Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

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I think VR and AR (especially AR) has largely failed to prove why anyone should care.

And keep in mind this is coming from someone who backed the original Rift DK and is looking forward to getting the final Rift.

There really hasn't been much in VR-land that isn't just a cool tech demo. "Hey you can walk through this virtual world and it's like you're actually there!" - yep, sure is cool, but then what?

Both VR and AR are at the stage where we have the technology to make whiz-bang cool tech demos that are legitimately technically impressive, but are not real products the masses actually want. Worse, we know we don't have any real killer applications of this tech, so we're branding a lot of these tech demos as products, which only generates more disappointment in the field.

At a previous job we hacked around for a bit with a Google Glass - which isn't real AR, but certainly has similarities. We never could figure out anything real to do with it. Everyone had tons of ideas for cool tech demos, but the only things they accomplished were being cool and making you feel like you're in a sci-fi movie. We could never come up with anything that was truly a lot of value.

Right now VR and AR feel like very early motion pictures - I'm talking about the period between its invention and the development of cinema. We're still at the stage where it's a novelty trotted around like a circus act, and curious people pay a penny to view a 5-second loop of something dumb. Motion pictures obviously found a real place with real substance and lasting demand - VR and AR are struggling to do the same.

Great points. It is interesting to me how little "slack" people developing wholly new technologies get. Even among tech people. It ends up being "meh, it's ok but - doesn't work yet" when I would have expected more "I know how I could improve this to get it to my expectations."

Quite frankly I think this is due in large part to how much most companies hype it.

It's tricky though, because if you don't hype things - anything really, you never catch anyone's attention - and this applies to all things unfortunately. Even wikipedia had a shitload of hype in the early days.

"I'm talking about the period between its invention and the development of cinema."

Right. Which should absolutely scream to an entrepreneurial crowd there's an immense opportunity here to develop the VR version of cinema.

The time you want to get into an emerging technology is precisely this stage. The groundwork has been laid but the direction is not yet set.

That's the puzzling part to me, that HN isn't all over that aspect of things.

I take a less optimistic view on it - we're in this limbo state where the technology exists but no good application has been found or developed.

Now, it can either achieve its Eureka moment and blossom into something really useful.

Or it can continue to wallow in obscurity finding at most a few niche applications.

Not every technology that is invented is destined to become world-changing like cinema or antibiotics. There are plenty that become the Betamaxes and Segways of history. At one point the Segway was also heralded to be the Second Coming of transportation.

Part of the problem is that the groundwork has been laid but nobody has the slightest idea which direction to go in. To be clear, it's not that we have a wealth of choices ahead of us and can't choose which one, it's that we have so few choices ahead of us that look genuinely promising.

- VR workspaces/entertainment spaces (see: 50 foot theater screen in your living room!)

- Cockpit-style VR gaming experiences (flying, driving, etc)

- Room-sized VR gaming experiences ("experiences" might be overselling a bit, all are tech demos where the room-size motion tracking feels more like a bug than a feature)

- ???

It seems pretty likely at this point that #2 (cockpit style gaming) is likely to succeed, at least moderately, but all of these other things are being tried but just aren't that interesting.

I don't think any Eureka moment is needed to find high value applications to implement. Just nobody has executed well enough yet.

Even if you think conservatively and consider only vr-ifying apps we already have: For VR, some types of games (Elite Dangerous, Until Dawn), applications directly related to design of real physical environments and objects. For AR there many obvious industrial applications even with simple overlaid indicators, eg in inspection and manufacturing. In AR games there are also many quite obvious concepts that should work (think eg party games or outdoor games) and you would be way off to say "we haven't come up with any worthwhile games" at this point.

This is what I was getting at. It's like people are waiting around for someone to do it. Aren't we the ones that are supposed to be doing it?

The thing is...you get pretty good VR devices that won't make you puke every 10 minutes for 399 to 899 soon. Most game engines these days are also free to use and support VR decently well. Basically what I'm banking on is setting this setup free to any interested enthusiast will lead to things we can't even imagine now. I'm hoping the useful stuff will be built by a 16 year old with a random VR headset for their game console hacking around in Unity and not some academic. It also helps that said 16 year old can share whatever they built with more people and get a better feedback loop. I think cool stuff is more likely to be built if at least one person in your immediate group of friends can actually use it.

[interaction and content are huge hurdles imo, the more people work on it the better]

This is related to an issue I am trying to solve.

I want to know if its possible to make an application that will make some task more efficient for people in VR rather than on a 2d screen.

I am having difficulty finding ideas that are more involved than just using the space in vr as an infinite 2d screen. Even with an infinite 2d screen though we have issues in vr because text is not very legible.

I am at GDC right now seeing if I can get ideas based off the games people are making.

Personally I'm not convinced this is a particularly promising avenue of exploration - I can be very wrong, of course.

A couple thoughts on VR-as-workspaces:

- The 2D screen has a lot going for it - I think it's tempting to regard 2D screens as something that only exists in this form because of technological limitations. On the contrary I think 2D screens have evolved into their present forms because they are extraordinarily good for what they do.

- Movement is consistently underestimated. Even ignoring the current resolution limits of VR, any workflow where the user must move a lot physically is destined to fail. Swinging your head around just to perform everyday tasks is a complete non-starter no matter how good the underlying technology is. One of the core features of computing today is that you can use almost all functionality while barely moving - this is a feature, not a bug.

There is a reason why enormous, gigantic monitors are unpopular for everyday work, and it's not just because of cost. There is also a reason why software-based multi-desktop and screen-area management is vastly more popular than multi-monitor setups, and it's not just because of cost. Physical movement in computing is a big deal.

Similarly this is also the deep hole that motion inputs fell into and never found their way out of. Minority Report's cool arm-waving UI looks cool, but is incredibly annoying (not to mention physically tiring) thing in real life that no one in their right mind would want to use for more than 45 seconds.

This is part of what I was talking about when I say the VR/AR is currently all tech demos - they are really cool, but many of these things are strictly worse than the status quo, in a way that's not even due to the limits of VR/AR tech.

A lot of the lack of excitement in this space IMO is because we have this cool tech but we keep trying to find a hole into which to shove it. A large percentage of the stuff we see coming out of VR development seems to be "hey, what if we can replace [perfectly good, functional thing] with a VR headset?", to everyone's collective groans.

How about Entertainment? Being virtually transferred to a remote location, either as tourism or to watch any kind of show (concerts, live theater, sports) should have obvious appeal for any spectator. Watching performances should be a larger market than other niche entertainments that benefit from VR like hardcore gaming.

The increased sense of presence is an instant upgrade over the limitations of TV and handheld devices, assuming the shortcomings of VR discomfort can be avoided.

VR and AR both need just one hit application. What would be a hit application?

1) It should just work, with no annoying aspects. Should be completely intuitive and engaging/fun

2) People want to use it on a regular basis. For example people play games for hours at a time on a regular basis, or use an app every day multiple times a day. Not just a "use it for 10 mins, think it's cool but never use it again" app

TiltBrush came close to this for me. Particularly the dress form scene. As soon as I found it, I picked the widest brush and started sketching an outfit around it. There's no fabric simulation, though no reason there couldn't be eventually, and it was still fun.

One hit application could be an outfit designer, especially if it can export to physical clothes. Even if it doesn't, it's a powerful artistic tool that also reminds me of The Sims.

Besides that, I can see lots of 3D modelling work done in VR. It seems like a natural boon to architectural design.

It could also be the next iPhone, time will tell. But I suspect that will require lighter goggles and better graphics. Full HD is just not good enough at that close range.

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