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Comment by gnaritas | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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?

Yes. VR is for porn.

lol, that too.

AR will also be for porn.

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