I wonder what the killer app for VR will be. (I guess we also need the killer headset first, which is still yet to come.)
Visualization is good, especially for people who don't naturally see things already in their mind's eye. For visually attuned thinkers I think its more a good way to achieve fidelity of a shared vision rather than to simply visualize something.
For example, someone is telling you a story that took place in a certain area in a certain orientation. You can quickly convey that in a virtual environment, harder to do verbally.
The other thing that I am hoping we'll get will be "unlimited resolution screens" which is to say that one will no longer be limited to what is on the one, two, or perhaps three screens in front of you, instead you can have screens above, around, even below you if you want with different bits of data on them. By freeing the organization of your windows from the frame of the monitor to being able to put them anywhere, you can achieve better data awareness.
In response to more important parts of your comment, the most exciting applications of shared visions and unlimited screens I feel will come through mixed and augmented reality. The sharing experience is much greater when you can also see the person you are interacting with rather than just an avatar. The visual speed of communication will need real, emotional anchors unless you are willing to trade nuance and subtlety for the speed of digital visual communication, which could have disastrous implications for how we communicate with one another. Infinite screens, though, better hope that higher density VR displays will keep coming and processing power will expand with that. Text and traditional interfaces are very difficult in VR right now since everything is sharing what is really a small amount of pixels for how much of your FoV they inhabit.
That said, it is a stereotype that pornographers are the first to exploit new technology commercially and that was what I was going for with that comment. What I actually expect the first "VR" porn to be basically actors filmed with one of the new 360 view cameras as the camera person walks around them. Basically replacing the "directors" idea of what would be useful to look at with your own choice. Given my understanding of how these sorts of things are shot, I expect this to be pretty challenging for the actors. The only "degree of freedom" is where you are looking.
I'm a big fan of AR and I really love the CastAR stuff but recognize that what VR has is vomitness AR has in image registration and occlusion.
In AR, the registration requirement is that you have to keep things in the environment pinned in the environment or your brain complains. There were some Google Tango demos that have that issue. When their position is "jittering" or worse moving around, your brain starts rebelling.
The occlusion part is really hard for your eyeballs. Since the world is naturally pretty light anyway, in order to make a pixel appear before you that is "opaque" with respect to the background behind it, you need to either literally block out the pixel behind (using and LCD shutter or something), always insure the background is not "bright" (the CastAR solution with the retro-reflective cloth) or dump more light into your eye to overwhelm its notion of what color the pixel is (putatively the Magic leap solution). The "VR" solution is to put high definition cameras on the headset where your eyeballs would be with a similar field of view and sensitivity and then mix in the "outside" data with the generated data.
And as you point out on the plus side if you can see someone in "real time" its a much better interactive experience.
A tangent. I'm a person whose mind's eye has visualization capabilities rated at "3/10 double buffered with one of the buffers being /dev/null". I have vivid dreams, but when awake, I can at best visualize something for fraction of a second before it disappears into "I feel it's there but I can't see it anymore" domain. Does anyone know of a way (exercises, maybe) to improve the ability to visualize vividly? Is this even possible? So far I've been doing simple exercises of trying to capture a part of the "image flashes" in my mind and focusing on keeping it visualized, but I didn't get anywhere.
To improve the latter I have an informal exercise where I'll sometimes sit down in a room and try to itemize everything I saw in a different room. It is a "no equipment required and externally non visible" way to combat boring situations like waiting to get on a plane or sitting in the dentists chair waiting for anesthetic to kick in. Can I remember what magazines were on the coffee table, how many? how many on other tables? etc. Basically practicing remembering scenes that I have seen recently.
Bret Victor discussed his conception of this when he wrote about 'Seeing Spaces': http://s3.amazonaws.com/worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces/SeeingSp...
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That said, I also didn't have parents that knew how to support my interest in geeky stuff and would have loved a world for building gadgets.
Take a look at Victor's premise. It's about expanding our capabilities for thinking about engineering and the world, not "tree fort simulator".
Haven't used it for coworking personally, but it's been fun using it to watch tv and hang out with randoms. Just having the body language goes a huge way in making it feel like you're really in a room with the other person.
There's a lot of little details you are looking for that wouldn't show up unless it was an extremely high resolution. On top of that, you are looking for subtle sounds and movement as you walk through the house. You're seeing if the floor is sagging, does the paint show water damage under certain lighting, etc.
It's like looking at the specs sheet of a car, before going for a test drive.
But I honestly feel it will be a long time before even those industries utilize it.
There is a market for this technology , it is also a fresh market in terms of application and practical use. I consider it a good oppurtunity for startups.
Although today is mainly with 360-degree photos rather than real-time rendering or lightfields.
where's the study of every technology the porn industry adopted that still failed
actually, don't do that study, I get all my investors by saying "historically porn has been a leading indicator of tech adoption, and look they're using it!"