no code, no widespread perception of need, and thus no clear market to target. And thus no hardware for sale. Bootstrap deadlock. Given the effect Minority Report's UI footage seemed to have on popular imagination, perhaps it might be helpful to have some nice demos? So say software devs can have a "I want that!" moment. And industry can have a "oh, well that, that we can build for you now" head-out-of- err, heads-up moment. Sent from my Lenovo Explorer WMR HMD running on an old laptop's integrated graphics. Simple custom stack. (But only briefly, so I could say that.)
  - jerf 8y ago
    "Given the effect Minority Report's UI footage seemed to have on popular imagination, perhaps it might be helpful to have some nice demos?" Well, I think that might be a more minor contributor to the problem, but definitely a contributor. The Minority Report interface is utter garbage and I seriously doubt anything we build is going to look like that in the end. Vague gestures that even strong AI is unlikely to be able to correctly determine the target for reliably, arms held in positions that are completely impossible to be held in for any period of time, the entire "interface" is a usability nightmare. Screens far more separated than they should be... just because I can spread my workspace out over 210 degrees doesn't mean that's actually going to be a good idea. But it's not as cool if you have anything conventional in it. I'm playing the recent Switch The World Ends With You re-release. It has a mode where you nominally point the controller at the screen to control a cursor. But there's no optical component to it; it just centers when you hit a button and uses the accelerometer. So of course I don't sit there like a dope trying to point at the screen. The controller just sits in my hand where ever it is comfortable, and I twitch in the appropriate manner. It may be "pointed" 60 degrees off the actual screen, but it works fine. I have some similar stories for the Wii, where I still may have had to point the remote at the screen, but I certainly didn't play the games like the commercials. I played them in a much less awesome manner... but a much more comfortable one. The first Wii Golf was the funniest... eventually I settled on holding the remote pointing straight up, and wiggling it back and then forward again for my stroke. It was not exactly a realistic interpretation of how one swings a golf club. Exquisite control compared to trying to do it the "right" way, though. The second Wii Golf got smart enough that didn't work anymore. What's a real pity is that there probably is a really cool demo waiting for this. It just involves thinking a bit more creatively.
    - mncharity 8y ago
      I'm sorry, I was unclear. I agree the Minority Report UI was poor. But seeing it, seemed to get people talking. People who normally wouldn't think about possibilities for future UIs. It seemed to fire imagination, to create anticipation. It had random TV news people talking about UI design. My impression is an "Iron Man" UI was similar. So UI demos, at least in blockbuster movies, can create popular interest. There currently seems an absence of anticipation for VR/AR "office work" screen-replacement UIs. And there is currently a failure to market VR hardware with tradeoffs made with that focus, rather than for gaming. I was speculating that we might get such hardware sooner, by creating a perception of a market worth attending to, by increasing popular anticipation, by making demos. Because waiting to get it as a side-effect of gaming tech has already cost a year or few, and seems likely to cost more than a couple more. I'd rather not lose a decade unnecessarily waiting. I can't spare one, and it's not clear society can either. Regards controllers, oh yes. Remember skeuomorphic design for user interfaces? Things should look like their physical counterparts? A calendar app should have a worn leather border? To ease on-boarding of all the new users not yet trained on phones? I suggest VR is in its skeuomorphic design phase. In contrast, my own interest is in expert UIs for all-day every-day use. So as you say, they are minimum-viable-twitch ergonomics. And any resemblance to the physical world, with its many and unmotivated constraints, is a design smell. But people are focused on gaming, training, CAD, and tours, and Reality is even part of the name. While aphysical UIs seem clearly the way to go, for much non-novice use.
dharma1 8y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/HMDprogramming https://www.reddit.com/r/HMDprogramming Doesn't really compete with a regular keyboard+monitor in terms of ergonomics/eye health/fatigue/input methods right now. Maybe in 5 years
crazyloglad 8y ago
you have a tiling++ WM in 3D/VR. https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr-desktop/ https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr...

Memosyne 8y ago

On a similar note, I'm looking forward to innovations relating to keyboard/mouse input. Without the restriction of a monitor, various advancements could be made to improve how information is entered.

tapoxi 8y ago

Motorcar is a cool demo of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgtba_GpG-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgtba_GpG-U I think we may actually be there with the Vive Pro, but that's around $1000 for the HMD + tracking gear alone, and I can imagine that using a keyboard isn't going to be easy, even for touch typists.

mncharity 8y ago
>> No more buying monitors > I think we may actually be there with the Vive Pro Perhaps if ones work environment is green terminals. I once heard rumor of an ops person being happy. 1600px sounds like a lot. But Vive's PenTile subpixel layout means only green is full resolution. And at least with Vive and WMR lenses, there's only a small region a few hundred pixels across where pixels aren't blurred together. Non-PenTile (non-Odyssey) WMR gets you color and subpixel rendering. But most devs will likely be unhappy peering through a VGA portal, even if you minimize head sloshing by remapping it. So basically no, current HMDs are far from competitive with screens. With better lenses and a larger panel, maybe. But the market seems mistakenly blocked on a misconception of "need immersion -> need high fps -> need next-gen GPU and game/cad support". Not "you can run existing HMDs on old laptop integrated graphics" (I do), and at least some people will buy an HMD with 4K panels, and even use them with laptop low-end integrated graphics, as soon as someone gets around to selling them. Perhaps even with the same blurry lenses. Desktop-ish screen replacement is very different than gaming. Gaming has lots of severe constraints. Which was nice for pushing some tech progress, but now it's causing a stall.