8 ms·

VR technology is the ultimate escapist technology to be used as a platform for entertainment. It's just a matter of time before it replaces TV. I can't see why

VR technology is the ultimate escapist technology to be used as a platform for entertainment. It's just a matter of time before it replaces TV. I can't see why it wouldn't have a place in every home (like TV).

paulcole 8y ago
TV isn't a dedicated activity that gets 100% of my attention. When I have my TV on, I can still cook, flip through catalogs, look at my partner, write emails on my iPad, etc.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Even my grandparents can have a chat over the top of the boring part of a programme or eat their dinner whilst watching the news. Nothing sounds more tedious than having a conversation with somebody whose attention is being drawn by something that only one of us can see.
  - dhh2106 8y ago
    Couldn't the whole family enter the same VR environment? Why limit it to just yourself? Then you'd be free to chat over the top of the boring bits... I agree that replicating the full social context of TV will be difficult
    - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
      Because they could just share a screen in real reality?
      - zapzupnz 8y ago
        Indeed. Much less hassle, much less expense, many fewer tradeoffs, and much more social.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Iff they're in the same place. Try that with relatives living in three different places across the country.
  - kruczek 8y ago
    > somebody whose attention is being drawn by something that only one of us can see. Typically whatever is seen in VR is repliacted on the monitor, so it's not true that only one person in the room can see what's going on in VR.
- tomcam 8y ago
  Which is almost exactly what they said about radio when TV was new
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Well, they got that right. Missed other stuff about TV's appeal.
  - paulcole 8y ago
    Who is “they” and what was actually said?
- davidivadavid 8y ago
  At that point it's just background noise. But I'll grant you that. I think those shortcomings are just a matter of improving current VR technology to make it less invasive more than an absolute limitation of the medium.
- dmarcos 8y ago
  VR is a bit of a contrarian tech. It’s a tool for focus. It shuts down the noise. Some described it as the headphones for the eyes. I find a good session of Google Earth VR very refreshing and meditative. Fully focused on enjoy wonderful places around the globe without interruptions and leaving the appartment.
- keshwa01 8y ago
  In your use case, the equivalent looks more like AR, having a PiP of the show on the corner of the lens while going about your day.
cheschire 8y ago
Maybe you don’t spend much time watching TV with family, but VR would never work for us. TV may be an escape, but we like to escape together.
- coldtea 8y ago
  That wouldn't be the real problem, since multiple people could "escape together" in the same VR world.
  - cheschire 8y ago
    How would I turn to my wife and make a comment, and how would whatever your answer is going to be actually be any better than AR?
    - coldtea 8y ago
      I'm not seeing much prospects in VR myself, but can answer those questions trivially. >How would I turn to my wife and make a comment You just turn your head/gaze to your wife's avatar in 3D space and make a comment to her... >how would whatever your answer is going to be actually be any better than AR? If we're talking "escaping together" you could be inside some virtual world (e.g. a virtual game of thrones 3D environment) watching events or playing together. AR would just add some extra figures and/or annotations on top of the real world, but it wont be as immersive.
      - zapzupnz 8y ago
        > You could be inside some virtual world watching events or playing together And not being able to enjoy your friend/partner's reaction, facial expression, or simply what they're doing. That mutual participation is half the fun. No, looking at an avatar mimicking your partner's movements doesn't count.
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Sounds like you've never played a multiplayer video game before. Sure, sound alone is not even half the emotional communications bandwidth, but people can work around those limitations. We already do in text, and in video calls, and it mostly works. With VR, you get to also have low-bandwidth body language, like movements of the head and limbs (and nothing is stopping the tech to slowly incorporate more and more cues). VR ain't gonna be a perfect simulacrum of the real world, but it doesn't have to be. It only needs to be good enough to let people express themselves somehow, and people will figure out the rest.
coldtea 8y ago
Because TV (and its internet equivalent) allows us to be passive and enjoy others doing the hard work to entertain us -- which is more like what we seek...
RobLach 8y ago
How do I eat a snack in VR? I almost exclusively watch shows while drinking coffee.
- eugeniub 8y ago
  It's surprisingly not that hard to have a snack with a headset on. Probably even easier when VR is just a pair of glasses.
lhorie 8y ago
I'd say smartphones and tablets already do 90% of what people want as far as tuning out of the real world goes. VR misses the mark on a bunch of real life scenarios: selfies, device sharing vs different body sizes, multitasking (e.g. cooking while watching youtube).
- gamma-male 8y ago
  Selfies were not a thint 10 years ago. As much as VR was not a thing.
  - plussed_reader 8y ago
    Check out this photograph taken by the photographer that totally didn't occur more than 10 years ago. https://imgur.com/gallery/boUed https://imgur.com/gallery/boUed Totally not a thint.
  - lhorie 8y ago
    Actually they were: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfie#cite_note-15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfie#cite_note-15 And that's beside the point anyways. Selfies exploded after digital photography became mainstream since one no longer needed to buy film. You could say that selfies happened because a physical burden was taken out of the picture. In contrast, you could say VR is a type of technology that _adds_ physical burden: today I can walk down to T-mobile, buy a new phone and get a free TV delivered to my house that I can then use to watch Peppa Pig w/ my kids. VR can do that too for, what, $1600 for a family of 4? Except I can't actually see my kids laughing with the thing stuck on my face and half of the devices have a high likelihood of breaking in 2 weeks in the hands of toddlers anyways.
eanzenberg 8y ago
This sentiment is very out of touch with the average household. Convenience is the ultimate vector which couch devices are judged.
JKCalhoun 8y ago
Hmmm ... I'm thinking the opposite. Outdoors, the sky, lakes — they're going to be the escape. We're practically living in a VR world where we have not only ubiquitous black mirrors everywhere but displays in our cars, restaurants, work, schools, homes, refrigerators. Stop for a second and think about it and it's as though, in our urban existence, we already have a headset on. In a manner of speaking.
- davidivadavid 8y ago
  That's one form of escape. But it's not necessarily meaningful to everyone. Many people have become jaded because all the beautiful sights have been turned into /r/EarthPorn posts or Netflix documentaries they've seen over and over. As Orson Welles said, (paraphrased), "Now people only watch Shakespeare plays in order to hear the quotations." Sure, many people still enjoy replicating existing postcard pictures and posting them to their Instagram/Facebook. But those experiences are fairly limited compared to what's available if you look at VR's potential — meaningful shared experiences across unlimited varied universes and identities. To be fair, that argument could be made about gaming. But I think gaming and VR are on a pretty obvious collision course.
ohiovr 8y ago
Maybe if you can have VR without a headset or glasses. It would otherwise be on the 3D tv doomed lists
mr_toad 8y ago
I own a VR headset, but it has a couple of major practical drawbacks for consuming entertainment. The biggest is motion sickness. It’s still a huge problem despite advances. I can’t game for several hours straight, it’s just impossible. Movies are better, but the second problem is the the total immersion. It’s a pain in the ass to even check the time with a VR headset on. I can’t easily answer a text, I can’t get up to go to the bathroom without untangling myself, I can even pick up a beer without risking spilling it.

paulcole 8y ago

TV isn't a dedicated activity that gets 100% of my attention. When I have my TV on, I can still cook, flip through catalogs, look at my partner, write emails on my iPad, etc.

zapzupnz 8y ago
Even my grandparents can have a chat over the top of the boring part of a programme or eat their dinner whilst watching the news. Nothing sounds more tedious than having a conversation with somebody whose attention is being drawn by something that only one of us can see.
- dhh2106 8y ago
  Couldn't the whole family enter the same VR environment? Why limit it to just yourself? Then you'd be free to chat over the top of the boring bits... I agree that replicating the full social context of TV will be difficult
  - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
    Because they could just share a screen in real reality?
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      Indeed. Much less hassle, much less expense, many fewer tradeoffs, and much more social.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Iff they're in the same place. Try that with relatives living in three different places across the country.
- kruczek 8y ago
  > somebody whose attention is being drawn by something that only one of us can see. Typically whatever is seen in VR is repliacted on the monitor, so it's not true that only one person in the room can see what's going on in VR.
tomcam 8y ago
Which is almost exactly what they said about radio when TV was new
- coldtea 8y ago
  Well, they got that right. Missed other stuff about TV's appeal.
- paulcole 8y ago
  Who is “they” and what was actually said?
davidivadavid 8y ago
At that point it's just background noise. But I'll grant you that. I think those shortcomings are just a matter of improving current VR technology to make it less invasive more than an absolute limitation of the medium.
dmarcos 8y ago
VR is a bit of a contrarian tech. It’s a tool for focus. It shuts down the noise. Some described it as the headphones for the eyes. I find a good session of Google Earth VR very refreshing and meditative. Fully focused on enjoy wonderful places around the globe without interruptions and leaving the appartment.
keshwa01 8y ago
In your use case, the equivalent looks more like AR, having a PiP of the show on the corner of the lens while going about your day.

cheschire 8y ago

Maybe you don’t spend much time watching TV with family, but VR would never work for us. TV may be an escape, but we like to escape together.

coldtea 8y ago
That wouldn't be the real problem, since multiple people could "escape together" in the same VR world.
- cheschire 8y ago
  How would I turn to my wife and make a comment, and how would whatever your answer is going to be actually be any better than AR?
  - coldtea 8y ago
    I'm not seeing much prospects in VR myself, but can answer those questions trivially. >How would I turn to my wife and make a comment You just turn your head/gaze to your wife's avatar in 3D space and make a comment to her... >how would whatever your answer is going to be actually be any better than AR? If we're talking "escaping together" you could be inside some virtual world (e.g. a virtual game of thrones 3D environment) watching events or playing together. AR would just add some extra figures and/or annotations on top of the real world, but it wont be as immersive.
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      > You could be inside some virtual world watching events or playing together And not being able to enjoy your friend/partner's reaction, facial expression, or simply what they're doing. That mutual participation is half the fun. No, looking at an avatar mimicking your partner's movements doesn't count.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Sounds like you've never played a multiplayer video game before. Sure, sound alone is not even half the emotional communications bandwidth, but people can work around those limitations. We already do in text, and in video calls, and it mostly works. With VR, you get to also have low-bandwidth body language, like movements of the head and limbs (and nothing is stopping the tech to slowly incorporate more and more cues). VR ain't gonna be a perfect simulacrum of the real world, but it doesn't have to be. It only needs to be good enough to let people express themselves somehow, and people will figure out the rest.

coldtea 8y ago

Because TV (and its internet equivalent) allows us to be passive and enjoy others doing the hard work to entertain us -- which is more like what we seek...

RobLach 8y ago

How do I eat a snack in VR? I almost exclusively watch shows while drinking coffee.

eugeniub 8y ago
It's surprisingly not that hard to have a snack with a headset on. Probably even easier when VR is just a pair of glasses.

lhorie 8y ago

I'd say smartphones and tablets already do 90% of what people want as far as tuning out of the real world goes. VR misses the mark on a bunch of real life scenarios: selfies, device sharing vs different body sizes, multitasking (e.g. cooking while watching youtube).

gamma-male 8y ago
Selfies were not a thint 10 years ago. As much as VR was not a thing.
- plussed_reader 8y ago
  Check out this photograph taken by the photographer that totally didn't occur more than 10 years ago. https://imgur.com/gallery/boUed https://imgur.com/gallery/boUed Totally not a thint.
- lhorie 8y ago
  Actually they were: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfie#cite_note-15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfie#cite_note-15 And that's beside the point anyways. Selfies exploded after digital photography became mainstream since one no longer needed to buy film. You could say that selfies happened because a physical burden was taken out of the picture. In contrast, you could say VR is a type of technology that _adds_ physical burden: today I can walk down to T-mobile, buy a new phone and get a free TV delivered to my house that I can then use to watch Peppa Pig w/ my kids. VR can do that too for, what, $1600 for a family of 4? Except I can't actually see my kids laughing with the thing stuck on my face and half of the devices have a high likelihood of breaking in 2 weeks in the hands of toddlers anyways.

eanzenberg 8y ago

This sentiment is very out of touch with the average household. Convenience is the ultimate vector which couch devices are judged.

JKCalhoun 8y ago

Hmmm ... I'm thinking the opposite. Outdoors, the sky, lakes — they're going to be the escape. We're practically living in a VR world where we have not only ubiquitous black mirrors everywhere but displays in our cars, restaurants, work, schools, homes, refrigerators. Stop for a second and think about it and it's as though, in our urban existence, we already have a headset on. In a manner of speaking.

davidivadavid 8y ago
That's one form of escape. But it's not necessarily meaningful to everyone. Many people have become jaded because all the beautiful sights have been turned into /r/EarthPorn posts or Netflix documentaries they've seen over and over. As Orson Welles said, (paraphrased), "Now people only watch Shakespeare plays in order to hear the quotations." Sure, many people still enjoy replicating existing postcard pictures and posting them to their Instagram/Facebook. But those experiences are fairly limited compared to what's available if you look at VR's potential — meaningful shared experiences across unlimited varied universes and identities. To be fair, that argument could be made about gaming. But I think gaming and VR are on a pretty obvious collision course.

ohiovr 8y ago

Maybe if you can have VR without a headset or glasses. It would otherwise be on the 3D tv doomed lists

mr_toad 8y ago

I own a VR headset, but it has a couple of major practical drawbacks for consuming entertainment. The biggest is motion sickness. It’s still a huge problem despite advances. I can’t game for several hours straight, it’s just impossible. Movies are better, but the second problem is the the total immersion. It’s a pain in the ass to even check the time with a VR headset on. I can’t easily answer a text, I can’t get up to go to the bathroom without untangling myself, I can even pick up a beer without risking spilling it.