4 ms·

I feel like an old grumpy man saying this, but I hate the idea of wearing a device on my face to literally hijack one of the precious senses one has. I'm sure o

I feel like an old grumpy man saying this, but I hate the idea of wearing a device on my face to literally hijack one of the precious senses one has. I'm sure over time I'll look back and laugh at myself for thinking that way.

vlunkr 4y ago
I've been railing against VR for years, because I'm really picky about video games, but I was converted. It's really worth a try. It's not a replacement for current video games, nor do I see myself wearing one for hours at a time to hang out in some corporate dystopia (which seems to be what Meta wants), but there are some really cool and unique experiences. I think VR game design is still pretty immature, but in a way I find that refreshing. most of these games are simple enough that any casual player can pick them up, which hasn't really been the case since the Wii came out ages ago.
rgovostes 4y ago
Do you ever wear headphones?
- emadabdulrahim 4y ago
  I do, but I'm not entirely deaf when I wear them. I can hear my surroundings easily if I wanted to. Is there a mode in those VR headsets where one can see what's in front of them without taking them off? I'm ignorant about the tech of VR.
  - rg111 4y ago
    That becomes AR then, I guess?
    - agloeregrets 4y ago
      I've seen the mix of VR and Ar called XR, or Extended Reality. That is what Quest Pro is.
  - rngname22 4y ago
    It's called passthrough-AR, it's a feature on some VR devices, current limitations are that its sometimes monoscopic not stereoscopic or has fucky depth perception (and some devices have black and white passthrough), but as technology advances there is no reason all VR devices won't have near full fidelity passthrough. AR and VR devices eventually merge and become one device.
  - libraryatnight 4y ago
    Someone correct me if I'm misremembering, but with my nephews Quest it shows you your surroundings and has you draw a perimeter to designate a safe play space, and if you step out of it you see your surroundings.
    - rjh29 4y ago
      You can also double-tap the headset to show your surroundings at any time.
  - ehsanu1 4y ago
    There is "passthrough", where cameras on the Oculus are relayed to the screens within, and it seems to be capable of mixing that with the virtual world too: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/mixed-reality-with-passthrough/ https://developer.oculus.com/blog/mixed-reality-with-passthr... Also, there's a lot of innovation happening in display tech for AR too which will be even better, since you'll just see the real world more or less directly.
  - agloeregrets 4y ago
    Quest has black and white passthrough. Next-gen's model (Project Cambria) has full color pass-through cameras that supposedly feel realistic enough. Current passthrough is good enough that I can walk through my house headset-on.
  - nomel 4y ago
    > where one can see what's in front of them without taking them off For quest, you double tap anywhere on the headset (it detects the physical tap) to enable passthrough mode. The game goes away, but you can see. Some games let you see through, but that's limited to games where having something float in front of you in your real room makes sense, rather than being somewhere else.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bena 4y ago
The very real cost of wearing a 1lb. weight in front of your face cannot be ignored either.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
aleksiy123 4y ago
screens and headphones are already hijacking your senses?
striking 4y ago
And you don't hijack your other senses? Listening to music, smelling perfumes, etc. are all kind of doing that. Obviously this is a novel and heavyweight way of messing with your vision and proprioception, but I'm sure you've watched a movie before. Besides, it's really tiring after just a couple hours, I don't think there's any risk of getting "stuck in VR".
bredren 4y ago
I'm not sure you'll laugh at yourself, so much as new information on what is possible might change your mind. The hijacking of senses was a major concern for the Apple design group at the earliest stages of their headset design. Reporting from The Information goes into some depth on Apple's headset external screen display (to show the current expression of the wearer) and what sounds like a uniquely high quality pass through of the environment so you can see and interact with people in the room. It apparently also deals with occlusion problems that are unsolved in the pass-through experiences of in-market headsets. It sounds all quite magic, and apparently the work is going in to create that sense. TI's reporting says accomplishing these goals is why the device has fallen behind.
lern_too_spel 4y ago
Not just one. Typically, today's VR systems substitute inputs for both vision and hearing, which is enough to disconnect most people from what is going on around them. Headphones by themselves or looking at a screen that you can easily look away from aren't remotely the same.
mhh__ 4y ago
As opposed to staring at a screen desperately trying to mimic what a VR headset can do much better anyway?
- nomel 4y ago
  "So, to look left, you grab this thing, move your hand left. To look up you move it forward! It's not 3d, but don't worry, you'll get used to figuring out how far away things are eventually." "Grandpa, this is stupid".
rootusrootus 4y ago
Eh, I can take it off, so the idea does not bother me. But that first time I put a Quest 2 on my head (was the first VR headset I've ever even tried), I was giggling just for the demos alone. It's marvelous, even with the awful resolution. There is clearly so much potential there. More resolution, less mass, I look forward to it.
ilaksh 4y ago
The next version of Quest 2 will probably have color passthrough video and be much less uncomfortable and heavy. Right now I can only tolerate it to enable playing table tennis but it is too uncomfortable for working. Next Quest might change that. The direction they are going in the next five years or so is truly comfortable goggles or even normal glasses that do augmented reality with high field of view. So it will not restrict your vision of the normal world any more than you request. There are also improvements coming in terms of eye tracking and realistic avatars as well as better room scanning and pose detection. This will mean that quite realistic virtual places start to become comfortable and easy to access. Try to imagine that instead of going to a physical coffeeshop, workplace or friend's home, you will have the option of just putting on the glasses and get a representation that truly is close to the real thing. Eye contact and facial expression tracking and projection will be a big part of it. You could even map this virtual coffee shop or what to a specific room in your house, or just one wall. Or don't have a virtual place at all and just have a giant virtual monitor. Or four of them. Put it on a wall so it does not restrict your view of anything. The bulky headsets are just a starting point.
- esyir 4y ago
  I'm interested to see what the lens advancements are going to look like. A good chunk of the weight/bulk comes from the current lens setup, so if the new ones reduce bulk and weight, that would make life a lot better.
agentdrtran 4y ago
it's really fun but I don't see the use case of staying in it all day
corrral 4y ago
Every time I start to think, "hm, maybe I'll get one of the cheaper VR sets, even if the games suck it's probably pretty awesome for porn" I recall the guy with the VR headset in the music video for Do the Evolution (Pearl Jam) and then don't. I'm already grossed-out enough when I happen to catch a glimpse of myself using a normal computer (faces of people immersed in a computer screen look a bit disturbing, kinda slack and dead, and it's much worse when the face is your own) I'm with you, it's too weird for now. I'll probably give in when they've got AR/VR combo glasses that you can toggle from one to the other, which I assume is the endgame for all this. By then I'll probably need it to talk to my grandkids or whatever anyway. The march of "progress".

vlunkr 4y ago

I've been railing against VR for years, because I'm really picky about video games, but I was converted. It's really worth a try. It's not a replacement for current video games, nor do I see myself wearing one for hours at a time to hang out in some corporate dystopia (which seems to be what Meta wants), but there are some really cool and unique experiences. I think VR game design is still pretty immature, but in a way I find that refreshing. most of these games are simple enough that any casual player can pick them up, which hasn't really been the case since the Wii came out ages ago.

rgovostes 4y ago

Do you ever wear headphones?

emadabdulrahim 4y ago
I do, but I'm not entirely deaf when I wear them. I can hear my surroundings easily if I wanted to. Is there a mode in those VR headsets where one can see what's in front of them without taking them off? I'm ignorant about the tech of VR.
- rg111 4y ago
  That becomes AR then, I guess?
  - agloeregrets 4y ago
    I've seen the mix of VR and Ar called XR, or Extended Reality. That is what Quest Pro is.
- rngname22 4y ago
  It's called passthrough-AR, it's a feature on some VR devices, current limitations are that its sometimes monoscopic not stereoscopic or has fucky depth perception (and some devices have black and white passthrough), but as technology advances there is no reason all VR devices won't have near full fidelity passthrough. AR and VR devices eventually merge and become one device.
- libraryatnight 4y ago
  Someone correct me if I'm misremembering, but with my nephews Quest it shows you your surroundings and has you draw a perimeter to designate a safe play space, and if you step out of it you see your surroundings.
  - rjh29 4y ago
    You can also double-tap the headset to show your surroundings at any time.
- ehsanu1 4y ago
  There is "passthrough", where cameras on the Oculus are relayed to the screens within, and it seems to be capable of mixing that with the virtual world too: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/mixed-reality-with-passthrough/ https://developer.oculus.com/blog/mixed-reality-with-passthr... Also, there's a lot of innovation happening in display tech for AR too which will be even better, since you'll just see the real world more or less directly.
- agloeregrets 4y ago
  Quest has black and white passthrough. Next-gen's model (Project Cambria) has full color pass-through cameras that supposedly feel realistic enough. Current passthrough is good enough that I can walk through my house headset-on.
- nomel 4y ago
  > where one can see what's in front of them without taking them off For quest, you double tap anywhere on the headset (it detects the physical tap) to enable passthrough mode. The game goes away, but you can see. Some games let you see through, but that's limited to games where having something float in front of you in your real room makes sense, rather than being somewhere else.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bena 4y ago

The very real cost of wearing a 1lb. weight in front of your face cannot be ignored either.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

aleksiy123 4y ago

screens and headphones are already hijacking your senses?

striking 4y ago

And you don't hijack your other senses? Listening to music, smelling perfumes, etc. are all kind of doing that. Obviously this is a novel and heavyweight way of messing with your vision and proprioception, but I'm sure you've watched a movie before. Besides, it's really tiring after just a couple hours, I don't think there's any risk of getting "stuck in VR".

bredren 4y ago

I'm not sure you'll laugh at yourself, so much as new information on what is possible might change your mind. The hijacking of senses was a major concern for the Apple design group at the earliest stages of their headset design. Reporting from The Information goes into some depth on Apple's headset external screen display (to show the current expression of the wearer) and what sounds like a uniquely high quality pass through of the environment so you can see and interact with people in the room. It apparently also deals with occlusion problems that are unsolved in the pass-through experiences of in-market headsets. It sounds all quite magic, and apparently the work is going in to create that sense. TI's reporting says accomplishing these goals is why the device has fallen behind.

lern_too_spel 4y ago

Not just one. Typically, today's VR systems substitute inputs for both vision and hearing, which is enough to disconnect most people from what is going on around them. Headphones by themselves or looking at a screen that you can easily look away from aren't remotely the same.

mhh__ 4y ago

As opposed to staring at a screen desperately trying to mimic what a VR headset can do much better anyway?

nomel 4y ago
"So, to look left, you grab this thing, move your hand left. To look up you move it forward! It's not 3d, but don't worry, you'll get used to figuring out how far away things are eventually." "Grandpa, this is stupid".

rootusrootus 4y ago

Eh, I can take it off, so the idea does not bother me. But that first time I put a Quest 2 on my head (was the first VR headset I've ever even tried), I was giggling just for the demos alone. It's marvelous, even with the awful resolution. There is clearly so much potential there. More resolution, less mass, I look forward to it.

ilaksh 4y ago

The next version of Quest 2 will probably have color passthrough video and be much less uncomfortable and heavy. Right now I can only tolerate it to enable playing table tennis but it is too uncomfortable for working. Next Quest might change that. The direction they are going in the next five years or so is truly comfortable goggles or even normal glasses that do augmented reality with high field of view. So it will not restrict your vision of the normal world any more than you request. There are also improvements coming in terms of eye tracking and realistic avatars as well as better room scanning and pose detection. This will mean that quite realistic virtual places start to become comfortable and easy to access. Try to imagine that instead of going to a physical coffeeshop, workplace or friend's home, you will have the option of just putting on the glasses and get a representation that truly is close to the real thing. Eye contact and facial expression tracking and projection will be a big part of it. You could even map this virtual coffee shop or what to a specific room in your house, or just one wall. Or don't have a virtual place at all and just have a giant virtual monitor. Or four of them. Put it on a wall so it does not restrict your view of anything. The bulky headsets are just a starting point.

esyir 4y ago
I'm interested to see what the lens advancements are going to look like. A good chunk of the weight/bulk comes from the current lens setup, so if the new ones reduce bulk and weight, that would make life a lot better.

agentdrtran 4y ago

it's really fun but I don't see the use case of staying in it all day

corrral 4y ago

Every time I start to think, "hm, maybe I'll get one of the cheaper VR sets, even if the games suck it's probably pretty awesome for porn" I recall the guy with the VR headset in the music video for Do the Evolution (Pearl Jam) and then don't. I'm already grossed-out enough when I happen to catch a glimpse of myself using a normal computer (faces of people immersed in a computer screen look a bit disturbing, kinda slack and dead, and it's much worse when the face is your own) I'm with you, it's too weird for now. I'll probably give in when they've got AR/VR combo glasses that you can toggle from one to the other, which I assume is the endgame for all this. By then I'll probably need it to talk to my grandkids or whatever anyway. The march of "progress".