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Why VR/AR gets farther away as it comes into focus

85 points by SLHamlet 4y ago

astlouis44 4y ago
Great article. Was hoping WebXR would be mentioned though!
SLHamlet 4y ago
Love the Neal Stephenson quote in here: “The assumption that the Metaverse is primarily an AR/VR thing isn’t crazy. In my book [Snow Crash, published in 1992] it’s all VR. And I worked for an AR company [Magic Leap]--one of several that are putting billions of dollars into building headsets. But I didn’t see video games coming when I wrote Snow Crash… Thanks to games, billions of people are now comfortable navigating 3D environments on flat 2D screens. The UIs that they’ve mastered [keyboard and mouse for navigation and camera] are not what most science fiction writers would have predicted. But that’s how path dependency in tech works. We fluently navigate and interact with extremely rich 3D environments using keyboards that were designed for mechanical typewriters. It’s steampunk made real. A Metaverse that left behind those users and the devs who build those experiences would be getting off on the wrong foot… My expectation is that a lot of Metaverse content will be built for screens (where the market is) while keeping options open for the future growth of affordable headsets.”
- astlouis44 4y ago
  Agreed, fantastic quote. My personal belief is that the browser as we know it today will evolve to be more based around 3D, leveraging emerging technologies such as WebAssembly and WebGPU. As headsets become more widely adopted, WebXR is what will extend the web into VR. There won't be a metaverse based around an app store model. It has to be open to everyone, built with standards and protocols in mind from the very start, and most importantly: no 30% fees from walled gardens.
  - WXLCKNO 4y ago
    I would definitely take the time to shop on an AR/VR based e-commerce site that had all products as visible demos. For certain categories of products anyways.
    - TylerE 4y ago
      Amazon already has at for a lot of furniture
  - jcelerier 4y ago
    > My personal belief is that the browser as we know it today will evolve to be more based around 3D, I interacted with a lot of 3D content, games, apps when I was a child / teen but nowadays I largely prefer 2D for all my interactions with computers, be it games, softwares, etc. 3D just feels gimmicky and less productive than WIMP, especially on all the VR headsets I tried. I'm curious if other people feel different.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
      There's an intentionality or exclusive focus aspect to 3D content. When you're working in a 2D desktop alt tabbing or rapidly task switching between monitors feels very low friction and natural. When you load up a game, a CAD app, etc, there's much more of a "ok I'm just going to do only this now" aspect that I think is interesting. For this reason I'm highly skeptical 3D will replace 2D.
      - dylan604 4y ago
        > "ok I'm just going to do only this now" for most of the games and other VR entertainment stuff, this is precisely what the producers what of you. they throw around terms like immersive. they want you in the world they created and believe that it make the experience that much more when you forget about where you really are and believer yourself to be in the virtual place. there's a definite time and place for that idea, but have never once felt that the content i was "immersed" in really had me at a level of suspension of disbelief to the level the producers had hoped. at that point, what is the point of it. i am not one bit intrigued by theZuck's vision. i do not want to hang out in a virtual conference room around a virtual conference table looking at cartoon versions of people because it's cute. you can cute the fuck out of it until the knob goes to eleven, but it doesn't make this boring as meeting any more enjoyable.
    - rngname22 4y ago
      Can you explain how you interacted with 3D content when you were a child/teen? I think you might be conflating 3D graphics engines that render a 2D image on a 2D monitor with modern stereoscopic 3D headsets.
- labrador 4y ago
  An important consideration for me is that a 43" TV with a 4K HD screen is beautiful to look at, while Oculus screens are not. For 300 dollars I can get a beautiful portal into 3D worlds in the form of a monitor in front of my face and I don't have to wear anything or change anything about the way I see or hear. And also, I don't like the way things move in the VR I've seen. It lags and jumps bit and does not scroll smoothly as I look around.
  - coffeebeqn 4y ago
    Maybe in 5 years it’ll be great but I found the Quest 2 to be very blurry and “streaky” compared to a decent monitor. It also still gives me nausea if I play a game for a few hours which I like to do
    - Scalene2 4y ago
      When is the last time you tried an extended session? It is now possible to do 120Hz on the quest for some games and on PCVR. Earlier versions were limited to 72Hz. There have been other improvements too. Maybe update your headset, tweak some settings, find games that will work at 120Hz and give it another go. Also, the Quest 2 is kind of old now, newer headsets are vastly superior with regards to blur and streaks.
    - anonred 4y ago
      I find the Quest Pro lenses and screen to be a significant improvement over Quest 2 in terms of clarity. You’ll find many other people saying the same thing. So your 5-year timeline seems off to me.
      - coffeebeqn 4y ago
        The quest pro costs as much as a gaming pc. So I guess I’ll have to wait. Also disappointing they didn’t increase the resolution. I’m not looking to pay 5x for marginally better lenses
        anonred 4y ago
- wahern 4y ago
  If a rich, interconnected 3D world at the scale of the WWW added significant value, then interest and uptake of Croquet would have taken off 10+ years ago. Croquet is technology-wise as close to the science fiction ideal of the Metaverse as anything that has existed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cobalt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cobalt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS With Croquet, you could literally jump from, say, your favorite 3D game into a virtual business meeting, controlling your same avatar, and without either 3D space being hosted by the same entity--directly or indirectly. It's the embodiment of some of the most fanciful visions of a Metaverse, and it has existed for quite some time. But Croquet hasn't taken off, despite intensive efforts, which tells me that not only will our 2D interfaces continue to stick around, the 2D digital world is likely to remain overwhelmingly predominate for quite some time still. At least outside isolated islands. And in any event, I don't see how that could change unless and until a fundamentally open, interconnected, and extensible platform like Croquet sees adoption. A world of closed gardens could never be as immersive and expansive. As large as Facebook has become (and as AOL before it), it simply doesn't and couldn't have the same underlying impact as the WWW collectively. [1] NB: the Wikipedia article for Croquet_project now forwards to Croquet_OS, a commercial project. I hope Croquet OS finds success. I can understand the thinking that on the modern internet new technologies necessarily require commercial backing. But ultimately I think that's a reflection of some fundamental dilemmas on the modern internet regarding the uptake of new technologies; a dilemma that likely has no real solution unless or until something else comes out of left field to toss the ecosystem into disarray. That something is unlikely to be the Metaverse because otherwise Croquet or something substantially similar would have already taken off long ago.
  - alanbernstein 4y ago
    It's amazing that I've never even heard of this. As we have seen time after time, the best technology doesn't always win, marketing is a huge factor. Does the organization behind this do any marketing?
  - bitwize 4y ago
    I like to say that with Croquet, Alan Kay built the Metaverse from Snow Crash... but that was just a step toward his actual goal, which is to build the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from The Diamond Age (Dynabook).
- saurik 4y ago
  And before we had moving 2D graphics in the form of movies and video games we had text descriptions of action with the occasional illustration or even (much later) photograph, which allowed people to build not only deep stories but rich worlds that have caused entire generations of people to enter what amounts to a shared hallucination (maybe more reminiscent of Vurt than Snow Crash). If only there were some way to use networked computers to allow users to navigate a world written by such authors... imagine how egalitarian that could be, without the large production budgets of 3D modelling and graphic artists enforcing large barriers to entry for aspiring contributors! Alas, no such future could ever be possible for The Metaverse--and it is almost ridiculous to imagine such--as the birth of The Internet in the same year as Nintendo invented the modern computer has guaranteed that no one, anywhere, has any interest in reading anything.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    And yet here we are on this site, typing and reading text, while Amazon has sold almost half a billion books on kindle alone. https://wordsrated.com/amazon-kindle-e-book-and-kindle-unlimited-statistics/ https://wordsrated.com/amazon-kindle-e-book-and-kindle-unlim...
    - Scalene2 4y ago
      So that means that Amazon has sold a kindle book to at absolute best, less than 1 in 16 people.
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        1 in 16 seems like really high market penetration for a device that (practically) requires special-purpose hardware and whose offerings are primarily in English. Meta gives away not just it's platforms, but in many countries the data that those platforms need. In some cases it's the only zero-rated app. And they have gotten maybe 6 in 16 people to make accounts.
        bombcar 4y ago
- hinkley 4y ago
  Where I see VR go the most wrong is, particularly when business people get involved, is the mistake of trying to recreate reality. I have at least a Library of Congress on my computer, which I can access without having to deal with Euclidean Geometry. I don't schlep through miles of shelves looking for something. I just look for it. That's profoundly important to the reasons why we went to digital from analog. If you want to make VR "work", you have to also have non-Euclidean Geometry. Things need to be smaller on the outside. You need to be able to affect the "world" through intention, not action. In a word, you need magic. Which dovetails pretty well with video games.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    The trying to create reality is simply recreating familiar paradigms to help new users hat a foothold. You can't jump right into the most modern user interface. Even voor advanced users. This is why a 'modern' desktop still mimicks a messy desk from a 70s office worker. The very easiest computers skipped that step due to technical limitations but the mainstream users had a hard time grokking them. Only with the mobile phone have we started to really leave that behind. VR will be similarly rooted in the past until people find their footing and embrace new ways to interact. And why meeting rooms in VR have to have chairs, tables and people have to draw on virtual whiteboards instead of just in the space in front of them in 3D. The tech is getting there, but our minds take even more time.
    - duxup 4y ago
      Does anyone want that? A meeting room? They are familiar sure, but who wants to put on a headset for a meeting…. I feel like being familiar here is also being uninteresting.
      - chaostheory 4y ago
        Conversely, who wants to look at flat boxes of people on a flat screen? Imo the best use case for VR isn’t in replacing reality. Its best use case is to mimic reality for people who are remote. VR meetings are way better than zoom or teams video meetings. I can also tell you that VR ping pong or VR mini golf are both way better than just having a FaceTime call. People who refuse to even try modern VR aren’t going to come to this realization.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Not necessarily disagreeing but I wonder how that applies to the yet to be born audiences. Maybe they will be used to it. The killer app (maybe remote travel, or vocational training) delivered via VR will make them used to it. To them 2D would be like using emacs having only used an IDE
robg 4y ago
I was skeptical on XR until I saw the health and care applications - typically short sessions 30-60 mins with high market value if solving a medical need. The long duration uses, like work or entertainment, seem unlikely any time soon, too many usability constraints.
- acdha 4y ago
  I think that also hits the equipment challenge: those kind of situations can have a rack of GPUs plugged into the wall and it still won’t be the most expensive device in the building. The same implies to a lot of the industrial applications - if your product makes a mechanic working on $500k jet engines more productive, you have a much easier design budget than someone trying to convince people to buy another personal entertainment system.
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    500k, or even $40 million like a Boeing 777 engine
    - acdha 4y ago
      Wow, yes, I hadn’t noticed how high the top end went.
- thfuran 4y ago
  Isn't your described use case a long-duration work use for one of the parties?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
aaron695 4y ago
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Scalene2 4y ago
How does the author justify comments about 16K resolution being optimal, 12 cameras being the minimum required, and 240Hz being ideal?
- acdha 4y ago
  Are you asking for citations to research papers? It’s briefly explained in context but basically your eyes capture a ton of data and process it quickly (different types of data are processed at different speeds: your brain can react to motion before you recognize color or identify an object). That has millions of years of evolution behind it, and our entire lives are spent training expectations on how that works and especially how it interacts with other senses or what we do. That leads to several hard problems: you don’t just need to generate a high-quality scene, you need to render it twice because your brain is used to the distance between your eyes (16K==8K per eye) and because your position isn’t static it needs to update very quickly when you move because your brain is very used to how that works in real life. You have a budget measured in single digit milliseconds to that or a fair number of people will get motion sickness and many more will notice the lag and find it detracts from their experience. Here’s a good overview: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2018/02/perfectillusion.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2018/0...
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > (16K==8K per eye) That's not how Ks work. And your explanation doesn't cover why the minimum number of cameras would be 12.
    - acdha 4y ago
      It’s also not how eyes work because your visual resolution isn’t consistent across the field of view, saccades are a thing, etc. but it’s serviceable enough to get the point that you’re not just rendering a high-resolution scene but two of them requiring different processing for a fair chunk of the pipeline (consider how much geometry is only visible to one of them when you walk around a corner). > And your explanation doesn't cover why the minimum number of cameras would be 12. This is covered in the article. The key thing to understand is that there are multiple tasks using cameras: AR needs to track the world around you, you need eye tracking to handle saccades and conscious direction, and tracking hands, arms, legs, facial expressions, and body position accurately requires multiple cameras with enough parallax to build 3-D models which are accurate enough to generate realistic, stable imagery. People will really notice if things bounce around or deform or if you punt on some of the proven and end up with Meta’s leg problem. The key point to take away here is that AR/VR aren’t one hard problem but a collection of hard problems which all need to be solved for most people to find the experience compelling — all with tight physical constraints.
giantg2 4y ago
I tried out the HoloLens. It was pretty cool. A little bulky, but pretty well balanced. I could definitely see this being useful in industrial repair settings. I'm also pretty excited about the next generation Google Glass with real time language translation. That seems like it would be awesome for international travel. I have no real interest in it for gaming though. And VR is unappealing compared to AR.
- siquick 4y ago
  > I'm also pretty excited about the next generation Google Glass with real time language translation. That seems like it would be awesome for international travel. This should be the first entry in How To Get Mugged 101
  - giantg2 4y ago
    That's stupid. Everyone kmows the first entry is, universally, look small/weak/vulnerable in a bad area. Then there's the overall likelihood of getting mugged in a given place. I'm not too worried about getting mugged in Japan. And I'm not interested in going to high crime places.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  > I have no real interest in it for gaming though. And VR is unappealing compared to AR. Let’s see if Apple is able to change your mind this year if they release their MR headset. Unlike Meta, Apple historically focuses on applications first instead of games. Apart from that, AR has even more hurdles to solve than VR, especially cost. To give you an idea, Apple’s upcoming $3000 MR VR headset is “cheap” compared to its delayed AR headset.
keepquestioning 4y ago
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Animats 4y ago
It's a great article. However, it omits that Matthew Ball, VC (venture capitalist, not Victoria Cross) was all metaverse real soon now in late 2021 - early 2022. He created a "metaverse fund", which did not do well. He's really echoing John Carmack, who said, around the time he quit Oculus/Facebook/Meta, that the headgear had to get down to swim goggle size to get any traction, and eyeglass size to go mainstream. You can just about do that now if you're willing to have a wire connecting you to the game console. Sony is doing that with their "VR2" headset. It connects to a Playstation 5.[1] But standalone, wear all the time is still a ways off. A lot of hardware has to be crammed into the headgear. [1] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/ps-vr2/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/ps-vr2/
aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 4y ago
> watching sports in a VR stadium I think this is going to be a huge driver of VR adoption, along with travelogues.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  I'm cynical enough to imagine that this VR stadium would involve purchasing tickets to sit in the nosebleeds. Why? Profit loves artificial scarcity, and of course realism.
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    That defeats the entire point of VR. It’s like limiting the number of digital copies of a game for sale. It’s nonsensical. The reality is that now everyone can have their own private movie theater to watch sports games or whatever they want, if they have a headset.
    - jonathankoren 4y ago
      I agree that digital scarcity has no reason to exist, is intentional broken by design, and shows a lack of imagination by companies. However, we live in a world where digital “purchases” routinely evaporate. We just went through the whole NFT dumbness about limited editions. Concerts in Fortnite and Second Life have people actually crowded around a stage. It’s not much a stretch to imagine limited access events where they mimic a stadium with assigned sections you can’t stray from. So in conclusion, yes, a better world is possible. It’s just that it’s intentionally sabotaged.
lukev 4y ago
One thing I have a hard time getting away from as a consumer is the delta in graphics quality between VR and a high-res display. Modern AAA games on a 32" 4k monitor that I'm sitting right in front of are pretty damn beautiful and immersive. By comparison, anything in VR is low res and low poly. Of course this is a natural effect of the technical constraints* but the 3d and head-tracking aspects of VR seem less important to me than the crispness of a screen. * I can't find a plausible explanation for the absurdity of the graphics of (e.g.) Meta which despite an apparently unlimited budget can't muster graphics exceeding what I experienced on a 1024x768 on my Pentium II in highschool.
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  My guess is that the metaverse has reduced quality so that it runs on the Quest headsets. They're basically just an android phone built into a headset, and they're capable of significantly less than a PC.
  - tomxor 4y ago
    The "Metaverse" has way too much hype right now, IMO it's damaging to the current VR audience, which is gamers. I've tried the "Metaverse" and it's an absolutely awful half baked collection of vaugeley purposed games and sandboxes. But it's just one app on a quest, I uninstalled it and carried on using it for what it's meant for (gaming), rather than Zuckerbergs failed attempt at forcefully making it into some new market. > They're basically just an android phone built into a headset, and they're capable of significantly less than a PC. You're missing the value in these things, it's also capable of significantly more, because it's not all about how fast your GPU and CPU is. A lot of work has gone into taking commodity mobile technology and tightly integrating all of the sensors in a way which is low latency enough to make VR a pleasant experience rather than a horrifically sickening one.
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      Metaverse is literally just AR and VR over the internet. It is not owned to tied to a single company. VRChat and RecRoom are also part of the metaverse. You can even consider Roblox as part of the metaverse since it has VR support. Apparently, Facebook’s marketing is so good that they’ve convinced most of the world, even techies, that they own and control the VR AR equivalent of the internet.
gfodor 4y ago
Apple’s headset is still expected this year - if Apple thinks the world is ready this year, that’s saying something.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  What’s interesting is that it’s rumored that Apple is going to sell its upcoming VR headset at cost. I could be wrong, but I don’t feel that this has ever happened with Apple before. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/apple-reality-pro-details-eye-hand-tracking-app-store-3d-ios-like-interface https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/apple-rea...
  - acdha 4y ago
    Didn’t they do that for the developer editions of their first Intel hardware? The pricing rumors made me wonder if they’re going to treat this as a developer preview product rather than something they expect to be a huge seller.
vlunkr 4y ago
I feel like they’re missing the point on the Wii Sports comparison. Wii Sports managed to be charming and have a memorable style despite running on relatively weak hardware for the time. Nintendo tends to do this really well. Horizon Worlds, on the other hand, looks lifeless and like it could be made of free assets. The console is absolutely capable of running a better looking game.
- Khoth 4y ago
  I agree, facebook could have saved themselves a lot of mockery and bad press by spending 0.01% of their VR budget on hiring some people who know how to make simple graphics look good.
prng2021 4y ago
I don't think AR/VR will ever take off, mostly because it seem's impossible (yes I'll go on a limb and use that word) to fit a supercomputer in a pair of glasses, as Zuckerberg put it. We're currently seeing the tail end of progress in transistor technology, evidenced by chip fabs now costing 10s of billions of dollars each, smaller improvements between transistor nodes, and so on. This is a huge obstacle and something which these AR/VR companies just have to hope and pray TSMC will indefinitely, magically overcome. At the same time, consumer expectations are continuing to increase year after year. We're so picky now about screen pixel densities, color gamut, contrast, refresh rate, etc compared to 10 or even 5 years ago. No doubt in 5 years our expectations will be much higher.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  > I don't think AR/VR will ever take off, mostly because it seem's impossible (yes I'll go on a limb and use that word) to fit a supercomputer in a pair of glasses, as Zuckerberg put it. It’s never wise to say something is impossible unless it breaks laws of physics. Computing wise, it’s already possible to stream a PC wirelessly to a VR headset either right now from a local network or even the cloud in the very near future. I mean we’re already streaming AAA Xbox games to phones now.
- nomel 4y ago
  I already play PC games on my iPhone with Shadow PC. Cloud rendering is clearly the future for mobile. I even play PCVR games on my quest, over the internet. It’s completely usable, as is (minus twitch games) for 2d, and surprisingly usable for VR, now (heads are slow and predictable). Give it 15 years, and all your power draw problems turn into AI models for input prediction, to get rid of that last 10ms of latency.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- thfuran 4y ago
  We're near the tail end of silicon transistors, but that doesn't mean we're near the tail end of computing substrates.
cvccvroomvroom 4y ago
I think trying to shovel computing power into the "display" is a terrible idea. There are already supercomputers in our touch devices, on our laps, and in the cloud. Just make bridge cooperation between touch device, laptop, and display/XR with faster nearfield links to remove HDMI and such. And make it a standardized open ecosystem that casts between each. Quest has all of the right sensors, but it locks away too much expensive computing power for a single dedicated purpose. It's extremely convenient but it's also another device to MDM and separate from a users other apps.
- anonred 4y ago
  And this assumes that selling displays is a highly profitable enterprise, right? Or what would motivate tech companies to invest in such an architecture, especially one with a “standardized open ecosystem”?
ShredKazoo 4y ago
>In early 2021, Zuckerberg said “The hardest technology challenge of our time may be fitting a supercomputer into the frame of normal-looking glasses. But it's the key to bringing our physical and digital worlds together.” What's wrong with mounting the supercomputer on the ceiling and having a telephone cord run from the glasses to the supercomputer?
- Scalene2 4y ago
  For me, the biggest issue with VR is friction. Just the process of putting on and adjusting a wireless headset, finding the controllers, then moving to the center of my play space feels like a chore. One worth doing, but a chore none the less. Adding in fiddling with a cord will make me just slightly less likely to say: sure, it's worth the effort to get into VR right now. I really want a full body tracking setup, but if I have to wear special devices for it, then it's a no go. I don't mind putting up a bunch of cameras though. Another issue is rotation, many people have a bias to the direction they turn, this twists the cord, AFAIK we aren't even close to having the tech to spin a high bandwidth (multi-gigabit) connection, I suspect that it may be possible to do with fibre optics. But AFAIK most designs are looking at doing hip mounted or wireless supercomputers. We already have backpack supercomputers for VR.
nephrite 4y ago
What I want to have, and what nobody does, is replace the computer screen with a infinite virtual screen. Same apps, windows etc. except it is in virtual reality. This way we could replace mobile phones/tablets with even smaller devices and outsource the display function to VR glasses.
- Scalene2 4y ago
  Practically every VR device supports this functionality, it was one of the first things developed for VR.
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    Tbf unless you’re willing to gamble $2000 on a headset from Varjo or a cheaper one from Pimax, the latest consumer models that are out today still aren’t good enough for work, which is surprising since meta was advertising work functionality for years yet even the Quest Pro still isn’t good enough for work. Maybe this will change with the upcoming $3000 Apple headset? I know SimulaVR’s upcoming headset was designed for work from the start.
    - Scalene2 4y ago
      What do you feel needs to be improved to make them suitable for work?

85 points by SLHamlet 4y ago

Great article. Was hoping WebXR would be mentioned though!

Love the Neal Stephenson quote in here: “The assumption that the Metaverse is primarily an AR/VR thing isn’t crazy. In my book [Snow Crash, published in 1992] it’s all VR. And I worked for an AR company [Magic Leap]--one of several that are putting billions of dollars into building headsets. But I didn’t see video games coming when I wrote Snow Crash… Thanks to games, billions of people are now comfortable navigating 3D environments on flat 2D screens. The UIs that they’ve mastered [keyboard and mouse for navigation and camera] are not what most science fiction writers would have predicted. But that’s how path dependency in tech works. We fluently navigate and interact with extremely rich 3D environments using keyboards that were designed for mechanical typewriters. It’s steampunk made real. A Metaverse that left behind those users and the devs who build those experiences would be getting off on the wrong foot… My expectation is that a lot of Metaverse content will be built for screens (where the market is) while keeping options open for the future growth of affordable headsets.”

astlouis44 4y ago
Agreed, fantastic quote. My personal belief is that the browser as we know it today will evolve to be more based around 3D, leveraging emerging technologies such as WebAssembly and WebGPU. As headsets become more widely adopted, WebXR is what will extend the web into VR. There won't be a metaverse based around an app store model. It has to be open to everyone, built with standards and protocols in mind from the very start, and most importantly: no 30% fees from walled gardens.
- WXLCKNO 4y ago
  I would definitely take the time to shop on an AR/VR based e-commerce site that had all products as visible demos. For certain categories of products anyways.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Amazon already has at for a lot of furniture
- jcelerier 4y ago
  > My personal belief is that the browser as we know it today will evolve to be more based around 3D, I interacted with a lot of 3D content, games, apps when I was a child / teen but nowadays I largely prefer 2D for all my interactions with computers, be it games, softwares, etc. 3D just feels gimmicky and less productive than WIMP, especially on all the VR headsets I tried. I'm curious if other people feel different.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    There's an intentionality or exclusive focus aspect to 3D content. When you're working in a 2D desktop alt tabbing or rapidly task switching between monitors feels very low friction and natural. When you load up a game, a CAD app, etc, there's much more of a "ok I'm just going to do only this now" aspect that I think is interesting. For this reason I'm highly skeptical 3D will replace 2D.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      > "ok I'm just going to do only this now" for most of the games and other VR entertainment stuff, this is precisely what the producers what of you. they throw around terms like immersive. they want you in the world they created and believe that it make the experience that much more when you forget about where you really are and believer yourself to be in the virtual place. there's a definite time and place for that idea, but have never once felt that the content i was "immersed" in really had me at a level of suspension of disbelief to the level the producers had hoped. at that point, what is the point of it. i am not one bit intrigued by theZuck's vision. i do not want to hang out in a virtual conference room around a virtual conference table looking at cartoon versions of people because it's cute. you can cute the fuck out of it until the knob goes to eleven, but it doesn't make this boring as meeting any more enjoyable.
  - rngname22 4y ago
    Can you explain how you interacted with 3D content when you were a child/teen? I think you might be conflating 3D graphics engines that render a 2D image on a 2D monitor with modern stereoscopic 3D headsets.
labrador 4y ago
An important consideration for me is that a 43" TV with a 4K HD screen is beautiful to look at, while Oculus screens are not. For 300 dollars I can get a beautiful portal into 3D worlds in the form of a monitor in front of my face and I don't have to wear anything or change anything about the way I see or hear. And also, I don't like the way things move in the VR I've seen. It lags and jumps bit and does not scroll smoothly as I look around.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  Maybe in 5 years it’ll be great but I found the Quest 2 to be very blurry and “streaky” compared to a decent monitor. It also still gives me nausea if I play a game for a few hours which I like to do
  - Scalene2 4y ago
    When is the last time you tried an extended session? It is now possible to do 120Hz on the quest for some games and on PCVR. Earlier versions were limited to 72Hz. There have been other improvements too. Maybe update your headset, tweak some settings, find games that will work at 120Hz and give it another go. Also, the Quest 2 is kind of old now, newer headsets are vastly superior with regards to blur and streaks.
  - anonred 4y ago
    I find the Quest Pro lenses and screen to be a significant improvement over Quest 2 in terms of clarity. You’ll find many other people saying the same thing. So your 5-year timeline seems off to me.
    - coffeebeqn 4y ago
      The quest pro costs as much as a gaming pc. So I guess I’ll have to wait. Also disappointing they didn’t increase the resolution. I’m not looking to pay 5x for marginally better lenses
      - anonred 4y ago
wahern 4y ago
If a rich, interconnected 3D world at the scale of the WWW added significant value, then interest and uptake of Croquet would have taken off 10+ years ago. Croquet is technology-wise as close to the science fiction ideal of the Metaverse as anything that has existed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cobalt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cobalt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS With Croquet, you could literally jump from, say, your favorite 3D game into a virtual business meeting, controlling your same avatar, and without either 3D space being hosted by the same entity--directly or indirectly. It's the embodiment of some of the most fanciful visions of a Metaverse, and it has existed for quite some time. But Croquet hasn't taken off, despite intensive efforts, which tells me that not only will our 2D interfaces continue to stick around, the 2D digital world is likely to remain overwhelmingly predominate for quite some time still. At least outside isolated islands. And in any event, I don't see how that could change unless and until a fundamentally open, interconnected, and extensible platform like Croquet sees adoption. A world of closed gardens could never be as immersive and expansive. As large as Facebook has become (and as AOL before it), it simply doesn't and couldn't have the same underlying impact as the WWW collectively. [1] NB: the Wikipedia article for Croquet_project now forwards to Croquet_OS, a commercial project. I hope Croquet OS finds success. I can understand the thinking that on the modern internet new technologies necessarily require commercial backing. But ultimately I think that's a reflection of some fundamental dilemmas on the modern internet regarding the uptake of new technologies; a dilemma that likely has no real solution unless or until something else comes out of left field to toss the ecosystem into disarray. That something is unlikely to be the Metaverse because otherwise Croquet or something substantially similar would have already taken off long ago.
- alanbernstein 4y ago
  It's amazing that I've never even heard of this. As we have seen time after time, the best technology doesn't always win, marketing is a huge factor. Does the organization behind this do any marketing?
- bitwize 4y ago
  I like to say that with Croquet, Alan Kay built the Metaverse from Snow Crash... but that was just a step toward his actual goal, which is to build the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from The Diamond Age (Dynabook).
saurik 4y ago
And before we had moving 2D graphics in the form of movies and video games we had text descriptions of action with the occasional illustration or even (much later) photograph, which allowed people to build not only deep stories but rich worlds that have caused entire generations of people to enter what amounts to a shared hallucination (maybe more reminiscent of Vurt than Snow Crash). If only there were some way to use networked computers to allow users to navigate a world written by such authors... imagine how egalitarian that could be, without the large production budgets of 3D modelling and graphic artists enforcing large barriers to entry for aspiring contributors! Alas, no such future could ever be possible for The Metaverse--and it is almost ridiculous to imagine such--as the birth of The Internet in the same year as Nintendo invented the modern computer has guaranteed that no one, anywhere, has any interest in reading anything.
- DennisP 4y ago
  And yet here we are on this site, typing and reading text, while Amazon has sold almost half a billion books on kindle alone. https://wordsrated.com/amazon-kindle-e-book-and-kindle-unlimited-statistics/ https://wordsrated.com/amazon-kindle-e-book-and-kindle-unlim...
  - Scalene2 4y ago
    So that means that Amazon has sold a kindle book to at absolute best, less than 1 in 16 people.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      1 in 16 seems like really high market penetration for a device that (practically) requires special-purpose hardware and whose offerings are primarily in English. Meta gives away not just it's platforms, but in many countries the data that those platforms need. In some cases it's the only zero-rated app. And they have gotten maybe 6 in 16 people to make accounts.
      - bombcar 4y ago
hinkley 4y ago
Where I see VR go the most wrong is, particularly when business people get involved, is the mistake of trying to recreate reality. I have at least a Library of Congress on my computer, which I can access without having to deal with Euclidean Geometry. I don't schlep through miles of shelves looking for something. I just look for it. That's profoundly important to the reasons why we went to digital from analog. If you want to make VR "work", you have to also have non-Euclidean Geometry. Things need to be smaller on the outside. You need to be able to affect the "world" through intention, not action. In a word, you need magic. Which dovetails pretty well with video games.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  The trying to create reality is simply recreating familiar paradigms to help new users hat a foothold. You can't jump right into the most modern user interface. Even voor advanced users. This is why a 'modern' desktop still mimicks a messy desk from a 70s office worker. The very easiest computers skipped that step due to technical limitations but the mainstream users had a hard time grokking them. Only with the mobile phone have we started to really leave that behind. VR will be similarly rooted in the past until people find their footing and embrace new ways to interact. And why meeting rooms in VR have to have chairs, tables and people have to draw on virtual whiteboards instead of just in the space in front of them in 3D. The tech is getting there, but our minds take even more time.
  - duxup 4y ago
    Does anyone want that? A meeting room? They are familiar sure, but who wants to put on a headset for a meeting…. I feel like being familiar here is also being uninteresting.
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      Conversely, who wants to look at flat boxes of people on a flat screen? Imo the best use case for VR isn’t in replacing reality. Its best use case is to mimic reality for people who are remote. VR meetings are way better than zoom or teams video meetings. I can also tell you that VR ping pong or VR mini golf are both way better than just having a FaceTime call. People who refuse to even try modern VR aren’t going to come to this realization.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Not necessarily disagreeing but I wonder how that applies to the yet to be born audiences. Maybe they will be used to it. The killer app (maybe remote travel, or vocational training) delivered via VR will make them used to it. To them 2D would be like using emacs having only used an IDE

robg 4y ago

I was skeptical on XR until I saw the health and care applications - typically short sessions 30-60 mins with high market value if solving a medical need. The long duration uses, like work or entertainment, seem unlikely any time soon, too many usability constraints.

acdha 4y ago
I think that also hits the equipment challenge: those kind of situations can have a rack of GPUs plugged into the wall and it still won’t be the most expensive device in the building. The same implies to a lot of the industrial applications - if your product makes a mechanic working on $500k jet engines more productive, you have a much easier design budget than someone trying to convince people to buy another personal entertainment system.
- spoonjim 4y ago
  500k, or even $40 million like a Boeing 777 engine
  - acdha 4y ago
    Wow, yes, I hadn’t noticed how high the top end went.
thfuran 4y ago
Isn't your described use case a long-duration work use for one of the parties?
- deleted 4y ago
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aaron695 4y ago

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Scalene2 4y ago

How does the author justify comments about 16K resolution being optimal, 12 cameras being the minimum required, and 240Hz being ideal?

acdha 4y ago
Are you asking for citations to research papers? It’s briefly explained in context but basically your eyes capture a ton of data and process it quickly (different types of data are processed at different speeds: your brain can react to motion before you recognize color or identify an object). That has millions of years of evolution behind it, and our entire lives are spent training expectations on how that works and especially how it interacts with other senses or what we do. That leads to several hard problems: you don’t just need to generate a high-quality scene, you need to render it twice because your brain is used to the distance between your eyes (16K==8K per eye) and because your position isn’t static it needs to update very quickly when you move because your brain is very used to how that works in real life. You have a budget measured in single digit milliseconds to that or a fair number of people will get motion sickness and many more will notice the lag and find it detracts from their experience. Here’s a good overview: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2018/02/perfectillusion.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2018/0...
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > (16K==8K per eye) That's not how Ks work. And your explanation doesn't cover why the minimum number of cameras would be 12.
  - acdha 4y ago
    It’s also not how eyes work because your visual resolution isn’t consistent across the field of view, saccades are a thing, etc. but it’s serviceable enough to get the point that you’re not just rendering a high-resolution scene but two of them requiring different processing for a fair chunk of the pipeline (consider how much geometry is only visible to one of them when you walk around a corner). > And your explanation doesn't cover why the minimum number of cameras would be 12. This is covered in the article. The key thing to understand is that there are multiple tasks using cameras: AR needs to track the world around you, you need eye tracking to handle saccades and conscious direction, and tracking hands, arms, legs, facial expressions, and body position accurately requires multiple cameras with enough parallax to build 3-D models which are accurate enough to generate realistic, stable imagery. People will really notice if things bounce around or deform or if you punt on some of the proven and end up with Meta’s leg problem. The key point to take away here is that AR/VR aren’t one hard problem but a collection of hard problems which all need to be solved for most people to find the experience compelling — all with tight physical constraints.

giantg2 4y ago

I tried out the HoloLens. It was pretty cool. A little bulky, but pretty well balanced. I could definitely see this being useful in industrial repair settings. I'm also pretty excited about the next generation Google Glass with real time language translation. That seems like it would be awesome for international travel. I have no real interest in it for gaming though. And VR is unappealing compared to AR.

siquick 4y ago
> I'm also pretty excited about the next generation Google Glass with real time language translation. That seems like it would be awesome for international travel. This should be the first entry in How To Get Mugged 101
- giantg2 4y ago
  That's stupid. Everyone kmows the first entry is, universally, look small/weak/vulnerable in a bad area. Then there's the overall likelihood of getting mugged in a given place. I'm not too worried about getting mugged in Japan. And I'm not interested in going to high crime places.
chaostheory 4y ago
> I have no real interest in it for gaming though. And VR is unappealing compared to AR. Let’s see if Apple is able to change your mind this year if they release their MR headset. Unlike Meta, Apple historically focuses on applications first instead of games. Apart from that, AR has even more hurdles to solve than VR, especially cost. To give you an idea, Apple’s upcoming $3000 MR VR headset is “cheap” compared to its delayed AR headset.

keepquestioning 4y ago

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Animats 4y ago

It's a great article. However, it omits that Matthew Ball, VC (venture capitalist, not Victoria Cross) was all metaverse real soon now in late 2021 - early 2022. He created a "metaverse fund", which did not do well. He's really echoing John Carmack, who said, around the time he quit Oculus/Facebook/Meta, that the headgear had to get down to swim goggle size to get any traction, and eyeglass size to go mainstream. You can just about do that now if you're willing to have a wire connecting you to the game console. Sony is doing that with their "VR2" headset. It connects to a Playstation 5.[1] But standalone, wear all the time is still a ways off. A lot of hardware has to be crammed into the headgear. [1] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/ps-vr2/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/ps-vr2/

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 4y ago

> watching sports in a VR stadium I think this is going to be a huge driver of VR adoption, along with travelogues.

jonathankoren 4y ago
I'm cynical enough to imagine that this VR stadium would involve purchasing tickets to sit in the nosebleeds. Why? Profit loves artificial scarcity, and of course realism.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  That defeats the entire point of VR. It’s like limiting the number of digital copies of a game for sale. It’s nonsensical. The reality is that now everyone can have their own private movie theater to watch sports games or whatever they want, if they have a headset.
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    I agree that digital scarcity has no reason to exist, is intentional broken by design, and shows a lack of imagination by companies. However, we live in a world where digital “purchases” routinely evaporate. We just went through the whole NFT dumbness about limited editions. Concerts in Fortnite and Second Life have people actually crowded around a stage. It’s not much a stretch to imagine limited access events where they mimic a stadium with assigned sections you can’t stray from. So in conclusion, yes, a better world is possible. It’s just that it’s intentionally sabotaged.

lukev 4y ago

One thing I have a hard time getting away from as a consumer is the delta in graphics quality between VR and a high-res display. Modern AAA games on a 32" 4k monitor that I'm sitting right in front of are pretty damn beautiful and immersive. By comparison, anything in VR is low res and low poly. Of course this is a natural effect of the technical constraints* but the 3d and head-tracking aspects of VR seem less important to me than the crispness of a screen. * I can't find a plausible explanation for the absurdity of the graphics of (e.g.) Meta which despite an apparently unlimited budget can't muster graphics exceeding what I experienced on a 1024x768 on my Pentium II in highschool.

rolenthedeep 4y ago
My guess is that the metaverse has reduced quality so that it runs on the Quest headsets. They're basically just an android phone built into a headset, and they're capable of significantly less than a PC.
- tomxor 4y ago
  The "Metaverse" has way too much hype right now, IMO it's damaging to the current VR audience, which is gamers. I've tried the "Metaverse" and it's an absolutely awful half baked collection of vaugeley purposed games and sandboxes. But it's just one app on a quest, I uninstalled it and carried on using it for what it's meant for (gaming), rather than Zuckerbergs failed attempt at forcefully making it into some new market. > They're basically just an android phone built into a headset, and they're capable of significantly less than a PC. You're missing the value in these things, it's also capable of significantly more, because it's not all about how fast your GPU and CPU is. A lot of work has gone into taking commodity mobile technology and tightly integrating all of the sensors in a way which is low latency enough to make VR a pleasant experience rather than a horrifically sickening one.
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    Metaverse is literally just AR and VR over the internet. It is not owned to tied to a single company. VRChat and RecRoom are also part of the metaverse. You can even consider Roblox as part of the metaverse since it has VR support. Apparently, Facebook’s marketing is so good that they’ve convinced most of the world, even techies, that they own and control the VR AR equivalent of the internet.

gfodor 4y ago

Apple’s headset is still expected this year - if Apple thinks the world is ready this year, that’s saying something.

chaostheory 4y ago
What’s interesting is that it’s rumored that Apple is going to sell its upcoming VR headset at cost. I could be wrong, but I don’t feel that this has ever happened with Apple before. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/apple-reality-pro-details-eye-hand-tracking-app-store-3d-ios-like-interface https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/apple-rea...
- acdha 4y ago
  Didn’t they do that for the developer editions of their first Intel hardware? The pricing rumors made me wonder if they’re going to treat this as a developer preview product rather than something they expect to be a huge seller.

vlunkr 4y ago

I feel like they’re missing the point on the Wii Sports comparison. Wii Sports managed to be charming and have a memorable style despite running on relatively weak hardware for the time. Nintendo tends to do this really well. Horizon Worlds, on the other hand, looks lifeless and like it could be made of free assets. The console is absolutely capable of running a better looking game.

Khoth 4y ago
I agree, facebook could have saved themselves a lot of mockery and bad press by spending 0.01% of their VR budget on hiring some people who know how to make simple graphics look good.

prng2021 4y ago

I don't think AR/VR will ever take off, mostly because it seem's impossible (yes I'll go on a limb and use that word) to fit a supercomputer in a pair of glasses, as Zuckerberg put it. We're currently seeing the tail end of progress in transistor technology, evidenced by chip fabs now costing 10s of billions of dollars each, smaller improvements between transistor nodes, and so on. This is a huge obstacle and something which these AR/VR companies just have to hope and pray TSMC will indefinitely, magically overcome. At the same time, consumer expectations are continuing to increase year after year. We're so picky now about screen pixel densities, color gamut, contrast, refresh rate, etc compared to 10 or even 5 years ago. No doubt in 5 years our expectations will be much higher.

chaostheory 4y ago
> I don't think AR/VR will ever take off, mostly because it seem's impossible (yes I'll go on a limb and use that word) to fit a supercomputer in a pair of glasses, as Zuckerberg put it. It’s never wise to say something is impossible unless it breaks laws of physics. Computing wise, it’s already possible to stream a PC wirelessly to a VR headset either right now from a local network or even the cloud in the very near future. I mean we’re already streaming AAA Xbox games to phones now.
nomel 4y ago
I already play PC games on my iPhone with Shadow PC. Cloud rendering is clearly the future for mobile. I even play PCVR games on my quest, over the internet. It’s completely usable, as is (minus twitch games) for 2d, and surprisingly usable for VR, now (heads are slow and predictable). Give it 15 years, and all your power draw problems turn into AI models for input prediction, to get rid of that last 10ms of latency.
deleted 4y ago
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thfuran 4y ago
We're near the tail end of silicon transistors, but that doesn't mean we're near the tail end of computing substrates.

cvccvroomvroom 4y ago

I think trying to shovel computing power into the "display" is a terrible idea. There are already supercomputers in our touch devices, on our laps, and in the cloud. Just make bridge cooperation between touch device, laptop, and display/XR with faster nearfield links to remove HDMI and such. And make it a standardized open ecosystem that casts between each. Quest has all of the right sensors, but it locks away too much expensive computing power for a single dedicated purpose. It's extremely convenient but it's also another device to MDM and separate from a users other apps.

anonred 4y ago
And this assumes that selling displays is a highly profitable enterprise, right? Or what would motivate tech companies to invest in such an architecture, especially one with a “standardized open ecosystem”?

ShredKazoo 4y ago

>In early 2021, Zuckerberg said “The hardest technology challenge of our time may be fitting a supercomputer into the frame of normal-looking glasses. But it's the key to bringing our physical and digital worlds together.” What's wrong with mounting the supercomputer on the ceiling and having a telephone cord run from the glasses to the supercomputer?

Scalene2 4y ago
For me, the biggest issue with VR is friction. Just the process of putting on and adjusting a wireless headset, finding the controllers, then moving to the center of my play space feels like a chore. One worth doing, but a chore none the less. Adding in fiddling with a cord will make me just slightly less likely to say: sure, it's worth the effort to get into VR right now. I really want a full body tracking setup, but if I have to wear special devices for it, then it's a no go. I don't mind putting up a bunch of cameras though. Another issue is rotation, many people have a bias to the direction they turn, this twists the cord, AFAIK we aren't even close to having the tech to spin a high bandwidth (multi-gigabit) connection, I suspect that it may be possible to do with fibre optics. But AFAIK most designs are looking at doing hip mounted or wireless supercomputers. We already have backpack supercomputers for VR.

nephrite 4y ago

What I want to have, and what nobody does, is replace the computer screen with a infinite virtual screen. Same apps, windows etc. except it is in virtual reality. This way we could replace mobile phones/tablets with even smaller devices and outsource the display function to VR glasses.

Scalene2 4y ago
Practically every VR device supports this functionality, it was one of the first things developed for VR.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  Tbf unless you’re willing to gamble $2000 on a headset from Varjo or a cheaper one from Pimax, the latest consumer models that are out today still aren’t good enough for work, which is surprising since meta was advertising work functionality for years yet even the Quest Pro still isn’t good enough for work. Maybe this will change with the upcoming $3000 Apple headset? I know SimulaVR’s upcoming headset was designed for work from the start.
  - Scalene2 4y ago
    What do you feel needs to be improved to make them suitable for work?