Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Coming up next:

- If your job involves sitting at a desk, and your inputs and outputs come in via phone or display, expect to be automated.

- Automatic driving.

- AIs which sell. These will be annoying but effective.

- Big Brother will be much more effective.

- Within ten years, an AI running some investment will fire a CEO.

Probably not important:

- Virtual reality. Other than for games, it won't be big.

- Internet of Things for the home. Home remote control is a niche product. It's been available since the 1980s and never got much traction.

Not yet:

- Robots for routine unstructured tasks. Still a hard problem, from both a hardware, software, and cost perspective.

- Nanotechnology (excluding surface chemistry stuff)

View on HN

On VR: Medical uses, though niche, have deep pockets and there is a desperate need for VR there.

75% of children that experience an ICU still have PTSD (among other problems) 90 day after discharge. The DoD funded Bravemind project (Oculus Rift with a clinical 'wizard of Oz'-type iPad interface) has shown real progress for PTSD treatment. Maybe the Bravemind for children stuck in ICU can reduce psychosis, need for anti-depressants with co-morbidities, and general depression for these children. Meningitis patients and those about to undergo organ donation are isolated for a long period in-hospital; boredom doe not help their recovery at all. Imagine a hololens in a long term ICU situation. Suddenly this room that is filled with wires, beeping machines, scary stuff even to adults, it can become fun, it can become 'their' ICU. Think a boggart from Harry Potter, what is scary is now funny. Mario or Iron Man is now dancing on the ventilator. Imagine the healing that can come from bedridden patients that can take a walk in their backyards again, that can play again with their dogs.

The applications for surgeons are great as well. With VR they can see with more than just small holes and the tips of endoscopes. The vascular system comes out at them in real time and in real dimensions. Now the nurses can see what is going on with a patient's womb as labor is progressing from across the hospital and behind walls. The education is also great. Now a patient herself can better understand what is going on with her body. She can see what the doctor is telling her, and not be confused with jargon or a typo in a take-home sheet. And this can all be personalized to the patient themself.

Children's Hospital Colorado services from the Canadian to the Mexican border; it's Flight For Life air ambulances are the best in the world. A little birdy has mentioned to me that in late April there may or may not be a 'push' for VR in medicine announced there. Hopefully we can help heal these children better in this new future.

How do you think VR can be use in Medicine? I would love to hear ideas from HN.

Surgical navigation and planning is a commonly used term to describe Augmented Reality for surgeons. I've seen similar systems for spinal surgery. Here's a project (cirle.com) I helped build a while back for eye surgery:

https://vimeo.com/92859273

>Suddenly this room that is filled with wires, beeping machines, scary stuff even to adults, it can become fun, it can become 'their' ICU. Think a boggart from Harry Potter, what is scary is now funny. Mario or Iron Man is now dancing on the ventilator. Imagine the healing that can come from bedridden patients that can take a walk in their backyards again, that can play again with their dogs.

On the one hand, I did once calm down in a hospital waiting room (literally a separate room, because reasons) from watching James and the Giant Peach and/or Pokemon the Movie (I can't remember if those are the same or different occasions at a hospital). On the other hand, if someone tried to fill my hospital room with marketing-ridden branded "content" anytime into or past my teens, I would probably pitch a fit and go psychotic.

> Virtual reality. Other than for games, it won't be big.

There are other niche markets for VR: Interior Design, Real Estate (especially commercial), Education, Health Care, Industrial Design ...

Every major sports network is working to deliver VR for sporting events.

> Every major sports network is working to deliver VR for sporting events.

Advertising in those will be powerful.

Probably more like a premium service like MLB Premium.

Escapism will be a new/enhanced gaming category with VR, IMO.

Sports and concerts seem like pretty compelling VR apps. If the music people handle their business right, I could see VR front row tickets at home being a premium to mid grade tickets. Same for sports, a couple rime vantage points that the user can toggle between? I could see people paying more than a live ticket

I tried William Hill's VR horse racing app. It uses computer game style horses linked to live position detectors on the real ones. It was quite good. Wouldn't use it myself but I could see it working. They hope to make money from the betting in the usual manner.

http://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/future-tech/virtual-reality-...

Yeah, I can imagine how much (and how many) court-side VR tickets to Kobe's last game at the Staples Center would go for.

Or strap a VR rig to the head of one of the towel boys and sit on the end of the bench as the 16th man.

I think this is actually a bigger $$$ market than VR games because of the repeatable sales.

> Virtual reality. Other than for games, it won't be big.

Why? Effective and realistic VR has reach far beyond games, it could nearly eliminate most business travel and recreational travel. No need for a real office or commuting when a company can have a virtual office that feels real enough for workers to collaborate with presence. No need to blow large amounts of money travelling to real places that are either perfectly imitated in VR or blown away by cooler places that only exist within VR.

VR ain't just for gaming.

Yes. VR is for porn.

lol, that too.

AR will also be for porn.

I don't understand the idea that VR will make business travel unnecessary. What problem does VR solve that video conferencing doesn't? The ability to turn your head?

The reason business travel, and in general non-remote work, is worthwhile isn't necessarily the pre-planned meetings, it's also the familiarity developed by meeting somebody in person, shooting the shit over lunch, and being able to casually mention an idea or anecdote without the overhead of a "call."

It adds presence, which is the main reason business types currently don't like video conferencing and still choose to travel when they really don't need to. People want to be around other people, in their actual presence, they don't get that from video conferencing. Lack of presence is why telecommuting hasn't really taken over and why companies still bother with the overhead of a real office. People are social animals, they want to be around other people, not around screens with other people's faces on them. Presence is far more than just turning your head.

> it's also the familiarity developed by meeting somebody in person, shooting the shit over lunch, and being able to casually mention an idea or anecdote without the overhead of a "call."

Yes, that's called presence, and that's what VR brings that video conferencing doesn't.

I see this sentiment echoed every now and then and it completely baffles me. How on earth do you see VR ever working as an evolution of videoconferencing, no less a substitute for in-person meeting? HMDs obscure the most important part of face-to-face interaction, the myriad nonverbal cues and visceral connection we get from the eyes.

Talking to a person wearing a brick over their face in VR with perfect presence is still talking to a person wearing a brick over their face.

That depends entirely on the quality of the virtual avatar. Facial expression capture is already used heavily in character animation for movies, such technology will be a core part of the VR experience in the future. It is quite inevitable that the VR experience will continue to improve until it's basically the Matrix and being in VR will be a perfectly fine substitute for being in the real world. For business, it won't need to be nearly that good to kill most business travel.

My company has remote workers in 5 states and offices in 2, when VR is good enough we can eliminate lots of unnecessary business travel that only exists because to satisfy the human social urge for presence. Nothing is accomplished by this travel that couldn't be done over Google video other than making people feel better. I suspect this is the norm for a large amount of business travel.

Does it matter how well the system analyzes and recreates facial gestures when anyone can just > load poker_face.vrscript?

Yes it does matter. It's presence, and the interactive responsiveness between participants. Loading a script / playing a script won't have that. What you're describing will be the new bot, and identifying them will be like having street smarts.

Is that what you do at work, load up your poker face and try and hide all your emotions? I don't think that's what most coworkers would want to do so I don't see that being a problem. People will know if you're not hooked up for real, no bot will fool a human unless there's real AI behind it. You can tell when you're up against another person vs any bot.

What I've read is that even without facial expressions, the sense of the other person being there is surprisingly strong because of the subtleties of seeing how a person moves and reacts to you. I can't find any of the articles I've read saying that, but I'll transcribe a bit of this audio interview with two people right after they tried Oculus's Toybox demo:

"For me the biggest takeaway was how much is added when you're with another human being in VR and you're able to intuitively interact with them."

"I felt like this person that I'd never met before -- I felt at the end of it like we were bros. ... You're sharing this VR space but at the end it feels surprisingly intimate."

That's from here: http://voicesofvr.com/228-candid-reactions-to-the-oculus-toy...

Note that it's already that good even without any representation of the other person's facial expression. All it would take to add facial expression are some sensors on the inside of the headset. There are even companies working on inferring what your eyes look like from the expression on the more-visible bottom half of your face.

Companies will come up with smart ways of maximising the strengths and minimising the weaknesses of VR. They'll find that efficiency just the way office chat systems (Slack, etc) have done.

In the shortterm, they'll be saving money/time spent on offices and commutes or long-distance travel so they'll have an advantage in sales.

If VR was going to be a big success, there would be a killer demo for the Oculus Rift by now. There isn't. "The Chair"[1] is considered one of the best demos. Whatever. GTA V in VR is pretty good, but that's because GTA V is pretty good without VR.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8c3dAWZ7No

We aren't talking about today, we're talking about the near future. Nor are we talking about games, but other uses beyond gaming. The Occulus is akin to the iPhone 1, in a few years it'll appear clunky and outdated but it's certainly the first step in consumer quality VR.

You clearly haven't tried very many demos (if any). To give just one example, Windlands is incredible and is not anywhere near as good outside of VR.

I've not used a VR headset before, but I've heard the games that provide the most immersive VR experience (at the moment at least) are 'cockpit'-based games such as Elite Dangerous. There seems to be some recognition of this from Oculus, as they're bundling EVE: Valkyrie with the CV1: https://www.oculus.com/en-us/rift/#eve-valkyrie

Oculus hasn't even shipped the consumer version of the Rift yet. Isn't it a bit premature to write of the success of VR?

Internet of things on the actuators side is a continuous failure since decades (because most of the time you need to be near anyway). But on the sensor and data collection side, there is plenty of opportunities (and insurers and commodity providers for example are very much interested in it, from what I ear). Of course we get back to the "who will own your data" question.

Have you tried an experience on a CV1 Rift or a HTC Vive? Before making judgements on VR I'd encourage you to try one of the modern VR platforms that will be coming out in April.

It's not a question of technology - the technology is impressive. I think the argument is that their aren't legitimate use cases outside of gaming.

I would argue that education could benefit immensely from VR. Why explain it when you can show it. Imagine something like Fantastic Voyage in high school biology.

Yet certain parts of education like abstract mathematics do not translate well into VR.

Nobody said everything has to translate into VR. Even then, showing those abstract concepts in a boundary free VR world could do a lot towards understanding those concepts.

Unfortunately, what you said doesn't make much sense to me. In fact, it's to the extent where it almost completely hampers what you're saying. So much of education is teaching/explaining these abstract concepts -- otherwise every day at school would be "movie day" -- so most of education probably cannot benefit from VR (unless you're talking about some sort of telepresence where you're in a virtual 3D MOOC democratizing access to a Harvard professor's lectures).

I need an operational definition here. How do you "show" an abstract concept? What is a "boundary free VR world"? The biology one is a good example but it's low hanging fruit because it's so tangible.

For example, if I crack open Unity right now, what do I build to teach someone what, say, Hilbert space is using VR? How do I teach someone the intermediate value theorem? How does VR add anything to the explanation more than a whiteboard would?

Even still, how do you demonstrate that someone will learn more/better with the VR? How convinced are you that it will be the case?

Lastly, given that VR is just a game with stereoscopic display and more limited UI/UX possibilities, why doesn't there yet exist the non-stereoscopic panacea computer game of education? Does depth perception REALLY add all that much?

You are really underestimating VR. You are not thinking on the applications that do not yet exists and no one has thought about yet. These will be the applications that will sell VR like donuts.

This is a purely speculative non-argument though, and so the "space" of non-existent applications can be as small or as large as anyone wants (might as well choose the size that benefit's one's argument). The subspace of "donut-selling" non-existent applications is even tougher to define.

Would you count programming as being in the first item? A lot of what keeps it from being automated is the boundary between the human specification and the machine implementation.

Just wondering, have you tried a VR headset of this generation? I feel a lot of people discount VR simply because they don't realise the possibilities.

> Virtual reality.

I'm interested in VR as an alternative to purchasing a 4k monitor and/or dual monitors for programming. I don't know how I'm going to do that, pretty much all Google results for "VR programming" are about programming video games, not programming using VR as an monitor alternative. I could probably do a better job googling.

Too dependent on the resolution of the VR screens. I think once they're high-quality enough, it will be trivial for people to write freeware apps that spin-up displays and/or overlaid text editors. Even with the Rift now there are virtual cinemas and text displays that work fine but are just limited by resolution.

There's a solid angle analogue to VR pixels where the "solid angle" is so much larger than a screen that occupies a much smaller portion of your field of view.

In order to represent a 4k resolution display in VR at a "natural" viewing distance in perspective-projected 3D space, you'll need a headset with probably two, three orders of magnitude more pixels covering your field of view.

The stereoscopic nature of the VR headset itself effectively halves your pixel count, to say nothing of the lossy distortion of the rectangle-shaped backing display by the lenses into both eyes. Your "solid angle" is going to vary depending on distance from the center of each lens given that display manufacturers only produce rectangular screens with uniform pixel densities.

Put VR headset in a football helmet. Then, a soldier. Then a civilian. Then the matrix.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com