5 ms·

> It feels a whole lot more like a real meeting than a Zoom call does. I haven't had the chance to try it myself, so can you explain how it's better? I feel l

by hiq 4y ago

> It feels a whole lot more like a real meeting than a Zoom call does. I haven't had the chance to try it myself, so can you explain how it's better? I feel like the main problem with remote meetings is the audio latency. You cannot speak as you would naturally, you'd speak in turn instead. I'm guessing VR allows you to give and receive visual cues about this so it might be better, is this what you had in mind?

modeless 4y ago
The audio latency is better. You're not sending or receiving HD video so your connection is less loaded and the audio doesn't ever have to be delayed to synchronize with video. And VR devices are better optimized for low latency than your average system. Visual cues for turn taking while speaking work better, as you mentioned. Spatial audio is awesome for locating speakers and differentiating multiple speakers at once. Hand gestures work better; you can actually point at things in a shared 3D space.
- nwienert 4y ago
  People just won’t put on world-occluding headsets to talk to cartoons, end of the day. Only in bubble-land does this pass the smell test imo.
  - mooreds 4y ago
    I remember swearing up and down that I didn't need a phone I could carry everywhere with me. This was in the late 1990s/early 2000s. What communication was so important that it couldn't wait until I was home, next to my land line and answering machine?
    - nwienert 4y ago
      Phones work because they are so simple, unobtrusive and easy to position and use contextually. They are the argument against VR.
      - mooreds 4y ago
        Have you seen the cellphones of the late 1980s? https://techcentral.co.za/the-cellphones-of-the-1980s/191544/ https://techcentral.co.za/the-cellphones-of-the-1980s/191544... While phones now are "simple, unobtrusive and easy to position and use contextually", they certainly weren't then.
        nwienert 4y ago
        And they weren’t as popular then. They also were unobtrusive in the ways that matter - you could walk around and talk while doing other things. David Foster Wallace has a whole thing on this in IJ that really captures it well, where even corded phones are really better than we give credit because they give you freedom and privacy. You can do chores, look in the mirror, and signal to people in the room all while talking. If anything I think things move more towards Slack Huddle where you retain your freedom of movement in favor of just voice + screen. It’s an anachronistic pov to try and force real world into virtual so literally. It’s just a very SV thing to ignore all the social and emotional needs and just look at “oh it’s higher fidelity” or whatever. If it was all about immersion people would carry iPads around, but they don’t. The difference in asking someone to give 10% of their vision to a TV or phone screen that can be turned away from with 0 effort, vs giving 100% of their vision, with considerable effort to enter and leave, is so under appreciated.
        Robotbeat 4y ago
        VR with inside-out tracking is way easier to use casually than wired PCVR.
        throwaway4aday 4y ago
        I don't think you've spent enough time learning about the technology or the goals of its proponents to argue against it. You're starting to veer off into strawman territory. Most VR proponents see two big use cases: immersive entertainment and augmented reality. Immersive entertainment will demand 100% of your attention but you will want to give it 100% because there is no other way to have such a deep experience otherwise. Watching a movie or playing a game on a screen is fine but it doesn't give you the same visceral reactions that you have with even the simplest VR experiences like standing on a ledge 10 stories up or killing an NPC in melee combat. Both feel real and the second one can be quite disturbing the first time you do it even though the graphics are still low res. I've never experienced anything that even came close through a normal screen Augmented reality will be unobtrusive and only demand part of your attention. It will be additive to the world around you and it will replace the phone in your pocket along with thousands of other things. This technology is still a long ways off but we're already building the bridge to it with mixed reality and high-res passthrough.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    The headset here doesn’t occlude the world it has video pass through.
  - crooked-v 4y ago
    > People just won’t put on world-occluding headsets to talk to cartoons People already do with VRChat (current average about 19,000 users/day on Steam, likely much more on the standalone app on the Quest 2), and it frankly sucks in a ton of ways. Take an app that captures the same user interest, fix all the shitty parts, and put it on better hardware and I would expect user numbers to explode.
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    I think the entire player population of VRChat would like to disagree with you.
MacsHeadroom 4y ago
The audio latency problem is solved with spatial audio. In VRChat you can easily follow a conversation with 10 people talking over each other, because the audio comes from the direction of their avatars and you can tune it in and out naturally like you do in real life.

by hiq 4y ago

modeless 4y ago

The audio latency is better. You're not sending or receiving HD video so your connection is less loaded and the audio doesn't ever have to be delayed to synchronize with video. And VR devices are better optimized for low latency than your average system. Visual cues for turn taking while speaking work better, as you mentioned. Spatial audio is awesome for locating speakers and differentiating multiple speakers at once. Hand gestures work better; you can actually point at things in a shared 3D space.

nwienert 4y ago
People just won’t put on world-occluding headsets to talk to cartoons, end of the day. Only in bubble-land does this pass the smell test imo.
- mooreds 4y ago
  I remember swearing up and down that I didn't need a phone I could carry everywhere with me. This was in the late 1990s/early 2000s. What communication was so important that it couldn't wait until I was home, next to my land line and answering machine?
  - nwienert 4y ago
    Phones work because they are so simple, unobtrusive and easy to position and use contextually. They are the argument against VR.
    - mooreds 4y ago
      Have you seen the cellphones of the late 1980s? https://techcentral.co.za/the-cellphones-of-the-1980s/191544/ https://techcentral.co.za/the-cellphones-of-the-1980s/191544... While phones now are "simple, unobtrusive and easy to position and use contextually", they certainly weren't then.
      - nwienert 4y ago
        And they weren’t as popular then. They also were unobtrusive in the ways that matter - you could walk around and talk while doing other things. David Foster Wallace has a whole thing on this in IJ that really captures it well, where even corded phones are really better than we give credit because they give you freedom and privacy. You can do chores, look in the mirror, and signal to people in the room all while talking. If anything I think things move more towards Slack Huddle where you retain your freedom of movement in favor of just voice + screen. It’s an anachronistic pov to try and force real world into virtual so literally. It’s just a very SV thing to ignore all the social and emotional needs and just look at “oh it’s higher fidelity” or whatever. If it was all about immersion people would carry iPads around, but they don’t. The difference in asking someone to give 10% of their vision to a TV or phone screen that can be turned away from with 0 effort, vs giving 100% of their vision, with considerable effort to enter and leave, is so under appreciated.
        Robotbeat 4y ago
        VR with inside-out tracking is way easier to use casually than wired PCVR.
        throwaway4aday 4y ago
        I don't think you've spent enough time learning about the technology or the goals of its proponents to argue against it. You're starting to veer off into strawman territory. Most VR proponents see two big use cases: immersive entertainment and augmented reality. Immersive entertainment will demand 100% of your attention but you will want to give it 100% because there is no other way to have such a deep experience otherwise. Watching a movie or playing a game on a screen is fine but it doesn't give you the same visceral reactions that you have with even the simplest VR experiences like standing on a ledge 10 stories up or killing an NPC in melee combat. Both feel real and the second one can be quite disturbing the first time you do it even though the graphics are still low res. I've never experienced anything that even came close through a normal screen Augmented reality will be unobtrusive and only demand part of your attention. It will be additive to the world around you and it will replace the phone in your pocket along with thousands of other things. This technology is still a long ways off but we're already building the bridge to it with mixed reality and high-res passthrough.
- dagmx 4y ago
  The headset here doesn’t occlude the world it has video pass through.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  > People just won’t put on world-occluding headsets to talk to cartoons People already do with VRChat (current average about 19,000 users/day on Steam, likely much more on the standalone app on the Quest 2), and it frankly sucks in a ton of ways. Take an app that captures the same user interest, fix all the shitty parts, and put it on better hardware and I would expect user numbers to explode.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  I think the entire player population of VRChat would like to disagree with you.

MacsHeadroom 4y ago

The audio latency problem is solved with spatial audio. In VRChat you can easily follow a conversation with 10 people talking over each other, because the audio comes from the direction of their avatars and you can tune it in and out naturally like you do in real life.