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I got caught up in the hype a bit. I went to meet-ups, tried the tech and was blown away by VR. Here’s the thing, though. To experience VR properly, you need t

I got caught up in the hype a bit. I went to meet-ups, tried the tech and was blown away by VR. Here’s the thing, though. To experience VR properly, you need to be able to walk arbitrarily through space. And houses are small. It sounds stupid and people have proposed solutions like rolling floors, but it’s actually not stupid. Sometimes a technology has a fundamental flaw (hello, there, hallucinating LLMs) which really does mean most of the value is unrealisable. VR needs neural interfaces. Until then it’s going to be a minor sport. The short term solution to this is AR. You can walk arbitrary distance subject to physical constraints you can navigate. This will drive the industry forward until neural interfaces are ready. Apple are right with Vision Pro, it’s absolutely amazing for a first product, but like the Newton they are just miles ahead of the curve, too far ahead. * fortunately for AI companies, hallucinations simply require conceptual developments to fix - they’re not a hard constraint. They just need to stop overfocusing on scale.

AppleBananaPie 1y ago
For me it's been pixel density. The second I can replace my monitor with it and be able to read small text without my eyes hurting I'll buy the nicest one they make. Unfortunately I've been waiting for 10 years now and it still hasn't happened :(
- svoit 1y ago
  Have you tried the Apple Vision Pro? It seems to have high pixel density. I’m not sure what counts as small text in that sense.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  Same. Trying to play some 3D piloting games (Flight Sim, Elite Dangerous, etc) that had cockpits with text to read on displays also proved disappointing. Had to lean really close to be able to read it. "Someday", it'll happen, though. Hopefully.
- rhubarbtree 1y ago
  Vision Pro is good, but more importantly this seems like a relatively easy problem to solve. It'll arrive.
cbolton 1y ago
> VR needs neural interfaces How would that solve the walking problem?
- frumplestlatz 1y ago
  Presumably by leveraging something like REM atonia to disconnect your mind from your motor neurons.
  - cbolton 1y ago
    And providing fake proprioceptive, vestibular and tactile feedback? That would be quite some tech.
    - chronic74939 1y ago
      > And providing fake proprioceptive, vestibular and tactile feedback? That would be quite some tech. Yes, he’s saying metaverse will take off once humans achieve transcendence. Only then will Meta recoup their AR/VR investment.
    - idiotsecant 1y ago
      I feel like once the interface is there at sufficient quality the rest will follow
zigman1 1y ago
> Here’s the thing, though. To experience VR properly, you need to be able to walk arbitrarily through space This is why racing games are such a good use case for the VR. Seems to me it is the only place where VR is used regularly
- nervousvarun 1y ago
  Similarly, what about flight simulators?
  - givemeethekeys 1y ago
    With flight simulators, improvements in haptics to the point where you can wear gloves to feel all the flight controls in VR will be incredible (one day?).
- idiotsecant 1y ago
  And spaceship games. Anything with a chair, really
- rhubarbtree 1y ago
  This is a good point, provided you can be sure you're not going to hit anything with your arms.
iamleppert 1y ago
There are more issues than just the lack of physical movement while you experience visual movement being uncomfortable and disorientating. Most people who play video games do so as a leisure activity. It works because it allows you to be put into a world that requires little physical exertion - just eye/hand coordination. You don't need to to use your legs to jump in a video game. You don't even need to have legs. In the vision of VR you're selling, it requires getting up and doing a lot of physical movement. The bulk of most gamers just want to play their game after work or school and relax. Most of my friends feel the same way about VR as they did when I was young and wanted them to play with the NES power pad when I was younger. There are better, more entertaining options available on the 2D screen that don't require much physical movement. In fact, I'd say that anything other than eye/hand movement distracts from game play. "Jumping" in the video game isn't fun because you actually have to jump, it's fun because you don't. And that's a feature that appeals to people who will never be appealed to VR.
armchairhacker 1y ago
Houses are small, but there's a lot of fairly empty space in the world. Why not more outside VR spaces?
vrighter 1y ago
if by "conceptual developments" you don't mean "a total paradigm shift to some non-probabilistic architecture that hasn't been discovered yet", then yes, they are a hard constraint of current LLM architectures

AppleBananaPie 1y ago

For me it's been pixel density. The second I can replace my monitor with it and be able to read small text without my eyes hurting I'll buy the nicest one they make. Unfortunately I've been waiting for 10 years now and it still hasn't happened :(

svoit 1y ago
Have you tried the Apple Vision Pro? It seems to have high pixel density. I’m not sure what counts as small text in that sense.
rkomorn 1y ago
Same. Trying to play some 3D piloting games (Flight Sim, Elite Dangerous, etc) that had cockpits with text to read on displays also proved disappointing. Had to lean really close to be able to read it. "Someday", it'll happen, though. Hopefully.
rhubarbtree 1y ago
Vision Pro is good, but more importantly this seems like a relatively easy problem to solve. It'll arrive.

cbolton 1y ago

> VR needs neural interfaces How would that solve the walking problem?

frumplestlatz 1y ago
Presumably by leveraging something like REM atonia to disconnect your mind from your motor neurons.
- cbolton 1y ago
  And providing fake proprioceptive, vestibular and tactile feedback? That would be quite some tech.
  - chronic74939 1y ago
    > And providing fake proprioceptive, vestibular and tactile feedback? That would be quite some tech. Yes, he’s saying metaverse will take off once humans achieve transcendence. Only then will Meta recoup their AR/VR investment.
  - idiotsecant 1y ago
    I feel like once the interface is there at sufficient quality the rest will follow

zigman1 1y ago

> Here’s the thing, though. To experience VR properly, you need to be able to walk arbitrarily through space This is why racing games are such a good use case for the VR. Seems to me it is the only place where VR is used regularly

nervousvarun 1y ago
Similarly, what about flight simulators?
- givemeethekeys 1y ago
  With flight simulators, improvements in haptics to the point where you can wear gloves to feel all the flight controls in VR will be incredible (one day?).
idiotsecant 1y ago
And spaceship games. Anything with a chair, really
rhubarbtree 1y ago
This is a good point, provided you can be sure you're not going to hit anything with your arms.

iamleppert 1y ago

There are more issues than just the lack of physical movement while you experience visual movement being uncomfortable and disorientating. Most people who play video games do so as a leisure activity. It works because it allows you to be put into a world that requires little physical exertion - just eye/hand coordination. You don't need to to use your legs to jump in a video game. You don't even need to have legs. In the vision of VR you're selling, it requires getting up and doing a lot of physical movement. The bulk of most gamers just want to play their game after work or school and relax. Most of my friends feel the same way about VR as they did when I was young and wanted them to play with the NES power pad when I was younger. There are better, more entertaining options available on the 2D screen that don't require much physical movement. In fact, I'd say that anything other than eye/hand movement distracts from game play. "Jumping" in the video game isn't fun because you actually have to jump, it's fun because you don't. And that's a feature that appeals to people who will never be appealed to VR.

armchairhacker 1y ago

Houses are small, but there's a lot of fairly empty space in the world. Why not more outside VR spaces?

vrighter 1y ago

if by "conceptual developments" you don't mean "a total paradigm shift to some non-probabilistic architecture that hasn't been discovered yet", then yes, they are a hard constraint of current LLM architectures