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In the 70s, it made sense to use metaphors based on experience with the physical world, because we had no alternative. Here in the 2020s, you can skip the clunk
by kibwen 4y ago
In the 70s, it made sense to use metaphors based on experience with the physical world, because we had no alternative. Here in the 2020s, you can skip the clunky skeuomorphism and just assume experience with the digital world. The problem is that VR has always been sold in terms of being a replacement for the physical world, and as it turns out, that's just plain worse than the digital equivalents that we already have. I don't need a VR library full of fake volumes of Encyclopedia Brittanica, because I already have Wikipedia, whose UX is far more convenient, and would only be made worse by imposing a physical metaphor. Unfortunately, anyone who's sunk a few tens of billions of dollars into VR will naturally be resistant to the idea that the spaces that they've so painstakingly made are worse than what they were intended to replace. Why would I want to strap this phone to my face? Nobody has yet found an answer to that question, aside from a handful of first-person video games.
- chaostheory 4y ago> Why would I want to strap this phone to my face? This is VR’s biggest problem. Normal people aren’t willing to put on a bucket on their face, even if it represents the future. Instead most people would rather form all kinds of weird and untrue speculation. Case in point: “I don't need a VR library full of fake volumes of Encyclopedia Brittanica, because I already have Wikipedia” No one has actually built a library in VR because the screen resolution is too poor for reading large amounts of text. All you’ve proved is that you still haven’t tried modern VR.
- Animats 4y agoThat's where Apple comes in. Apple convinced people that wearing iDweebs in their ears in public was OK.
- acdha 4y agoI think that illustrates the scale of the problem: wearing headphones in public was already normalized at least as far back as the Walkman craze, AirPods are arguably the most successful AR experience on the market with their unobtrusive experience, and they’re towards the higher end of the price range but not outliers for a premium product. It is not unreasonable to fear that personal AR isn’t going to get popular until goggles are comparable in size to regular glasses.
- wkat4242 4y ago> It is not unreasonable to fear that personal AR isn’t going to get popular until goggles are comparable in size to regular glasses. They're not all that far: https://www.engadget.com/2019-01-03-vuzix-blade-hands-on.html https://www.engadget.com/2019-01-03-vuzix-blade-hands-on.htm...
- chaostheory 4y agoI agree, but I feel that even Apple isn’t very confident in this space. It’s rumored that they’re selling their upcoming $3000 headset at cost. I feel that the entire industry is waiting for Apple to magically make XR socially acceptable. If they can pull this off without Jobs and Ive, it will be a miracle.
- jimmySixDOF 4y ago>UX is far more convenient, and would only be made worse by imposing a physical metaphor Convenience is contextual and no doubt the way 2D WIMP screens have been built work and will keep working, but nesting that in a 3D experience makes new room for new feature interactions to complement the same datasets with more interface layers doing things you just can't do with real world physics.