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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

As someone who owns both headsets from day one and has been developing software for Vive, I'd honestly say the current generation of tech just isn't worth it for most people. In five years when we have wireless headsets with eye tracking and full FOV displays with no discernible pixelation and the library of games are finally here it will be worth it. As it is most people would probably be let down after the initial wow factor wears off.

I think VR is at the point smartphones were from 2000-2007 until the iPhone showed up. It's going to take another generation of devices that incorporate all of those features in a really well designed package before it goes mainstream.

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I completely agree with this sentiment. I too develop for both Vive and Oculus and they're just so unfinished products that I'd never recommend anyone to buy them.

* Vive has huge problems with tracking devices. It needs to track 3 things and usually 1 has a problem and is not tracking properly sigh * The coords are annoying * FOV is too narrow * picture quality is crap (low resolution) * steam vr (as steam itself) is low quality software * the device is heavy on your face, uncomfortable and makes you sweat (in the face.. nasty) * lack of compelling content that has things just right (i.e. doesn't make you sick)

From developer point of view: * openvr library can be confusing, documentation is lacking and it's married to steam :(

I think the author is overshooting the importance of VR. The next generation hardware will undoubtedly improve much and there's definately potential especially in fields like visualization work and gaming too. But lets be honest there's a whole bunch of basic "productivity" apps and light user content apps (think your average phone app) that really doesn't have much to gain from VR. Undoubetedly some of these will want to jump on the VR hype (once it comes) and quickly make totally horrible half-assed versions of their software for VR.

yeah sounds like the author is still in the initial "wow" stage, since they only tried it last week. I too was amazed by my oculus when i first got it. I was amazed again when the touch controllers came out. But once you get used to the new interface you get resigned to the fact there are no games out for it and the ones that are out are essentially expensive demos created to show off the tech. Furthermore the cords and setup are a pain.

I think that the Vive is a little like the release iPhone. It has all of the pieces, but it's also clunky and extravagant.

You had to have a pretty good imagination to look at any 2004 phone and envision the iPhone, but once you had the 1st gen iPhone it's pretty easy to imagine a modern smartphone. It's pretty much just the same thing only more so.

I don't know, that first iPhone was pretty special. Just having a fantastic web browser (mobile Safari) was a game changer. The gap feels bigger with VR, to me.

The first iPhone cost $600 after subsidy, you had to wait for pages to load forever over EDGE, and it had literally no software. Seems like a decent analogy of current VR.

Before the iPhone, nobody had any idea what improvement on the smartphone would be required to get them in the hands of everyone. All anyone could say was "a smartphone isn't for everyone". With VR, just in this thread half the people are saying "I just hated the resolution, lack of portability and software", similarly specific objections like people had with the initial iPhone.

I actually had the opposite experience to you. The first iPhone wasn't very special to me. "So what, it accomplishes everything my current phone does, only with pinch zoom". My first Oculus dev kit experience, terrible 720p display and all was captivating.

Agreed that the first iPhone was special, it let me move across the country without knowing a soul for two thousand miles with confidence.

The limitations were obvious though. The small screen and low resolution made it hard to read much text. It was really slow, both in processor and in its 2G connection. And it was clear that there was a lot of work to be done on the software and design technology side.

The Vive feels pretty special to me too. Presence, that feeling of being in another place, a fictional place with fictional rules. Perceptually perfect hand and head tracking. The chaperone system to let you move around the room with confidence.

The limitations are obvious: high system reqs, cords everywhere, low resolution, flaky software, and again we need to question a lot of our assumptions about the kind of software that we write. All of that's being aggressively engineered away. I'm bullish.

>Agreed that the first iPhone was special, it let me move across the country without knowing a soul for two thousand miles with confidence.

What was your alternative way to move across the country?

There used to be a weird merge between google maps and 2D printing

There was also that old man Rand McNally. Or stopping somewhere and asking for directions. I think you might've managed fine without the iPhone.

It's nice to get accurate directions when you really, really need it. There's also something to be said for getting lost or wandering every now and then.

Pre-app store iPhones? (and all of the software that it massively incentivized?)

Or just the phones themselves?

You didn't have to buy and configure a gaming PC to use the release iPhone, though. There's a certain out-of-the-box simplicity that's missing from the Vive and Oculus.

For sure, people can see the potential of the interface and it just needs the hardware to catch up.

Which I think will look like:

- Inside-out head tracking (hololens and project tango)

- Dedicated VR GPUs (heat and power issues)

- Better resolution (4k per eye is getting close to desktop screen res)

Then phones will go into 'VR mode' as we're seeing today with daydream, so it essentially rolls out automatically and without additional spending from consumers.

All incremental improvements to really take it mainstream

I love this analogy. A similar one I've been using is that the Vive is like the Nintendo Entertainment System (1985).

Sure you could technically play video games in your house on the Atari 2600, but they were so much worse than arcade games they were sort-of still a gimmick.

The NES was the first home game system whose games were good enough to get lost in. But that doesn't mean there wasn't tremendous room for improvement.

I had the exact same thoughts after playing with a Vive. An amazing glimpse at the near future.

I have used a Vive and a Rift for games for about five hours each and that was enough time for me to get bored with it. Not sure if it's that the games being developed for it are extremely lackluster compared to "real" games or if, like you say, the technology just isn't where it needs to be to be fun, but it was a letdown for me. It did have an amazing wow factor when I first tried it though.

You should take a look at this YC company: https://www.sixa.io/ - these changes might come faster than you think :)

No Linux client. Dumb move, when a typical use case is windows development when working from a Linux workstation. Pity. I'd be a customer (and toss my windows VMs)

I wholeheartedly agree with you, but it's not hard to do so - it's the most logical and obvious explanation for what we're seeing. Just like any 1st generation technology, it's far from elegant and is clunky, so we have to give it a few iterations.

> In five years when we have wireless headsets with eye tracking and full FOV displays

Wireless at least ships in Q1 in China, Q2 for the US (TPCast)

What's stopping it from being wireless right now? Wifi technology or battery life?

Nothing actually. The tech is there and they are releasing multiple third party wireless addons for the Vive this year, but none of the major HMD's come with wireless as standard yet.

I would think the added weight of a battery on your head would be one additional factor also.

We're not going to have all that in five years.

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