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Comment by carlosdp | Hacker News Reader

I said this in another thread, but if you haven't tried the Vive (or maybe Oculus with the Touch controllers, which are not generally available yet), then you haven't really tried VR.

Wearing a stereoscopic headset is one thing, but the presence that room-scale brings is just another thing altogether. I had tried Oculus demos at conferences and such, and I kinda started to think maybe VR was over-hyped.

Then I got my Vive on pre-order, put it on and went into the tutorial. There was a part where you can inflate balloons coming out of your perfectly-tracked controllers. I instinctively bonked one with a controller, and I FELT it (thanks to haptic feedback from the controller and diagetic sound). I basically forgot I was wearing a headset for the rest of the tutorial, I was present.

That's when it really clicked for me that this is happening this time. This is something new. I'm 100% convinced VR is the new medium going forward.

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I worked on a demo experience for the Vive unveiling and for the first time in my career I felt like VR was more than a gimmick. We were working with beta (maybe more like RC) hardware, had no controllers, and only one tracking cube.

I had two a-ha moments with it that sold me... There was a small demo room called something like Shopkeeper (think an old goblin's hut filled with wares) and I actually reached out to grab a faerie/wisp that was buzzing nearby. The second was a Valve demo app where a Portal like robot came stomping into the room and I actually jumped the F out of the way, only to have the floor start falling out from under me and scrambling back to safety.

For a few fleeting moments at a time there was no virtual, it was reality and it was freaking amazing. And all this without the added immersion the controllers provide.

The Vive is by far the best VR setup I've tried. It's made the rifts we had around seem like toys.

A vive headset without controllers is by itself objectively worse than a rift on all accounts. Maybe your experience shows how important software is.

There are definite points of contention on this. The Vive headset doesn't face nearly as significant a glare issue as the rift, it is far better for glasses wearers than the rift and for some people the improved brightness is a significant advantage.

Integrated audio is definitely nice, but not a deal breaker and the improved ease in reaching a comfortable setup is definitely and advantage, but it makes trade offs in other areas.

You could split hairs about where the trade offs were made (fov vs SDE) but the displays and optics are so similar that those dont matter.

Those demos are both part of The Lab, a set of VR demos distributed by Steam. To everyone else with a Vive: get it. It's free, and it's frickin' awesome, even though the Steam description spoils one of the games.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/450390/

I tried a Vive the other day. It's the closest experience to magic I've ever had which didn't involve sacrificing chickens.

What game does the description spoil? I have a Vive and have played all the Lab demos and I don't really see anything that spoils any of them.

For those who want to show Vive to friends: http://imgur.com/qJucDyO

Also if you have a somewhat okish wheel+pedals Project Cars, Assetto Corsa (needs ReVive) and Dirt rally are all great experiences. Though this doesn't take advantage of the room scale stuff (so can be done with an Oculus) but still found that great enough to go and buy a Vive for my home racing sim setup.

That's fantastic, thanks!

I'd update that to add H3VR

H3VR seems so mundane if you hear someone describe it:

"Yeah, it's a game where you get to shoot a variety of guns, all of which are very nicely modeled and have accurate mechanics like bolt handles that work etc in a variety of shooting ranges"

I mean, who would want to play that... but when you do, oh my goodness is it satisfying. The fact that it's VR makes rather mundane sounding experiences incredibly immersive and great. I've pretty much stopped playing all the great "normal" non-VR games that I bought in the steam sale because of VR.

Now imagine if you could create a triple A game on this platform. Holy fucking shit, it's going to be the end of the world.

There's also now SculptrVR for 3D building/drawing.

I actually was completely convinced when I tried my friend's Rift. That being said, I bought a Vive for my house and I do agree that it is another step beyond the Rift.

> it is another step beyond the Rift.

Literally. I can't imagine how they're still justifying the Rift at this point. Is the room scale tracking somehow inferior when you sit in a chair?

> Is the room scale tracking somehow inferior when you sit in a chair?

Nope. The Rift is definitely more comfortable for most people and looks more like a finished product, but that's about all the good I can say about it. I used a Rift demo station about a week before my Vive arrived and it immediately made me happy about my choices. Roomscale is huge and while Oculus technically can be used that way the official support is still largely based around forward facing.

Things will change when Oculus Touch comes out. I don't understand why people are already dismissing the Rift as if it's the final revision, especially in such an immature market such as VR.

Oculus is still more focused on non-roomscale experiences for now, but they're already starting to change how they talk about it, no doubt in preparation for Touch. The tech is there, the games are there (from Vive-land), the only thing really missing right now are the controllers.

Oculus' tech is excellent. That is not disputed. But their management is hot garbage. And if anything can kill an excellent product, it's poor management. HTC and Valve have been much better stewards of the Vive than Facebook and Oculus have been of the Rift.

Oculus has burnt a lot of good will in the developer and consumer communities, with the delays, the shady exclusivity deals, the walled garden app store, the broken promises on open source and Linux and OS X support, etc.

Yup, I got my dk2 and then they dropped Mac and Linux support in the next version - what a waste.

Well, as a Mac fan, it unfortunately made sense. Aside from the top of the line Macs PRO, Apple doesn't sell machines good enough to support VR.

I have money, and I love mac, but I won't be buying Mac Pro for $3k just to play with the tech.

Even the top of the line Mac Pro is not good enough. I've used it with the DK2 in Windows, and judder was still a huge problem.

No, that computer is good enough. It's the devs making the app you played that are not.

Oculus is playing a game with their specs. On one hand, it makes their peripheral look like really cutting edge technology if it can only run on the latest and greatest hardware. And on the other, it keeps them from having to try to fulfill even more orders over what they have already proven they cannot handle.

Simple graphics + room scale VR is an amazing experience. AAA games need whizbang graphics features to be able to compete with each other because they haven't had any new gameplay features to show off in nearly 15 years. But a lot of this effects are unnecessary in VR--sometimes even a bad idea! Normal mapping, for example, is has been reliably shown to cause motion sickness in people with a relatively high ratio of estrogen to testosterone (not just women, but men with hormonal imbalances. Women with high testosterone seem to do fine).

I think Valve and Oculus understand that AAA game studios don't have a lot to offer to VR. You're not going to really adapt Call of Duty to the Vive. So they are banking on the huge cadre of indie developers to rapidly make the first content for them. And that is going to mostly be fairly new devs using Unity, not really understanding what they are doing other than following tutorials. Optimisation is not exactly a strong point.

Do you have a source on the testosterone information? That seems really interesting to me and something I haven't heard yet.

This study went into some of the changes in depth perception experienced by people going through hormonal therapy for gender reassignment operations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10341369

This paper talks about some observations and some of the issues that still need to be covered: http://www.danah.org/papers/transtech.pdf

And a further paper from Dr. Boyd going into more detail on virtual reality more specifically: http://www.danah.org/papers/sexvision.pdf

Good enough for what? I used the first build of WebVR with my DK2 on 2013 Macbook Pro and tried a simple Quake level viewer. Sure, no AAA graphics but it worked, and well!

The new drivers removed my ability to experiment with WebVR. I could no longer use the hardware not due to limitations with my computer, but limitations imposed for marketing purposes.

That's an excellent point. It's a shame that Apple doesn't make either of (a) good computers or (b) moddable computers anymore.

Meanwhile, I've got a Windows PC that I've thrown together over the years, I just put a new SSD in it, and I'm waiting on buying either a new RX 480 or 1080, and I've got a 3D-capable PC, more capable and also much cheaper than the $3K Mac.

I think a lot of people want the Oculus to fail, because it's Valve vs Facebook. Valve is generally loved, Facebook is generally disliked. Had Palmer not sold to FB, I think they would have much stronger support and it would be a very different story. People were behind team Palmer+Carmack until they used the kickstarter dollars to "sell out." Oculus definitely didn't help their standing in the community once they started trying to buy exclusives and add DRM.

Kind of reminds me of the Makerbot fiasco. Like Makerbot, Oculus has lost much of the early adopter community, but if they can hang on long enough, they can capture the mainstream adoption wave and it might not matter.

Had Oculus not sold to FB, they would have kept working with Valve and there wouldn't be a Vive. https://www.engadget.com/2016/03/18/htc-vive-an-oral-history...

Good. More competition = better.

The relevant bits:

"Valve's work up to 2013 had made real-time tracking in VR a viable proposition. But although it had worked out the fundamentals, it wasn't about to build its own headset. And why would it? The public had already voted with its wallet, funding Oculus to the tune of $2.4 million. In Jan. 2014 Valve announced that it would collaborate with Oculus on tracking to "drive PC VR forward." It also said it had no plans to release its own VR hardware, although it noted that "this could change" in the future.

It's clear that at some point Oculus and Valve's cooperative spirit fell apart. It could be that Oculus and Valve disagreed on what VR should be: The Rift and Vive certainly offer different experiences. But it's also been suggested that communication from Oculus ground to a halt in the months after the Facebook acquisition, which forced Valve to explore other paths. It's unlikely that anyone will go on the record to confirm that for years. All we know is that in early January, Luckey was reportedly calling Valve's tech "the best virtual reality demo in the world," and by late spring, HTC and Valve were meeting to hammer out a deal."

Because objectively, the Rift, in its current form, is vastly inferior to the Vive with Lighthouse touch controllers.

Even if the Rift's touch controllers are released later and are superior, they'd be hard pressed to be much more superior.

Hey Chris, long time no see!

Yeah I basically agree with you, I just don't see it as a much of problem for Oculus in the long term given how early all this is.

It does room scale just fine with the touch, by all accounts. I've used the vive and own a rift. I'm pretty happy with it. The display in the rift is better and it's more comfortable.

Thats a pretty good way to put it. It's like the difference between a slightly better display and being in another world

I own DK1, DK2, Vive and tried Rift CV1 at a Best Buy. Was not impressed by the tracking on the Rift CV1. Perhaps it was the demo or demo environment, but it didn't feel as smooth. It definitely 'cut out' a few times, albeit very briefly. Have you experienced that at home?

As someone who wears glasses, I actually have the opposite experience. The Vive accommodates the glasses pretty easily. I've wondered about the display difference though.

I've had a lot more time in a Vive and am going to get to compare to a Rift again soon but my recollection is that the Oculus had a better display. I also might not have "dialed in" my Vive well. The Oculus was setup for me by a friend who is an Oculus engineer, so I suspect he set it up correctly. I'm going to read up on tuning the Vive display right now. :)

That balloon was the first experience I had, and made me realize the first bug on the vive: the chaperone (thing that hints your room boundaries) doesn't tell you where your ceiling is.

I chased the balloon and jumped up and smacked it in the ceiling. Didn't break it though (as far as I can notice)

It should be trivial to add imho; they are tracking in 3d; so chaperone could also watch in 3d; it's just that they don't...

Some people would always see the ceiling grid, which might lower immersion.

It should track the controllers; not your head; only if you're always with your hands at shoulder/higher level...

That's a good point, and something my Vive setup has been struggling with. My play area is just a little bit too small, so I see the boundaries a lot. It's not as bad as not having them and periodically punching a wall or walking in to the couch, but it's kind of a bummer to see it and go, "oh, right, I'm in my living room," especially in some of the much more immersive experiences.

You should be able to turn it off then, much like how you can change the wall pattern on the chaperone and turn it off completely if you desired right now.

I think they added it, actually.

The chaperone doesn't help if you're a noob--you drive your controller through the wall regardless of the chaperone. You get used to your room after a while and it stops happening.

The Lighthouse boxes are supposed to be aimed at a downward angle. I think that limits the ability for the Vive to track any kind of height past a certain point. Unless they did a calibration similar to the floor calibration where you hold the controller as high as you can and it just sets that as the de-facto "ceiling", there might not really be a way to do this reliably without additional Lighthouses.

What do you mean by the new medium going forward? What are you expecting it to replace, or do you not expect it to replace anything?

It's the first time humans will move from speaking in binary with one another to interfacing with one another in binary. Good luck to regimes like China keeping up with their censorship like they can today when we can all talk and exchange ideas in a VR world while speaking what seems to be the same language in realtime.

If other forms of internet communications are any indication, China will have its own virtual universe, shut off from any outside influence, "harmonized" with the party line, requiring real names and such, and likely larger than any Western one.

>requiring real names and such

If facebook and google have any say, then America will too.

Google, fortunately, retracted the real names policy a year or so ago. Sometimes common sense still wins.

I personally don't think it'll so much "replace" as much as open up new doors. As in Cinema/TV didn't "replace" theatrical performances, theatre is still around and strong, but the audience has mostly shifted to movies/TV because it is more scalable and flexible.

There's a bunch of apps that are trying to make virtual desktops in VR or 360 movies and the like. I don't personally buy into those that much, I think 360 movies are difficult to make interesting and virtual desktops are more for Augmented Reality.

Besides the obvious (VR games), I think there is a potential for a new form of entertainment (maybe a hybrid of theatre/cinema), for more advanced design tools that make faster work of 3D-based design, for educational experiences. Some things might be "replacements", but there are a lot of possibilities that a VR environment opens up for things that would not be compelling or practical on a 2D screen with common input controls.

>I personally don't think it'll so much "replace" as much as open up new doors. As in Cinema/TV didn't "replace" theatrical performances, theatre is still around and strong, but the audience has mostly shifted to movies/TV because it is more scalable and flexible.

Theatre is niche whereas once it was mainstream though. And it has been ages since its been culturally relevant in the way movies are discussed etc, even for high-bro audiences (e.g. since the 50s or so in the US, or around the 70s for European audiences).

Movies are still like theater though. You can go all things you might do at the theater at the movies: Eat a snack, have a drink, whisper commentary to your significant other. Essentially it's scalable theater.

With VR, you're trying to be 'inside' the media. Imagine a bunch of people feeling around for their drink or bumping heads as they try to whisper. I think if this iteration of VR becomes successful, it will be because they found a niche for themselves. But I can't imagine it becoming the default medium for anything, not even games.

You can put the other people in the VR experience too.

Google at IO/2016 showed some experiment with schools using cardboard where they raytraced where each student in a classroom was looking at. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuceLtGjDWY

With full body tracking and depth cameras you could put 3d avatar bodies in.

Obviously the face would be obscured by the headset, but it's dark in a cinema and people are normally looking at the screen when watching TV at home. So it might actually end up being more social.

Even with just simple 3d positioning of the headset and input devices with a simple visual indicator is enough to get a sense of someone being present. Add a microphone and 3D spacial positioning of voices.

Of course the current generation of technology would make that hard and rare. Not too many people you know will buy a $1000 headset. Everyone would need to bring that and a fairly powerful computer to the one place.

Although physically being present in the same room isn't required.

A new medium never really replaces an old medium, it just starves all other media for time. So far VR is great for games, experiencing immersive environments (eg destinations), and some design/creation (eg tiltbrush).

I think it will get better as time goes on, but it is already really compelling. I realize I'm an early adopter, but my enthusiasm is only increasing. WebVR is fascinating, and it's possible to create, for example, a really compelling shopping experience where you could see the actual size of objects before buying.

Whoever comes up with a way for furniture and homewares retailers to demonstrate their products in your home is going to make a fortune, whether it's an open system or a whitelabel platform for scanning rooms, ingesting models and integrating with a shopping cart.

IKEA literally already has such an app in Steam.

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/447270/

[2] http://www.ikea.com/us/en/about_ikea/newsitem/040516_Virtual...

It even has swedish meatballs

That's not really what OP is talking about - it's just a single pre-assembled kitchen scene containing only a few Ikea items.

It's a start. I already have my apartment mocked up in Sketchup, and I imagine it's not that hard to import that. It'll be hack-y at first, but it seems like a very achievable target for professional interior designers, etc. The tech could easily trickle down.

Even though the VR app is just a kitchen demo, IKEA has had Augmented Reality to place furniture in your own home in their standard catalog app for a couple years now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDNzTasuYEw So VR is the next step

Probably something like the Hololens is the next step for that, and Hololens is amazing, so seeing the furniture in your room without having to wave a phone around is going to change buying and decorating

VR is more a different direction, it's hard to take your house and represent it in VR for you to furnish. You could use something like the Matterport, but even then it's an hour or two before you can use it in VR.

I used to manage the engineering R & D department at a pretty major e-commerce retailer, they bought the oculus devkit and that was my first idea. I brought it up and was promptly shut down. Then they made me build a cars.com clone. Don't work there anymore.

Similar story: I backed the oculus kickstarter and one of the first thing I wanted to try it once it would be released is realtime 360 video (then move on later to realtime 3d 360). Not being in the Valley, obviously got zero funding, and now such cameras are commonplace; so frustrating.

This was demoed at Google I/O for Project Tango, featuring furniture from WayFair among others. It's not true VR but AR, which actually works better for this application. Until consumer project tango hardware has shipped in quantity, though, it won't get past the demo stage.

The great thing about project tango is that since it has accurate depth sensing and builds a 3D model of the space, furniture placed is accurate to scale. Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gYwc6nS7qs

I personally know of three companies trying to do this. It's a hard problem, one of them basically gave up on the problem, but someone's going to figure it out.

I guess the company that makes it easy will win.

A new medium never really replaces an old medium, it just starves all other media for time.

Really? So, TV and movies starved audio commentary and discussion for time? I suspect TV and movies became dominant, but they didn't completely eliminate audio. Games are a new medium, and they seem to coexist with other media. Books don't seem to be going away. If anything, new forms of media seem to be synergistic with the existing forms.

Maybe starved is too strong a term. I think we're both trying to make the same point - a new medium can exist, but it doesn't mean that the old media go away. You might just use them less. The idea of a new medium replacing an older medium 1-for-1 doesn't make much sense.

That said, the amount of attention people can pay to all media is essentially finite, and new media decreases the hold of old media. In a very real way the internet is killing print newspapers, by drastically reducing the amount of attention that is paid to them.

Likewise, if you look at printed books, they are much less important than they were 100 years ago, largely due to radio, television, movies, computers, and the internet.

Books might be less used by the majority, but they're still the most important medium. They're usually the highest quality, most vetted source of information and reading exercises your mind. As well, most content online today will be gone in 100 years, while we have books from 2,000 years ago. It sounds weird to the modern, arrogant man who mocks something so old fashioned, but the printed word dwarfs all these other inventions. Nothing is replacing it.

> They're usually the highest quality, most vetted source of information and reading exercises your mind.

That's kind of an arrogant categorization.

1) We all read, regardless of the material the text is presented on.

2) I've bought and borrowed an immense amount of really awful books, and I've read a ton of truly insightful, well worded and interesting stories, posts, discussions online.

Sure internet is ful of crap, but I believe it's equally full of great ideas that wouldn't get a chance to be published on paper, whether that is because the author doesn't feel he/she can fill a book, they are not appropriately confident about their work or any number of other factors.

Online, you can crowdsource the editing process and everything (most) good will be visibly published. If that is not succeeding a medium I don't know what is. Honestly I'm not even comfortable calling them different medias. I believe text is the medium, the same way 2d video is a medium, from 35/70/135mm celluloid through VHS/betamax through all imaginable codecs online. There's really no difference in how you process the information.

There's an incredibly huge difference between text and video and how the information is processed. Your statement literally rejects the validity and significance of the director of photography's job

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematographer

If I'm not mistaken, they meant that text == text, just as video == video - not that text and video are directly comparable.

There's no difference between a printed and bound book full of (for the sake of argument) Tumblr posts and the same posts online - or alternatively, a betamax video, and the same video captured and encoded in an MKV container.

The parent comment meant that there is not a big difference to them on which medium (paper book, iPad, desktop monitor) they read a text, "text" is its own category instead of paper vs electronic. Similar "video" is its own category. Watching a Football game on a gigantic 60 inch screen vs on your small phone the big screen may be more comfortable, but it doesn't fundamentally change how you process the information (compared to reading what happened on Wikipedia or hearing radio play-by-play commentary.)

The other replies have already clarified it better than I did, but from the horses mouth: Yes, of course video is different from text. I meant as the other comments suggest that text is no different from text, and video is no different from video. I called both of them their own (separate) medias.

Sorry for the ambiguous phrasing.

Most content online doesn't require quite the attention span and focus of reading a book. There's just no equivalency between Facebook and The Republic. Books usually have better vetted sources and an editor going over it. I've never seen anything that originated online like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. Except maybe The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

And I doubt that the next "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" will originate online either. It might be advertised online, eventually people will pirate it in epub form but no one is putting a great work online first. Because what I'm saying is true.

"I've read a ton of truly insightful, well worded and interesting stories, posts, discussions online"

As have I. It's not worthless, I love the internet. It's just not replacing books. When all the drives fail that store this conversation, there will be a million copies of The Iliad still in existence. I stand by my original statement, books dwarf all these other mediums.

I like the Chris Milk quote "VR is the last medium." Because VR (eventually) encapsulates all of our senses and all of our actions, all other media, past and future, can be encapsulated in VR.

smell-o-vision disagrees :-)

It depends on how you define VR ... if you define it as covering every sense, then yes, by definition is encapsulates all other media. But if you define it as how its implemented, then no, because net every sense has been implemented. Smell, temperature, wind, acceleration, weightlessness, full-body touch ... we're a long way from the holodeck.

True, but those are all enhancements that will come to VR, not themselves new mediums.

You could say that the interactivity/3D of VR was an enhancement to the TV.. and therefore not a new medium

VR is new and thus not well defined. The name, at least, is inclusive of all technologies that simulate a sensory experience, in a way that "television" never was.

No, because TV was never meant to simulate reality, and simulating reality is what VR is and that naturally includes all the senses.

VR is interesting. It gives content creators a lot more options to engage participants, but it also takes an axe to their knees in their ability to control things. The author has no control over where the participant is looking - and with room-scale tracking, very little control over where the participant is standing either.

The most successful content in my view capitalizes on this freedom, and provides new spaces for participants to express themselves. You do not have to roll on the floor to dodge lasers in the arcade shooter Space Pirate Trainer, but it is fun to do, gives you a workout, and was not programmed into the game.

If it replaces anything, it will be things like museums, casual sports (ping pong, pool etc that require big space commitment for a singular activity), and social interaction tools like skype.

The travel industry (packaged trours) say it will replace catalouges. Sounds plausible for me and as far as I heared there are a few pilots going on.

Great application.

Will also replace pictures in real estate listings I suppose.

I just got done apartment hunting recently, and there's walkable virtual tours of just about every apartment, at least in my region on apartments.com.

Basically a bunch of 360 panoramic shots with spaces you can click on the ground to traverse to the next spot that gives you another view, and it fades between the two, kind of like moving down the street in Street View with Google Maps.

It did a pretty damn good job of giving you a feel for the apartment (we toured many of them afterwards).

Obviously actual VR would be better, but what they've got now is pretty darn good already, and definitely a lot better than pictures.

That being said, I think most home listings still rely on low-res still pictures, which is a shame.

People still use catalogues?

I tried the Vive, with the TiltBrush game/app, and one shooting one. No haptics.

It was really quite incredible, and I was skeptical coming in. However, it was incredible in a "super high tech sparklers" kind of way, that I'd like everyone to check out once for fun. I don't really see any future in them.

The vive has haptics in both controllers.

It's neat, but do you find yourself looking forward to playing it still? The novelty is fantastic, but until the software shows up (I'm not a gamer), it feels like a demo.

> I'm 100% convinced VR is the new medium going forward.

Maybe we should stop chasing that elusive high of extensive growth and just come to terms with the fact that computing is now a mature industry. There will be no more double-digit growth rates.

So you kinda thought VR was hyped, but it didn't stop you from ordering a Vive?

I think VR is incredibly hyped, just as it was 15 years ago.

What do you imagine this new medium replacing? Games? Movies? Monitors?

It replaces the default reality.

What can I say, I'm a compulsive early adopter =P I also have an Apple Watch and a Myo armband, but haven't found a ton of compelling uses for them yet. I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to develop for it early if I was wrong and I had the cash to buy it.

The difference from 15 years ago is that the hardware is actually here and practical. We have the tracking and displays and they are actually really good. It really creates presence, there is 0 comparison between Oculus/Vive and VR experiences of yesterday, such as the Aladdin ride in Downtown Disney. Hell, HTC is literally pivoting the entire company to the Vive. HTC/Valve + Facebook + Sony + Samsung is a ton of top-notch engineering effort being put into just the first generation of devices/software.

See my comment above, but basically I imagine it'll create new media/experiences rather than replace. I don't think "floating monitors in space" will ever be compelling (maybe in AR), and I don't think "movies" as we think of them now will be practical (though I do think there is room for a more "theatre-like" approach).

If the displays get a lot higher res, I could see myself using stacks of floating displays for apps instead of my current multimonitor display. Imagine being completely surrounded by digital paper that defies the laws of physics.

For me, the headsets would also need to be way lower profile. I think by then the distinction between AR/VR will be very small though.

Research is promising: https://research.nvidia.com/publication/near-eye-light-field...

Wow, that's cool. Light-weight, close to actual sunglasses size, and able to correct for prescription? I want to try these.

They were letting people try them on at the Emerging Technologies booth at SIGGRAPH. You could get yourself one of the cheap passes and come down to Anaheim in a couple of weeks, I'm sure they'll have their latest revision.

I'm actually going to be in Anaheim the weekend of the 16th (Disneyland), but making it back down there a week later isn't going to work with my already planned vacation later. :/

If only I could find a way to convince my employer that this conference is related to the job at hand...

Probably just games, though other uses will pop up too. TotalBiscuit (the Youtuber) said he got one of the Samsung VR things (I forget the name, the one where you put your phone in it) and used it to watch a movie on a long flight, and it completely removed his fear of flying.

Gear VR is the name.

After playing Elite: Dangerous with the Rift, I can corroborate that it's a legitimately amazing experience that is a huge step up from both playing with stereo 3D or regular monitors.

VR might stay as a somewhat specialized medium, but within the medium the possibilities are very compelling.

>Monitors?

Maybe someone can chime in here, but doesn't the Hololens team already do some dev by wearing them in place of monitors at this point?

I've heard that but I really suspect that is just some story put out largely for PR sake. The resolution is something around 720p per eye. But that essentially means 720p total, right? Because the "per eye" part basically means that it is stereoscopic 720p.

The one scenario I imagined working at that resolution that would really be helpful is if you were actually working on the the code in your current view? Then updating and reloading wouldn't require you to take the headset on and off.

But stories of the engineers not using regular monitors anymore seems a bit far fetched.

This is the only reason I am waiting for the next Gen VR. The resolutions right now are just too low.

I tried the vive demo and was blown away (I could play the spice pirate trainer game until my body gave out) but the low resolution was noticeable (along with the screen door effect) and I had trouble reading text.

But there is something to be said for having your entire vision devoted to what you're doing. Once resolutions get higher, you have almost your entire FOV to devote to code, browsing, whatever.

And being able to control your screen just by moving your head will be pretty crazy.

VR definitely hits games and porn pretty naturally, right now. Games like Hover Junkers are an example of great early execution in this medium.

I think VR movies are a still a bit off, though I could be totally wrong. The reason I say that is because some of the fundamental theories used in making a movie are different in VR. Namely, you can't be certain you know where the "camera" is. :) Also, VR movies require a lot of new and developing camera hardware and editing software to come along. There are some cool things out now but my understanding is it is all very new and developing. Ultimately, I still buy in on VR movies, though. I am a believer in VR movies mainly because of my own experience watching short films in VR was super cool but also from watching videos of people curled up in the fetal position as they were being shown some scary movie in VR. It's visceral in a way that has not been achievable up until now.

I also think AR well be a widely adopted medium and there might become a pretty gray distinction after a while. I could imagine headsets or glasses that you can increase or decrease how much external light comes through. I can see doing things like checking email, facebook, etc. being done in AR but still allowing you to go about your normal routine like making coffee and breakfast or walking the dog. Seems far more compelling than looking at notifications on my watch.

Eventually, I also suspect that we will be "mainlining" these experiences and not be wearing headsets at all. Implanting some device that directly stimulates the necessary parts of the brain (or other parts of the body needed).

Namely, you can't be certain you know where the "camera" is.

Aren't you assuming that they would allow the wearer to change the camera position?

You could film a movie or design a game such that the camera location is fixed or on rails. You're more like an observer than a participant.

Eg. Chronos and Edge of Nowhere

I believe the GP was refering to the production of films and movies. For example, much of the Lord of the Rings films were shot with forced perspective. How would that translate into a VR medium?

I would agree that my language was a bit loose but what I'm talking about still applies as long as the viewer can turn their head.

The main issue I was thinking about was that you cannot say for sure where your audience is looking at any moment in time.

Have you seen Pearl from Google's Spotlight Series? It's a VR film that shows how you can get around the "limitations" of VR: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3060252/dont-be-surprised-if-goo....

I definitely agree though. You can't just take what works in film and expect it to work in a VR film. It'll be interesting to see how filmmakers experiment with the medium as more and more start pushing what it can do.

I have a friend who partnered with another guy and they bought the Nokia OZO recently. I'm really excited to see what they do and hopefully will get to figure out someway I can participate and be useful. I'm very intrigued by video for VR. Though I am kinda sold on light field tech eventually being the solution.

That link is cool. I'll read it in depth. Thanks! I am excited by the possible shakeup in film theory caused by VR. I believe some really cool artistic innovations are going to come coupled with the technological ones.

>VR definitely hits games and porn pretty naturally

The consensus at /r/vive is that VR porn is pretty terrible. You either deal with uncanny valley stuff for 'real' 3D scenes or just awkward camera placements and other issues for 360 movies. There's also a psychological effect of being 'too close to the action' or 'first person porn being unsexy' many have complained about.

I think the "tech will succeed because of porn" is a problematic mantra nowadays. I don't see facebook, Apple, etc succeeding because of porn. If anything, those platforms either outright block it or give a substandard porn experience. I don't think porn tells us anything nowadays.

I wasn't saying "tech will succeed because of porn".

Theoretically? Everything.

>What do you imagine this new medium replacing? Games? Movies? Monitors?

Why would it? It supplements my other recreational activities. The same way a Xbox didn't replace PC gaming or flat screen TV's didn't replace movies.

>I think VR is incredibly hyped, just as it was 15 years ago.

I own a Vive. Its kinda amazing. No, people won't be "locked in VR and refuse to leave" and other hysterics, but what we are able to do right now is exceptional. Its the most interesting thing I've bought in a long time. I see these breathless essays on HN and reddit about new cellphones or some new laptop that you have to squint to see the difference between the old and the new versions. I think some level of hype is justified here. If people can lose their shit over the annual new iphone or ipad then can certainly lose their shit over VR.

That said, there is a lot of hype, but that's part of being in a competitive marketplace full of marketers and advertisers. Arguably, if the hype was toned down then a lot of people interested in VR would have never heard of the Vive.

Hype/marketing/pr serves a purpose.

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