3 ms·

Everyone read that one Vernor Vinge novel and decided to get on the gravy train before Chicago gets nuked. /s Speaking more seriously: I think you're right in

Everyone read that one Vernor Vinge novel and decided to get on the gravy train before Chicago gets nuked. /s Speaking more seriously: I think you're right in the short-term, wrong in the long-term, but getting at a fundamental truth, which is that *applications* are what will drive development and adoption. And they have to be fully-formed and wedded to the form factor, while still being accessible. AR/VR will revolutionize general computing, but if you can't figure out how yet - clearly, they have not - the focus should be on the applications that are already well-envisioned (and, in the past few years, as you've said, well-executed) on the platform. Further, it helps if the killer-app is emotionally engaging, allows and anticipates the failure of the user within the app's internal UX logic, and doesn't interfere with a user's crucial assets or processes (related to work, health, etc.) until the platform's kinks are worked out. Sounds like games fit the bill quite nicely. It is truly weird that execs taking home eight figures or more can't (or refuse to) wrap their heads around that. Gaming is anathema amongst a certain portion of the population, I suppose.

gumby 3y ago
Obligatory pedantry: True Names was a novella, not a full novel. And the better for it. Or you were referring to Rainbow's End in which case I'm embarrassed about my comment. More seriously: I was really excited by True Names when it was published (and a bunch of us at MIT talked about it a lot) but by the time Snow Crash came out it seemed pretty obvious that real world metaphors weren't really desirable in virtual environments. Certainly the web and its abortive competitors (like apple eWorld, and many others) made it clear for those not paying attention: nobody wanted to "walk" from Gap to Williams Sonoma in some virtual mall: they just wanted to click over and get satisfaction. Nobody likes long boring travel in an open video game; a little is OK to avoid breaking the spell, but soon something has to happen or you need a convenient elevator. The same applies to movies. BTW you're 100% right about gaming being the killer app. Once people are used to that perhaps they'll want to do other things. But without a reason to develop the right metaphors, affordances, and experiences, there's "no there there".
- underlipton 3y ago
  >Or you were referring to Rainbow's End in which case I'm embarrassed about my comment. Sorry, Gumby, it's the Play-Doh press for you. I feel you. RE is probably going to end up being wrong about a lot of things, too; in particular, Vinge even kind of hinted at how the lack of haptics would cause the "mirror world" and virtual object schemas to break down, at least as far as immersion and utility go. Ultimately, I don't think we get to the world he described without the tech that was just nascent within it. That's analogous to the inapplicability of real-world translation metaphors to the pop-into-existence data stream that is the web, as you said. I realized this the moment that I reached out to touch the 3D model of a character I'd created and nothing was there. Gaming short-circuits perception and gives leeway in a lot of ways that are conducive to a haptic-less experience, though. Good movement and animation can make up for a lack of embodiment that would kill a more serious experience (Second Life as a virtual office or retail branch...), and while animation is much less reliable of a tool for VR, I'm sure that other affordances can be found if devs are allowed to just... play around with it (pun intended). The presentation kind of disappointed me because I didn't see an understanding of the situation that they face.
- floren 3y ago
  > Certainly the web and its abortive competitors (like apple eWorld, and many others) made it clear for those not paying attention: nobody wanted to "walk" from Gap to Williams Sonoma in some virtual mall: they just wanted to click over and get satisfaction. Nobody likes long boring travel in an open video game; a little is OK to avoid breaking the spell, but soon something has to happen or you need a convenient elevator. The same applies to movies. What's funny is that I think (having not experienced it) that I would like to basically set various files and applications around a virtual space, because I'm eternally frustrated with all window managers and other 2d application management tools. I just don't want to wander through someone else's "carefully curated" hall of t-shirt JPEGs.
  - underlipton 3y ago
    People seriously underestimate the potential entertainment or even utility of being able to take your digital photo collection and, just, spread them all around your floor or walls or whatever. Grab them, stack them, group them with natural gestures. After that, the next time you open a PC-based photo manager, you will feel trapped, poking around a bucket full of files with a stick.
wpietri 3y ago
> AR/VR will revolutionize general computing People keep thinking that stereoscopic 3D will revolutionize things, but they've been consistently wrong about that for more than 170 years. It starts with the Brewster Stereoscope [1] which was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. [2] It was a huge success, and in following years hundreds of thousands of viewers were sold, with lots of content following. Eventually the fad blew over, ending up as antique-shop fodder. Next up was the ViewMaster; the US Department of Defense bought 100,000 units because it was going to revolutionize military training. Then came the 1950s wave of anaglyph 3D movies, the 1990s VR boom and bust, the Avatar-driven resurrection of 3D movies in 2009, which was quickly followed by a wave of enthusiasm for 3D TV. Then, most recently we have the resurrection of VR, this time with the Metaverse attached. I think 3D worlds have revolutionized a chunk of gaming, from Quake to Minecraft and onward. But the available evidence suggests that stereoscopic 3D interfaces are an idea much more popular in theory than in practice. As best I can tell, the most representative 3D technology is not facehugger VR, but those Magic Eye stereograms [3] that go in and out of popularity. They are a fun novelty, but they never transform everything. There's a big hype cycle and everybody gets excited, but after a bit of use they quickly go back to 2D and most are just fine with it. [1] https://stereosite.com/collecting/the-brewster-stereoscope-its-improvements-and-variations/ https://stereosite.com/collecting/the-brewster-stereoscope-i... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Exhibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Exhibition [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Eye
- geysersam 3y ago
  On the other hand, isn't it quite typical for good ideas to be recognized as such many times before the technology is actually mature to implement them properly? Edit: most morbid example that comes to mind - flying machines.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    That can be true, but you see the same pattern with bad ideas. Look at perpetual motion machines. People keep trying to invent them, but that doesn't prove they'll eventually succeed. We could also consider jetpacks and flying cars and food pills. People have been inventing and re-inventing them for years. I'm sure if I looked I could find new generations of people taking another swing at it who haven't really reckoned with why all the previous waves failed.

gumby 3y ago

Obligatory pedantry: True Names was a novella, not a full novel. And the better for it. Or you were referring to Rainbow's End in which case I'm embarrassed about my comment. More seriously: I was really excited by True Names when it was published (and a bunch of us at MIT talked about it a lot) but by the time Snow Crash came out it seemed pretty obvious that real world metaphors weren't really desirable in virtual environments. Certainly the web and its abortive competitors (like apple eWorld, and many others) made it clear for those not paying attention: nobody wanted to "walk" from Gap to Williams Sonoma in some virtual mall: they just wanted to click over and get satisfaction. Nobody likes long boring travel in an open video game; a little is OK to avoid breaking the spell, but soon something has to happen or you need a convenient elevator. The same applies to movies. BTW you're 100% right about gaming being the killer app. Once people are used to that perhaps they'll want to do other things. But without a reason to develop the right metaphors, affordances, and experiences, there's "no there there".

underlipton 3y ago
>Or you were referring to Rainbow's End in which case I'm embarrassed about my comment. Sorry, Gumby, it's the Play-Doh press for you. I feel you. RE is probably going to end up being wrong about a lot of things, too; in particular, Vinge even kind of hinted at how the lack of haptics would cause the "mirror world" and virtual object schemas to break down, at least as far as immersion and utility go. Ultimately, I don't think we get to the world he described without the tech that was just nascent within it. That's analogous to the inapplicability of real-world translation metaphors to the pop-into-existence data stream that is the web, as you said. I realized this the moment that I reached out to touch the 3D model of a character I'd created and nothing was there. Gaming short-circuits perception and gives leeway in a lot of ways that are conducive to a haptic-less experience, though. Good movement and animation can make up for a lack of embodiment that would kill a more serious experience (Second Life as a virtual office or retail branch...), and while animation is much less reliable of a tool for VR, I'm sure that other affordances can be found if devs are allowed to just... play around with it (pun intended). The presentation kind of disappointed me because I didn't see an understanding of the situation that they face.
floren 3y ago
> Certainly the web and its abortive competitors (like apple eWorld, and many others) made it clear for those not paying attention: nobody wanted to "walk" from Gap to Williams Sonoma in some virtual mall: they just wanted to click over and get satisfaction. Nobody likes long boring travel in an open video game; a little is OK to avoid breaking the spell, but soon something has to happen or you need a convenient elevator. The same applies to movies. What's funny is that I think (having not experienced it) that I would like to basically set various files and applications around a virtual space, because I'm eternally frustrated with all window managers and other 2d application management tools. I just don't want to wander through someone else's "carefully curated" hall of t-shirt JPEGs.
- underlipton 3y ago
  People seriously underestimate the potential entertainment or even utility of being able to take your digital photo collection and, just, spread them all around your floor or walls or whatever. Grab them, stack them, group them with natural gestures. After that, the next time you open a PC-based photo manager, you will feel trapped, poking around a bucket full of files with a stick.

wpietri 3y ago

> AR/VR will revolutionize general computing People keep thinking that stereoscopic 3D will revolutionize things, but they've been consistently wrong about that for more than 170 years. It starts with the Brewster Stereoscope [1] which was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. [2] It was a huge success, and in following years hundreds of thousands of viewers were sold, with lots of content following. Eventually the fad blew over, ending up as antique-shop fodder. Next up was the ViewMaster; the US Department of Defense bought 100,000 units because it was going to revolutionize military training. Then came the 1950s wave of anaglyph 3D movies, the 1990s VR boom and bust, the Avatar-driven resurrection of 3D movies in 2009, which was quickly followed by a wave of enthusiasm for 3D TV. Then, most recently we have the resurrection of VR, this time with the Metaverse attached. I think 3D worlds have revolutionized a chunk of gaming, from Quake to Minecraft and onward. But the available evidence suggests that stereoscopic 3D interfaces are an idea much more popular in theory than in practice. As best I can tell, the most representative 3D technology is not facehugger VR, but those Magic Eye stereograms [3] that go in and out of popularity. They are a fun novelty, but they never transform everything. There's a big hype cycle and everybody gets excited, but after a bit of use they quickly go back to 2D and most are just fine with it. [1] https://stereosite.com/collecting/the-brewster-stereoscope-its-improvements-and-variations/ https://stereosite.com/collecting/the-brewster-stereoscope-i... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Exhibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Exhibition [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Eye

geysersam 3y ago
On the other hand, isn't it quite typical for good ideas to be recognized as such many times before the technology is actually mature to implement them properly? Edit: most morbid example that comes to mind - flying machines.
- wpietri 3y ago
  That can be true, but you see the same pattern with bad ideas. Look at perpetual motion machines. People keep trying to invent them, but that doesn't prove they'll eventually succeed. We could also consider jetpacks and flying cars and food pills. People have been inventing and re-inventing them for years. I'm sure if I looked I could find new generations of people taking another swing at it who haven't really reckoned with why all the previous waves failed.