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I think that a lot of the cynicism about this space comes from theorisers who have not yet tried VR for themselves and experienced viscerally + emotionally for

by mox111 5y ago

I think that a lot of the cynicism about this space comes from theorisers who have not yet tried VR for themselves and experienced viscerally + emotionally for themselves, the fact that it is a total game-changer for work and play. The thing with this space is, enough smart people are sufficiently excited by this new media and working on realising its potential, that it will inevitably end up producing value that can’t be ignored. Large swathes of smart people who see unrealised possibilities will always win out against individuals who only see impossibilities. Whenever I see a failure to appreciate the potential of new media, I’m reminded of this conversation between Jeremy Paxman (British journalist) and David Bowie when they were talking about the internet back in the 90s. https://youtu.be/LaHcOs7mhfU?t=297 https://youtu.be/LaHcOs7mhfU?t=297 “The internet… it’s just a tool though isn’t it” ?

lordloki 5y ago
Even the 13-25 year old males who are excited about this will tire of VR quickly. VR is comparable to 3-D movies and televisions, exciting the first few times you try it but once the novelty fades you just don't care enough about it.
- mox111 5y ago
  Sounds like you're speaking from experience here, so it's not for me to tell you you're wrong to feel that way. But from my POV, we've started using VR for work meetings/social gatherings (we're a remote company, myself in Spain, the majority in SF), and we've been able to achieve a level of rapport with each-other that's just not possible via a webcam. We will definitely continue to use it.
  - qorrect 5y ago
    I got the impression he has not used it ( or at least not the latest iteration ). I believe it's a game changer, it definitely holds my attention I even use it for exercise.
  - machiaweliczny 5y ago
    What tools are you using?
  - JohnAaronNelson 5y ago
    That’s super weird. I’d look for a new job real quick if I was required to do stand up with be goggles in. WTF is wrong with people… Rapport is built through authenticity and vulnerability, not fucking avatars.
    - dymk 5y ago
      Avatars may provide a better way to express authenticity and vulnerability compared to text or a video call.
      - JohnAaronNelson 5y ago
        “You can get to know me better by the mask I put on”
        dymk 5y ago
        …and you don’t put on a mask over text or video call?
    - mox111 5y ago
      Nobody is forcing us to use this tech. If we all happened to agree that it was annoying or "super weird" then we would just opt out. Fact is, that for now it feels valuable enough for us to keep using it (more so for social 'hangouts' than for things like stand-ups, which we still do via Zoom and where we can be as authentic and vulnerable as we like)
      - JohnAaronNelson 5y ago
        How many people participate? Doesn’t seem like it would scale outside a small group. Once you get past that size, it becomes a clique and thus corrosive to team building. A small group will have a wonderful time, everyone else will resent them. The company will then crumble or become something different entirely
        5y ago
- grumbel 5y ago
  Even if all the novelty fades away, you'll still be left with a gigantic virtual TV that you can carry everywhere. VR gaming doesn't need to succeed for AR/VR to be able to replace every display you have. It will still need some resolution improvements to replace a 4k display, but the latest headsets are already getting pretty close to replacing a 1080p display. And of course that isn't limited to one 1080p screen, it's all virtual, so you can have a tripple screen setup, a big cinema screen or whatever else you want.
IshKebab 5y ago
I don't know, I own an Oculus Quest and some games are definitely amazing. Beat Sabre and I Expect You To Die for example. I love them. But I still rarely use it. Even completely wireless it's still a hassle to get out, and not especially comfortable or easy to wear. And even shifting it slightly results in things going out of focus so you need it lines up just right. Plus very few people have big empty dedicated VR rooms so you have to move furniture. There's definitely potential but there's zero chance people are going to use this routinely for work even in a few tech generations. It would need to get to the weight and convenience of wearing sunglasses, with an angular resolution close to that of a real monitor. We're probably 40 years away from that tech. For gaming I think it will get more and more popular. For socialising and work? No chance.
- mox111 5y ago
  I hear you. For months I had my Oculus sitting in the corner of the room gathering dust. Unlike a phone, it's not pinging notifications at you all day so it's easy to forget about. But you know that saying "come for the tool, stay for the network"? Right now, we are super early in the adoption phase. You can tell by looking at what fraction of your Facebook network are on Oculus (in my case it's about 2%). That's why most of us are playing solo games which feel a bit like mere novelties. But now that all of my work colleagues have one, I'm using it heaps. The value of VR grows the more your buddies have access to it.
- parasubvert 5y ago
  For socializing and work I think there’s quite a lot of chance for VR, especially if due to climate and pandemics we can’t travel as much as we used to. It’s just a matter of finding the right balance of capability and convenience. Remember, videoconferencing was also dead and nobody used it… until they suddenly did.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    > Remember, videoconferencing was also dead and nobody used it… until they suddenly did. People use videoconferencing now in spite of its flaws because they have to. Once the pandemic is truly over it will gradually return to near its old levels. The fundamental issue is that a lot of people have shitty internet. VR doesn't change that. Replacing shitty videoconferencing with shitty VRconferencing is not a compelling option unless you really benefit from the VR (maybe architects?).
JohnAaronNelson 5y ago
You may be right on some level. I’ve used VR a bit. Was kind of neat and novel at first. Made me want to puke after a five minutes of use. Then again, I don’t game for the same reason.
mlac 5y ago
I will use VR when I can put on my headset, anywhere, and be transported to my "desk". I want to be able to take documents and move them around in VR, read them, put them on my "table", and then have apps that appear as monitors. So I can move and pull up email in front of me, "grab" an attachment, and "put" it into another email that I will compose. And have emails look like a stack of papers that you could actually process - pick up, hold, throw in a trashcan or put in an archive folder. It'd be amazing if I could just crumple up garbage emails and throw them on the floor behind me, or light them on fire. May still need a physical keyboard, but voice recognition could work. Or voice memos sent to people. I think we don't do that today because most people don't have a private office or headsets on. But it would be a lot more efficient in some circumstances if you could just leave a voice memo. And "apps" become screens - so you can pull up PPT, see it, work on it, and then push it to the side. It would be virtually unlimited and scalable screen real estate purchased with just one headset. You could have different flexible workstations (e.g. one for music production with 6 screens in front of you, one for each project). Sort of like desktop environments, but actually changing the desktop so that the files you leave around and windows you have up are saved in their state until you return to it. Writing a new book? Pull up a writing environment template that minimizes distraction. Ready to be social? News feeds? Gaming? There is a lot of potential there...
- mlac 5y ago
  Not to mention the separation it would give you working from home / or wherever. You could disengage from your whole work environment by taking off your headset, and have a very minimal tech setup outside that space. It would be a clean transition from work and home. You couldn't text with your phone, have TV in the background, and be in a room with someone at the same time. It would be fully engaged in tech, or not. (I admit there will likely be more opportunity for distraction in the virtual environment, because the friction to add an additional data feed or notification will be low). And watching sports on the weekend? Throw up all the games on multiple big screens.
  - redisman 5y ago
    After seeing some of the programming environments people have posted here in the last few months I’m becoming more convinced. I’d love to test out a VR work environment where I can sit on a fairly realistic mountain top or in a quiet forest. Still waiting for the cheap and economic version but I’m sure that’s coming eventually.
zephyr9 5y ago
> enough smart people are sufficiently excited by this new media > Large swathes of smart people who see unrealised possibilities You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
- mox111 5y ago
  Jeremy, that you?

by mox111 5y ago

lordloki 5y ago

Even the 13-25 year old males who are excited about this will tire of VR quickly. VR is comparable to 3-D movies and televisions, exciting the first few times you try it but once the novelty fades you just don't care enough about it.

mox111 5y ago
Sounds like you're speaking from experience here, so it's not for me to tell you you're wrong to feel that way. But from my POV, we've started using VR for work meetings/social gatherings (we're a remote company, myself in Spain, the majority in SF), and we've been able to achieve a level of rapport with each-other that's just not possible via a webcam. We will definitely continue to use it.
- qorrect 5y ago
  I got the impression he has not used it ( or at least not the latest iteration ). I believe it's a game changer, it definitely holds my attention I even use it for exercise.
- machiaweliczny 5y ago
  What tools are you using?
- JohnAaronNelson 5y ago
  That’s super weird. I’d look for a new job real quick if I was required to do stand up with be goggles in. WTF is wrong with people… Rapport is built through authenticity and vulnerability, not fucking avatars.
  - dymk 5y ago
    Avatars may provide a better way to express authenticity and vulnerability compared to text or a video call.
    - JohnAaronNelson 5y ago
      “You can get to know me better by the mask I put on”
      - dymk 5y ago
        …and you don’t put on a mask over text or video call?
  - mox111 5y ago
    Nobody is forcing us to use this tech. If we all happened to agree that it was annoying or "super weird" then we would just opt out. Fact is, that for now it feels valuable enough for us to keep using it (more so for social 'hangouts' than for things like stand-ups, which we still do via Zoom and where we can be as authentic and vulnerable as we like)
    - JohnAaronNelson 5y ago
      How many people participate? Doesn’t seem like it would scale outside a small group. Once you get past that size, it becomes a clique and thus corrosive to team building. A small group will have a wonderful time, everyone else will resent them. The company will then crumble or become something different entirely
      - 5y ago
grumbel 5y ago
Even if all the novelty fades away, you'll still be left with a gigantic virtual TV that you can carry everywhere. VR gaming doesn't need to succeed for AR/VR to be able to replace every display you have. It will still need some resolution improvements to replace a 4k display, but the latest headsets are already getting pretty close to replacing a 1080p display. And of course that isn't limited to one 1080p screen, it's all virtual, so you can have a tripple screen setup, a big cinema screen or whatever else you want.

IshKebab 5y ago

I don't know, I own an Oculus Quest and some games are definitely amazing. Beat Sabre and I Expect You To Die for example. I love them. But I still rarely use it. Even completely wireless it's still a hassle to get out, and not especially comfortable or easy to wear. And even shifting it slightly results in things going out of focus so you need it lines up just right. Plus very few people have big empty dedicated VR rooms so you have to move furniture. There's definitely potential but there's zero chance people are going to use this routinely for work even in a few tech generations. It would need to get to the weight and convenience of wearing sunglasses, with an angular resolution close to that of a real monitor. We're probably 40 years away from that tech. For gaming I think it will get more and more popular. For socialising and work? No chance.

mox111 5y ago
I hear you. For months I had my Oculus sitting in the corner of the room gathering dust. Unlike a phone, it's not pinging notifications at you all day so it's easy to forget about. But you know that saying "come for the tool, stay for the network"? Right now, we are super early in the adoption phase. You can tell by looking at what fraction of your Facebook network are on Oculus (in my case it's about 2%). That's why most of us are playing solo games which feel a bit like mere novelties. But now that all of my work colleagues have one, I'm using it heaps. The value of VR grows the more your buddies have access to it.
parasubvert 5y ago
For socializing and work I think there’s quite a lot of chance for VR, especially if due to climate and pandemics we can’t travel as much as we used to. It’s just a matter of finding the right balance of capability and convenience. Remember, videoconferencing was also dead and nobody used it… until they suddenly did.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  > Remember, videoconferencing was also dead and nobody used it… until they suddenly did. People use videoconferencing now in spite of its flaws because they have to. Once the pandemic is truly over it will gradually return to near its old levels. The fundamental issue is that a lot of people have shitty internet. VR doesn't change that. Replacing shitty videoconferencing with shitty VRconferencing is not a compelling option unless you really benefit from the VR (maybe architects?).

JohnAaronNelson 5y ago

You may be right on some level. I’ve used VR a bit. Was kind of neat and novel at first. Made me want to puke after a five minutes of use. Then again, I don’t game for the same reason.

mlac 5y ago

I will use VR when I can put on my headset, anywhere, and be transported to my "desk". I want to be able to take documents and move them around in VR, read them, put them on my "table", and then have apps that appear as monitors. So I can move and pull up email in front of me, "grab" an attachment, and "put" it into another email that I will compose. And have emails look like a stack of papers that you could actually process - pick up, hold, throw in a trashcan or put in an archive folder. It'd be amazing if I could just crumple up garbage emails and throw them on the floor behind me, or light them on fire. May still need a physical keyboard, but voice recognition could work. Or voice memos sent to people. I think we don't do that today because most people don't have a private office or headsets on. But it would be a lot more efficient in some circumstances if you could just leave a voice memo. And "apps" become screens - so you can pull up PPT, see it, work on it, and then push it to the side. It would be virtually unlimited and scalable screen real estate purchased with just one headset. You could have different flexible workstations (e.g. one for music production with 6 screens in front of you, one for each project). Sort of like desktop environments, but actually changing the desktop so that the files you leave around and windows you have up are saved in their state until you return to it. Writing a new book? Pull up a writing environment template that minimizes distraction. Ready to be social? News feeds? Gaming? There is a lot of potential there...

mlac 5y ago
Not to mention the separation it would give you working from home / or wherever. You could disengage from your whole work environment by taking off your headset, and have a very minimal tech setup outside that space. It would be a clean transition from work and home. You couldn't text with your phone, have TV in the background, and be in a room with someone at the same time. It would be fully engaged in tech, or not. (I admit there will likely be more opportunity for distraction in the virtual environment, because the friction to add an additional data feed or notification will be low). And watching sports on the weekend? Throw up all the games on multiple big screens.
- redisman 5y ago
  After seeing some of the programming environments people have posted here in the last few months I’m becoming more convinced. I’d love to test out a VR work environment where I can sit on a fairly realistic mountain top or in a quiet forest. Still waiting for the cheap and economic version but I’m sure that’s coming eventually.

zephyr9 5y ago

> enough smart people are sufficiently excited by this new media > Large swathes of smart people who see unrealised possibilities You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

mox111 5y ago
Jeremy, that you?