21 ms·

There is something quite remarkable and puzzling about the VR/AR and now SC (spatial computing) space. All major (ad)tech companies are convinced that this is

• bushbaba 3y ago
  Not joking. Checkout VR porn. Then it hits you. Holy shit this is the future of media and entertainment. Something about perspective in VR gives a human touch of interactivity not possible with other media forms. I have no doubt this new medium will revolutionize mainstream TV and Movies. The infinite desk. Infinite whiteboard. Improved conferencing. Are just added bonuses.
  • paul_grisham 3y ago
    >Not joking. Checkout VR porn. Then it hits you. Holy shit this is the future of media and entertainment. Something about perspective in VR gives a human touch of interactivity not possible with other media forms. One of the most pathetic things I've ever heard. Gushing about immersive cuckoldry.
    • bushbaba 3y ago
      Media technology has seen past innovation on by the porn industry. A major VR selling point is entertainment. I say this less as gushing about omg porn. But more that immersion VR video at a human to human perspective changes video entirely. It feels more human. Feels like you aren’t looking at a celeb but a real human being. This will change the way we do TV, Social Media, and a Movies. https://www.thrillist.com/vice/how-porn-influenced-technology-8-ways-porn-influenced-tech-supercompressor-com https://www.thrillist.com/vice/how-porn-influenced-technolog...
      • mrguyorama 3y ago
        People keep parroting this "porn pushes tech" line, but what important algorithm or tech advancements have come out of mindgeek the past twenty years? The oft repeated "VHS won because Beta didn't have porn" is flat out wrong, you could rent porn on Beta back in the day.
    • acuozzo 3y ago
      Kink-shaming on HN. Wow. Man, I miss when the web was dominated by counter-cultural weirdos.
  • phatfish 3y ago
    Isn't VR porn just a stereoscopic look around? Google cardboard gets you 90% of that experience.
    • qhayiya15twazi 3y ago
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    • qhayiya15twazi 3y ago
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  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    VR porn is a nice gimmick for a while, but most people aren't going to get $3500 invested in Porn. If VR porn was that important to people, Google Cardboard would be a household name. Plenty of people have tried VR porn, and most go back to the same stuff they usually do for regular sessions.
• pfannkuchen 3y ago
  Abstractly, we have different devices that stimulate our sensory inputs by mimicking, in an imperfect way, what they receive naturally in the environment. We can make devices that are fixed in space, where you need to orient your sensory inputs around the device. Or, we can make devices that instead are themselves oriented around your sensory inputs. The latter tends to be better for ergonomics and convenience (at least), since the device is accommodating your senses instead of your senses accommodating the device. In other words, AR/VR/etc devices are headphones for the eyes. I can see why it seems like an obvious next step to some (if they can get it right).
  • nologic01 3y ago
    The headphone analogy is a good one and maybe sheds some light on the different nature of these "visual" headphones. Headphones are in a sense "additive": they take a channel (auditory) that for a prolonged period of time might be underused while we go on about our lives and utilize it in an unobtrusive way. You can listen to podcasts while doing other stuff. We can optionally upgrade the experience: If you want, you can close your eyes and lose yourself in music. Goggles are necessarily subtractive. Whatever you do while immersed must justify the fact that you are obstructing your primary contact with the world. It may well be that there are worthwhile pursuits but its a bit odd that they don't advertise themselves.
    • darkwater 3y ago
      I think that you can extend what you said in your first example to the second. In a future where they are just small devices barely noticeable and providing by default just AR, it would be just like headphones. Then, if you want, you can switch to VR and lose yourself there.
    • pfannkuchen 3y ago
      With theoretically perfect AR (e.g. AR contact lenses with perfect pass through), it would be better than anything you use a screen for today, because it would be a strict superset of today’s experience. Imagine using your phone but you don’t have to hold it up to your face, or tilt your head to look at it. You don’t need to sit at a desk, because your work screen is wherever you are. If you really want the old experience, you could make the contacts emulate a fixed display in space, or on top of a soap bar. The goggles today are much worse than the theoretically perfect version, but it isn’t clear where the experiential threshold is for “better”.
• Hasu 3y ago
  > All major (ad)tech companies are convinced that this is a major market that will materialize and be profitable if the right combination of hardware and software is developed. Does Google have a VR play? They explored this with Glass 10 years ago, but that's dead and they don't seem interested in developing a successor.
  • nologic01 3y ago
    Never got glasses but I still have some cardboards :-). The data point for the discussion is that at some point they did think that this might be an interesting direction.
• mettamage 3y ago
  Wasn’t this the same with computers? I remember that people didn’t want to use them about 25 years ago
  • layer8 3y ago
    People mostly still don’t want to use them, other than for texting and taking pictures.
• Schroedingers2c 3y ago
  I see use cases for business. Using HoloLens / Vision Pro / AR instead of sending your engineers to Tokyo. But for consumers? I mostly agree. It has a few nice gimmick features, but seems rather isolating and disrupting natural human interaction.
• alkonaut 3y ago
  Agree. Indeed it's still looking for the breakthrough. The question is whether it's just around the corner like a surprising threshold to usefulness (E.g. like GPT models) or if it's still decades out. I think there aren't enough people who will want to wear it for games or social media. Not because it's a bad experience, but because it's an expensive and cumbersome experience and it's just not THAT much better than just staring at a small screen. The user base can't motivate spending billions on creating the experiences that would grow the user base significantly. What I think could be the breakthrough thing is the combination of AI and VR. Interactive agents and possibly also something to cheaply create that holodeck experience for rendering (NeRFs with foveal rendering, whatever - I'm an amateur skimmer of papers and extrapolating research is difficult even for experts). But imagine the difference in development costs between a VR experience where some interior space is modeled by hand in minute detail in Unreal engine, and NPCs are scripted, versus one where a space is merely captured in RFs and the NPCs are GPT bots with some plot instructions. Both of those technologies (NeRFs and GPT NPCs) would have sounded like science fiction even to the creators of the Quest2, yet here we are. I would have said "no one would ever buy/wear this" 5 years ago, but with the idea of a mind blowing photorealistic interactive murder mystery developed on a shoestring budget (Not to mention: porn - never underestimate it) I'm not so sure any more.
• nolok 3y ago
  I fully agree, and to go one step "further" in that reasonning, there seems to be two ways on that street: one is the massive headset, which is a pain and whose only viable purpose for which people will accept wearing it seem to be gaming, and the other is the invisible headset in the continuation of google glass, which is less of a headset and more of a small addition to your everyday life. I'm very weirded out to see all of them go with the massive option. A google glass oriented solution with 2023 level of tech and that can be adapted to any/most pair of glasses but offering much more limited functions (pictures/photo, maps/gps, notification, light AR, ...) would have much more appeal to every day life. Not saying it's easy, not saying it would work, but it feels like it would be an easier challenge to convince people to wear that all the time.
  • macrolime 3y ago
    If we're to believe this, Apple is working on it but thinks it will be four years at minimum before it's good enough to be usable https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-glasses https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-glasses
• m_mueller 3y ago
  I think it's still a couple of years out, but what about a little thought experiment: Let's say you had a pair of normal looking glasses that do everything that Vision Pro is doing now [1] and cost, say, 1500 USD. This would IMO be a no-brainer, as you can then augment any space and activity you want with having views into the digital world - for work, for hobbies, you name it. That would IMO be a mass market device on the level of today's smartphones. Now, the question is, how much worse can it be and still sell well? How good is good enough? How soon will we see the plastic iPhone 3G equivalent at half the price, 70% the weight and 150% the battery life? After listening to the first hand experiences I do think Apple is onto something here, and this could be the beginning of the next step, finally going beyond what Douglas Engelbart has already envisioned in terms of digital augmentation of our lifes (on which we're IMO only now getting to a full realisation, almost 60 years later). [1] listen to yesterday's Cortex podcast, they go over all the details after first hand experience, and it's quite interesting to say the least.
  • tsimionescu 3y ago
    What makes you think it's possible, especially in just a couple of years, to have a laptop powerful enough to drive two 4k+ screens + cameras at the same time reduced to the weight and form factor of a pair of glasses? Phones, laptops, and tablets have all been fighting on weight vs compute power for years, and improvements are incremental year to year. I don't see any reason to imagine it's possible to reduce the size that much in the foreseeable future. Even with compromises like a separate battery, which is already extremely clunky. Not to mention, the illusion depends highly on having your regular vision blocked out completely and on having the screens at a very fixed position relative to your eyes. So, for the foreseeable future, the screens will have to stay well fixed to your face, even if in a more glasses-like form factor, and completely cover your eyes. Ski goggles are actually a better description of the best that can be done, not glasses.
    • m_mueller 3y ago
      I'm not saying it's possible in a few years. My argument was: Such a device would definitely be mass market. So how much worse can it be and still be mass market. And I could see a consumer version of Vision Pro in a couple of years reaching that state, where they just make it a bit cheaper, lighter and smaller.
• jen729w 3y ago
  This feels like a technology that will be ‘ready’ in ten (twenty?) years, but to dismiss it now a) feels unimaginative and b) precludes that from ever happening. Do I want to wear big goggles? No. Do I, one day, want a device that can magically project anything I want on to my field of vision, and for it to be as realistic as my actual vision? Hell yeah I do! And we can’t get there unless we go through the ski goggles phase. So, here we are. I feel the same way about people complaining that the headphone jack was removed. ‘The phone is thin enough!’, they say. No it isn’t! My god where’s your imagination. The phone is good enough when it’s wafer thin and I can have it protein-printed on my arm or whatever.
  • wiz21c 3y ago
    I alreday feel exhausted when I walk my town because there's so many information to process: front of shops, advertising, road signs, people, cars, bikes, nice buildings,... If I had to add yet antoher layer of information on top of that, it would be exhausting. Now, if I was someone who works in construction, I'd be happy to have glasses that add the position of eletrical wire in the wall where I'm going to drill a hole :-)
    • layer8 3y ago
      Real AR glasses could also edit out the existing distracting information, like an ad blocker. I guess technically that would not be AR, but DR (diminished reality).
    • xenostar 3y ago
      If the headsets are good enough you could actually use them to remove information from your view as you walk instead of adding more to it.
    • psiops 3y ago
      The iGlasses could just as easily block information making a walk through downtown Manhatten look like a stroll through the woods. Use at your own risk :)
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• liendolucas 3y ago
  I share similar thoughts. If we go back in time to the mobile phone era, just before the iphone was released, the mobile market was actually flourishing and very solid: companies like nokia, motorola and blackberry managed to make mobile phones something as common as a TV, almost everyone had one. At the time Apple introduced the iphone with its touchscreen and virtual keyboard, forever game changers to the whole mobile industry. The rest is history. VR has been in the market for some time now and despite the fact that competitors haven't reached the level of technology that Apple has unveiled, those cheaper alternatives are by no means something that are either underdeveloped or half-way unusable products. I've tried a pair of Occulus few years ago and found them pretty impressive (putting aside all their flaws). I must assume that since then these got better and prices actually dropped a bit, and if they haven't they are still way way cheaper than what Apple will be selling next year and I'm sure you can have a ton of fun with budget ones as well. But yet... Why VR goggles can't be found in homes the same way that TVs, mobile phones and other popular electronic products despite that they are already affordable? Why hasn't this technology became mainstream? Is it maybe due to the fact that the VR experience can't be shared the same way that when we turn on a TV, play with friends with a gaming console on the couch or sit down on a desk with a PC and we share its use? Is it because it lacks that mythical killer VR app that could be a gamer changer? Is it because the industry hasn't released as much software for VR as for other more common devices like consoles, PCs, mobile phones? It feels as if there's still something inherently missing in VR that won't make you go and buy a pair of goggles no matter how technologically advanced they become. And people spend a lot of money on expensive phones, gadgets and the alike... Maybe I'm wrong and shortsighted and the answer is actually trivial.
  • neillyons 3y ago
    I don't think the experience needs to be shared. Steve Jobs was making a comparison to headphones https://youtu.be/bQECSInWVPY https://youtu.be/bQECSInWVPY That is the way I think of it. A pair of headphones for your eyes.
  • doctor_eval 3y ago
    Well, if you look back at the history of Apple, most of their popular products were considered unnecessary, especially including the iPhone. Of the Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, AirPods and Apple Watch, I don't think any of them were immediate hits except (ironically) for the iPad. The thing about Apple is that they iterate in meaningful ways over a long period of time. I'm unlikely to buy this first version of Apple Vision Pro. But in a few years, I expect some later version of it is likely to be as indispensable to me as my noise cancelling headphones.
• askafriend 3y ago
  Why can't more immersive entertainment be an exciting goal and vision? That alone is amazing. To have an entire movie theater in any room in your house or in an airplane. Or gaming.
  • monk_e_boy 3y ago
    part if it is to extend my house - I have tiny rooms, in VR I am in a giant open world. Same on the plane or train. I can wonder a beach or sail the ocean.
  • nologic01 3y ago
    Personally I love the immersive feeling, at least for some experiences. IMAX movies are a level up from normal cinema, which is a level up from TV. I would think though that if that is the main target use you don't need to strap a computer on your head.
    • mrguyorama 3y ago
      Crucially, I don't want the hassle of a headset to play something like Civ. """immersion""" doesn't add anything to that experience, and is actually a massive distraction
      • CatWChainsaw 3y ago
        I said before somewhere else that I want to be invested in video games and their stories, characters, worlds. I don't particularly want to be immersed in Slender or Diablo or MTG.
  • layer8 3y ago
    It can, but that only appeals to gaming or movie/TV aficionados, and otherwise is only for very occasional use as a novelty. It’s not something that would become an integral part of most people‘s life like a smartphone.
    • sneak 3y ago
• Juliate 3y ago
  I see it more like the Vision Pro is the bulky Apple II equivalent (in a very positive, optimistic way) of what spatial computing is going to be - and perhaps Dynamicland was another take at the same « target ». It’s bulky because/in the sense, how much top technology and work has been designed into it to validate and refine even further the vision with more users and developers. It’s also bulky in an other sense, because how massive it is to wear still; and how social etiquette around it barely exist (but is also taken into account/proposed/embedded in this first public iteration). It definitely make sense because it opens a really opiniated conceptual door to a different way of interacting with computers.
• darawk 3y ago
  > So far at least, this is a tech that is being pushed onto people rather than being pulled. I think it's very hard to tell the difference between these things ex ante. Everything that succeeds looks like it was pulled. But many things were pushed before they were pulled. Buying things on the internet, for instance. This was laughed at for quite a while, while a few people and companies were committed to the idea that it was the future. They were right of course, so right that it feels like it was effortless and demanded by the public, but it wasn't. Not at first. That isn't to say that that will happen with VR either. Just to say that there is a long history of things being pushed hard and finally breaking through and becoming a near universal norm, and there is a long history of things being pushed hard and dying and being completely forgotten. The promise of VR is to unlock a world free of the constraints of physics. Where physical distance prevents certain styles of communication and interaction - where physical real estate is finite and therefore rivalrous, etc. There are many things that VR, in principle, could solve. Whether or not the tech can deliver those things in a way that partially (or totally?) replaces actual physical reality remains to be seen. It is clear though that if you want to weave tech into the fabric of people's lives in the deepest possible way, something like VR is probably your best bet.
  • _glass 3y ago
    I remember the argument against tablets, I was one of them, I thought because of the weird hand/arm position, this can never be a serious format. It was pushed through several iterations, and now it is accepted.
    • nologic01 3y ago
      I never had the same feeling about tablets. If anything, I am still somewhat surprised that they have (in relative terms) flopped. I was really expecting much more widespread use given it is quite a sweet-spot form factor (small and lightweight to carry around to far more places than a laptop yet offering a good fraction of the laptop functionality)
      • irrational 3y ago
• trotro 3y ago
  Porn. What you're missing is porn. Or generally, anything that's much better experienced directly than through a screen. Think about virtually hiking Mt Everest, diving the Mariana Trench, walking on Mars, etc. The technology certainly isn't there yet, but I can imagine a future where for a majority of the population, especially those with lower income, VR provides the only affordable* escape from reality. * In a few years obviously, $3500 is far from affordable.
  • nologic01 3y ago
    > Porn. What you're missing is porn. I suppose this means that Apple is aiming for the high end of that market while Meta for the coin-operated booths? :-)
  • scrum-treats 3y ago
    > Porn. What you're missing is porn. This is correct. With the ability to mimic touch, the VR NSFW avenues are set to explode.
    • drewmol 3y ago
      Explode?!? Do you think people who don’t already pay for porn/sexual IOT devices/digital sexual pleasure content will start to enter this emerging market? Do you think the same customer base will drastically increase spending? - I’m genuinely curious and surprised by the confidence.
      • sebzim4500 3y ago
        I'm sure there are millions of people who visit pornhub that would never have visited a pornographic cinema (or whatever they were called).
        • drewmol 3y ago
          Agreed. But there are much fewer people who pay for pornhub. Fewer who would buy a $3500 device just for a more immersive pornhub experience. I highly doubt these people are in apple’s target market.
• johnchristopher 3y ago
  > So far at least, this is a tech that is being pushed onto people rather than being pulled. I don't think this was the case with any of the major steps in the development of digital computing but would be quite interested if people can think of historical precedent. Not computing but 3D TV and 3D movies ?
  • tsimionescu 3y ago
    Is there any movie today that anyone releases exclusively in 3D? I can imagine maybe Avatar 2, but for the vast majority of AAAA blockbusters, they are available in either version, and the 3D is really just a gimmick. And 3D TVs are not remotely common. So 3D TV/cinema seems to be a counter-example - a technology that was pushed hard, but has generally failed to become anywhere close to mainstream, nor to continue moving in that direction.
    • mrguyorama 3y ago
      3D movies/TV are the perfect example: It's been PUSHED SUPER HARD for decades by execs who swear up and down the improvement in immersion will be life changing and utterly reinvent the entire industry but oh oh oh the tech just isn't here yet but you just wait it will totally take over everything. In reality, 3D would not have made the new ghostbusters a better movie. Nobody watches a movie for "immersion", they watch it for a story.
    • johnchristopher 3y ago
      Sorry, the question - that I quoted - didn't asked specifically for a successful tech or a current unproven tech.
• yakorevivan 3y ago
  [dead]
• jbc1 3y ago
  >we are talking about people (homo sapiens) putting a major something on their heads that dramatically takes over their visual field for the pursuit of... what exactly? That is the puzzle. A far better screen real estate to hardware size ratio than you can get if you dont put something on your head. Most office workers have been using two or more 22 inch or far larger monitors for a decade now. People buy the largest televisions in their budget and are impressed when their buddy gets a new bigger one. Movie theatres 1) exist when television ownership is common and 2) advertise it when they have particularly big screens. Laptops make up like half of all computer sales. Plenty of people have been trying to make working on tablets work to shave down a bit more size. Phones are frequently used for media consumption. If I wasn't a person who existed in the world and used devices, it'd still be perfectly obvious to me that people want to see a lot of stuff at once but they also don't want to lug around the things necessary to do that. I am a person who exists in the world though and therefore have this very problem. I carry a phone everywhere I go and sometimes find myself giving up on tasks, or it not even occurring to me to try them, because I know they'll be a lot easier when I have my laptop. I carry it to less places and find myself doing the same thing, leaving off tasks until I'm at my desk, which I carry nowhere. I keep seeing people mention an aha moment or killer app needed to make these devices make sense and I honestly dont get it. It doesn't need to satisfy some new want to be incredibly successful. It just needs to be a laptop with far more screen real estate than any actual laptop.
• kickbutt22 3y ago
  I would agree that the putting goggles over your face is absurd and it will never be a hit, not in a million years. However! Having that proof of concept to be able to manipulate your environment with just a gesture of your fingers and simply by looking at something - this I believe can be extended to external cameras, screens, and all sorts of IoT devices.
  • curiousgal 3y ago
    Not to mention how dry your eyes would be from wearing that thing for hours, like seriously, why is no one talking about that?
    • threeseed 3y ago
      Because dry eyes is not an issue that plagues the majority of people. And whilst you do blink less whilst wearing VR glasses it's on par with looking at a computer screen.
    • evilos 3y ago
      Why would your eyes be drier? If anything they'd be more moist because there's less air movement around them right?
      • Ireallyapart 3y ago
        Also moisture is trapped in the enclosure between eye and screen.
    • zeknife 3y ago
      It's not like it prevents you from blinking
    • cracrecry 3y ago
      I have used several VR devices. Never had a problem with dry eyes. >why is no one talking about that? Because it is not an issue for most people?
  • 3y ago
• Hypergraphe 3y ago
  > we are talking about people (homo sapiens) putting a major something on their heads that dramatically takes over their visual field for the pursuit of... what exactly? In the simulation field, the advances are already major. There is a huge gap in the gaming experience when playing simulation games for instance.
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    The difference is fidelity and accuracy of experience are ONLY important to simulation turbo nerds. Call of Duty would not be a bigger franchise if it gave you trenchfoot for example.
• dougmwne 3y ago
  Gaming is legitimately awesome with these devices. It’s a high effort, high reward experience. Using the Quest on a few of the highly polished and addictive games surpassed even my childhood experience of getting a computer for the first time. As a general purpose computer, I see a hint of what it could be, and I am convinced it’s the future. It has to be. It’s too powerful not to be. Imagine there’s nothing to put on. The computer doctor sprinkles some magic computer dust over you 7 minutes after you are born and you get Apple Vision++++ levels of ability, all of the time. Everything in the world becomes a potential UI. Every action becomes an input. Every surface a display. Look at our total screen time and realize there’s no going back, so we might as well ditch the screens and stop all the squinting. But I am also convinced this is 30 to 100 years away. There‘s no line of sight on how to build this magic dust and no one is going to wear ski goggles all day.
  • automatic6131 3y ago
    >Imagine there’s nothing to put on. The computer doctor sprinkles some magic computer dust over you 7 minutes after you are born and you get Apple Vision++++ levels of ability, all of the time. Everything in the world becomes a potential UI. Every action becomes an input. Every surface a display. I am begging you to consider how this is an awful future
    • Sai_ 3y ago
      I’m from a world where my myopia was debilitating (minus 10.5 in one eye, -9.5 in the other). Then, someone came an sprinkled magic dust into my eyes through a Laser and bam! 20/20 eyesight in one afternoon. You could say I was going the other way - from wearing a contraption (specs/contacts) to not wearing one unlike AR/VR where I have to wear something to experience it - but the effect is the same. I was naturally one way and then, out of nowhere came LASIK to make life better for me. It’s the same way everywhere. We couldn’t fly and now we have flying tubes. We couldn’t understand movies in foreign languages and now close captions exist. Personally, I’d like to give that VR/AR magic dust a chance to see if my now 20-20 eyesight can kick up a notch.
      • 3y ago
• chepurko 3y ago
  I think the aha moment is essentially having spatial computing but without wearing a computer on your face. So “Minority Report.”
• domatic1 3y ago
  According to some people who have tested it, it is amazing to use it to watch a movie, watch a big screen and the 3D effect, the Vision Pro is just a television from the future.
  • watmough 3y ago
    Interesting that on that basis, $3500 is probably about on a par with a really nice OLED big-screen TV and surround sound system. One person only though, not a shareable experience. Like others, I'm waiting for this to come to a spectacles / sunglasses formfactor. An external box would be fine, I just wouldn't be able to bear wearing what looks like metal ski-goggles for any significant period of time.
• pjmlp 3y ago
  My first try with a VR headset was in 1994, with DOOM. Since then my opinion has hardly changed that these are gimmicks, and mostly unusable by people with eye sight issues, where already dealing with natural light is an issue, let alone tiny screens a couple of cms away.
  • nologic01 3y ago
    Circa that time was also (in more professional context) the NCSA CAVE immersive visualization project. For good measure, this was also the time of the Mosaic browser. I think three decades is enough to suspect that if there was some unique added value from the VR concept (that goes beyond some very small niches), it would have been adopted more broadly, even with imperfect technologies. Future developments (~5-10 yr) in other parts of the digital universe may bring use cases that are currently not visible to people with limited imagination. But usually short-termist corporates launching major products here-and-now does feel a bit odd to me. Who knows, time will certainly tell.
  • aembleton 3y ago
    Pixel density is a bit higher in the Apple Vision Pro. Might be less of an issue.
    • pjmlp 3y ago
      Doesn't make a difference for light sensitivity issues.
  • sebzim4500 3y ago
    Have you actually tried it though? I would be willing to buy this argument if anyone who actually used the device were reporting these issues.
    • pjmlp 3y ago
      I doubt they would fix issues like photophobia, or high light sensitivity.
• ChrisRR 3y ago
  I'm currently seeing it like the introduction of the ipad. At first I was snarky about "what is this even for? It's way too expensive. Why would anyone use one? It's just a big phone" And they were mainly bought by people with disposable income. Where as nowadays tablets have become a staple and it's very common to own one, and often not own a computer. I ate my words. So at the moment there's a few players in the VR/AR landscape, maybe something big will come of it, maybe it won't. But I think it's too early to tell
  • stingraycharles 3y ago
    I was so skeptical about the iPad, I really didn't understand the audience when it was introduced. I could do everything on my iPhone already anyway, it's just bigger and not a phone. Little did I know that the iPad would slowly take away my time spent on my iPhone. So now I have a $1000 iPhone that I don't use that much (except when not at home), and I have an additional $750 iPad I spend 4+ hours / day on. Not sure what happened, but I couldn't go back to just my iPhone anymore.
• dayglo 3y ago
  A couple of years ago, I sat down with my friend for a game of chess. After a few minutes of chatting and playing, I realised that I had completely forgotten he wasn’t really there. I took my headset off and it was like he had just left the room. I think that being able to provide the feeling that someone you love is there with you (when they are far away) is why people use a lot of tech. It was a feeling that 2d FaceTime just cannot give you (and it felt like a bigger advancement than going from a phone call to video calls). If Vision Pro’s face reconstruction thing works well I can see that being the killer app.
  • lloeki 3y ago
    I had a similar feeling without VR: working from home + having friends far away meant I spent a lot of time on video chat du jour. One day I set up the TV with a spare computer and webcam, and used that instead of phone, laptop, or even desktop. The difference was huge, and exponentially so when the other party was doing the same. With selfie webcams we got person-centric mugshots, with room webcams we connected places. It was like having opened a portal to another place, we could move around each one's place very naturally, which only reinforced the connection between people. Just a little bit of care with placement and angle went a long way to drive the illusion. I remember that a couple of times we honest to god unconsciously tried to hand over objects through the screen. Brains are so easy to trick. As it seems to be currently my cobbled up setup looks better than floating mugshots. Also not addressed and never shown is how the VR user shows up to these FaceTime users. I mean the wearer doesn't have themselves captured by the device? And it can't take into account other people naturally walking into the room.
    • codethief 3y ago
      This reminds me of what the people over at https://tonari.no/ https://tonari.no/ are building. I would love to try out their tech!
      • lloeki 3y ago
        Yes! I did basically that with a Logi C920 something + a 42" TV. And yes the perspective is wrong, things don't line up, objects and textures don't match, but after a few minutes it doesn't matter, basically as long as you get the horizontal plane right the brain just adjusts and still believes you're looking through a window.
• grumbel 3y ago
  It's really not that difficult, you put the thing on your head and instantly have a three monitor setup whenever and wherever you want. And of course with the right software, you can go past that and use your whole surrounding as your "desktop", watch movies on a virtual IMAX screen, go full virtual realty or whatever else you can imagine. The problem so far has simply been that none of the existing headsets work for this. Resolution needs to make it past 30 PPD to be usable for text. All the exiting consumer ones are between 10 and 20 PPD. You also need the right software. SteamVR has basically nothing by default, you get a blurry view of your desktop if you go the menu and that's it. You can enhance it a little with Steam overlay addons, but it's all a crude "make desktop show up in VR", not a "userinterface build for VR". Oculus is a bit better, but still not great. Microsoft tried with WMR Portal to bring the full Windows desktop into VR and it is about the closest thing to what Apple is doing now, but it was still riddled with problems, lots of bugs and limitations that made it impossible to take full advantage of VR (max window size was restricted to 1920x1080, no way to anchor virtual windows to the real world, no real passthrough mode). What Apple has shown so far look much better than anything else out there. The resolution is good enough that you can actually read text, the passthrough cameras are good enough that you can actually see and interact with the world around you in proper 3D and color and the software seems to be completely focused on making 2D content in a virtual space work well, something none of the other companies spend much effort on. There is an alternative reality somewhere where VR went the other direction, focus on making it cheap and accessible and focus and producing proper full VR games, basically the original vision behind Oculus. That could have worked, Oculus delivered a couple of great games in the early days of VR and before Facebook joined them, they were even able to produce $300 headsets. But all that got derailed by Facebook, who raised the price to $600, gave up on PC based VR and forced everything on mobile. They also largely gave up on games and focused instead on "Metaverse", which means that the Quest2 games out know, still look a lot worse than what we had 6 seven years ago on CV1 or even DK1. The insane amount of money Meta has spend so far simply doesn't show in the actual product and especially not in the software. Anyway, since this alternative reality didn't happen, we are now basically stuck waiting for VR headsets to get enough resolution that 2D content becomes enjoyable in them, as that's the only way VR will get content. Native VR content is still just too rare and the quality is often not great. Apple's VisionPro is the first device that crosses that threshold and has the software to go along with it.
• rajman187 3y ago
  The point you’re missing, and with no fault of your own, is that this isn’t the end goal by any means. You’re right that this type of device will always be a niche market, indeed Apple are targeting just 1M units sold. If you dig deep enough, you’ll find that the ubiquitous, always-on, socially acceptable form factor is indeed AR in the shape of glasses. As in Google Glasses but with infinitely more utility. The ability to do anything you can now on your phone and more, powered by a localized and shared augmented experience. > What would be such indicators? If you agree on the above as the end goal, one clear indicator of success is “how many times did you not take out your phone?” Of course any expert in the field will tell you we’re 10+ years away from achieving such technology, due in no small part to the physics of optics and displays. But you can imagine the Apple VisionPro shrinking toward this end state.
• robertlagrant 3y ago
  One thing would be you could go to the movies in your lounge, watching a massive screen. That could be cool.
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    You can do that on something like the Quest 2 for $399, yet that didn't take over the world. That "feature" just isn't that enticing.
    • robertlagrant 3y ago
      It might've been ahead of its time. There is a funny thing that Apple are good at where early adopters decide they're going for something, they "invest", an ecosystem develops, the price goes down (or more models appear, some cheaper) and people start prioritising buying that thing. Tesla also, with their sequences of car releases. I'm not saying this will follow that pattern, just that low adoption of a lower price product that can technically do something isn't necessarily evidence of failure of the idea.
• ynx 3y ago
  One of the most persistently irritating parts of being deep in this space is people loudly proclaiming what it is that VR is truly missing. The answer is not only different for different people, but very different for some of them. It's a way for trans people to express their real gender in a way that seriously alleviates their dysphoria, or for people to explore sexuality in a place they are fully equipped to defend themselves in, and discover that their biases or prejudices were weaker than they thought, or outright reaction formations to their real-life environment. Still others use it as an artistic outlet, a mechanism for connecting to people across the world, a sandbox with which to experiment with and learn certain pieces of technology. It's been juiced up by Facebook money, sure. It's not purely motivated by that by a long shot. There's a demand and perhaps an oversupply in some respects, but the experiences achievable are legitimately delightful if you know how to look for them. Fantastic escape rooms, beautiful gardens, relaxing rooms, sleepy hideouts, fantasy worlds. This is all happening and has been happening for years. There are of course serious caveats, such as some people being simply physically unable to tolerate it. It's a rough piece of technology early in its lifetime and it's got a lot of road to cover, but it's already nailed a level of immersion into an artificial world that nothing else has come even remotely close to - and it's everything else that sucks to some moderate degree and needs to catch up and surpass the norm.
  • auggierose 3y ago
    You see a bench in your garden, and you cannot sit on it. That's just very disappointing. I don't even want to translate that into the sexual domain ... The idea of VR/AR is super exciting, and beat saber is super fun. The reason why beat saber is super fun is because it manages to transcend the visual only aspect of VR. I don't see how this can be done in general. Unless you can go full Holodeck, I don't see the general appeal for most things. Immersive cinema is certainly a nice application, 3D-avatar facetime is not.
  • meindnoch 3y ago
    Transsexuals and furries... So these are the best use cases for VR after all these years? Really?
  • jabradoodle 3y ago
• mellosouls 3y ago
  The end goal is Ready Player One world dominance. The sticking point is the tech is several years off the miniaturisation and power needed to enable the comfortable switching of worlds.
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    The actual sticking point is that nobody actually wants "ready player one", even people who think they do. VRChat and RecRoom exist today and are available to anyone, anywhere with an internet connection. They do not have millions of players because "meet strangers in a virtual environment that can be ANYTHING" is a novelty, not something you want to do every day. I say this as someone who literally spent hours every weekend during the pandemic raving (yes really) and socializing in VR chat. Your average person doesn't want to be spammed with half naked Anime Waifu avatars and dinosaurs with boobs
• cracrecry 3y ago
  >So far at least, this is a tech that is being pushed onto people rather than being pulled. Like anything else in life? How much it took for the Guthenberg press to be "successful". It took at least 50 years since Guthenberg died bankrupted until there were millions of books being printed and people realised what the printing was by the consequences. Guthenberg pushed so hard his entire life. Aviation was not pushed by fanatics that killed themselves for at least 50 years(they were gliders in India thousands of years ago that killed themselves trying to fly) before it became a normal thing. Read about Otto Lilienthal or the casualty rate of early aviators and then tell me that it was not pushed. The nuclear bomb was not pushed with project Manhattan, one of the biggest expenditures on earth ever? Rockets were not pushed? Going to the moon was not pushed? The diode and the transistor were not pushed by the germans and later the Americans? Lasers were not pushed before we knew what could be done with them? Computers were not pushed? >I don't think this was the case with any of the major steps in the development of digital computing but would be quite interested if people can think of historical precedent. The entire Silicon Valley thing was created by the Pentagon at first. It did not went from zero to billions of devices instantly. The military were paying the development of early (ultra expensive)microprocessors in the dozens to power submarines and spaceships, like the hand weaved RAM of the Apollo devices. The early entire DARPA internet was at first 56Kbits, the entire network!! Certainly things like Xerox PARC machines were pushed when every single machine did cost a fortune. It was not pulled because Xerox had no idea of what to do with the technology, just like lasers before.
  • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
    You think 56kbit/s is slow, but in early Internet times, people communicated with 9600bit/s modems. We sometimes had to be satisfied with upper half of the body only.
    • michaelnik 3y ago
      Ha but the modem would not make you feel sick!
  • nologic01 3y ago
    > Like anything else in life? There is a lot of truth in that. Modern consumerist needs have an important push element to them. Creating "wants" is by now very sophisticated social engineering practice with over a century of successful track record. But the examples you mention mostly bundle other phenomena that I would not include in the typical "consumer push" category. Doggedly pursuing research on various uncertain technologies (typically government founded) is common, but it is not pushing anything onto consumers. Potentially this may happen in the final phases, if/when successful, relevant and mass market commercializable. Mass market companies typically only enter the game when there is an expected short or (at most) medium term return that will compensate for the investment risk.
• codeulike 3y ago
  The first time I tried an Oculus Quest was mindblowing, it was a very unique and impressive experience. I wont go on about it but I encourage you to do the Oculus Quest demo app if you get the chance. BUT then the excitement faded and I don't find myself wanting to return to VR much. Having something strapped to your face is awkward and tiring. Tech companies can see the potential because it _is_ breathtaking but are also aware of the drawbacks and hurdles. Zuck decided it was a big enough thing to bet the farm on. Its a potentially very powerful thing with some big issues that no-one knows how to fix. Hence the buzz and endless talking and companies jostling for position to be the leader without knowing quite where they want to lead us to.
  • wslh 3y ago
    One important issue with Oculus is that doesn't have AAA apps to consume, so at the end you only bought a device. I assume Apple knows well the apps strategy and there would be apps that leverage de device as it happened when they launched multitouch displays (remember: they were the firsts).
    • wslh 3y ago
      Mark downvoting my comments ;-) non-happy owner of the Oculus Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro. Have them for the business.
  • ozten 3y ago
    ADU metrics are hurt by Facebook’s execution of OS software updates and UX issues that make it a tedious dance. Many releases where create a situation where it is put into a drawer.
• psychphysic 3y ago
  The key for me will be if it can meet it's core proposition of making a virtual world as good as the real one. At a basic level of I'd be willing to binge netflix on it rather than a TV. That would be the start. What if I preferred it to going to the cinema? Already a win. What if it can make it feel like you're having lunch in a restaurant? Perfect. It doesn't really do any of these things. More like having wallpaper of a photograph of a restaurant
  • eloisant 3y ago
    There are already applications on the Quest to use your physical keyboard, and either see it (AR) or see a representation of your keyboard as well as your hands.
    • psychphysic 3y ago
      Yeah but they are pants. I'd have to go 10 rounds with Tyson Fury to experience reality like the quest feels.
• piyush_soni 3y ago
  That's why I always believe Google's Glasses and their vision were way ahead of their time - they were not strapping a big device to your head like all these other ones. Unfortunately, for legal and whatever reasons it didn't take off. But as a person who already wears prescription glasses I'd have definitely wanted to wear that instead.
• spi 3y ago
  I am seeing a rather clear (if incomplete) parallelism with 3D television (which, oddly, I never see mentioned, even by detractors). What was it, 10 years ago? All TV producers pushed it hard (it was impossible to buy a high end TV without it). AAA movie producers pushed it hard (a lot of blockbuster movies were _designed_ to be 3D first). Just like with VR, the technology wasn't new: I had watched a 3D movie some 30 years ago at a theme park, liked it, threw up and passed out afterwards, for the first and only time in my life - doing it after a rollercoaster was not a great idea. Just like with VR, it required you to put something on your eyes that people found awkward - and ultimately, this was possibly what made them unpopular, if you want to relax, you don't want to focus on your hardware. A bit like VR, the early glasses were cheap and disposable (just pieces of red/blue plastic); the "pro" versions with active filtering were significantly more expensive and technological. But for all that, they didn't solve the main issue, i.e. they weren't less intrusive, if nothing else more so (heavier, requiring batteries, etc.). In this case, I'm not sure if the Apple vision is a step forward or backward - if I understand correctly it makes the experience "better" than other visors, but it is also bulkier. A lot of optimism on this technology comes from saying "it is not yet mature, give it time, the first iPhone was very limited, etc.". But the main issues I see seem just too hard to surpass in a few technological iterations: - The experience is limited to the eyes. No matter how magic Apple is, I'm not ready to believe that in 5 years wearing something as simple as a goggle will give me tactile feelings or anything else. Though I'll admit, 3D vision might be enough. - Battery power won't evolve tenfolds. The first iPhone didn't have a shorter battery life than the current ones, and that's because research for better batteries and more efficient CPUs is already cutting-edge - a 2x improvement would be huge already. Everybody just assumes it will get better, but not everything does, or at least not always fast enough. - The main issue everybody notices is lack of apps and, in general, something to do with it. Here, people cite the iPhone as an example of thing that developed a lot of apps, which made all the difference between the first and later versions. This might happen thanks to the Apple Vision Pro, but I'm not ready to believe it without proof. Just a few years ago, Apple pushed hard, very hard, the touch bar on basically all of its users. Certainly more than half the developers (not just mac developers; all developers) had it integrated in their working machine, whether they wanted it or not. Yet, I only saw apps starting integrating functionalities there years later, and it was often half-baked things, and even when they were not I found myself never using them - the old hotkeys, or the F-keys, were easier to memorize, and faster. And Apple did roll back on that, now I have again physical buttons which I very happily use to change screen light or volume. All in all, maybe this technology will fly, maybe it won't, but if we look at the past we shouldn't forget the large fraction of technologies that didn't make it, or which at most thrived as a niche sector unlikely to ever explode. Not everything that Apple makes needs to be the new iPhone - and why should that be a problem, really?
• michaelnik 3y ago
  Lots of it is about the execution. I went through 2 PCVR headsets and I'd never think: oh this is going to be mainstream (in the present state!). Those headsets are not comfortable (sweaty); the hardware needed for anything realistic is top tiers; it takes PhD/time to configure (and goes out of sync!); the software ecosystem was(is?) not super stable; the interaction (controllers, tracking) is sometimes awkward (controllers are big, interfere with keyboard and real world). Often it small things like comfortable physical head position vs. position in VR world are not "lined up" We'd laugh that it takes as much time to get into the VR plane simulator as to drive to the airport to fly real plane! Compare a VR kit to a monitor pair, or a game controller (imo VR is kind of a cross of the 2) - both are mostly plug an play.
  • squeaky-clean 3y ago
    I'm changing my simracing rig from VR to triple-monitors for this reason. (And also the narrow FOV). When it works it's amazing. At least I can pretend the sweaty visor is because I'm wearing a racing helmet. But every 2 weeks or so something messes up and I have to spend an hour or two resetting things and reinstalling things. Also only a few simracing games have really good VR support.
• fearface 3y ago
  TIL some people believe desktop computing is more natural than spatial computing
  • nologic01 3y ago
    Believing (and preaching) is easy. Some tangible evidence is harder.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• danwee 3y ago
  > Their VR "visions" differ but only at the margin. No matter how you execute it, we are talking about people (homo sapiens) putting a major something on their heads that dramatically takes over their visual field for the pursuit of... what exactly? That is the puzzle. I definitely think VR/AR is the next big think, but not via headsets, but via holograms or whatever it takes to get rid of physical screens and mouses (peripherals in general). You tell me I can have a huge 4K "hologram screen" projecting whatever is on my phone by just clicking a button? I'm sold. I mean, why would I read HN on my tiny phone if I can read it in a 13inch hologram display being projected from my wrist while I'm on the bus? Or a 30inch display when I'm on my couch? Same for whatever you do on the internet. What Apple has showned us in the demo is the future... but not with headsets (if I go to the supermarket to buy milk, I'm not taking my headset, if I go to the bathroom I'm not taking my headset, if I'm taking the public transportation I'm not taking my headset). You may think "high definition holograms" are just too sci-fi, but I don't think so. In any case, headsets are just too clumsy. Perhaps Apple's v2 for their headsets becomes just some glasses ala Google glass? In that case I don't know, maybe that gets traction if implemented correctly.
• elorant 3y ago
  The “what” is some immersive experience. IMHO Zuck understood it better than Apple and tried to build that experience with the Metaverse. Although it tanked it was in principal the right choice. You have to give something more than just a spatial computer otherwise you solve no problem and offer no incentive.
• danmur 3y ago
  Feels a bit like 3d movies. The producers can practically taste a fresh new market, just have to get the consumers stampeding. I don't think there's been the Avatar equivalent yet, and though it might take a bit longer, I think there will still be a tipping point where enough people realise it's garbage and Zuckerberg is thrown into a long dark well forever. Followed by the peoples' tim cook right to the stomach. Slightly more seriously, this stuff reminds me of that book Snow Crash (which I love). But it's never going to be like that, and even if it was, the virtual world aspect of that is a bit of a horrible dystopia. It's like a drug.
  • adverbly 3y ago
    Feels a lot like 3D movies . Don't think immersion provides the value or demands the purchasing price that people think it does. I mean, people still play dwarf fortress for god's sake. Look at how popular 8-bit things are. Animated movies, games, sawtooth waveform music. At a certain point, the real value of realism is in being able to fake it. Which is a little bit of a scary thing I guess when the wrong actors use it for for lying and misleading.
    • mrguyorama 3y ago
      CoD isn't one of the most popular games because it accurately recreates the experience of being in a massive world war
• hospitalJail 3y ago
  >There is a missing aha moment around this type of interface that would justify the major behavioral adjustment that is required for it to be adopted as a general purpose interface rather than a gimmick. Quick question, have you used the HTC Vive? I have used tons of VR, and they are all cool for about 2 minutes, except the Vive. The Vive was the game changer. Walking around a room, interacting, etc.. The other versions either look bad, have bad controls, etc... Quality VR isnt accessible for $100 despite companies offering you a box for your cellphone. You do need to spend over $1000 to participate in good VR. It prices out lots of people, and the low cost version pushes people away.
• sudhirj 3y ago
  Will try to take a crack at this. Two underlying principles I think will drive the Vision pro are: 1. The need to live vicariously / voyeuristically: it’s possible for me to at least a two-sense experience of sky diving, bungee jumping, F1 / motor cross racing, and many others, including some darker more voyeuristic experiences like sex with someone out of my league, or unfortunately even extremes like murder / suicide. While the extremes are bad, there’s a lot of market for meeting desires in the middle. 2. Current efforts that have physics limitations: I’d like to make my multi-monitor setup on to a couch or car or plane, or even just have more monitors at my desk than my desk allows. I’d like a bigger TV in my small room. These things I want are big, expensive, and limited by physics and money, and the Vision makes them available to me. So these two things are the killer apps for me - experiences which I would otherwise not have access to, and the removal of physics burdens in my daily work setup.
  • coffeebeqn 3y ago
    We are quite far from producing that kind of video at scale. The current 360 degree videos are horrible quality fishbowl looking experiences.
    • sudhirj 3y ago
      But the Vision stereo cameras might be able to pull it off. Not necessarily in 360 (though Apple was showcasing some environments there as well), but at least from a single POV, taking viewers along for the ride.
• ookblah 3y ago
  Everything looks like a gimmick until it isn't. Even when the iphone was released nobody would ever be able to comprehend the reach it has today. I think we are waiting for hardware to "catch up" and its getting closer + people's aversion to wearing something like this (aka google glass .. prob too ahead) + the right ecosystem and company to take this to market (maybe apple is the one?). For me personally I wanted to jump on board the spacial computing for reasons like being able to work in any location but have my awesome setup. Current systems have terrible resolution or are bulky, but I can see the promise. Current entertainment avenues are not tapped (imagine courtside sports seats anywhere, novel ways to engage users, porn, etc.)
• alistairSH 3y ago
  ... the pursuit of... what exactly? That is the puzzle. I remember similar thoughts about the first wave of tablets. And the first generation or so weren't great. But, the technology matured and now people can use an iPad instead of a full PC for most home uses.
• Fnoord 3y ago
  To me it is obvious: Most of the FAMAG is concerned about advertising (Apple the least, but still), while life nowadays is all about signal to noise. The bandwidth is there, 24/7 connectivity is there, wrt smartphones. Its the noise which can be reduced further, which would increase productivity. What is noise? Stuff you don't want to see, suggestions, lower priority vs higher priority (ie. what is really important to you vs clickbait), and, yes: advertising. If I could just block all advertising with a AR/VR glasses I'd easily shell out 1k EUR every 2 years for the hardware (not 3k, but YMMV as I don't earn a Netflix dev wage). In fact, perhaps a good UI on it could replace a smartphone. Except, the smartphone UI is going to be in (comparison) mature, its very unlikely a new hardware interface is going to be great right away. Smartwatch needed time (and cannot replace smartphone full-time at all), smartphone needed time (vs desktop/laptop, see mid '00s before capacitive touch), foldables are going to fill the niche which tablets/phablets provide, and now we got a hardware UI like this released by Apple (yes, I'm aware of predecessors including Meta/Facebook Quest, Magic Leap, and Google Glass). Also, it has the disadvantage of being visually omnipresent to others. A Google Glass is much less obvious. And yeah, walking around in Amsterdam with OSM AR (no, not Google) for all the buildings but without all the advertising would (after transition period) be a massive, massive plus to me. Add Wikipedia on top of it, with TTS and voice input pivoted towards my own voice as a bonus. Heck, I wouldn't even mind if I could just blacklist certain buildings like Nutella bars and red light distract. Yes, I can see it as a future, but not by FAMAG (Musk isn't sane enough; it'd be someone sane with deep pockets who's not into advertising).
• brookst 3y ago
  An interesting comment because it’s so contrary to my lived experience as a backer of Oculus DK1, among many other VR attempts going back to the VFX1 in 1995. > for the pursuit of. . . What exactly? Experience. Fun. Productivity. Emotion. All of the same things we look at screens for. I’m surprised that’s not clear. People (homo sapiens) have sought these things in many mediums for as long as we’ve been sapiens. There is nothing categorically different about seeking these things in the kind of immersion that (so far) only headsets can give. In the future we’ll have glasses and then BCI. I’m excited for both. But if you’re seeing XR as pushed by waves hands with no consume pull or enthusiast hacking, I think you’re not looking with truly open eyes.
  • saiya-jin 3y ago
    You are an enthusiast, that's pretty clear. OP gives sober perspective of regular Joe, who didn't have VR as a wet dream since early childhood. That's perspective of vast majority in this world. If you connect only with people in same echo chambers, you will invariably have very skewed perspective on real world, and you will not grok similar opinions. Personal viewpoint - I was VR enthusiast since 90s. Then I sobered up when I grew up, and that seamless trouble-free experience that would make me want to spend time in VR instead of big screen never came. Still waiting for it. Also people change, and thus markets change. I have much less free time, thus I value it massively. I am not going to spend it (on top of ridiculous amount of cash) on some geeky almost-there-in-next-5-years tech. But who knows, maybe Apple will finally make breakthrough on society and tech level. Maybe in 5 years. Or next 5. Till then, my cashflow will be pointed to matter actually important in life, and mighty useful right now, like new climbing shoes. Also, where is actual content worthy of such investments?
    • _gabe_ 3y ago
      > OP gives sober perspective of regular Joe, who didn't have VR as a wet dream since early childhood Yes, the average Joe doesn't care about this stuff. That's why Ready Player One grossed 600 million dollars at the box office[0]. And why we've had movies like Tron since the 80's. And hypothetical tech in movies like Iron Man display AR/VR capabilities we dream about. Clearly the average Joe doesn't concern themselves with AR/VR or care about it becoming a reality. /s [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One_(film)#:~:text=Reception-,Box%20office,in%20order%20to%20break%20even https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One_(film)#:~:t....
• TheCondor 3y ago
  Some of the games are good. It’s a little surprising how immersive the primitive current devices are. My kids do the psvr pretty heavily for a weekend and then leave it for weeks without touching it. I think it’s the interface that is wonky but that will get better. Immersive is the key here. There are entertainment things where I think that could be killer, maybe seeing a concert from impossible to get vantage points, maybe viewing the nfl game from on the field, maybe some movies and some games. Do I want to be immersed in work? I’ll write code and you know what I do at times? I go outside for a walk, my quality goes up and the problems get solved. Same thing doing data analysis, I’ll find some interesting bits and then I need to think, maybe I could have more ‘screen real estate” in VR but I don’t know if I want it, need it, or could actually use it. There is something about production to consider too. There are things in the nfl games that you don’t see, maybe some people want to, I’m pretty sure a lot don’t want to. “Taking some football outa guys” is a thing. Someone on another thread mentioned climbing Everest; you never do that for the views, people actually die doing it and then others just sort of pass by their dead bodies because the quest they are on is so so very different than seeing the world from the top of Everest. Maybe that’s the point, but it’s not for everyone.
• rubicon33 3y ago
  I can give you an anecdotal "indicator": Been a gamer my entire life. Ever since getting into VR 4 years ago, I basically haven't played a single "flat" (non-VR) game. > pursuit of... what exactly Experiences that you literally cannot get in real life without going to jail or dying. It's the same value proposition that gaming in general provides, but far more immersion and realism.
  • 11101010001100 3y ago
    Or read a book and use your imagination.
• noonething 3y ago
  lets be honest, facial recognition and some sort of longer distance hearing/tts. Also terminator hud, etc.
• trey-jones 3y ago
  I was talking to my daughter about sort of a tangential issue the other day. I want to say it's related because some of these "better" technologies get pushed onto public schools. Some idiot in her class had managed to completely disable (destroy?) a Smart Board by throwing some tiny object and striking it. I have to admit that I don't actually know exactly what a Smart Board is or exactly what its capabilities are, but I get the impression that the replacement cost of such a device is multiple orders of magnitude greater than that of a simpler device, the Overhead Projector, so common in classrooms thirty years ago. And I have to ask the question, is the educational value multiple orders of magnitude greater? Also consider that you don't need a degree in electrical engineering (and other domain/manufacturer specific knowledge) to understand how the mirrors and light bulbs make the older device function, and to repair it. I fear this attitude comes off as crotchety old man get-off-my-lawn a little bit, but I think if we take a step back and make objective comparisons we might find that we've been had by the marketing department quite a few times in recent years. And I just hate to see public schools (which I think are so desperately important, and don't have the disposable cash) taken advantage of by the marketing departments with budgets larger than the engineering department of their firm. I would be dismayed to see my kids' schools investing into VR/AR any time soon, but I could see it happening.
  • dylan604 3y ago
    I find this similar to those note taking apps. Everyone assumes having notes stored digitally will be more useful by allowing search, sharing between devices/friends, or any of the other propaganda used. However, they all miss the crucial bit of taking notes is that the act of writing the note is the key in helping retain the information. Can't get much cheaper than a pencil and paper, but yet we keep trying and failing.
    • BeFlatXIII 3y ago
      95% of technology in the classroom initiatives are pure grift. Ever notice how it's usually the struggling districts that are most willing to go all-in on them?
• callmeloonely 3y ago
  > the right combination of hardware and software > this is actually an empowering piece of tech People wear sunglasses to avoid eye contact, Roddy Pipers character wore one in the movie "They Live" to see the real message - I would love one that blocks irl ads. Perhaps when they're small and hackable enough.
• vagab0nd 3y ago
  There's a saying, if you don't believe in VR, you haven't played Half Life: Alyx. Joking aside, I do think gaming is important to bootstrap VR. Once it's cheap enough and many people have it, it will be much easier to build other things. Personally I think interactive 3D story-telling could be a big one.
  • illegalsmile 3y ago
    I think Alyx has a lot of potential to be great, as do a lot of other games. However, so far I haven't used a headset that's comfortable with high enough fidelity to make me want to play through the game. I agree that 3d story-telling especially with interactivity and even group participation could be huge. An escape room meets It Takes Two meets The Last Of Us seems like it could be awesome.
    • dvngnt_ 3y ago
      the index worked perfectly fine. it was an amazing experience. jeff gave me nightmares
• pier25 3y ago
  I think a virtual space has plenty of obvious benefits for productivity and immersion. The main problem seems to be the execution. Nobody wants to have a huge thing attached to their head for hours. Maybe this will change if headset become as lightweight as regular glasses but we're still very far away from that.
• 908087 3y ago
  [dead]
• thebigwinning 3y ago
  If you take this reasoning further you will realize you don't actually need any technology in your life.
• dontupvoteme 3y ago
  >we are talking about people (homo sapiens) putting a major something on their heads that dramatically takes over their visual field for the pursuit of... what exactly? That is the puzzle. IRL adblock, please. I'd pay up to 5k if it worked decently well.
• zem 3y ago
  some vr games seem like a lot of fun - beat saber in particular is good enough that if I could have bought an oculus without needing to tie it into an internet-of-shit account I would have just because I have seen a convincing proof of concept that I could get a few hundred dollars of entertainment over the lifetime of the device. as for AR, google glass has demonstrated convincing value as a heads up display for factory floors and other places where people need to interact with complex machinery. I am excited about the potential in that.
• bob123qwe 3y ago
  Oh, it's very simple, when the next "emergency" comes by and everybody is locked in their tiny apartments, AR/VR/*verse will be ready.
  • bakuninsbart 3y ago
    mong us vr is already quite great actually, and I think you are spot on. Pandemics will become far more common unless we develop really effective vaccine/medication pipelines.
• CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Your answer as to the "end goal" was downvoted to death: "to inject advertising/manipulation and surveillance into every remaining aspect of your life." The thing is, although it was downvoted, nobody responded to it. Given that every trend in computing technology is to make it more seamless, more integrated, less downtime; and data was the new oil on which AI is fueled; and that only a handful of Big Tech companies control the way most laypeople do computing; and, that these trends show signs not of stopping but of accelerating, explain how that answer is wrong. Silicon Valley does not value anything that can't be quantified, because value, by computer logic, must always be represented by a number. And since software will eat the world, therefore it must be a law of the universe (as in, might makes right) that the summation of you is a sum - a number - to be used in a greater calculation, for someone else's profit. Did that glimpse in the mirror show you a side of yourselves you desperately wish to believe didn't exist?
• fennecfoxy 3y ago
  Well, keep in mind that every yokel with a PS4/5 or Xbox plays Fifa and CoD etc now. Tonnes of people have a switch/had a DS etc. I remember gaming even like early-mid 2000s was a "geeky/nerdy" thing to do. Now everyone(ish) plays games. Browsing the web was a geeky thing to do & tbh I kind of miss how the Internet was without the masses of the general population; the Internet has changed. But the same thing will happen to VR, Valve/HTC and Facebook created a burgeoning market that Apple is now trying to capitalise on and "bring to the masses hurr durr". But VR/AR will be very big eventually, imo. Once prices get down to a mid-flagship phone level, once hardware is lightweight and small like a pair of glasses, easy & convenient to set up and more non-gaming applications that make sense for AR/VR are available it will take off. Maybe not with older gens but that's been true for all of history.