VR Is STILL a Stupid Idea | Hacker News Reader

VR Is STILL a Stupid Idea

alexstjohn.com

32 pointsdouche18 comments

I think that there is overoptimism in VR right now where the technology is going to progress slower than people think, there will be more difficult roadblocks than people think, and the best practices around VR software will take a while to develop. It will happen, it's just not going to be easy.

This article strikes me as saying something akin to "Cellular phones are a stupid idea and will never take off. They're heavy, the size of a brick, and you can only use them in the few areas where there are towers nearby." Well yeah, if we were perpetually stuck in 1985 sure, but fortunately we're not.

I'd argue that the current generation of VR (Rift/Vive/Gear/PS4/etc) is already multiple orders of magnitude more successful than past attempts, and, to continue the cell phone analogy, we're essentially in 1985 right now.

Did you not read the article? The points he makes are not due to technological or environmental constraints. It's about what people actually are interested in and capable of doing.

Pretty much everybody wants to be able to use a phone on the go. However, if cellphones made 90% of people nauseous after a short time just from walking around with them, they wouldn't be that popular.

I did read the article, and yes, his points are largely due to technological and environmental constraints. He presents a combination of current and past VR tech (with a healthy dose of strawman mixed in) and uses that to make the claim that VR will never work. It's not going to live up to the current hype, but you can say that about almost everything.

Nausea from VR is not some sort of intrinsic property, it's due to a number of physical factors, many of which can be solved technically by better hardware or by the design of VR experiences. It's not going to be easy, but it's not an intractable problem.

The difference between the VR we have now and the VR we had in the past is that now there is momentum towards moving the technology forward. You have multiple companies competing to develop hardware. You have many developers working on VR experiences and learning what does and does not work. You actually have people buying these things and using that software.

> I'd argue that the current generation of VR (Rift/Vive/Gear/PS4/etc) is already multiple orders of magnitude more successful than past attempts

Are they, I haven't seen sales number? Has anyone beaten the virtual boys 350,000 units?

http://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-1-million-people-use-vr-every...

Some forecasts for the rest of the year here: https://www.superdataresearch.com/vr-market-update-october-2...

That is an informative perspective that many people who haven't been following VR for as long could benefit from.

However, I think I have some even more beneficial context. One of the biggest problems with society is the fact that people just cannot distinguish between merit and popularity. They don't know that they are two separate things.

Also, I will go further and say that relates to the capital-oriented nature of society, so people often cannot distinguish between something that just currently fails to make lots of money and something that doesn't have merit.

Nearly every major innovation goes through years where it doesn't quite live up to the hype, isn't particularly affordable, and/or just isn't fashionable or popular. That doesn't mean they weren't great ideas.

Actually the best ideas are often the ones that face the most technical, economic, and social challenges. But eventually we look back and recognize how advantageous the transformation was. And the armies of non-historically-informed detractors look silly in hindsight.

VR is fast approaching the hype-cycle "Trough of Disillusionment" as well as the chasm of "Crossing the Chasm". Expect to see a whole lot more doom-saying over the next couple of years.

What will happen is the same story that plays out with every breakthrough technology. Now that we have the early implementations in consumer's hands, everyone will expect everything and a pony immediately if not sooner. But, the reality will be that there are still a lot of very difficult problems to overcome that will still take years to sort out. So, the general consensus will overestimate in the short term and underestimate in the long term by large margins. In the end, VR will make a very large difference in a whole lot of people's lives. But, it won't deliver <insert-magical-fantasy-situation-here> on any predictable timeline. So, people will say it turned out "OK, I guess".

> Way back in 1995 ... New head tracking technology and high resolution LCD displays had made it possible to make light weight VR glasses affordable to the masses

I found this line really funny when two of the critics that I often see with the current generation is the price and that the resolution is still not enough.

"If you can’t simulate inertia, you’re not delivering VR, you’re delivering nausea!"

This seems to be the main thing. There's a basic user need that's effectively impossible to deliver short of a SEGA AS-1 type machine... which is too big/spendy for home entertainment.

It's not as simple as that, individuals have very different sensibilities regarding simulator sickness and lack of inertia is just one (presumed) cause of it. There are studies that suggest "virtual cockpits" or even a "virtual nose" can help here.

However, it's clear that right now everybody is trying to "play it safe" regarding movement in VR and this is quite limiting to the possible experiences. Marketing towards the segment of that population that doesn't get simulator sickness is unthinkable.

Don't room scale VR systems, like the Vive, avoid this problem? They (usually) avoid having any artificial movement at all, mapping you walking around in your room 1:1 to walking in the virtual environment.

...which is one reason why VR won't live up to the hype.

You won't be piloting the Millennium Falcon, you will be sitting in the back room, playing Holo-Chess against Chewbacca.

That may be interesting enough to some people, but it's not going to "change the world".

Yeah, but you're limited to a very small play area. Some slow-moving games get around this beautifully using teleportation (Budget Cuts is a great example), but it doesn't work in all cases. Wouldn't want to teleport my way around Fallout 4. The developers are trying different tricks to make it work, really hope they come up with something because the potential is great, but as it stands my Vive has been collecting dust for the past months.

>but the truth is that VR has been tried and failed repeatedly over the last two decades.

Maybe it's not VR as most think of it, but the problem has existed for even longer when considering 3D movies in the 1950s.

Since then the same cycle of new technology, hype, sizzle, and obsolescence seems to play out whenever there is a new invention. VR is not like other technologies once written off that became ubiquitous, instead it replays itself with each generation before they discover that it's terrible and not enjoyable.

This article is one of the best explanations out there why it will never succeed with permanence.

To me the real growth in the next few years will be in augmented reality more than in VR. At the same time I think pro vr and anti vr are both taking extreme positions on where VR is heading.

I can't say if these points are all right or all wrong, but it certainly made me think. The idea of inertia and nausea really resonated with me.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

Just needs more time...

You could use this same quote for anything.

"This revolutionary new toaster that prints memes/tweets on your toast in the morning will soon be found in every household"

"That's stupid, no it won't"

"Well, Ken Olsen said 'There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home' so this toaster is gonna really take off'"

Many (most?) ideas fail. I'm not convinced that the fact that Ken Olsen failed to anticipate the PC revolution has any bearing on VR's success. Yes, sometimes people fail to predict success, but just as often people succeed in predicting failure.

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