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Comment by bronz | Hacker News Reader

Well, in accordance with tradition I will now lay my thoughts down and be down-voted into oblivion for it. VR will flounder. I was a VR evangelist from 2012 to around 2014. I owned a DK2 -- I followed every shred of VR news like a fanatic. And what I learned from being so involved with VR was that it is not ready for mass adoption and probably never will be. People in the VR community drastically underplay nausea and discomfort. The main flaw is that if you move in the virtual world but not in the real world, your body does not like it. Thanks to head tracking, you can move the camera wherever you can move your head without sickness because the movement in the real world and virtual world are the same. But if you want to move around in any greater capacity than that without making 50% of people sick immediately, and perhaps 80% sick after just a few hours, then you have to do full body tracking. We are talking about 3/4 of games, easily. Games where you are a character and you run around in virtual space.

Even if you do full body tracking in your home, you are going to be extremely limited. You'll be running into the boundaries of your play space constantly. Those tricks of perception that allow you to walk along a curve instead of a straight line and thus never hit a boundary require very large amounts of space, especially if it is done in a way that is not detectable at all by the user. "What about omni-directional treadmills?" At this point I think we are getting crazy. Not only are you buying a hugely expensive VR headset, but you are setting aside a huge space in your home and buying a fucking gigantic omni-directional treadmill. Plus, the treadmill also does not provide the bodily acceleration required to prevent sickness because you are stationary relative to the earth while you use it.

And all of this is assuming that VR headsets reach a place where we have full FOV, perfect resolution and extremely high refresh rates. And VR headsets that have all of that will never be affordable unless they become popular. And they probably won't because of the reasons that I have just explained to you.

The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement. Other than that, when I look at the future of this kind of technology I see AR. Not VR. I am sorry Rift fans, it was painful for me too.

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> We are talking about 3/4 of games, easily. Games where you are a character and you run around in virtual space.

Then don't make those games for VR.

This might be cliche, but VR is not just a new accessory for an existing platform. It's a completely new platform. It needs new content that fits it -- shoehorning existing content into it will generally suck. Wandering around Skyrim sounds cool but will not work. Sorry.

As an example I've tried a lot, sim games (car, plane) work really well with VR. If there clearly is a cockpit around you and a seat you are sitting in inside the virtual world, your brain is fine with you sitting in your comfy chair.

Of course, not everyone will enjoy sim games. However, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that there are and will be more new games that fit VR well. These will probably include entirely new genres of content that are not compelling or interesting on a monitor but work well on VR. Conversely, some genres will never translate well into VR.

> Then don't make those games for VR.

We're talking about big-budget "AAA" games, which drive console and pc sales alike. Excluding them, immediately destroys any notion that VR may become anything more than a niche product and go fully "mainstream".

> As an example I've tried a lot, sim games

I enjoy these games as well, but recognize their market appeal is very narrow. These games don't drive sales of consoles or PC's.

> I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that there are and will be more new games that fit VR well

Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen until VR becomes mainstream, which it probably will not for the reasons listed in the GP post. In order for a studio to take the enormous risk of developing something entirely new, they need as close to a guarantee as possible to get back at least their investment. With VR poised to be nothing more than a niche product, this becomes a huge risk.

Now, maybe Facebook and their deep pockets could subsidize development of these games (effectively pay "AAA" studios to natively support VR), but that doesn't appear to be happening... otherwise they would have done that before the flagship product launched, and "AAA" studios are not in a "release cycle" at the moment (which tends to be October-November for the really big "AAA" projects).

Again, you're looking at this from the perspective of what the industry looks like now, not what VR enables. AAA games are generally of a certain type now, but that is not a universal law which will remain true forever.

> you're looking at this from the perspective of what the industry looks like now, not what VR enables

VR has been around a long, long time. I know, most folks say "but this time it's different", but in reality it's plagued today by the exact same issues it has been plagued with all along.

No "AAA" support, too few games, too expensive of devices, motion sickness, and more!

> AAA games are generally of a certain type now, but that is not a universal law which will remain true forever

Essentially, it is. These are the games that grab people's attention, have grabbed their attention, and will continue to grab their attention. Nobody is going to spend $600+ to play Bejeweled in VR... but they might to play CoD, Fallout, Battlefield, GTA, Skyrim, etc. All are "AAA" titles, and all could offer a new level of immersion with VR - but none support VR natively (and they had plenty of opportunity to do so before launch).

What hardware was there "all along" for consumers? As I understand the latency and tracking problems have just now been solved with the latest revisions of oculus/vive. You can't say it failed in the past because of X and Y external factors when the product itself wasn't even a thing.

I enjoy these games as well, but recognize their market appeal is very narrow. These games don't drive sales of consoles or PC's.

Well, they don't drive PC and console sales, perhaps in part due to the limitations of the existing platforms.

Driving and especially flying games suffer more from the limited point-of-view. I'm often switching to the 3rd-person view to get a better handle on how my car is placed on the track.

For combat flight sims, one of the UI staples for the last 20 years has been showing markers on the edge of the screen to indicate the current target. You spend a lot of the time in those games without your enemy in view, which, frankly, stinks. But that's the limitation of the current platforms based around a monitor / TV. There have been hacks to help with this, but they aren't that great IMHO.

VR could really help these types of games have a much broader appeal, because of the immersion.

As an indie gamedev myself. I can think of dozens of potentialial games that'd likely work well in be and not on monitor. And don't require physical movement and can be done sitting with swivel chair. Having the limit of not being able to run around may be disappointing to some. But any limit just forces us to innovate and achieve greatness thru new paths.

There are several instances in last 150 years where a patent or some other restriction caused others to innovate around a restriction and the end result was far superior because of it.

I definitely see that happening with vr.

> And don't require physical movement and can be done sitting with swivel chair

Remake of N64's Pokémon Snap

This 100%. From my experiences with VR, the "character moving freely in the world" paradigm never works. As you point out, developers need to rethink the type of software they're putting out for these platforms.

I think games where the player is static is a good place to start. In addition to simulators, I could see god games, rail shooters and puzzle games all working well in VR. Even a game with restrained movement like a slow-paced mech shooter or old-school first person RPG (think Ultima Underworld) could turn out great. Making the player aware of the dissonance between the virtual and physical worlds is the immersion-killing poison that VR game developers must avoid.

Finally, I'd like to make note of the many non-gaming applications of VR that could turn it into a compelling platform. The platform has tons of potential in fields such as art [1], manufacturing [2], education [3][4], health care [5] and the list goes on. VR can be used to enhance these applications but not if it's treated like a cheap gimmick.

If VR flounders it will be because developers failed to tap into the vast market of VR software waiting to be unlocked. The key is imagination.

[1] http://www.tiltbrush.com/

[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/leoking/2014/05/03/ford-where-vi...

[3] http://www.roadtovr.com/it-time-we-started-talking-specifics...

[4] http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/17/museum-collections-enter-vr...

[5] http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/pts

> VR software waiting to be unlocked

VR has been around since the 60's, and has not "unlocked" anything noteworthy.

Sure, this "round" of VR might be the best yet graphically, but it still hasn't solved any of the problems that prevented the original 1960's implementations from taking over in storm.

These being: No "AAA" support, too few games, too expensive of devices, motion sickness, and more!

It's almost like folks think this is the first time VR has come to market... "imagine all the possibilities!" - the same promises time after time after time again. What makes this iteration anything different?

Maybe some folks have high hopes due to the Facebook stewardship - I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, but Facebook has been anything but a good steward of Oculus.

They have not used their size or bank accounts to convince "AAA" studios to embrace VR, nor have they subsidized Oculus purchases to lower cost-of-entry for consumers. About the only thing they have done is go against all of their initial promises to not "Facebook-ify" VR[1] and turn the thing into yet another extension of the Facebook Social machine.

> The platform has tons of potential in fields such as art [1], manufacturing [2], education [3][4], health care [5] and the list goes on

VR will ultimately do nothing for these fields. AR advances will ultimately be what these industries end up embracing. You lose far too much environmental awareness when both eyes are staring at a narrow-focus screen without peripheral visibility, etc. AR allows the user to work and behave like normal, only their vision is augmented with additional useful information. It's less intrusive and disruptive, and has very few of the issues that plague VR.

AR is already widely deployed and in mass use. Any HUD is a form of AR (this covers everything from airplanes to cars to robots to google glass, camera viewfinders, etc...).

[1] http://www.wired.com/2016/02/mark-zuckerberg-plays-zero-grav...

I agree with the bulk thrust of this. The classic writeup on the OR/FB marriage is this http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-rea...

and in two years, nothing major has really changed. This makes me think that we're in for yet another VR "thrust and bust".

Ahh, but this time around we have porn: http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/23/11290610/pornhub-vr-free-p...

I agree too. "3D" had another push a half-decade ago in theaters and on TVs, and by this point it's reasonable to call it a failure. VR is much in the same vein: it's inconvenient enough to our lives that we're more likely to justify getting away from it than going to it. The Visicalc moment should either have happened by now or be right on the horizon. It hasn't. The demos are still basically reliant on the same kind of "spectacle" elements that 3D movies use, and the track record there is bad for franchise media - that is stuff that sells tourist tickets for theme park installations, but not repeat visits from loyal fans.

But AR, AR stands a chance. It is not hugely different to our existing uses of media technology - one more screen, in a different location, supplementing the existing experience. And it has good cross-over into VR for the remaining experiences that do work well in immersion mode. That might buy VR time to develop gradually for a few decades, like silent film. There are some things that are worth exploring with VR, but the tech really needs to be in mass adoption first.

>AR is already widely deployed and in mass use. Any HUD is a form of AR (this covers everything from airplanes to cars to robots to google glass, camera viewfinders, etc...).

I would nitpick this.

Regardless, I don't see anywhere near the level of give a shit for AR that there is for VR from the press and investors.

Supremely frustrating as an AR dev.

Comparing AR to VR is comparing apples to oranges; they don't compete in the same space and are not competing with each other.

Wow!

> it still hasn't solved any of the problems that prevented the original 1960's implementations from taking over in storm.

So much progress has been made with VR since then. A lot of problems have been solved.

Motion sickeness has been solved - when your motion 1:1 matches that of your virtual body there is no problem. Where there is a mismatch, there can be a problem (for about 30% of the population who are sensitive to this). So informed developers know how to create experiences that induce no sickness.

Regarding no AAA support / too few games - they are working on it. There will be over 50 games usable for the Vive at launch. There are some pretty big name games, like Elite Dangerous. Google, Valve and other big names are working on/have made stuff.

>What makes this iteration anything different?

Because it's actually at a point where it's usable now. Mobile phone popularity was one of the things that made this wave of VR possible as it drove forward the technology used.

>VR will ultimately do nothing for these fields.

There are VR applications that are currently for those fields mentioned, for example Tilt brush is generally received very well by artists and creative people.

I believe VR and AR will converge somewhat. VR has a headstart, and AR will adopt many of the technology, tools and techniques that VR uses. The Vive has a camera and can do limited AR, as can most mobile VR headsests.

I agree, that for a lot of applications - especially work-related then AR is better.

But when I game, I don't care about peripheral vision, I want to be in another world. Ultimately I want a headset that can switch between AR and VR modes.

Exactly. I'd go so far as to suggest a new term, since "Virtual Reality" seems to bear such a terrible burden of near-complete immersion in some practically unbounded realm with total mobility and Holodeck-like possibilities. Instead of virtual reality, think about virtual presence. VP, if you will.

What are some really cool situations in which you can simply be present and be completely immersed? When I refocus my perspective this way, I think about being at a movie -- in a movie. Maybe I'm the gunner in the Millennium Falcon. Maybe I'm just a spectator on a nearby ship. Or maybe I'm sitting in a sports arena, as if really at the game, watching it and taking it in in a way I can't through my TV alone. Maybe I couldn't afford tickets to the Radiohead tour, but I can buy a virtual seat at any of the worldwide tour venues and see the concert with those crowds. That seems really fucking cool. I want to do that. I want to do that right now. And I don't need to run or jump around when I'm there. All I want to do is sit, and watch, and listen, and be present. And be immersed.

Whenever people think of VR, their thoughts immediately turn to gaming, and then they get disappointed when they realize that VR Skyrim or VR Grand Theft Auto (or what have you) isn't in the cards anytime soon. Instead of thinking about awesome scenarios where VR will fall short of the status quo, we should think of fun scenarios where VP will be a big step up from the status quo.

> Instead of thinking about awesome scenarios where VR will fall short of the status quo, we should think of fun scenarios where VP will be a big step up from the status quo.

Does anyone have links to actual examples? The Rift dev kit has been available for a while now. Developers should have gotten past the 'VR makes too many people sick' phase and started looking at new ideas. What are these new ideas?

Altspace ( http://altvr.com/ ) and Tilt Brush ( http://www.tiltbrush.com/ ) jump out at me. Industrial Lights and Magic has been playing with using this stuff professionally as part of their movie making process: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeaLgPMGzkQ ).

Personally I'm a little disappointed that most of the hype around VR has been explicitly focusing on the gaming aspect. The non-gaming applications of VR are much more exciting to me. I want a meditation room, where I can sit on a stormy mountain to think. I want to program in a virtual room with monitors on every surface, and pieces of code fixed in space, where I move to the code instead of the other way around. Maybe it'll work and maybe it won't - its impossible to know until the hardware gets good enough to try.

I think the meditation/therapy angle is going to be a big one. Being able to get away to a happy place of your choice, maybe with a guided breathing exercise, could be very powerful.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X is almost universally considered to be amazing on the Rift.

Digital Combat Simulator is excellent, apart from the difficulty of reading some of the instruments. Completely new simulator feeling.

I think the game Chronos has a good take on this with the "player" as a fixed camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u47uN544HYQ&t=1m23s

I would imagine that Command & Conquer-like games could be a good fit for VR as it requires overview where you'll usually have to scroll in cases where you'd otherwise just lift and eyebrow.

I could also imagine a Window Manager where every window is placed in a large (huge) sphere that surrounds you and your chair (you are stationary in the middle). You could turn you head to see and interact with windows that are nearby or you could zoom out and rotate the whole sphere by using some shortcut or other device (maybe an ergonomic mouse with a ball on top of it [1], such that the sphere around you rotates in the same direction as the ball of the mouse). You could still map virtual desktops to a zone on the sphere (or perhaps just create virtual spheres). With some handy keyboard shortcuts I could imagine this to became quite awesome. Especially for programmers that use many windows at the same time.

1: http://www.ergodirect.com/images/Logitech/16728/large/Logite...

I want that

I don't understand if your head or your entire body rotates: if it's your head I can tell you that is not e good idea. I have bad neck just with 3 monitors...

Sounds like I could do all this with 2 or 3 nice big monitors. Then I can turn my real head and see new things, and not have to wear a giant headset.

Nausea is not the problem from my perspective.

At present I have my own small business creating VR experiences, I've managed to do about Euro 80k in business in the last six months. I have three large clients and have probably personally ushered more that 2,000 people through the Oculus based experiences at trade shows. Perhaps 1 in 100 people "bug-out" of the experience within the first 30 seconds. One executive I work with won't put the Oculus on anymore to approve work, he instead gets colleagues to try it and gauges their opinion.

However, it's been a learning curve avoiding 100% nausea inducing experiences. Certain camera moves and experiments have made me so ill I had to sleep it off for a few hours. So in my opinion, it's not the display tech, it's up to the experience of the application developer to know what works - and what will make you seriously ill. It's a strange job actually, programming that will make you sick if you get it wrong. :-)

At present, the big problem as a developer with a business like my own is that we can't get headsets. There is no VAR program. I feel that Oculus & HTC doesn't take developers of business applications seriously, or at least, I don't have any contacts there.

I've been involved with VR since the VRML hype of the dot com boom and the technology has come so incredibly far - my sense it that it will continue to progress and become a new display technology that's pretty much on everyones desk.

I'm working on non games VR applications too but my background is in the games industry and contacts from my games past have made it easier for me to get my hands on early hardware. If you don't have those contacts it's definitely harder to get an 'in' but I can tell you that Oculus is interested in non games applications it just hasn't been their focus for launch.

Feel free to email me at matt@virtuallightsoftware.com - I'm interested to talk to other people working on non games VR applications and may be able to help you with some contacts.

Hi Matt, thanks very much! I'll shoot you an email.

> Well, in accordance with tradition I will now lay my thoughts down and be down-voted into oblivion for it.

I downvoted you because of your snooty "ugh, I'm going to be downvoted just for posting my opinions" crap. Either post your comment and join the discussion or don't. Don't beg for upvotes.

It's a small distinction but I think he's actually saying don't downvote if you disagree, not asking for upvotes.

For another point of view, I personally appreciate the heads up that the opinion being voiced is believed to be unpopular so I can be careful to ensure conclusions I draw are informed ones since there are a variety of easy to make fallacies associated with unintentional groupthink.

Sure, but ironically a different kind of unintentional groupthink happens in this case. Some people read "I'm going to be downvoted" and...consciously or not...want to upvote it.

How could we tell if such a disclaimer results in more upvotes or merely fewer downvotes?

I also read it that way, but "What I'm about to say will be controversial, but bear with me for a second..." is probably a better alternative.

I think nowadays all the different types of disclaimers are all the same, and how receptive audiences are just depends on whether the audience read something similar or not 10 pages ago. It's weird.

I genuinely apologize. I love the HN comments and I wouldn't want to muddy them with stuff that people find distracting. In my defense, I was simply referring to the fact that whenever I voice this opinion anywhere on the internet it is not taken well because of the amount of enthusiasm in the VR community. I was not begging for upvotes. I will try to do this less often.

I know what you mean. Every time I say "the visual quality is really much worse than you'd expect" people downvote me to hell. But those pixels remain very very chunky.

And the beatings will continue until morale improves.

literally reddit

It's in the guidelines:

> Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

> Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted.

his post was thoughtful and interesting and calling him out on a minor rule violation is not.

Ignoring "minor rule violations" is how major rule violations start slipping through. Internet communities are only as good as the vigilance of the members allows.

Strict enforcement of the rules can kill internet communities. We are not robots. We make mistakes. We can consider context. We can forgive. We can consider the spirit of the law as well as the letter.

These 'rules' are not black-and-white orders handed down from on high. They are guidelines shared with us. We are free to disagree with these rules, to follow or ignore the rules, to enforce the rules or not, and to face the consequences of those decisions. We are thinking and reasoning beings associating freely.

The question shouldn't be, "Was a rule violated?" The question should be, "Does enforcing this rule in this instance help achieve our goal?" In this case, I believe I could make a compelling argument for both sides; but I am not convinced that thinking in absolutes will achieve our shared goal.

you are not a Haskell developer, are you?

It's not a matter of it being a rule violation. It's a shitty, pretentious tactic.

Fair points. There are definitely a lot of use-cases beyond ones that require moving around your body though: Zuckerberg's talk of court-side seats sounds pretty neat. For parents that can't get a baby sitter, or just don't want to spend a thousand bucks, getting to see a Warriors game virtually, from court-side, does sound appealing. I found the least nauseating experiences to be ones where I'm sitting in a spaceship, flying around. Perhaps enough of these types of experiences will carry the platform long enough for people to be willing to dedicate more of their home space to more advanced equipment.

Your comments about nausea are interesting, because I am a sailor and I know about motion sickness a little. I know that some people never get it for instance, and I know that I do get sick but only really on the first day of the season or whenever the movement first starts - normally I am ok for the rest of the year if I stay a lot of time on board. Very few people will be sick all the time, but I have heard of people who get sick all the time and still go sailing because they do enjoy something after all (meh, I don't think I would)

does the motion sickness of VR not wear off?

I would like to go sailing, but don't because I get motion sickness easily (I can prevent it though by 1) keeping my eyes fixed on horizon and 2) taking dramamine). Do you think using techniques 1 and 2 I'll be able to manage symptoms of motion sickness when sailing? Is dramamine popular in sailing circles to prevent motion sickness?

AFAIK, dramamine is still pretty popular for sea sickness. It's what I use if I need it. Like other antihistamines, though, it makes me really groggy so that may be the effect as much anything. Other things I hear people using are Scolpamine patches and just wristbands; no personal experience in either case.

I find being on deck and actively engaged helps me a lot too. For this reason, I suspect that I wouldn't be particularly bothered by VR but I've never had an opportunity to check it out thoroughly. You get to just sitting and going to yourself "I will not get seasick" tends to lead to problems.

as ghaff says, dramamine is used by many though I think the side effects can be harsh. I've heard good things about the patches and especially using a smaller dose (cutting the patch in half) to reduce the side effects. I've also heard that it can take a while for the drugs to pass through the blood/brain barrier and therefore its useful to actually take the drugs the day before you go on board. We have a different drug over here in general use in the UK (Stugeron) which is cinnarizine which is an antihistamine. I am dubious about the pressure bands but then I have used them and was not sick and when I took them off I didn't feel very good for a while so perhaps they do something I don't know.

I know of many people who join a sailing club and sail all size boats in the evening/weekend races but never really go out into the sea - for some of them, the whole social scene at the sailing club afterwards is important, perhaps some of them because its actually pretty exciting to be sailing in close quarters in that way. Some might do it for nausea related reasons I don't know. I am more of a cruiser though, I like to spend some weeks on board poking around in little coves, etc.

In my experience of sea sickness, I may feel funny the first day and not want to eat or drink, then (especially if cold and bumpy) would be sick overnight or the next day - then I would be feeling strange for a day but mainly I think because I was low blood sugar and dehydrated but I would eat some, then the next day I would be ravenous but having bowel problems probably because the food I ate the day before was having difficulty digesting as my stomach had been cleansed. after that I would be fine. Also around the 4 day mark (I have done a 29 day passage) you become much more attuned to the movement of the boat, you become much more comfortable with everything swaying around, you have started to tidy away all the bits and pieces that keep falling on the floor or clanking in the lockers and the whole experience can turn very pleasant.

I think people work out their own method for dealing with sea sickness, but I think that often its just denial that its happening and trying to stave off the inevitable (lying on a bunk down below, clutching the bucket works well). If you work out a technique for vomiting (head well back, mouth well open) that doesn't leave any residue washing around in your sinuses then thats probably best. I always feel better immediately after getting something out, though I pity anybody else around as I can't silence the hideous choking sounds. In order to treat the secondary problems I have some high sugar high caffeine drink handy (flat coke) and some high sugar biscuits (gingers are great - supposedly ginger is good for nausea too) and keep getting it in. I don't care if it will come out again in 2 minutes because you absorb that stuff into your blood pretty quickly, and you can eat healthily once you get over it.

I am not a sailor, but I've done some offshore work for companies like Heerema and other offshore oil companies. I don't get sea sick, ever.

However, I get sick trying to play games with my google cardboard. Nasty, nasty feeling and it takes a good hour to feel normal again... Not a big fan of VR after a few sessions of sickness. I don't think I will play it more to "get over it" either.

I've had the same experience and it made me wonder, like the OP, about the overall future of VR.

But still I'll hold out, and still I'll try :)

Hopefully higher response and faster refresh rates with quicker and more accurate tracking will evidence the difference between Caraboard and near-term future VR.

fingers crossed

I have a decent amount of off-shore sailing experience in small yachts, and like you, I never get sea-sick.

I haven't tried VR yet, but I was hoping my apparent immunity from motion sickness might carry over to a nice VR experience. Now I'm not so sure it will.

Yes, it does wear off. (From personal experience and reading others' experiences in the development kit forums.)

That said, it requires several weeks of repeatedly exposing yourself to awful motion sickness that may take hours to disappear.

Doesn't have to be awful. The collective wisdom is to stop immediately if you start to feel ill. Trying to push through will not go well. Eventually, most people build up a resistance to motion sickness ("VR legs"). Bonus is that this motion tolerance carries over outside of VR. Several VR users have reported being able to read in the car for the first time!

> VR will flounder.

I think you mean:

> VR First-Person-Shooters will flounder.

There are plenty of really amazing non-nausea-inducing applications of VR - and especially AR.

So what if traditional games don't map 1-to-1 with VR? It's an entirely new medium, and we've barely begun to work with it. Hell, even "traditional" non-VR games are still a very new medium.

I really think EVE Valkyrie is going to be the defining game for the beginning of this round of VR. Any sort of sim game is going to be a perfect fit for VR, and I'm sure there's games we haven't even thought of yet that will get released and really make the platform shine.

I've spent a couple months using VR (used to own a DK2) and hands-down the best experiences were "cockpit" style games.

I bought a joystick and Elite: Dangerous was the most incredible gaming experience I've ever had, if only for the sheer immersion.

Most of your negative points are valid, except for this one: "VR will flounder"

Your sentiments echo detractors of revolutionary inventions such as automobiles (eg. there are no paved roads, it breaks down too often, there are no gas stations, ...) and even the iPhone (e.g. there are no apps, it's too slow, the keyboard has not tactile feedback, ...). What you have in common with them is that you treat temporary obstacles as permanent unsolvable problems while overlooking the long term potential.

As a counter argument for your omnidirectional treadmill point, this is much cheaper, takes up a lot less space, and has already been released: http://www.virtuix.com/

It's like with 3D movies, now we have 4k LCD TVs that support 3D glasses. But how often does one watch a 3D film at home or at a cinema? Beside Avatar and a few Pixar CGI movies, most weren't that great (often filmed in 2D and rehashed later for 3D).

Virtual reality glasses are ready (and were ready several years ago, but quite heavy with two CRT monitors in the helmet), but many people are sensitive to motion sickness - so this will be less popular than 3D glasses we know from 3D TVs/cinema. Plus it is more expensive. Certain games lend themselves to VR like racing/space games, were you sit and can move your head. But many other traditional games feel strange, at least for new users and sensitive individuals.

Augmented reality (Google Glass, Hololens) is further away and not ready yet. It will take 3-5 more years until we will see the first consumer products. At the moment the graphic quality is low and the POV is far too small - the graphics overlay area is very small. Some games lend to that technique, but many others won't be that great if you always see your own walls as background.

More promising is glasses-less 3D (aka autostereoscopy), known from the Nintendo 3DS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_3DS#Hardware . It's friction free, no additional equipment is required, it can be used by more than one person.

Perhaps autostereoscopic displays can be theoretically used by multiple people simultaneously, but it's not how the 3DS is currently implemented. The original versions of the 3DS required the player to keep the screen at the right angle to get the 3D effect; without doing that, it's just a blurry image, much like taking off the 3D glasses at a movie theater. The New 3DS (yes, it's actually called "New 3DS") has built-in face tracking so the display automatically adjusts to the eyes of the SINGLE person it believes to be playing, which is much more convenient, but still not perfect as it can lose track sometimes and takes a little jiggle to get back into place.

On both devices, any time more than one person is looking at the screen, the display has to be set to 2D mode or it will be blurry for at least one person.

Nintendo also puts a disclaimer in place that states 3D mode should not be used by individuals under 7 years of age. From what I've read, this is just out of an abundance of caution and there's no real evidence that the 3DS's autostereoscopy can harm developing eyes.

I was talking about autosteroscopic displays. The 3DS was just an example, and the only one that general public may have seen. And yes, the new 3DS uses eye tracking and is meant for one person. But there are professional displays that can be used by a group of people (even without any eye-tracking).

Similar disclaimer probably are on VR headsets and 3D shutter glasses.Such 3D technology with a fixed focus is probably a bit more problematic and sensitive persons get motion sickness.

The thing that stood out to me in following the community around Oculus over the same period of time was how consistently insiders responded to complaints that it just wasn't quite there yet with statements that it was the next version of VR that would really blow you away. The one that people could actually get in their hands at any given moment was never the True Realization of the ideal. That was always just a little bit farther down the road -- conveniently distant enough that you couldn't actually put it to the test.

DK1? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is DK2."

DK2? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is Crescent Bay."

Crescent Bay? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is the Rift consumer release."

Now we actually have the consumer release. And what's the message? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR includes controls like Oculus Touch." And so the can gets kicked down the road another few months.

The continual response to underwhelmed users with "oh, you just wait till the next version!" made the whole thing start to feel less like a revolution-in-waiting and more like a faith-based enterprise. True Believers can help a company through the hard times, but they do not a mass market make.

Pretty sure people will agree that the Vive (which includes touch controllers and room scale tracking) is "Real VR" -- if the Vive fails to deliver amazing experiences, then yes 2016 VR is a dud.

The Oculus CV1 by not including hand controllers, and secondarily by having a limited tracking range, while amazing visually, is a very stunted experience when it comes to really being able to deliver good made for VR content. The Oculus Touch controllers are amazing, and can't arrive fast enough.

Well if your comment gets buried I do want to note that your perspective at least sounds reasonable, and your personal experience is worth extrapolating to a more broad experience or market potential. I've got my reservations about the 'revolution' that VR will be able to bring in the mainstream sense. I think the physical discomforts you mention are absolutely worth noting as a caution.

I'm not saying it's a great correlation, but some of the excitement regarding VR reminds me of other fancy, tech-oriented entertainment innovations that sounded interesting, but didn't quite pan out. Specifically the one where the movie audience was supposed to be able to have an effect on the story[1].

>"In another year, you'll see the pistol grip plus a seat with gyroscope motion control," Mr. Bejan said. "Two years after that, it will be virtual reality, with the goggles and gloves." (1993)

The purpose of mentioning such a whiff is as a reference point for my personal belief that people tend to like their entertainment simple and relatively easy to access. Great advancements in tech and media - successful ones/profitable/etc - seem to have been more about delivering traditional content in an 'easier' method of convenience. Netflix didn't revolutionize the business of making films, but rather the distribution. People are funny when it comes to art, no doubt.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/13/movies/when-the-film-audie...

Though, if we're to quote the Times, this review[1] of Gone with the Wind is also notable vis-a-vis contemporaneous attitudes towards new media:

> we still feel that color is hard on the eyes for so long a picture

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9807E2DA153EE432A257...

To be honest, it _was_ a long picture.

Well I think the reference you're citing is more about the length of the film - 3 hours and 45 minutes - moreso than the fact that it's in Technicolor. A closer parallel would be comparing Gone With the Wind to a Michael Bay Transformers film, in that almost 3 hours of cinema is typically hard on the viewer, and moreso when there are tons of visual explosions and loud sounds that wear down on an audience.

I love THX theater sound. SDDS. All of them. However, those tools can be very much abused by certain practitioners, and that's not the tech's fault. Basically I think that improvements are welcomed but gimmicks never last. Is VR a new gimmick in the grand context of entertainment? We're about to find out it seems.

> Well I think the reference you're citing is more about the length of the film - 3 hours and 45 minutes - moreso than the fact that it's in Technicolor.

It's both – if the film had been in black and white, the comment would not have been made, nor if the Technicolor portion of the film were shorter (e.g. in The Wizard of Oz, which the reviewer had seen some months prior).

Okay I mean I follow your assertion, but I don't ascribe that much weight to the mention of color versus the context of the length of the picture.

One thing this discussion does bring up though is that if VR can only be worn comfortably for 20-40 minutes, will it have a viable mainstream future?

I'm fairly confident that the VR headsets of today are equivalent to the bulky brick-size cellphones of yesteryear – the utility they provide to the early adopters is more than enough to offset their cumbersome nature right now, but in 10 years' time everyone will want one, and they'll be priced much more competitively.

...or the production quality might degrade to the point of bursting into flames, like those $XXX self-powered scooter boards, which dampens the appeal.

I get horridly and painfully seasick, others don't. Most that don't were "raised on the sea". I suspect younger generations could adapt to VR the way my generation adapted to the spatial awareness required for 3D gaming.

On a side note, this makes me think VR could possibly be used therapeutically to "cure" motion sickness. Something like the 3D gaming tutorials in early 3D games.

I strongly disagree. Yes, nausea is a big problem but there are a lot of scenarios/games where you don't need locomotion or can comfortably work around it (warping, a cockpit of some sorts etc.).

Also we might be closer to solving the eye vs. inner ear discrepancy completely rather sooner than later. Samsung is working on a headset that stimulates your vestibular system to make you sense motion & acceleration: http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/14/11220836/samsung-etrim-4d-...

A lot of Vive games are solving movement by a combination of 1-1 mapped in the limited floorspace, combined with teleportation. It sounds like it is a pretty much nausea free solution.

Yes, I've demoed this type of locomotion with a Vive. Teleportation is the de facto method, and causes no sickness. Try this in games like The Gallery, Budget Cuts, etc.

Yep, Vive devs all agree that 1:1 motion solves nausea, that's why it is a main Vive's feature. I think, I've heard it in the round table video on valve's youtube channel.

I watched half a dozen vive videos and I've never seen anyone complain about nausea. In my opinion the biggest obstacle is the lack of games or at the very least a killer app that justifies the pricetag.

If the VR marketplace is going to depend merely on gamers who don't get sick, then you are spot-on - this will be a failed business model. But just as early PC tinkerers couldn't imagine what would be created when it went mainstream, we too lack the imagination to see what people will do with VR. The good news is that we won't have to wait long now that hardware is getting out into the wild. There are MANY applications that don't require moving around or that only require moving around in a small space.

you're right on all of this, except I disagree with your conclusion that VR is not close to being ready for mass market adoption. I was getting my PhD in VR before dropping out to start a YC backed company in 2011. It wasn't glorious at the time, I would just say I was pursuing a PhD in Computer Graphics so that people didn't write me off immediately. I am really happy that VR is getting a lot of attention, but the entire focus is on general purpose headsets which will likely not work due to two main reasons.

-The virtual world needs to match the physical world, if the haptic feedback isn't there, it is extremely discomforting and the closer you get in visuals, the worse the sickness will be.

-Headsets take too much set up, anything that requires you to deal with that many cords is going to eventually collect dust. I loved playing games in 3d using nvidias shutter eye glasses, but even that was too much set up to continue using for 6 months or longer.

All this is true, but I think there is still a huge opportunity for VR in the near future. To get it right, people need carefully crafted experiences where they can match the virtual world with the physical world using haptic feedback. You could use headsets or not, you can also just use stereoscopic monitors or projectors in a carefully crafted experience. I can envision an arcade that let's you play a 5v5 robot fighting MOBA, with the monitors not right up on your eye, but surrounding your cockpit. You can have visual acuity matching the real world (retina displays). You can match every physical stimulus with real world stimulus.

There is a certain niche of games that will be great in oculus-rift-style VR. Your comment reminded me of these two articles about a game where the main character is sitting down and thus, you do not get that kind of sickness:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/M...

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/254432/Jesse_Schells_six_...

> The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement.

I don't see it as a good monitor replacement technology. In limited applications, such as for AutoCAD and 3D design, I can see it as a good option. It would be very useful for 3D visualization or model examination. But for normal, every day, web browsing / computer use, I don't see VR to be very viable. Goggles with high res screen and AR are going to happen, and are going to be very useful. I can see the day where your cellphone will also be your laptop, and you just connect goggles to it to do some work. But that's not VR, that's just evolution of cinema goggles.

I do agree though that VR does make a lot of people sick, including people who have been flying FPV drones with goggles for a while. There is something about completely filling your field of view that just makes people sick if it doesn't track just perfect, and matches to your vestibular system. There are efforts to hack the vestibular system to make you fee what you are seeing, but it's a little scary, and I think many people would be creeped out by electrodes and such connected to their heads.

I disagree.

I also had been following VR closely. Studying what happened to photography cinema or radio we can predict VR as the new media having a great success over time. Today VR lacks media designed for VR.

Right now, VR is opening to thousands or tens of thousands of people, probably millions, including creative, smart developers and artists. Before, patents made VR limited to a handful of people.

Artist will adapt to VR limitations like they did to cinema. Someone had to invent travelings, or cuts, and blendings. At first, cinema was just theater.

Do you know that if you record video without motion stabilization for some time people experience nausea and disconfort?

That is the reason virtually every film uses steady cams or rails or tripods with panning on each axis.

That you can't replace reality totally with VR does not mean that VR is not useful with their limitations.

We had been using VR in our company for CAD for a long time now, and for this application is extremely useful, better than anything else.

No doubt they will discover great new applications for VR even within their limitations. Artist will learn how to minimize their drawbacks just like they do in radio, cinema, or TV.

I've personally demoed the Gear VR to about 70 to 80 people, and in my experience nausea/vr-sickness is a problem for a tiny minority of people (maybe 2 or 3 out of 70 or 80 for properly designed experiences). With the consumer version of the Oculus Rift, that should be even less of a problem, due to the higher specs.

Much more of a problem is physical comfort of the headset itself. After the novelty wears off, few but the most dedicated want to stay in VR for extended periods of time, or even bother with putting the headset on anymore. Headsets are just too bulky and uncomfortable. Even regular glasses are too much of a hassle for a lot of people. VR headsets have the uncomfort of regular glasses multiplied by a hundred.

I don't think VR will fully take off until you can experience VR with something as comfortable and unobtrusive as contact lenses. Until then, it will remain a novelty or used for purposes where it really does not have much competition, like tele-surgery. There are some other niches where people will likely use a headset, like to play an occasional game or for videoconferencing, but then they'll take off the headset and go back to monitors for more mundane tasks that don't benefit from immersion, like word processing, web surfing, etc. Even for movies, current headsets are a bit too much, when you could just as easily watch a movie unencumbered by the bulk.

That's not to say VR isn't impressive. It is. I was blown away by it when I first experienced it, despite being spoiled and knowing what to expect by watching videos and reading about it. There's nothing like the real thing, though. But eventually all that wears off, and then you have to deal with the day-to-day choice of whether to put on the headset again.. and that's where I think for now headsets are too uncomfortable for regular, casual use.

That is an interesting comment.

I have limited, hands on, VR experience. However, last week I went to the California Academy of Sciences, and they had this show called "Impact" going on.

Due to the way their spherical projector in the planetarium is setup, it takes most of your field of view. That particular show had a camera that moved smoothly, but seldom in sudden movements. Instead, it had would accelerate to a given speed, and that gives you the impression you are moving.

I though it was a little bit disconcerting for the first couple of minutes, then I adjusted just fine. My wife was sick for half an hour afterwards. Her son was so-so during the show, perfectly fine afterwards. The feel is exactly as you described, you feel that you should be moving, but aren't.

That was an eye opener for me. I didn't think that a stationary display would ever make me feel anything (I used to be a flight sim fan, and nowadays I play a lot of Elite: Dangerous).

I haven't reached any conclusions about VR tech yet, other than it is probably not suited for my wife.

I worked at a museum with a planetarium. The way it was explained to me was that if the stars move — as far as your brain's visual processing is concerned — you must be moving. After all, the stars are fixed points of light; they never move unless you are yourself spinning in some manner — except, of course, in a planetarium.

We also had a flight simulator; but with that, the movements of your body mostly matched the movement of the plane (you couldn't feel forward/backward acceleration, i.e., acceleration on an axis perpendicular to your chest, as otherwise, you'd be actually moving around in the building). This never made anyone sick. The planetarium, however, regularly made people feel ill, and occasionally I'm told, actually lost their lunch, whereas nobody ever lost their lunch in the flight sim AFAIK.

It's interesting to see games for the HTC Vive tackling this problem by forcing players to be static, or move around the environment with a sort of point-and-click style teleport.

From what I've seen, players pick it up fairly naturally and it doesn't seem to impede gameplay. The major drawback would be that games need to be designed specifically with this in mind.

I don't quite understand it when people say that VR won't succedd but AR will. They're two points on a single technological continuum. One will enable the other. If AR does massively take off, all of that tech will benefit VR. Alternatively you can view AR as just a special case of VR, where display of the real world is passed through and where there's more sensing of the real-world environment for use in constructing the virtual parts of the environment. In that sense, VR is just a step towards more general AR; in that case the VR tech benefits AR applications.

Why do people insist that it can only be one OR the other? The technology is all converging to the one point. In fact I'd argue it's mostly the same technology. It's irrelevant as to whether it's AR or VR applications that break the technology into the mainstream. Once it's there, both AR and VR will have broken through.

From what I've seen, the problem as you describe it is 100% the problem the Oculus team set out to solve. Their solution wasn't the DK2.

I think it's sheer pessimism to suggest that they failed before you've tried their solution.

Regarding sickness: Doesn't stop mountaineers. Doesn't stop sailors. Humans adapt remarkably.

> Regarding sickness: Doesn't stop mountaineers. Doesn't stop sailors. Humans adapt remarkably.

I'm a mountaineer. Feeling ill at altitude isn't the same as motion sickness. People can die of HAPE - it's not something to brush off and say, "humans can adapt". The great majority don't at high altitude. That's why you see tourists on Everest with oxygen masks and dexamethasone in tow. It's not to be a little more comfortable, it's to be a little less likely to be dead.

I also get motion sickness for weeks on end. Trying VR isn't exactly appealing to me, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to die from it.

I grew up on a sailboat - other than feeling weird for the first coupla hours after sailing, it wasn't a big deal.

People are complicated, I guess.

That is all true, but you are assuming the content created will always try to have full body movements, or that people will always want to move around. It's like complaining about movies when they came out because they were not 360", or didn't have colors, or didn't have sound. Some of these came in time, some turned out not to be required.

What I think will happen instead is that the content created for the Rift (and others) will be shaped by what the medium does well. Games like driving or flying simulators play perfect well within the limitations of most HMD devices, and actually shine in comparison to the current alternative (monitors). To me this is just one of many examples of things that work better in the Rift than anywhere else.

You're absolutely right about flight sims. They are definitely the least sickening non-stationary experiences. The reason that not being able to move around is such a big deal in my eyes is because that is what I always fantasized about. I think that first person experiences are what most VR fans fantasized about. But you and many other people in this thread have made the very good point that VR can create new genres. Genres that are well suited for VR.

I've too been very enthusiastic about VR (supported the original kickstarter in the 1st hour it went live) and have had a little bit of an awakening after the initial enthusiasm. When Team Fortress 2 came out with Rift DK1 support I installed it and immediately realized that would NOT work. It was instant nausea, and it was not fun in any way.

But other people realized the same. Since then, indie and amateur developers (as well as some professional ones) started properly exploring the medium, instead of just trying to re-purpose content. There's many new subgenres better fit to VR that are emerging and, I believe, will get more visibility. The vast majority of those are "seating" experiences, but still ones that can easily blow people away, and continue to amaze me to this day. Which is just as well - getting a new blockbuster FPSs every month was starting to get boring.

VR won't be for everything or everyone but it'll be great for what it does well.

I remember when TF2 first rolled out support for the DK1. Good times. It was magical. Although most people reported that playing as the scout was not a good idea.

flight sim isn't really that great with VR HMD because you can't see the buttons which you need for more realistic controls. With a HMD you are limited to only the joystick + throttle combination which don't have enough buttons for a fully simulated cockpit.

I'm a big fan of how the Vive is approaching VR. I think Budget Cuts is a great example of what's possible with VR if you're willing to take these problems head-on and treat them seriously rather than ignoring them and just slapping VR onto normal games.

I also think there are many games where room-scale tracking is entirely sufficient with no need for any artificial locomotion. Strategy/RTS games are a great example. Just walk around the map. When you need to move further than you can, just move the map itself. Easy. You could even make the map into a hologram, so that rather than walking on it you're walking in it, with it floating at waist height. Now you don't even need to bend over to interact with it.

Absolutely agree on the nausea front – Windlands (controlled via a trackpad and swinging from tree to tree) takes a lot of getting used to.

Experiences designed around the limitations of room scale VR with tracked controllers, though, address that issue pretty effectively. I've spent hours playing Fantastic Contraption on the Vive Pre, and it's an amazing and immersive experience.

VR also makes 2D content much more cinematic in nature, despite the (for the moment noticeable) reduced resolution. And the resolution will likely be the first thing to improve in the next generation of headsets (using foveated rendering to reduce the onus on graphics cards)

I own a DK1, and agree with you on a lot of these points.

I would add that while first-person shooters universally made me sick to my stomach within about 5 minutes, flight sims generally never did. My guess is that being seated in a virtual cockpit and flying around seems a lot less wrong to my vestibular system.

Unfortunately, the flight/space sim market is a rather small one within gaming as a whole. Though it does tend to be one full of people generally more willing to buy dedicated sim hardware than most.

The DK1 is just awful in comparison to the DK2, though. Positional tracking and reduced latency of the DK2 improve the nausea situation a whole lot. I haven't had a chance to try the CV1 yet, but it's supposed to be an equally big jump.

I got a DK1 a few years back and was ridiculously excited to try it out. I had blocked out the whole weekend to mess with it. I tried it for under an hour, took it off, and didn't use it again for a week. It made me nauseous and gave a killer headache. My wife and brother had similar experiences -- both expected to be thrilled and have difficulty putting it down, but both ended up keeping their distance after the initial experience.

I haven't tried any other VR devices yet (skipped the DK2), but I look forward to demoing the CV1 at some point. Since Linux support has been killed, it will probably be a while, whenever I get around to building the separate free-standing Windows machine I've been intending to get for the last year or so (with dual-boot, I find I boot up Windows once a year, or twice if MS is lucky that year; I just have too much stuff running on my primary workstation to let it go powered off for very long).

> People in the VR community drastically underplay nausea and discomfort.

You must have never tried the HTC Vive, I never had any of these problems with it. Limited amount of space as well, as long as your game doesn't move you everywhere around.

I'm better at reading in a car than my parents are. I bet the next generation who grows up with VR headsets around them will adapt and not have any of the nausea feeling we currently have.

I have my doubts that you're part of a generation that has evolved the ability to read comfortably in cars. I get nausea reading in a car but I don't think my dad does.

Evolution works a bit more slowly than that.

I don't think the case is being made for genetic evolution but instead for neuroplasticity.

The visual cortex in humans is capable of very significant adaptations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1-TaR5ToKw

Is VR a viable platform for porn? If it were, there'd likely be a sizeable market opportunity for it.

As with any new technology, the adult entertainment industry has already embraced VR. [1][2]

Links obviously VERY NSFW. [1] http://naughtyamericavr.com/ [2] https://virtualrealporn.com/

Came here to post about this. The elephant in the VR room is that porn, both recorded and semi-interactive 3DCG, is easily the most immediately interesting use of the technology to the vast majority of consumers. It's also a huge part of why everyone lost their shit when Facebook bought Occulus, as early adopters feared that Facebook would either implement a closed platform or track what "applications" people used.

> The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement.

Does this include watching a sports match from a perfect spot within the stadium?

Anyway, I sure hope they will increase the resolution so that I can have a virtual monitor on a virtual beach in my office.

What about a full experience like the Vive? Yeah I know it only does roomscale, but it should prevent a lot of the nausea you talk about. I think it would work out well, you would have "rooms" like old school adventure games that you mess around in, and then kinda hit go north, south, east, west etc to go to another area.

I have a heard time seeing how that wouldn't be flat out amazing. I'm not a huge fan of the Rift, which sounds like your experience is based on. But SteamVR looks really good to me.

Other than SteamVR, I see mobile VR being where it really hits. I think roomscale + mobile VR will work out together. The Rift should and will die, I'd hope for all the reasons you mentioned.

The rift and VR in general have strong parallels with steering wheels for computers from a market standpoint.

The racing games actually drive console and pc sales, at the very least GT does. At the same time, it is a normal game with the controller, and a fantastic experience with a good wheel.

The best racing game/sim IMO, called iRacing fully supports all wheels, and it has a profitable service.

Some people like you may not know about it, not being 'mainstream', but that is not really needed for the product to be successful and to have a rabid fanbase of active subscribers.

So, if steering wheels are a product with good margins, and also, making games for them is profitable which it is, then the same will apply for VR.

Welcome to the era of the long tail.

> "What about omni-directional treadmills?"

Maybe not for home users but I think for military training, rescue training other such applications those could be viable. I don't see anything wrong with this technology being professional/luxury first then becoming more affordable to regular users.

We had a DK (or maybe DK2, don't remember) as well and yeah we played with it but I ended up not liking it. The resolution was too low, I could see individual pixels and it was like looking through a screen-door. We played with it for a while, ran some demos, everyone had fun. Then put it on a shelf and hadn't touched it since.

> The one thing that I think has the potential to make VR popular is monitor replacement. Other than that, when I look at the future of this kind of technology I see AR. Not VR. I am sorry Rift fans, it was painful for me too.

VR/AR as monitor replacement is actually the application I'm most excited about personally. I'd love to see a Google Glass/Hololens type device that functions as a wireless Miracast/WiGig monitor and nothing else, which could hopefully bring the product into the realms of affordability.

Will that not be fatigue issues with this? Ignoring the actual weight of the headset, isn't it really bad/tiring on the eyes to be constantly focused at the same distance?

That's definitely true for VR headsets like the Rift or Vive. I was thinking more along the lines of the Google Glass/Hololens form factor, which probably won't pose any problems with respect to weight.

In terms of focus, I don't think it will be much different compared to using stationary physical monitors since those usually stay at the same focal distance as well. The Glass/Hololens form factor only occupies a tiny part of your field of vision, allowing you to freely look elsewhere as you see fit (and AFAIK the Hololens, at least, has the ability to simulate different focal distances).

I'm picturing this as more of a supplement to physical monitors as opposed to a complete replacement in a typical workspace setting. What really excites me are the possible applications of something like this in mobile (an always-on, wireless second screen/HUD for your phone that takes voice commands or some other new control mechanism, for instance).

Give the HTC Vive a try. I played with it in a reasonably sized room and it was a lot of fun and there was no motion sickness to speak of. It does positional tracking. The tilt brush app is amazing.

I do not own a Rift, but I do fly FPV quad-copters using video goggles. There is no binoccular vision, no headtracking and the FOV/resolution are pretty limited.

I have never experienced ANY nausea and I'll do flying sessions several hours long (though I do take the googles off repeatedly inside that window.)

Given my experience with sea faring ships, I doubt that I am one of those who will not get nausea, so why is my use case not a problem? Is the nausea just due to an uncanny valley of which my setup falls short?

Most video glasses have quite a small field of view... Are yours the same? So it's kind of like seeing a screen floating somewhere in front of you, whereas with the vr headsets you basically can't see the edge so it's a lot more immersive.

I expect that's the main reason you don't get nausea.

If it is indeed the FOV that makes the difference, this implies a potential solution for when a game needs to move the camera independently of your body: limit the FOV as the camera moves.

> Plus, the treadmill also does not provide the bodily acceleration required to prevent sickness because you are stationary relative to the earth while you use it.

I didn't really get this point. So what if the treadmill is stationary relative to the Earth ? And what do you mean by "bodily acceleration" ?

I honestly do think the "omni-directional" treadmills would solve all the problems you bring up here. And it doesn't even have to be that big.

Thanks for editing out your suggestion for me to "read a high-school physics textbook." The earth is the frame of reference when considering free body diagrams of objects moving around on its surface for all practical purposes. Neither the treadmill nor the person using the treadmill moves with respect to the earth and therefore no bodily acceleration is experienced by the user. In the virtual world, however, the user does move and bodily acceleration is expected. Therefore, a treadmill cannot alleviate the problems caused by acceleration mismatching.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my comment - I still don't understand your point. It's as if you're saying, "because the treadmill (or you) don't move with respect to the ground, you don't experience movement."

If this were the case, you wouldn't be able to exercise on a treadmill since no energy would be spent (Energy = Force * distance), where distance would be 0 in your argument.

I think the difference here is that the treadmill moves you, vs you moving yourself. Even still, there are machines that can move using the friction between your feet and the treadmill surface - and they are starting to make their way into some of the local 24-hour gyms.

I'm not arguing with your point that "VR will flounder", but I just want to keep everything honest. And honestly, your physics doesn't check out.

Yes, this is only about physics for me too. My physics does check out though. If you are in a car and it accelerates from 0 to 30 mph you will experience the symptoms of acceleration. For example, an object that is hanging from a string in your frame of reference, such as a fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror, will appear to move backwards on its own. Try holding the fuzzy dice while running on a treadmill. I guarantee you won't see anything like that happen. Because you are not accelerating.

In your argument, your string and fuzzy die are not measured with respect to the surface of the treadmill, which is the frame-of-reference you should be considering. If you think of it this way, then yes, your fuzzy die will "lean forward".

You absolutely do experience acceleration when you're on the treadmill, how do you think you go from 0 mph to 5 mph ?

With respect to the ground of the earth, then there is no acceleration horizontally. With respect to the surface of the treadmill (which is what you must now consider), then yes. Just think of exercise. I challenge you to run 100 miles on the treadmill and not get tired.

I don't think you understand the arguments people are making.

Your inner ear does not experience any acceleration in your example, which is what is required to avoid sickness. What's happening relative to the surface of the treadmill doesn't matter, the acceleration of your inner ear does, and that's not changing.

How does my inner ear know I'm accelerating on the treadmill or the ground ? What if I blindfolded myself ?

The treadmill is just like the ground, for all intents and purposes.

Is your head accelerating while you're on the treadmill? I've never seen a treadmill where that happens, the whole idea of a treadmill is running in-place.

The most common VR treadmill-ish device I'm aware of is the Virtuix Omni: http://www.virtuix.com/, where your head is clearly not accelerating.

What are you picturing when you claim your head (and hence inner ear) is accelerating on a treadmill?

I'm starting to understand yours and everyone replies. I think what I had in mind is that I'm accelerating relative to a point on the treadmill, and therefore my entire body is accelerating. I can't wrap my head around the fact that we're still considering the ground as the frame of reference.

I know that the treadmill moves on its own, but what if I push the surface of the treadmill to make me move forward. Wouldn't I not know the difference between a sidewalk and the treadmill ?

The ground as a point of reference isn't really relevant, it's your previous position that matters (new position relative to your old position). Acceleration requires a change in trajectory, and no matter what the treadmill is doing, if you are not changing your trajectory you are not experiencing acceleration (ignoring the effects of gravity).

Thanks for taking the time with me. Acceleration for me is a change in a velocity - isn't that what is going on ?

Velocity is a change in distance, and to me it seems there must be a change in distance - since there is energy being spent (we're "traveling" as we run, while putting in the force of our feet against the treadmill - each step is an "acceleration" forward).

> Acceleration for me is a change in a velocity - isn't that what is going on ?

Yes that's what it is. But you aren't changing velocity when you start running on a treadmill. When you are on a treadmill your velocity is the same as a person standing still on the ground next to you. We may talk about you 'running at 5 mph', but this is just a casual way of talking unless you're doing a physics problem. In reality, your legs are moving in a similar way as if you were running at 5 mph, but your velocity, relative to when you started, is zero the whole time.

> it seems there must be a change in distance - since there is energy being spent

If you stand still and flap your arms you're spending energy aren't you? But you're not going anywhere. Next imagine running on the spot. Still spending energy but not going anywhere. Next imagine that on a treadmill. Still spending energy, still not going anywhere.

> we're "traveling" as we run, while putting in the force of our feet against the treadmill

Here's another way to think about it from scratch that may help.

You are running forward, going at 5 mph. The treadmill underneath you is going backward, at 5 mph. Your actual velocity is therefore 0, because the two cancel out.

When you run on the ground you are running forward at 5 mph, the ground is staying still, so the result is actually 5 mph.

People casually say that your velocity on a treadmill is 5 mph, but really they mean that you are moving your legs fast enough that you would be going 5 mph, if the treadmill was't working in the opposite direction against you. If you were doing a physics exam you would be more careful with your terminology and you would say that the velocity of someone on a treadmill is 0.

> each step is an "acceleration" forward

No, each step forward on a treadmill is compensation for the treadmill going backward. All of the progress forward that step gives you is used up balancing out that the treadmill is going backwards, and there is no acceleration.

Thanks very much for breaking it down for me.

I guess what I don't really understand is how I can tell the difference when I'm blindfolded.

If I am undergoing the same force with my feet on the treadmill than I do on the sidewalk, how do I really tell the difference ?

I know since the treadmill is moving on its own, I have to "walk" to keep up with it, but what if I could move the treadmill backwards as I walk ? (The force of my steps make the treadmill move, rather than the rotor machine?)

I understand I don't move anywhere with respect to the ground, but if I undergo the same motion that I do when I'm walking, how is it that I am able to tell the difference ?

If I can literally make the treadmill move under me just by walking, how is it different from walking on the sidewalk ?

Sorry - I'm just really baffled, even though I believe everyone. Could someone just ELI5 me ?

The fluffy dice on a string.

Do you understand that when you accelerate in a car the dice moves toward the back of the car, so that the string leans backwards?

This happens because the car moves forward, but the dice wants to stay where it is. So it kind of gets dragged. This is a fundamental property of the universe we live in, called the first law of motion, and I can't explain that further as nobody knows why the universe is like the but it is.

Do you understand that this doesn't happen if you hold a fluffy nice on a string and run on a treadmill?

This happens because the dice wants to stay where it is, and it is staying where it is, so nothing happens. Whatever you legs are doing beneath the fluffy dice is irrelevant.

Your ear effectively has a tiny fluffy dice on string inside it, and tiny hairs that feel whether or not it is leaning backwards. You don't need to see or feel anything else to sense this, and it doesn't matter what your legs are doing. That's why the treadmill and your eyes don't matter. Your legs are running on it but the little dice in your ear knows what is really happening.

That is how you know that you are really accelerating.

And, going back to the original point, is the whole problem. There is no way to poke this fluffy dice to fake the sensation of acceleration, as it is sealed inside your head.

The fluffy dice in your head thing is obviously not quite true, but it really isn't that far from the truth.

You can do an experiment to understand this better (or at least prove it to yourself). Get a glass of water and half fill it. Get in a car and get a friend to accelerate somewhere legal and safe. The water will slosh to the back of the glass. This is like the dice. Now get a treadmill and turn it up high. Put the glass of water on the skateboard. Lower the skateboard on to the treadmill while it's still running. The 'acceleration' here will be huge as the skateboard will go from 0 to whatever mph instantly (it's not really acceleration, that's the whole point). The water will not slosh (if you put the skateboard down carefully).

Thanks, I think I finally get it - and the experiment would definitely confirm your point.

How does our inner ear chooses to uses the ground vs a point on the treadmill as it's starting point? I keeping wanting to think that I'm in motion with respect to a point on the treadmill.

What if your inner ear were located on your feet ? Would you then not be able to tell the difference between treadmill and sidewalk ? Your feet are actually traveling in the same motion on the treadmill as it would the sidewalk ?

You are born onto the earth, so your reference point starts as the earth.

In reality the earth is moving through the solar system, so your starting reference point is in motion already.

If you get into a vehicle and start moving at speed relative to the earth, then that vehicle becomes your new reference point when the speed becomes stable.

When you step onto a treadmill your speed relative to the earth, your previous reference point, doesn't change, so the reference point doesn't change. If someone were to drag the treadmill behind a vehicle with you surfing on it, then it would become your reference point.

It's confusing to talk about your inner ear being in your feet because they're in a running motion, so they're being shaken up all the time. They'll experience constant acceleration and deceleration relative to the earth as your foot goes back and forward in a running motion. If you had little dice on strings in your feet you wouldn't be able to tell what was going on with them as the dice would be flapping all over the place.

1) Start running on a treadmill 2) Jump directly sideways off of the treadmill 3) Experience 0 acceleration because your velocity parallel to the treadmill is basically 0.

Note, I think treadmills can work for VR, I'm just here for the physics.

Also, for my third edit, upon re-reading all the comments in this chain, it really seems like we're all agreeing. Just talking about different effects.

This is the same misunderstanding that many people are having. Your frame of reference while on the treadmill should be the surface of the treadmill.

Once you jumped off, you switched your frame of reference to the ground of the earth.

Keep your reference on the surface of the treadmill, and you'll see you've experienced negative acceleration.

This is why you always get an "extra boost" when you come off the escalator.

you can only do this if the surface of the treadmill is an inertial reference frame. ie. a person running at constant speed vs a person on a treadmill at constant speed is functionally equivalent.

However, the moment you want to stop or change speed this no longer works - in the real world your body needs to accelerate, while on the treadmill the treadmill accelerates and your body does not. This is because the ground remains an inertial reference frame during the acceleration, while the treadmill surface does not.

The point is that for your inner ear, there is no acceleration when running, or not, on a treadmill. Your body isn't moving relatives to where it started, so your inner ear doesn't detect the same equilibrium changes that would align with your visual perception - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_ear#Equilibrium

See my replies to the rest of the comments. The point is, you have to use the surface of the treadmill as your frame of reference. Then, it's obvious that your body has moved relative to where it started.

Sorry, you're right. After reviewing your comments and debating long with my best friend (what are best friends for, anyways), I finally see my flaw. I didn't consider the inner ear not accelerating whether or not the treadmill below you does. everyone who has tried to set me straight.

Plus it's expensive both the goggles and the hardware it takes to run the software that takes full advantage of said goggles.

And that's also without the sense of touch, smell, balance, temperature etc. So it's only slightly better than watching a film in 3D and way more expensive.

Yup lots of work ahead. But read some Vernor Vinge and think Disneyland. And Arcades.

No treadmills necessary.

Sure, it has limitations but do you not see any applications of VR besides games? I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of games are not first person shooters, or ones that require you to control the movement of a character.

I can see plenty of applications of VR besides games. In fact I'm fairly sure that if takes off, it will be the other applications that break it open.

But right now it's too heavy, too low-res, and far too expensive to appeal to non-gamers.

I'm not sure that even if it cost $50 for all the hardware, fully complete, you'd get a stampede of new users - yet.

Most people need a reason to use it, and games are not the reason.

> VR will flounder

To second your arguments, from a pure business perspective, VR would be already growing its user base and showing pretty nice retention rate if it was any close to be something people really want.

I think what you're talking about is tolerance, which is going to be different for everyone. The same could be said about being on a roller-coaster for several hours.

What if we popped a pill that disabled motion sickness?

Or could modify our body to disable motion sickness?

None of the issues you mentioned is a problem with porn, which will be the reason why 99.9999999999999999999% of VR headsets are purchased.

If you are going to spend 600 dollars you might as well get a hooker.

But a hooker won't look like taylor swift while your VR CG GF will look like whoever you want.

CastAR is pretty good. Better than Oculus.

Has no sickness problems.

http://castar.com/

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