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For me VR for office use doesn't survive the "timeline reversal thought experiment". Imagine that from the very beginning computers only had virtual reality he

by dvh 3y ago

For me VR for office use doesn't survive the "timeline reversal thought experiment". Imagine that from the very beginning computers only had virtual reality headsets as the only interface. In the time of ENIAC it would be extremely huge grotesque steampunk helmet that you would put on but as the time goes by smaller and smaller headsets developed and eventually today we would arrive exactly where we are now with this Apple VR headset. And now, someone invents desktop PC monitor. It will be revolutionary. No longer you have to strap on headset and wear it for 8 hours when you're in the office. Instead of $4000 fragile gear you buy cheap $100 dollar flat panel with double the resolution. No motion sickness, no batteries, no cables around your neck. Everybody would switch and VR headsets would become niche product.

arijun 3y ago
That’s a bit silly of a thought experiment, because nothing survives it, since everything has its niche. If we had started with smartphones, computers coming along with their big screens and external input devices, people would be flooding to them. Even the timeline we have doesn’t survive—when smartphones came out it turned out people love having computing accessible from their pocket.
- xanderlewis 3y ago
  > That’s a bit silly of a thought experiment, because nothing survives it I don’t think that’s true. There are developments that really do constitute genuine progress: for example, going from CRTs to LCDs. It’s hard to imagine a world populated by high-resolution, energy-efficient, colour-accurate flatscreens suddenly being replaced by the invention of a gigantic ugly box that performs worse on every available metric. …and yet CRTs still exist as a ‘niche’ product. There’s a whole corner of the internet where people admire and collect them. It may well be that ‘spatial computing’ or whatever you wish to call it is going to be a genuine step forward, but it’s also easy to imagine it might not be. And that’s not true for every technology.
  - theshackleford 3y ago
    > that performs worse on every available metric. Except motion. In which twenty year old monitors on my desk make everything put next to it look abysmal by comparison.
  - i5-2520M 3y ago
    To be fair there are a few metrics where CRTs smash any LCD, mostly response time related, but OLED and MicroLED can bridge that gap...
    - xanderlewis 3y ago
      Fair point. But I don’t think the average consumer cares about those metrics.
vineyardmike 3y ago
> For me VR for office use doesn't survive the "timeline reversal thought experiment". I think the most damning "thought experiment" is "do you think you'd buy this?". I'm waiting for a VR headset for this. Less 'in office' and more 'WFH' but still same idea. I don't know if the Apple headset is the one (because my work/Apple won't let me connect my existing computer to it) but it looks to closely solve the problem on a hardware level. I've screamed it from the mountains. I want a VR headset that acts as a monitor/tv and lets me turn any flat surface into a private desk. I travel a lot, and it sucks not having a monitor in a hotel. It sucks needing the extra room for a desk when I have tables already. Housing in my city is $1000+/sqft, so space for a desk or office is a meaningful expense for many. It sucks that having others in my house (kids, spouse) means I can't have a private, distraction free area without paying for a whole extra room (again, a premium). Plenty of people besides me live in an n+1 bedroom house, where they have a whole extra room for a desk. Plenty more people live in urban environments where they can't afford extra private space. Think on the global scale, where people have more multi-generational homes, and live in smaller urban apartments. Sure they might not be able to afford the top-line apple headset today, but think longterm. Plenty more people are students, in academic halls and dorms and libraries, and would benefit from "on demand" distraction free, large monitors but don't have the private space for it.
- josephg 3y ago
  Yeah, I watched a few videos about the apple headset and this was one of my takeaways as well. Would I buy this? - I would if it were a viable replacement for my computer monitor. I have a 48" monitor at home. Its basically a TV on my desk. I absolutely adore having so much space while I'm programming. If the resolution, price, battery life, weight and sweatiness issues of virtual headsets were all addressed to the point that I could use a headset like that instead of a giant monitor, I'd totally buy one. Especially if it meant I didn't have to lug my laptop around as a result. After all - the apple headset has an M2 chip in it. There's no good technical reason to need a laptop as well. The apple vision headset looks like its getting much closer to that dream. The displays and the software stack look much more appealing than the quest 2 I have. But they need to address the weight and battery life. And it needs to be a lot cheaper (or a lot more capable) to justify its price. I'll probably grab one in a few generations if they keep iterating on it.
sureglymop 3y ago
However, if we had glasses that looked like and were as light as regular sunglasses that had similar functionality but over wireless? That could be cool (and I suppose is the original google glass idea).
gautamb0 3y ago
Here's the thought experiment I'd run. If you have a device that looks and feels like traditional glasses, but enables you to create and place an unlimited amount of virtual displays of any size and shape you desire, which can follow you around as you walk, why would you ever want to replace those with physical displays?
- layer8 3y ago
  Since I wore glasses for the first time as a kid, I never particularly liked wearing them, due to their tendency of fogging up, the way the frame impairs the field of view, and the weight on the nose and ears when wearing them for many hours. Certainly, I would have some uses for such AR glasses, but I wouldn’t like to wear them all day unless they are literally (and completely unrealistically) invisible and weightless. They won’t replace displays. What I’d really like is paper-like non-emissive, high-contrast, full-color-gamut, millimeter-thin, wireless multitouch displays I can hang everywhere. Those are similarly unrealistic though.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  That sounds cool but also nothing like the AVP so it's not really relevant.
Cacti 3y ago
But it’s not a VR headset. It’s an AR headset, and it’s rapidly headed to convergence with VR headsets. After all, VR is in some sense a special case of AR. VR headsets are just a stopgap until tech or price/power lowers enough to make AR more than a gimmick. AR is the future, and everyone will have to have it the millisecond they start watching a demo of the Super Bowl being played out in your living room. Or pornography.

by dvh 3y ago

arijun 3y ago

That’s a bit silly of a thought experiment, because nothing survives it, since everything has its niche. If we had started with smartphones, computers coming along with their big screens and external input devices, people would be flooding to them. Even the timeline we have doesn’t survive—when smartphones came out it turned out people love having computing accessible from their pocket.

xanderlewis 3y ago
> That’s a bit silly of a thought experiment, because nothing survives it I don’t think that’s true. There are developments that really do constitute genuine progress: for example, going from CRTs to LCDs. It’s hard to imagine a world populated by high-resolution, energy-efficient, colour-accurate flatscreens suddenly being replaced by the invention of a gigantic ugly box that performs worse on every available metric. …and yet CRTs still exist as a ‘niche’ product. There’s a whole corner of the internet where people admire and collect them. It may well be that ‘spatial computing’ or whatever you wish to call it is going to be a genuine step forward, but it’s also easy to imagine it might not be. And that’s not true for every technology.
- theshackleford 3y ago
  > that performs worse on every available metric. Except motion. In which twenty year old monitors on my desk make everything put next to it look abysmal by comparison.
- i5-2520M 3y ago
  To be fair there are a few metrics where CRTs smash any LCD, mostly response time related, but OLED and MicroLED can bridge that gap...
  - xanderlewis 3y ago
    Fair point. But I don’t think the average consumer cares about those metrics.

vineyardmike 3y ago

> For me VR for office use doesn't survive the "timeline reversal thought experiment". I think the most damning "thought experiment" is "do you think you'd buy this?". I'm waiting for a VR headset for this. Less 'in office' and more 'WFH' but still same idea. I don't know if the Apple headset is the one (because my work/Apple won't let me connect my existing computer to it) but it looks to closely solve the problem on a hardware level. I've screamed it from the mountains. I want a VR headset that acts as a monitor/tv and lets me turn any flat surface into a private desk. I travel a lot, and it sucks not having a monitor in a hotel. It sucks needing the extra room for a desk when I have tables already. Housing in my city is $1000+/sqft, so space for a desk or office is a meaningful expense for many. It sucks that having others in my house (kids, spouse) means I can't have a private, distraction free area without paying for a whole extra room (again, a premium). Plenty of people besides me live in an n+1 bedroom house, where they have a whole extra room for a desk. Plenty more people live in urban environments where they can't afford extra private space. Think on the global scale, where people have more multi-generational homes, and live in smaller urban apartments. Sure they might not be able to afford the top-line apple headset today, but think longterm. Plenty more people are students, in academic halls and dorms and libraries, and would benefit from "on demand" distraction free, large monitors but don't have the private space for it.

josephg 3y ago
Yeah, I watched a few videos about the apple headset and this was one of my takeaways as well. Would I buy this? - I would if it were a viable replacement for my computer monitor. I have a 48" monitor at home. Its basically a TV on my desk. I absolutely adore having so much space while I'm programming. If the resolution, price, battery life, weight and sweatiness issues of virtual headsets were all addressed to the point that I could use a headset like that instead of a giant monitor, I'd totally buy one. Especially if it meant I didn't have to lug my laptop around as a result. After all - the apple headset has an M2 chip in it. There's no good technical reason to need a laptop as well. The apple vision headset looks like its getting much closer to that dream. The displays and the software stack look much more appealing than the quest 2 I have. But they need to address the weight and battery life. And it needs to be a lot cheaper (or a lot more capable) to justify its price. I'll probably grab one in a few generations if they keep iterating on it.

sureglymop 3y ago

However, if we had glasses that looked like and were as light as regular sunglasses that had similar functionality but over wireless? That could be cool (and I suppose is the original google glass idea).

gautamb0 3y ago

Here's the thought experiment I'd run. If you have a device that looks and feels like traditional glasses, but enables you to create and place an unlimited amount of virtual displays of any size and shape you desire, which can follow you around as you walk, why would you ever want to replace those with physical displays?

layer8 3y ago
Since I wore glasses for the first time as a kid, I never particularly liked wearing them, due to their tendency of fogging up, the way the frame impairs the field of view, and the weight on the nose and ears when wearing them for many hours. Certainly, I would have some uses for such AR glasses, but I wouldn’t like to wear them all day unless they are literally (and completely unrealistically) invisible and weightless. They won’t replace displays. What I’d really like is paper-like non-emissive, high-contrast, full-color-gamut, millimeter-thin, wireless multitouch displays I can hang everywhere. Those are similarly unrealistic though.
IshKebab 3y ago
That sounds cool but also nothing like the AVP so it's not really relevant.

Cacti 3y ago

But it’s not a VR headset. It’s an AR headset, and it’s rapidly headed to convergence with VR headsets. After all, VR is in some sense a special case of AR. VR headsets are just a stopgap until tech or price/power lowers enough to make AR more than a gimmick. AR is the future, and everyone will have to have it the millisecond they start watching a demo of the Super Bowl being played out in your living room. Or pornography.