10 ms·

So does anyone think this is at the point where I can pick one up and do away with multiple monitors? (Hypothetically, I see they aren't selling to consumers ye

So does anyone think this is at the point where I can pick one up and do away with multiple monitors? (Hypothetically, I see they aren't selling to consumers yet) I play a game called Elite Dangerous with my Oculus rift, and the UX of being able to have holographic windows around my person that I can look at to activate and control is so insanely powerful and so freeing, and I'm literally willing to drop multiple thousands of dollars on something right now that can give that experience with normal desktop software right now. Sadly the Rift lacks any way to see the real world when it's on (which makes using a keyboard and mouse more difficult), and the resolution still has a ways to go before I can comfortably use it like this, not to mention the software still needs work for this use case. But I can't wait until the day when I can get rid of the monitors on my desk and replace them with a headset. Being able to place normal 2d windows around my person, be able to maybe use some limited gestures to control them, and then the same keyboard and potentially mouse that in used to.

thefounder 8y ago
Both Hololens and Oculus are far from being replacements for traditional displays(i.e for programming)
- Klathmon 8y ago
  Yes, but why? What is the limiting factor here, because from my perspective it's only missing a few small things on each platform that would solve it. I'd be honestly happy with my Rift as-is if they bumped up the resolution a bit, and had some way to see the real world with the headset on (even camera passthrough is fine!). I've used virtual desktop apps in the Rift, and they aren't bad to use, and playing games like tabletop simulator is so intuitive and nice that I'm floored tht this hasn't been tried commercially yet. I assume there are some pretty significant hurtles that I'm missing, or maybe the market is still hilariously small at this point, but it just seems so close!
  - poutine 8y ago
    The resolution is way too low. Needs to be 4-16x greater for desktop replacement. Also the headsets are too hot and bulky to comfortably wear for a full workday.
    - andybak 8y ago
      How old are you if you don't mind me asking? I'm pushing 50 and the real world is rather lacking in resolution nowadays. I solve this by leaning forward or back. In VR/AR the same thing works.
      - poutine 8y ago
        I'm your age. I find my oculus totally useless for real world work. I'm used to a 4k monitor as a desktop.
        mcbits 8y ago
        I'm used to a 14" laptop + 21" monitor (resolution doesn't matter), which together occupy maybe 20% of my field of view while using them. If I could take the same quantity of information and arrange it arbitrarily in my environment, eliminating the need for any monitors, it would be a win even if the text had to be larger.
        poutine 8y ago
        You'd need to move your head a lot to look at stuff. Gets old quickly. Try out the VR desktop on oculus and you'll quickly discover the need for much more dense pixels.
    - ipsum2 8y ago
      4-16x is an exaggeration. I've tried headsets that are 2x higher resolution than the Rift (i.e. 2k x 2k per eye), and I could view text the same size as my monitor renders. No doubt 4-16x resolution would be nice, though. True "retina" screens are still at least a decade away.
  - taeric 8y ago
    Feature parity. Having one interface that is trying to keep up with and surpass basically all others, is just setting up something that will take a long time to succeed. Note,I am not claiming it won't succeed. Just that it will take a long time.
  - thefounder 8y ago
    For Oculus to be useful as a traditional display it would probably need a higher resolution(i.e 8k per eye), it needs to be wireless, lightweight and possibly use the camera to blend-in the outside environment so that you don't feel trapped in Matrix while you work. It would probably take 5+ years to get there
    - leovander 8y ago
      http://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-oculus-go-better/ http://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-ocul...
    - Klathmon 8y ago
      But we have the tech to do that right now! Maybe 8k per eye is outside our current capabilities without being ludicrously expensive, but 4k should be doable! And the rest already exists in other products!
      - thefounder 8y ago
        4k is not good enough. What you need is 8k or even 16k(whenever it becomes available) per eye. Otherwise you better stick to a traditional display.
  - foobiekr 8y ago
    eye strain.
- goatlover 8y ago
  But imagine a Smalltalk-like environment on steroids with that sort of 3D environment. Still need a virtual keyboard or voice-input for the actual code, but the ability to place Smalltalk GUI elements anywhere in your visual field would be interesting.
  - taeric 8y ago
    I actually can't imagine this. As someone described by aphantasia, this level of graphical immersion sounds off, to me. More, this will have less rigor than standard 2d graphical builders. And those don't exactly have a great track record. :(
  - e12e 8y ago
    I always thought croquet/cobalt would be a nice fit for vr: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project http://www.opencobalt.net/ http://www.opencobalt.net/
  - Impossible 8y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project is basically what you described. Dynamicland also has similarities. Neither are mixed reality like Hololens but long-term I think it will be the application model that wins for MR.
- daeken 8y ago
  I used the HL1 as my full-time computer for a while. The display itself was actually fine -- the text rendering was great, so it worked out well. The issues were 1) software (I built an app called VNCaster that was a decent implementation of VNC, but you were restricted to working within that window, which kind of killed a lot of the benefits), 2) FOV (way too small), and 3) comfort (it got uncomfortable quick -- 2-3 hours was about my cap). I think that with the HL2, many of these are going to go away. I can't speak to the comfort, but I know that the first two are now non-issues for me.
  - andybak 8y ago
    Be wary of HL1 and HL2 as abbreviations. I'm already on a hair trigger hoping for HL3 (Half Life that is...) It's only a few characters and you saving typing breaks my Ctrl+F and web search. :-)
    - daeken 8y ago
      Fair point, thanks!
  - therein 8y ago
    FOV was the main problem in my opinion as well. If that's taken care of, it will be significantly more impressive than the first HoloLens.
pj_mukh 8y ago
I'm awaiting a time where I can do this as well. My issue so far has always been the loss in resolution due to the subsampling required. You can try a service like this: https://immersedvr.com/ https://immersedvr.com/ to try out just piping your desktop to an Oculus Go. There is a bit of a latency which will disappear with something like the Hololens. However, you'll notice that they are taking a 1080p desktop and sampling it on to the Oculus (or Hololens) spherical glass. That loss in resolution is quite noticeable.
daeken 8y ago
I picked up a Magic Leap a month or two ago with the goal of doing this. I'm building a Wayland compositor that forwards its rendered windows over to a headset, so you can have an arbitrarily large 'display'; windows can be positioned anywhere in space. The ML1 probably isn't good enough for actual use, due to the text rendering, but I think the HL2 will be. I had the HL1 and its text rendering was plenty good, but the FOV killed it; the 2 should fix that.
lostmsu 8y ago
IMHO, what they need is to work on "ClearType for 3D" and/or "DirectWrite for 3D". In the demo they use giant fonts, because text rendering sucks if you simply render text to a texture, then put that texture on a rotated plane in 3D. If that last stage was bypassed, e.g. when rendering text, the renderer would somehow know the rotation and distance, and draw the vector font directly into the screen pixels, they could get it crisp enough for most apps.
- daeken 8y ago
  You can do that by rendering text yourself, particularly in a full-immersion app. Rendering distance field text is cheap and really easy to do properly in that situation, but I don't know if anyone has actually done it in practice.
  - lostmsu 8y ago
    > full-immersion app IMHO, that's another dead end (or rather intermittent tech), like full-screen apps, or single task environments (hello, DOS).
    - daeken 8y ago
      Personally, I like the idea of doing everything of mine through a full-immersion app. But my ideal use-case for these is also to just have windows from my desktop anywhere in space, which isn't exactly the norm.
    - andybak 8y ago
      Gosh. I run all my apps full screen. The only thing I need to switch to is a web browser to look stuff up. I never have more than one window visible at once.
      - minkzilla 8y ago
        how big is your monitor ? When I am on my laptop I run everything full screen. When I am on my desktop I have two 20" monitors and I regularly have multiple windows open on each. I have found that splitting vertically on one monitor with the code I am actively working on and firefox for looking up things works really well for me.
dmos62 8y ago
I'm waiting for the time when you don't even need a headset.
z3t4 8y ago
We got decent VR but meanwhile screen technology have also advanced. You can get 3-4 really good monitors for that price.
wpdev_63 8y ago
What you would be looking is the pimax 8k[0]. Unfortunately it does support native 8k output due to limitations on the input. Hopefully they will release something soon with 8k support as I am in the same boat as you. [0]:https://pimaxvr.com/pages/8k https://pimaxvr.com/pages/8k
m3kw9 8y ago
Problem with that is only you will ever see your screen. Forget about have friends over
- Klathmon 8y ago
  That's mostly solved by keeping a screen around for others. I've found that sending the PC output of what I'm seeing in VR to a TV in the same room turns an isolating VR experience into a group activity fairly well. And if AR ever becomes ubiquitous, the expectation would be that multiple people could wear the headsets and all see the same AR info.
georgewsinger 8y ago
SimulaVR/Simula is about to release a working prototype for VR Linux Desktop with the HTC Vive. See https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula. Check it out at the end of next month.
janoc 8y ago
Nope. It is nowhere clear and contrasty enough for that and the eye strain you get from wearing these displays for a long time would make you get the monitors back in a hurry. It may work if all you need is playing a game for an hour or two but if you need to actually work for hours on a lot of text or graphics, the technology is not anywhere close yet.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  I already somewhat routinely spend multiple hours playing text-heavy games in it, and while I'm sure it would be a problem if I spent my whole work day in it, I really feel that the resolution is the only thing that would be needed to be bumped up to stop the little strain I do feel. That's what annoys me so much. I feel like the tech is already here, but nobody is putting together all the right parts for some reason. We have high enough res displays (IMO), we have the tracking, we have the "AR" aspect, and we have the ability to project screens into the world around you, but nobody is putting all those parts together in one package!
  - alasdair_ 8y ago
    People are trying. Apple is very likely to come out with “Lens” in 2020 and magic leap still exists.
  - darepublic 8y ago
    One part of the package imo: the ability to type without a physical keyboard (just using the finger movements)
mavdi 8y ago
In terms of keyboard/monitor, Logitech is aiming to solve it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVXvk1X1Gbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVXvk1X1Gbs
melling 8y ago
I don’t want to use a keyboard and a mouse. Can we move past that too? In fact, I’d like to get past being tied to a desk. In this article on HN a few days ago, Stephen Wolfram had a laptop strapped to himself so he could work while on walks. We would all benefit getting away from our desks a little more often. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19220889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19220889 Direct link to Wolfram’s blog: https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-productive-life-some-details-of-my-personal-infrastructure/ https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-producti...
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  I love how he just causally has an Iridium satphone.
  - sbr464 8y ago
    Iridium side note -- I was testing a RockBlock (rock7) recently. They are really easy to use, ~$200. Awesome that this stuff is getting more approachable. http://www.rock7mobile.com/products-rockblock http://www.rock7mobile.com/products-rockblock https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13745 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13745
    - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
      Interesting. It's $180 for the module then $11/mo and $12 for 100 credits (5kb of data transfer). So to get up and running would be $312 a year for what would be at most a location beacon (6B per 24 digit location transfer). Not at all unreasonable for how much of an offline system this is.
      - sbr464 8y ago
        I agree. What’s interesting is that it’s compatible with most devices/libraries (arduino etc), compared to using a consumer level garmin device with sms/data functionality that requires a contract (to be affordable at least). Also, even though location info is typically the main feature, I believe it’s included automatically in the msg envelope (a kind of satellite caller id), which means you can use that more expensive bandwidth for your own requirement, while still getting the lat/lon metadata.
jtonz 8y ago
The 2x field of view will still be smaller than most anticipate so its likely still not suitable for anything outside of commercial applications. I was fortunate enough to try the v1 of hololens when a Microsoft representative bought it into my work, the tech was amazing but the FOV was far less than I anticipated. From what I can recall it was akin to looking through a tissue-box sized area roughly 1 foot from your face.
shostack 8y ago
I don't have a VR rig, but do have the game. What's the difference in experience like between non-VR vs. VR?
- Klathmon 8y ago
  It's amazing how well it translates to VR. You can feel the size of planets and stations in a way that you can't even describe. And things like the left and right menus you just look at to activate and control, and when you look away they deactivate. It's incredibly intuitive. There's also the effect of being able to look your head out the various windows, and even lean and sit forward to see out a bit more when you need to. Battle is amazing as you can really get into a dogfight and spin your ship to keep them in view and keep an eye on what they are going to do next! It's pretty amazing, and it's the only way I play it now. I highly recommend a Rift even for just that game!
dwighttk 8y ago
do you look at your keyboard and mouse that often, or is it just an uncanny feeling when you can't see them in your periphery?
- Klathmon 8y ago
  No it's not an uncanney valley thing (and I can touch type, my keyboard doesn't even have symbols on it!), but it shocked me how much that little bit of peripheral vision helps with things. The game I play most with the Oculus Rift can use a keyboard and mouse (and a flight joystick!). At least a few times an hour I'll blindly find the home row on the keyboard by touch only to realize too late that I've put my left hand on fghj instead of asdf. And finding a mouse blind after taking your hand off it is really hard! Especially when trying to do it without bumping it and a accidentally clicking or moving it a lot. I think some kind of visual "rough outline" of where those devices are in reference to the headset would help a TON.
  - mwcampbell 8y ago
    I'm surprised that it's so difficult to accurately find the home row without visual feedback. Being legally blind, I've done it my whole life without thinking, and I don't recall it being hard to learn. But I suppose it might be hard to relearn after years of using sight to find the home row. Maybe a generation of kids raised on a VR headset and a keyboard would think nothing of it.
    - Klathmon 8y ago
      It may be partly the games fault, you are in a space ship with stuff around yourself that you need to physically look at to interact with (and by look at, I mean you need to point your head at it, there is no eye tracking), so i'll often take my hands off the keyboard, spin my head and use both hands on the joystick and buttons, then have to quickly find the home row again right after. But I do think a part of it is that my brain has gotten very used to having the general location of the keyboard. So for instance I know the home row (for my left hand) is middle of the keyboard vertically, and on the left side horizontally. I'll quickly find the middle vertically by touch, but then I search for the nub on the f key next and if I was only a few keys too far to the right, I'll find j instead and then instantly assume I'm at the right spot, and it's quite jarring when it's wrong! With sight, I'm able to know and move my hand toward the right hand side without feeling around more than a key in any direction for the most part.
sundvor 8y ago
Greetings, Commander. Just commenting to say that the VR experience in E:D is indeed incredibly good. This was coming from just using an ultra cheap cheap Lenovo Explorer, headset only, which I recently purchased. The fidelity of the tracking as you stand up from your chair and walk around in the room astounded me, especially as you lean in on the extra panels. I definitely agree with your points on using AR for real work, it has amazing potential.
DKnoll 8y ago
There's a VR program that simulates multiple monitors called 'Virtual Desktop.' I haven't tried it but it sounds pretty cool, if only as a proof-of-concept. https://store.steampowered.com/app/382110/Virtual_Desktop/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/382110/Virtual_Desktop/
gotrythis 8y ago
This looks like what we're waiting for. They almost look like regular glasses: https://www.redsharknews.com/vr_and_ar/item/6168-these-smart-glasses-from-letinar-are-a-big-advance-for-optical-ar https://www.redsharknews.com/vr_and_ar/item/6168-these-smart... "Still in the lab, but given a demo at Mobile World Congress, these glasses actually deliver 4K per eye and yield a 120 degree field of view (FoV)."
phkahler 8y ago
I found a simple 55" curved 4K TV to be an excellent "desktop" where I can arrange all my windows around me. No, it's not virtual or 3d. Yes, I can lay out everything I'm using with no overlap. It turns out our "desktop" GUIs have failed to follow the metaphor very well - they've got too many features that make assumptions based on small monitors. I still like it though.
tokyodude 8y ago
There's a bunch of VR setups claiming much better resolution. Here's one Varjo VR-1: https://varjo.com/ https://varjo.com/ For me I need to ditch the headset. That thing covering my head is too heavy and makes my face sweat. I wish I could get more into VR. I have a Rift, a PSVR, a Daydream. I've loved a few experiences but mostly I turn them on once every 3-4 months at this point. The quality experiences (for me) are few and far between. rant mode on: The new Oculus home UI is horrible. It uses every button on the controller instead of just like say one button and putting all the UI in VR. It's become a huge frustrating pressing the wrong button or having to test every button to figure out which one does what. It's like it was designed by an xbox dev instead of a VR dev.
Treegarden 8y ago
I had the same thought and my idea would be to buy the pimax 8k (or 5k). I read that the resolution is high enough to do desktop stuff with it. I dont have the money to buy it and the problem doesent bother me too much, but you could try it.

thefounder 8y ago

Both Hololens and Oculus are far from being replacements for traditional displays(i.e for programming)

Klathmon 8y ago
Yes, but why? What is the limiting factor here, because from my perspective it's only missing a few small things on each platform that would solve it. I'd be honestly happy with my Rift as-is if they bumped up the resolution a bit, and had some way to see the real world with the headset on (even camera passthrough is fine!). I've used virtual desktop apps in the Rift, and they aren't bad to use, and playing games like tabletop simulator is so intuitive and nice that I'm floored tht this hasn't been tried commercially yet. I assume there are some pretty significant hurtles that I'm missing, or maybe the market is still hilariously small at this point, but it just seems so close!
- poutine 8y ago
  The resolution is way too low. Needs to be 4-16x greater for desktop replacement. Also the headsets are too hot and bulky to comfortably wear for a full workday.
  - andybak 8y ago
    How old are you if you don't mind me asking? I'm pushing 50 and the real world is rather lacking in resolution nowadays. I solve this by leaning forward or back. In VR/AR the same thing works.
    - poutine 8y ago
      I'm your age. I find my oculus totally useless for real world work. I'm used to a 4k monitor as a desktop.
      - mcbits 8y ago
        I'm used to a 14" laptop + 21" monitor (resolution doesn't matter), which together occupy maybe 20% of my field of view while using them. If I could take the same quantity of information and arrange it arbitrarily in my environment, eliminating the need for any monitors, it would be a win even if the text had to be larger.
        poutine 8y ago
        You'd need to move your head a lot to look at stuff. Gets old quickly. Try out the VR desktop on oculus and you'll quickly discover the need for much more dense pixels.
  - ipsum2 8y ago
    4-16x is an exaggeration. I've tried headsets that are 2x higher resolution than the Rift (i.e. 2k x 2k per eye), and I could view text the same size as my monitor renders. No doubt 4-16x resolution would be nice, though. True "retina" screens are still at least a decade away.
- taeric 8y ago
  Feature parity. Having one interface that is trying to keep up with and surpass basically all others, is just setting up something that will take a long time to succeed. Note,I am not claiming it won't succeed. Just that it will take a long time.
- thefounder 8y ago
  For Oculus to be useful as a traditional display it would probably need a higher resolution(i.e 8k per eye), it needs to be wireless, lightweight and possibly use the camera to blend-in the outside environment so that you don't feel trapped in Matrix while you work. It would probably take 5+ years to get there
  - leovander 8y ago
    http://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-oculus-go-better/ http://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-ocul...
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    But we have the tech to do that right now! Maybe 8k per eye is outside our current capabilities without being ludicrously expensive, but 4k should be doable! And the rest already exists in other products!
    - thefounder 8y ago
      4k is not good enough. What you need is 8k or even 16k(whenever it becomes available) per eye. Otherwise you better stick to a traditional display.
- foobiekr 8y ago
  eye strain.
goatlover 8y ago
But imagine a Smalltalk-like environment on steroids with that sort of 3D environment. Still need a virtual keyboard or voice-input for the actual code, but the ability to place Smalltalk GUI elements anywhere in your visual field would be interesting.
- taeric 8y ago
  I actually can't imagine this. As someone described by aphantasia, this level of graphical immersion sounds off, to me. More, this will have less rigor than standard 2d graphical builders. And those don't exactly have a great track record. :(
- e12e 8y ago
  I always thought croquet/cobalt would be a nice fit for vr: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project http://www.opencobalt.net/ http://www.opencobalt.net/
- Impossible 8y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project is basically what you described. Dynamicland also has similarities. Neither are mixed reality like Hololens but long-term I think it will be the application model that wins for MR.
daeken 8y ago
I used the HL1 as my full-time computer for a while. The display itself was actually fine -- the text rendering was great, so it worked out well. The issues were 1) software (I built an app called VNCaster that was a decent implementation of VNC, but you were restricted to working within that window, which kind of killed a lot of the benefits), 2) FOV (way too small), and 3) comfort (it got uncomfortable quick -- 2-3 hours was about my cap). I think that with the HL2, many of these are going to go away. I can't speak to the comfort, but I know that the first two are now non-issues for me.
- andybak 8y ago
  Be wary of HL1 and HL2 as abbreviations. I'm already on a hair trigger hoping for HL3 (Half Life that is...) It's only a few characters and you saving typing breaks my Ctrl+F and web search. :-)
  - daeken 8y ago
    Fair point, thanks!
- therein 8y ago
  FOV was the main problem in my opinion as well. If that's taken care of, it will be significantly more impressive than the first HoloLens.

pj_mukh 8y ago

I'm awaiting a time where I can do this as well. My issue so far has always been the loss in resolution due to the subsampling required. You can try a service like this: https://immersedvr.com/ https://immersedvr.com/ to try out just piping your desktop to an Oculus Go. There is a bit of a latency which will disappear with something like the Hololens. However, you'll notice that they are taking a 1080p desktop and sampling it on to the Oculus (or Hololens) spherical glass. That loss in resolution is quite noticeable.

daeken 8y ago

I picked up a Magic Leap a month or two ago with the goal of doing this. I'm building a Wayland compositor that forwards its rendered windows over to a headset, so you can have an arbitrarily large 'display'; windows can be positioned anywhere in space. The ML1 probably isn't good enough for actual use, due to the text rendering, but I think the HL2 will be. I had the HL1 and its text rendering was plenty good, but the FOV killed it; the 2 should fix that.

lostmsu 8y ago

IMHO, what they need is to work on "ClearType for 3D" and/or "DirectWrite for 3D". In the demo they use giant fonts, because text rendering sucks if you simply render text to a texture, then put that texture on a rotated plane in 3D. If that last stage was bypassed, e.g. when rendering text, the renderer would somehow know the rotation and distance, and draw the vector font directly into the screen pixels, they could get it crisp enough for most apps.

daeken 8y ago
You can do that by rendering text yourself, particularly in a full-immersion app. Rendering distance field text is cheap and really easy to do properly in that situation, but I don't know if anyone has actually done it in practice.
- lostmsu 8y ago
  > full-immersion app IMHO, that's another dead end (or rather intermittent tech), like full-screen apps, or single task environments (hello, DOS).
  - daeken 8y ago
    Personally, I like the idea of doing everything of mine through a full-immersion app. But my ideal use-case for these is also to just have windows from my desktop anywhere in space, which isn't exactly the norm.
  - andybak 8y ago
    Gosh. I run all my apps full screen. The only thing I need to switch to is a web browser to look stuff up. I never have more than one window visible at once.
    - minkzilla 8y ago
      how big is your monitor ? When I am on my laptop I run everything full screen. When I am on my desktop I have two 20" monitors and I regularly have multiple windows open on each. I have found that splitting vertically on one monitor with the code I am actively working on and firefox for looking up things works really well for me.

dmos62 8y ago

I'm waiting for the time when you don't even need a headset.

z3t4 8y ago

We got decent VR but meanwhile screen technology have also advanced. You can get 3-4 really good monitors for that price.

wpdev_63 8y ago

What you would be looking is the pimax 8k[0]. Unfortunately it does support native 8k output due to limitations on the input. Hopefully they will release something soon with 8k support as I am in the same boat as you. [0]:https://pimaxvr.com/pages/8k https://pimaxvr.com/pages/8k

m3kw9 8y ago

Problem with that is only you will ever see your screen. Forget about have friends over

Klathmon 8y ago
That's mostly solved by keeping a screen around for others. I've found that sending the PC output of what I'm seeing in VR to a TV in the same room turns an isolating VR experience into a group activity fairly well. And if AR ever becomes ubiquitous, the expectation would be that multiple people could wear the headsets and all see the same AR info.

georgewsinger 8y ago

SimulaVR/Simula is about to release a working prototype for VR Linux Desktop with the HTC Vive. See https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula. Check it out at the end of next month.

janoc 8y ago

Nope. It is nowhere clear and contrasty enough for that and the eye strain you get from wearing these displays for a long time would make you get the monitors back in a hurry. It may work if all you need is playing a game for an hour or two but if you need to actually work for hours on a lot of text or graphics, the technology is not anywhere close yet.

Klathmon 8y ago
I already somewhat routinely spend multiple hours playing text-heavy games in it, and while I'm sure it would be a problem if I spent my whole work day in it, I really feel that the resolution is the only thing that would be needed to be bumped up to stop the little strain I do feel. That's what annoys me so much. I feel like the tech is already here, but nobody is putting together all the right parts for some reason. We have high enough res displays (IMO), we have the tracking, we have the "AR" aspect, and we have the ability to project screens into the world around you, but nobody is putting all those parts together in one package!
- alasdair_ 8y ago
  People are trying. Apple is very likely to come out with “Lens” in 2020 and magic leap still exists.
- darepublic 8y ago
  One part of the package imo: the ability to type without a physical keyboard (just using the finger movements)

mavdi 8y ago

In terms of keyboard/monitor, Logitech is aiming to solve it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVXvk1X1Gbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVXvk1X1Gbs

melling 8y ago

I don’t want to use a keyboard and a mouse. Can we move past that too? In fact, I’d like to get past being tied to a desk. In this article on HN a few days ago, Stephen Wolfram had a laptop strapped to himself so he could work while on walks. We would all benefit getting away from our desks a little more often. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19220889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19220889 Direct link to Wolfram’s blog: https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-productive-life-some-details-of-my-personal-infrastructure/ https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-producti...

AndrewKemendo 8y ago
I love how he just causally has an Iridium satphone.
- sbr464 8y ago
  Iridium side note -- I was testing a RockBlock (rock7) recently. They are really easy to use, ~$200. Awesome that this stuff is getting more approachable. http://www.rock7mobile.com/products-rockblock http://www.rock7mobile.com/products-rockblock https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13745 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13745
  - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
    Interesting. It's $180 for the module then $11/mo and $12 for 100 credits (5kb of data transfer). So to get up and running would be $312 a year for what would be at most a location beacon (6B per 24 digit location transfer). Not at all unreasonable for how much of an offline system this is.
    - sbr464 8y ago
      I agree. What’s interesting is that it’s compatible with most devices/libraries (arduino etc), compared to using a consumer level garmin device with sms/data functionality that requires a contract (to be affordable at least). Also, even though location info is typically the main feature, I believe it’s included automatically in the msg envelope (a kind of satellite caller id), which means you can use that more expensive bandwidth for your own requirement, while still getting the lat/lon metadata.

jtonz 8y ago

The 2x field of view will still be smaller than most anticipate so its likely still not suitable for anything outside of commercial applications. I was fortunate enough to try the v1 of hololens when a Microsoft representative bought it into my work, the tech was amazing but the FOV was far less than I anticipated. From what I can recall it was akin to looking through a tissue-box sized area roughly 1 foot from your face.

shostack 8y ago

I don't have a VR rig, but do have the game. What's the difference in experience like between non-VR vs. VR?

Klathmon 8y ago
It's amazing how well it translates to VR. You can feel the size of planets and stations in a way that you can't even describe. And things like the left and right menus you just look at to activate and control, and when you look away they deactivate. It's incredibly intuitive. There's also the effect of being able to look your head out the various windows, and even lean and sit forward to see out a bit more when you need to. Battle is amazing as you can really get into a dogfight and spin your ship to keep them in view and keep an eye on what they are going to do next! It's pretty amazing, and it's the only way I play it now. I highly recommend a Rift even for just that game!

dwighttk 8y ago

do you look at your keyboard and mouse that often, or is it just an uncanny feeling when you can't see them in your periphery?

Klathmon 8y ago
No it's not an uncanney valley thing (and I can touch type, my keyboard doesn't even have symbols on it!), but it shocked me how much that little bit of peripheral vision helps with things. The game I play most with the Oculus Rift can use a keyboard and mouse (and a flight joystick!). At least a few times an hour I'll blindly find the home row on the keyboard by touch only to realize too late that I've put my left hand on fghj instead of asdf. And finding a mouse blind after taking your hand off it is really hard! Especially when trying to do it without bumping it and a accidentally clicking or moving it a lot. I think some kind of visual "rough outline" of where those devices are in reference to the headset would help a TON.
- mwcampbell 8y ago
  I'm surprised that it's so difficult to accurately find the home row without visual feedback. Being legally blind, I've done it my whole life without thinking, and I don't recall it being hard to learn. But I suppose it might be hard to relearn after years of using sight to find the home row. Maybe a generation of kids raised on a VR headset and a keyboard would think nothing of it.
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    It may be partly the games fault, you are in a space ship with stuff around yourself that you need to physically look at to interact with (and by look at, I mean you need to point your head at it, there is no eye tracking), so i'll often take my hands off the keyboard, spin my head and use both hands on the joystick and buttons, then have to quickly find the home row again right after. But I do think a part of it is that my brain has gotten very used to having the general location of the keyboard. So for instance I know the home row (for my left hand) is middle of the keyboard vertically, and on the left side horizontally. I'll quickly find the middle vertically by touch, but then I search for the nub on the f key next and if I was only a few keys too far to the right, I'll find j instead and then instantly assume I'm at the right spot, and it's quite jarring when it's wrong! With sight, I'm able to know and move my hand toward the right hand side without feeling around more than a key in any direction for the most part.

sundvor 8y ago

Greetings, Commander. Just commenting to say that the VR experience in E:D is indeed incredibly good. This was coming from just using an ultra cheap cheap Lenovo Explorer, headset only, which I recently purchased. The fidelity of the tracking as you stand up from your chair and walk around in the room astounded me, especially as you lean in on the extra panels. I definitely agree with your points on using AR for real work, it has amazing potential.

DKnoll 8y ago

There's a VR program that simulates multiple monitors called 'Virtual Desktop.' I haven't tried it but it sounds pretty cool, if only as a proof-of-concept. https://store.steampowered.com/app/382110/Virtual_Desktop/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/382110/Virtual_Desktop/

gotrythis 8y ago

This looks like what we're waiting for. They almost look like regular glasses: https://www.redsharknews.com/vr_and_ar/item/6168-these-smart-glasses-from-letinar-are-a-big-advance-for-optical-ar https://www.redsharknews.com/vr_and_ar/item/6168-these-smart... "Still in the lab, but given a demo at Mobile World Congress, these glasses actually deliver 4K per eye and yield a 120 degree field of view (FoV)."

phkahler 8y ago

I found a simple 55" curved 4K TV to be an excellent "desktop" where I can arrange all my windows around me. No, it's not virtual or 3d. Yes, I can lay out everything I'm using with no overlap. It turns out our "desktop" GUIs have failed to follow the metaphor very well - they've got too many features that make assumptions based on small monitors. I still like it though.

tokyodude 8y ago

There's a bunch of VR setups claiming much better resolution. Here's one Varjo VR-1: https://varjo.com/ https://varjo.com/ For me I need to ditch the headset. That thing covering my head is too heavy and makes my face sweat. I wish I could get more into VR. I have a Rift, a PSVR, a Daydream. I've loved a few experiences but mostly I turn them on once every 3-4 months at this point. The quality experiences (for me) are few and far between. rant mode on: The new Oculus home UI is horrible. It uses every button on the controller instead of just like say one button and putting all the UI in VR. It's become a huge frustrating pressing the wrong button or having to test every button to figure out which one does what. It's like it was designed by an xbox dev instead of a VR dev.

Treegarden 8y ago

I had the same thought and my idea would be to buy the pimax 8k (or 5k). I read that the resolution is high enough to do desktop stuff with it. I dont have the money to buy it and the problem doesent bother me too much, but you could try it.