6 ms·

Ehh. I've owned a VR headset for a long time now, and I think many people underestimate how fundamentally isolating being in VR is. Humans are social creatures

Ehh. I've owned a VR headset for a long time now, and I think many people underestimate how fundamentally isolating being in VR is. Humans are social creatures and unless you live by yourself and want to escape into VR, you're a lot more likely to enjoy watching the big game with friends and family so you can shoot the shit, and share the experience. Don't get me wrong... VR is and can be a lot of fun, but I just don't see it being this next big thing that people seem to hope it will be. On the other hand, I think when someone solves AR, I suspect that may very well produce a seismic change across society with widespread adoption.

taurath 6y ago
VRChat w positional audio is superior to just talking on the phone or thru a video conference I’d say
- _coveredInBees 6y ago
  I was never arguing that VRChat/social apps are worse than other remote social experiences (phone call / video conference, etc.). My point is that it is very isolating and impossible to share the experience in any meaningful way with folks around you, or just be present at all while doing something in VR. Like I can play Mario on my TV while sharing that experience with my kids or chatting with my wife about things, while still being around my family in a shared living space. VR just isn't cut out for that. I do use it for sim-racing (which is pretty much a perfect fit for VR headsets) which is anyway a situation where you need to be distraction free and kinda isolated from everyone else so it works well in those types of scenarios.
  - slimsag 6y ago
    Counterpoint: The same argument is true of phones, and that has largely not stopped people from being regularly severely distracted by them even in social settings.
  - oarsinsync 6y ago
    > My point is that it is very isolating and impossible to share the experience in any meaningful way with folks around you There are an awfully large number of people who are currently literally isolated and unable to share any experiences with anyone.
    - wlesieutre 6y ago
      Even sans pandemic, my family all lives several states away (drivable), and my extended family are all even further (flying distance). In person connnections are great, but it’s not like I can just pop over for dinner after work. I haven’t gotten any of them to join me on the VR train, but as it grows I think that’s a big use case for it. You can hang out together with someone in a VR space in a way that video chat doesn’t capture.
- shpx 6y ago
  For what it's worth, the VR meetup in my city is hosted on Zoom and not VR.
wavefunction 6y ago
You could be at multiple super bowl parties/other events at once in VR. I know it's not exactly the same as being physically proximate but it offers some advantages that being there irl can't offer. You and all your friends in the lower stands at halfway marker all game. Maybe you want to all "sit" wherever the ball is on the field as it moves up or down the field of play. Maybe you have a specific spot in the stadium you like to sit at and you don't have to fight with others for that spot. I don't know it sounds kind of interesting for some things. I'd still personally rather be at a concert in person, I guess.
- _coveredInBees 6y ago
  I'm not arguing against VR for shared social experiences over the internet with remote participants. I actually do think that it can be great for that, especially once technology catches up some more. My point though is that if you already have family or friends in your home, then it is pretty much impossible to have any sort of quality social interactions in VR and you are much better off enjoying things IRL, even if it isn't as immersive as what a VR experience could produce.
sfennell 6y ago
I totally agree and is probably the main reason I don't use my Rift more - it takes me to another location. > unless you live by yourself Is a very important point, I think the social (especially with covid) aspect of VR for people that are not together might be the angle that Apple is looking at.
darig 6y ago
If there was only a single camera "orb" that everyone was watching through, it would be awkward to place many people in the same arena and let them interact with each other. If I was looking at someone else and they were looking at me, someone else would also have to see that we were looking at each other. Maybe this is something Carmack could do in 5 lines of complex vector math, but getting it working in real-time at scale seems difficult.
f6v 6y ago
> Humans are social creatures Yes, humans evolved to live in groups. However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes. That would scare the soul out of our ancestors. My point is that we can't always judge the technology by what's "natural" to us. Brain is extremely flexible, and children who grew up with VR might just want to live in it, instead of the "real" world.
- CPLX 6y ago
  > However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes. Glancing around it seems quite apparent that we’ve done exactly that.
  - f6v 6y ago
    We adjusted our culture, but our brains are likely the same as they were before the mega-cities came into existence. My point is that we shouldn't necessarily judge the technology by what's "natural" to us, i.e. "VR isn't going fly because we're social creatures".
  - coldtea 6y ago
    "Evolved == went on" to live in big cities vs "evolved == adapted as an evolutionary process" to live in big cities, etc, are two very different things.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Evolution adapts to present conditions, not future conditions, and on a time scale of millenias. It chanced into a feature set that let us change our environment much faster than that. We're still adapted to the lifestyle we had many thousands of years ago.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Yes, humans evolved to live in groups. However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes. That would scare the soul out of our ancestors. Well, it gets us to stress, depression, suicides, the loneliness epidemic, and other such day-to-day suffering today too (plus obesity, poor physique, etc). Living in a better environment, without the "huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes" but keeping the modern advancements in medicine, sanitation, and so on, we would probably live 20+ years more...
bearbawl 6y ago
This is exactly why 3D movie has been a complete failure.
epanchin 6y ago
If you do live alone, do you feel vulnerable using VR? Not being remotely aware of surroundings sounds like it has the potential to be disconcerting.
- neartheplain 6y ago
  When I’m playing in VR and no one else is at home, I feel no more vulnerable than if I had my nose buried in a book. I do keep the door locked and the blinds down, though.
disabled 6y ago
I agree about it not being the next big thing. But, for some people who are extremely introverted, it can be the best thing ever. I think it has a lot of therapeutic use, although underdeveloped. I find it to be disorienting, relaxing, and exhilarating, like a drug. To me, gives me the feelings of nitrous oxide without the strange nitrous oxide sensation.
Fricken 6y ago
Tim Cook said the same thing about VR in 2017. He didn't like that it was isolating, and was much more excited about the potential of AR. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-41590323 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology...
- bsenftner 6y ago
  I totally agree; VR is very isolating, while AR is all about enhancing and augmenting one's interface with the real world. There is no contest: the real world will win, simply because the real world is sophisticated to start with, while anyplace in VR is what you see only, and that's a façade.
  - arcanon 6y ago
    VR is isolating because its the blank canvas precursor to AR. AR is just a datastream for VR all sexed up for the media. What matters are the graphics engines/OSes. VR Chat is not isolating. Is it VR or AR to change your camera scale and 3d zoom into a reconstructed electron microscope scene and look around? Hugs will increase in value surely..
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Sports are a special case as, arguably, they're mostly boring and their main value is the social context - cheering for players/teams, spectating together with family and friends. In contrast, the market for serious movies or single-player videogames suggest that there is a lot of demand for "lone time" experiences. I think a big factor in lackluster adoption of VR is... space. VR games require space, which is expensive, and people seem to have less of it in recent years. On top of that, usable space disappears very quickly once you start a family, which cuts out a good chunk of the target audience.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  > Sports are a special case as, arguably, they're mostly boring and their main value is the social context I think this is a bit of a fringe opinion. I can certainly see how people appreciate the social aspect of sports events with necessarily appreciating the sports. But I don’t think I wake up in the middle of the night to watch F1 alone for the social benefit.
  - disiplus 6y ago
    yup,im watching f1 for the last 20 years mostly alone. there are boring races but those would not be fun even if i watched it with somebody else.
    - AmericanChopper 6y ago
      Just remember. If you accidentally fall asleep, Lewis will somehow lose. I nodded off during Monza this year and then the moment I was asleep all hell broke loose.
- jimmySixDOF 6y ago
  Games do you are right, but productivity work is much like sitting at a desk in a cubicle -- just with so much much more you can do, even now. Sure, today there are a lot of caveats, like you need to touch type and transitioning between controllers and keyboard is sub optimal on the hardware side; while the software is still all 99.9% game oriented, there's no native multitasking, even little things like cut/copy/paste are a hassle. Today, your only option is some version of screen casting with all its multiple window resolution/scaling pain. But once you get it working it is hard not to be amazed working on a 10foot tall visio diagram and by the time Apple rolls anything out all these problems will have been solved for all practical purposes.
farias0 6y ago
For people who are really sports fans (which might be a little out of the Hacker News audience, I know) not having your friends and family talking during the game might be a pro, not a con.
bsenftner 6y ago
I started and got out of VR due to the complete lack of anyone grasping how isolating and empty it is without other people, and those other people really ought to look non-generic. I'm an "original 3D graphics researcher" from the 80's, and have created 3D production pipelines as one of my career specialties. VR needs an entire "face lift" where it includes people, at a moderately personal appearance level. When girls can look like themselves and it requires less effort than their own getting dressed each day, while also presenting their real time actual facial expressions they will use VR, if for nothing else, a gossip (social media) platform. But my main point is, until a person can go into VR and be themselves, look and act like themselves, VR is alien.
germinalphrase 6y ago
Presumably, this isolation would be less of a concern with mixed reality. Just place “the game” in a shared middle of the room and blend your friends into the stands.
swalsh 6y ago
It really does depend on the app, I was once playing the game Hotdogs Horseshoes and Handgrenades. It has this western level which is wide open. But I really hated it, it felt really isolated. The echos only made things worse. But Onward VR feels really social.
Accujack 6y ago
>you're a lot more likely to enjoy watching the big game with friends and family This is more a comment on the state of VR software than the technology itself. With the Apple product described, it's pretty easy to imagine software that allows you to have a "virtual box seat" where you can get online to watch the game with your family/friends, even if you aren't all in the same place, and use the tech to both watch the game and talk to each other when nothing's going on with plays. Alternatively, you can use the cameras in the app to merge your immediate surroundings with the game feed, so you see the people beside you in a part of the picture, or in the aforementioned "virtual" box seats. You can watch the game as if you're on the side lines (or on the ball) and see people around you react to plays, too. With eye tracking tech, the headset knows when you're looking at the game vs. your surroundings and can react accordingly. I think Apple producing a VR headset would be a very good thing for the market. Like or hate Apple as a company, they tend to set the standard for industrial design and UI technology, and their products drive other products' features and uses.
drited 6y ago
What about if you could sit next to your friends in VR to share the excitement even if they're physically remote from you?

taurath 6y ago

VRChat w positional audio is superior to just talking on the phone or thru a video conference I’d say

_coveredInBees 6y ago
I was never arguing that VRChat/social apps are worse than other remote social experiences (phone call / video conference, etc.). My point is that it is very isolating and impossible to share the experience in any meaningful way with folks around you, or just be present at all while doing something in VR. Like I can play Mario on my TV while sharing that experience with my kids or chatting with my wife about things, while still being around my family in a shared living space. VR just isn't cut out for that. I do use it for sim-racing (which is pretty much a perfect fit for VR headsets) which is anyway a situation where you need to be distraction free and kinda isolated from everyone else so it works well in those types of scenarios.
- slimsag 6y ago
  Counterpoint: The same argument is true of phones, and that has largely not stopped people from being regularly severely distracted by them even in social settings.
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  > My point is that it is very isolating and impossible to share the experience in any meaningful way with folks around you There are an awfully large number of people who are currently literally isolated and unable to share any experiences with anyone.
  - wlesieutre 6y ago
    Even sans pandemic, my family all lives several states away (drivable), and my extended family are all even further (flying distance). In person connnections are great, but it’s not like I can just pop over for dinner after work. I haven’t gotten any of them to join me on the VR train, but as it grows I think that’s a big use case for it. You can hang out together with someone in a VR space in a way that video chat doesn’t capture.
shpx 6y ago
For what it's worth, the VR meetup in my city is hosted on Zoom and not VR.

wavefunction 6y ago

You could be at multiple super bowl parties/other events at once in VR. I know it's not exactly the same as being physically proximate but it offers some advantages that being there irl can't offer. You and all your friends in the lower stands at halfway marker all game. Maybe you want to all "sit" wherever the ball is on the field as it moves up or down the field of play. Maybe you have a specific spot in the stadium you like to sit at and you don't have to fight with others for that spot. I don't know it sounds kind of interesting for some things. I'd still personally rather be at a concert in person, I guess.

_coveredInBees 6y ago
I'm not arguing against VR for shared social experiences over the internet with remote participants. I actually do think that it can be great for that, especially once technology catches up some more. My point though is that if you already have family or friends in your home, then it is pretty much impossible to have any sort of quality social interactions in VR and you are much better off enjoying things IRL, even if it isn't as immersive as what a VR experience could produce.

sfennell 6y ago

I totally agree and is probably the main reason I don't use my Rift more - it takes me to another location. > unless you live by yourself Is a very important point, I think the social (especially with covid) aspect of VR for people that are not together might be the angle that Apple is looking at.

darig 6y ago

If there was only a single camera "orb" that everyone was watching through, it would be awkward to place many people in the same arena and let them interact with each other. If I was looking at someone else and they were looking at me, someone else would also have to see that we were looking at each other. Maybe this is something Carmack could do in 5 lines of complex vector math, but getting it working in real-time at scale seems difficult.

f6v 6y ago

> Humans are social creatures Yes, humans evolved to live in groups. However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes. That would scare the soul out of our ancestors. My point is that we can't always judge the technology by what's "natural" to us. Brain is extremely flexible, and children who grew up with VR might just want to live in it, instead of the "real" world.

CPLX 6y ago
> However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes. Glancing around it seems quite apparent that we’ve done exactly that.
- f6v 6y ago
  We adjusted our culture, but our brains are likely the same as they were before the mega-cities came into existence. My point is that we shouldn't necessarily judge the technology by what's "natural" to us, i.e. "VR isn't going fly because we're social creatures".
- coldtea 6y ago
  "Evolved == went on" to live in big cities vs "evolved == adapted as an evolutionary process" to live in big cities, etc, are two very different things.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Evolution adapts to present conditions, not future conditions, and on a time scale of millenias. It chanced into a feature set that let us change our environment much faster than that. We're still adapted to the lifestyle we had many thousands of years ago.
coldtea 6y ago
>Yes, humans evolved to live in groups. However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes. That would scare the soul out of our ancestors. Well, it gets us to stress, depression, suicides, the loneliness epidemic, and other such day-to-day suffering today too (plus obesity, poor physique, etc). Living in a better environment, without the "huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes" but keeping the modern advancements in medicine, sanitation, and so on, we would probably live 20+ years more...

bearbawl 6y ago

This is exactly why 3D movie has been a complete failure.

epanchin 6y ago

If you do live alone, do you feel vulnerable using VR? Not being remotely aware of surroundings sounds like it has the potential to be disconcerting.

neartheplain 6y ago
When I’m playing in VR and no one else is at home, I feel no more vulnerable than if I had my nose buried in a book. I do keep the door locked and the blinds down, though.

disabled 6y ago

I agree about it not being the next big thing. But, for some people who are extremely introverted, it can be the best thing ever. I think it has a lot of therapeutic use, although underdeveloped. I find it to be disorienting, relaxing, and exhilarating, like a drug. To me, gives me the feelings of nitrous oxide without the strange nitrous oxide sensation.

Fricken 6y ago

Tim Cook said the same thing about VR in 2017. He didn't like that it was isolating, and was much more excited about the potential of AR. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-41590323 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology...

bsenftner 6y ago
I totally agree; VR is very isolating, while AR is all about enhancing and augmenting one's interface with the real world. There is no contest: the real world will win, simply because the real world is sophisticated to start with, while anyplace in VR is what you see only, and that's a façade.
- arcanon 6y ago
  VR is isolating because its the blank canvas precursor to AR. AR is just a datastream for VR all sexed up for the media. What matters are the graphics engines/OSes. VR Chat is not isolating. Is it VR or AR to change your camera scale and 3d zoom into a reconstructed electron microscope scene and look around? Hugs will increase in value surely..

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Sports are a special case as, arguably, they're mostly boring and their main value is the social context - cheering for players/teams, spectating together with family and friends. In contrast, the market for serious movies or single-player videogames suggest that there is a lot of demand for "lone time" experiences. I think a big factor in lackluster adoption of VR is... space. VR games require space, which is expensive, and people seem to have less of it in recent years. On top of that, usable space disappears very quickly once you start a family, which cuts out a good chunk of the target audience.

AmericanChopper 6y ago
> Sports are a special case as, arguably, they're mostly boring and their main value is the social context I think this is a bit of a fringe opinion. I can certainly see how people appreciate the social aspect of sports events with necessarily appreciating the sports. But I don’t think I wake up in the middle of the night to watch F1 alone for the social benefit.
- disiplus 6y ago
  yup,im watching f1 for the last 20 years mostly alone. there are boring races but those would not be fun even if i watched it with somebody else.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    Just remember. If you accidentally fall asleep, Lewis will somehow lose. I nodded off during Monza this year and then the moment I was asleep all hell broke loose.
jimmySixDOF 6y ago
Games do you are right, but productivity work is much like sitting at a desk in a cubicle -- just with so much much more you can do, even now. Sure, today there are a lot of caveats, like you need to touch type and transitioning between controllers and keyboard is sub optimal on the hardware side; while the software is still all 99.9% game oriented, there's no native multitasking, even little things like cut/copy/paste are a hassle. Today, your only option is some version of screen casting with all its multiple window resolution/scaling pain. But once you get it working it is hard not to be amazed working on a 10foot tall visio diagram and by the time Apple rolls anything out all these problems will have been solved for all practical purposes.

farias0 6y ago

For people who are really sports fans (which might be a little out of the Hacker News audience, I know) not having your friends and family talking during the game might be a pro, not a con.

bsenftner 6y ago

I started and got out of VR due to the complete lack of anyone grasping how isolating and empty it is without other people, and those other people really ought to look non-generic. I'm an "original 3D graphics researcher" from the 80's, and have created 3D production pipelines as one of my career specialties. VR needs an entire "face lift" where it includes people, at a moderately personal appearance level. When girls can look like themselves and it requires less effort than their own getting dressed each day, while also presenting their real time actual facial expressions they will use VR, if for nothing else, a gossip (social media) platform. But my main point is, until a person can go into VR and be themselves, look and act like themselves, VR is alien.

germinalphrase 6y ago

Presumably, this isolation would be less of a concern with mixed reality. Just place “the game” in a shared middle of the room and blend your friends into the stands.

swalsh 6y ago

It really does depend on the app, I was once playing the game Hotdogs Horseshoes and Handgrenades. It has this western level which is wide open. But I really hated it, it felt really isolated. The echos only made things worse. But Onward VR feels really social.

Accujack 6y ago

>you're a lot more likely to enjoy watching the big game with friends and family This is more a comment on the state of VR software than the technology itself. With the Apple product described, it's pretty easy to imagine software that allows you to have a "virtual box seat" where you can get online to watch the game with your family/friends, even if you aren't all in the same place, and use the tech to both watch the game and talk to each other when nothing's going on with plays. Alternatively, you can use the cameras in the app to merge your immediate surroundings with the game feed, so you see the people beside you in a part of the picture, or in the aforementioned "virtual" box seats. You can watch the game as if you're on the side lines (or on the ball) and see people around you react to plays, too. With eye tracking tech, the headset knows when you're looking at the game vs. your surroundings and can react accordingly. I think Apple producing a VR headset would be a very good thing for the market. Like or hate Apple as a company, they tend to set the standard for industrial design and UI technology, and their products drive other products' features and uses.

drited 6y ago

What about if you could sit next to your friends in VR to share the excitement even if they're physically remote from you?