Comment by _qbjt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _qbjt | Hacker News Reader

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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

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.

> 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.

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