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Comment by sgift | Hacker News Reader

Not really, the observation can be made about any new technology and sometimes will be correct, sometimes not. Without further explanation why 3D TV and VR, two completely different technologies, are somehow comparable it's just noise.

Edit: There's also little proof that 3D TV failed because wearing the glasses was awkward. I can only compare it to 3D cinema, which is basically worthless. Avatar is still the only movie I've seen where it worked, for every other one it was just money paid for nothing.

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>Not really, the observation can be made about any new technology and sometimes will be correct, sometimes not. Without further explanation why 3D TV and VR, two completely different technologies, are somehow comparable it's just noise.

They don't have to be similar technologies, just comparable in that they're fads (which lot of us feel, and time will prove -- check back in 5 years).

The original comment seems to be saying that VR is a fad because it's similar to 3D TV. You're saying that VR is similar to 3D TV because it's also a fad. You may well be correct, but that can't be used to support the original comment, since it would be circular reasoning.

I also think VR is overhyped, but not because it's a fad (though that's part of it).

It's similar to 3D TV in that it presents content in a better way that nobody asked for, and nobody ever found a way to massively leverage the tech that truly felt natural.

3D content ended up falling into two camps:

- Films that are largely the same experience as their 2D counterparts. You barely notice that the 3D is there, and after the fact you'd be hard pressed to claim that the 3D made the experience substantially better in any way. A lot of VR tech demos fall into this category - things that are "well, that's very cool, but..."

- Films that exploited the 3D technology by throwing baseballs at your face, having characters literally fly out of the screen, etc, to fully drive home the 3D effect - but ultimately all of them were gimmicky and done for the sake of showing off the tech. VR has a boatload of these, where the entire experience is about the spectacle of VR, rather than VR tech being the vehicle to some more substantial experience.

3D films never found a way to integrate the tech in a way that felt substantial, and VR is struggling with the same. Some niche VR categories (see: cockpit games like driving and flight sims) have certainly embraced VR, but more generally VR is dominated by tech demos and games that simply don't feel like a meaningful upgrade over their 2D counterparts.

VR is a (very cool) solution looking for a problem, and IMO in that way it is similar to 3D TVs, and unless it finds its killer problem to solve, will suffer the same fate as 3D TVs.

I don't know if VR will take off, but I do think it has a lot of potential.

3D just doesn't add that much to videos. It can add a little bit to the immersion, but we're already good at picking up other depth cues. I can think of videos which could potentially be better with 3D, but I can't think of any video experience you fundamentally couldn't have without 3D.

With VR, it's pretty easy to come up with things it can do which fundamentally can't be done without it. Flight sims, as you mention, are a big one that come to mind. Being able to freely look around is huge. I think this stuff is going to become a really useful tool in learning to fly. Simulation is already proving really useful even without VR, but seeing everything through a fixed monitor is severely limiting. Being able to look around to get the same visual cues you'd get in the real airplane will be a big improvement.

Obviously, that's fairly niche, but a really useful technology that greatly appeals to a few is different, and much more interesting, than a not-very-useful technology that vaguely appeals to many.

I'm skeptical about some of the wacky stuff people predict for VR, like using it to hang out with friends or watch movies together or whatever. But if you get away from areas where you just do the same old stuff a little bit better, there do seem to be some properly interesting things it can do.

> It's similar to 3D TV in that it presents content in a better way that nobody asked for...

No, that's where VR is so different from 3D TV. Nobody was making 3D TVs in their basement. But people have wanted VR for so long that they have been hacking together their own VR headsets. I had been experimenting with using smartphones in cardboard boxes for years before Google Cardboard came out. The significance of Google Cardboard is that it signaled a moment when smartphone hardware was finally "good enough" to do it.

And while Google Cardboard is of course not a great experience, in a lot of ways it's still the basis of the core technology behind most of the other headsets. The Rift and the Vive wouldn't have their relatively high DPI display modules if it weren't for the advances in display module tech built for smartphones. The original Rift DK1 and the Gear VR wouldn't have their motion tracking tech if it weren't for the advancements in high-frequency, low-cost IMU technology built for smartphones.

And the problem is not that VR does not have a cool solution for any problems. It has plenty of those. You just don't personally care about the problems that VR solves. And that's fine, we all have our different interests. But don't assume that means that nobody wants VR.

> "You just don't personally care about the problems that VR solves."

On the contrary, I do. I have the Oculus Rift and the Touch controllers, and I enjoy trying all the content there is. I also love VRs and flight sims - but I've been a flight sim nerd since I was a kid...

The problem is that I don't think the vast majority of the world cares about the problems that VR solves, and that's precisely the similarity with 3D TVs.

I still know some people who love their 3D TVs and watch as much content in 3D as they can get their hands on, but ultimately these people are a very small market, and manufacturers have decided this market isn't serviceable profitably. VR faces the same issue - the places where it's truly well integrated are very niche, and despite multiple attempts at broader appeal, has yet to break out.

Heck, you say mostly the same:

> "But people have wanted VR for so long that they have been hacking together their own VR headsets."

"People" being a vanishingly small community of makers and tinkerers.

VR has been a dream for a long time for many people - especially in the hacker community - but it was never a mainstream desire. In the same way people have been hacking stereoscopic tech together for a long time before 3D TVs, and yet 3D TVs still failed in the mainstream.

VR will always have a place in some niches - the issue here is if major hardware manufacturers will be able to support this niche at the level they are doing right now. The Rift and the Vive are both incredible leaps in VR tech, but both are predicated on the expectation that VR goes mainstream in some major way. Both products will not be sustainable if VR continues to be a very small market like it is right now.

I think one major difference between the two will be that VR content should be much more accessible. A lot of computer games were already trying to be VR, just with clumsy controls and a fixed monitor. Taking a typical first-person game and VR-izing it is pretty easy, and there's a thriving indie game scene. 3D movies require quite a bit more effort and have much more room for stupid stuff like using parallax on an object that's supposed to be gigantic and distant.

Having the hardware be something totally different may well be helpful too. A 3D TV is just a regular TV with a weird feature tacked on. It's hard to justify a higher price, so there isn't much incentive to add that feature. VR headsets are seen as a totally different technology, so their price can be set independently.

> "Taking a typical first-person game and VR-izing it is pretty easy"

This isn't true, though. Developers have found that existing genres are incredibly difficult to adapt into VR. First-person games have had the most trouble adapting to VR because moving the player without a corresponding real-world movement is disorienting.

The abstraction of moving with a controller actually made FPSes even possible - what we've found is that allowing free-look with a VR headset and movement with a joystick is basically impossible to implement well.

If you're looking to your left and push up on your joystick, should the player move in the direction you're looking? Or in the direction of your torso? Worse, having the player move through the world even though the player is physically still causes nausea and disorientation in even seasoned VR users.

First-person game devs have largely settled on teleportation as the replacement - you can't move the player around like you do in a normal game, you can only teleport them to fixed positions. This has solved the disorientation problem at the cost of immersion - most games don't have a convenient in-world explanation for why the player gets to teleport around - and also removes dimensions of gameplay (teleportation makes dodging enemy attacks stupidly easy, after all).

Some modders have shoved VR support into traditional FPSes, and for all of the above reasons these are unplayable. Some have altered their gameplay to support teleportation, and some have disallowed player movement at all (see: Superhot VR). In any case, adapting games to VR is really hard, and in many ways controllers/keyboard/mice were much easier.

Thanks for the info. There are, however, a lot of first-person games where the player controls some sort of vehicle, where all of this is basically solved by default. That's still enough for a lot of content.

I think 360 degree video and other POV style video is going to be the killer app for VR. Even more so than gaming because passively watching video doesn't require complicated/gimmicky controls and half a dozen sensors. Coverage of sports in 360 video is going to be huge.

I suspect once the tech is good enough, it could become quite useful for non-entertainment uses. E.g. viewing houses before buying them, or house designs before building one. Maybe integrate it with something like Google Maps street view, so you can get a feel for where something is, and where to park, before you arrive.

I'm sure there are plenty of other uses, but it will probably be a while before the tech is good enough to be convenient for these uses.

There are decades of hard scientific research driving VR towards its current position. Shooting robots with it at home might turn out to be a fad, but dismissing the entire technology outright as a pointless toy is disingenuous. You really, honesty, don't see any market applications for VR? Any scientific applications? You don't think the Navy is going to train pilots with VR?

Sure, there are verticals that get extra value out of it. But flight sims (for example) are actually easier to "get right" with regards to subsonics, etc by constructing a box to put the person in, and immersing them directly.

Similarly, telemedicine was a thing 20 years ago and it does work in some cases, just like robotic surgery with the DaVinci system. But most people want to have a doctor diagnose them and then perform whatever procedures might be necessary, and especially the wealthy customers hospitals really want tend to prefer doing that with a human. So most of the value add comes from the surgeon rather than the surgery. (Even in oncology, bedside manner is worth a tremendous amount -- to the tune of 8-figure restricted endowments for colleagues of mine)

Speaking as someone who participated in said research, I've seen this cycle before. Maybe it will end differently. But I personally am skeptical. YMMV.

I think at some point being able to tour houses for sale online, or even to be able to view designs in VR would be very useful.

Imagine if you were buying a fixer upper, and hiring someone to renovate it. It would be pretty cool if you could see their design for the renovation in VR and make sure it feels good before investing in the house and the work.

> two completely different technologies

Which nonetheless have the common side effect of nausea in a non-negligible fraction of the population...

VR was workable 20 years ago; I was working on it at that time. Thing is, it only provides a tangible benefit for certain use cases, and most people don't derive enough value from those use cases to pay extra for it.

Argue all you wish, but both 3D and VR are now on their 3rd or 4th hype cycle, and the evidence from previous cycles is that people just don't value them enough to justify the cost.

> VR was workable 20 years ago; I was working on it at that time. Thing is, it only provides a tangible benefit for certain use cases, and most people don't derive enough value from those use cases to pay extra for it.

"Workable", as far as I know basically everyone who used VR then and used it now agrees that there is a big difference due to technological advancements.

The argument that people don't pay extra for it is also only relative, because that's a function of the price they have to pay extra. I'm pretty sure if a high-end VR headset would cost 30 Euro many more people would buy it, as I'm sure more people would buy it for the current price point if the tech would be more advanced.

To sum it up with an comparison: Your argument reminds me of all the people who said a file hosting service will never be something people want as others had failed before and it is a useless idea. Dropbox proved the opposite.

In the end no one knows the future, but at least we now have had a fruitful discussion with arguments for both positions.

True, if the marginal cost is tiny, a lot more doors open. But my recent experience with a VR headset we got my daughter for xmas ... did not knock my socks off.

Predictions are difficult when they concern the future. I'm skeptical, but I've certainly been wrong before. We shall see.

VR 20 years ago was hampered by the same reasons that video game and professional graphics were: you couldn't render visually convincing detail in realtime, which greatly limited the "reality" portion of the name. Today, the graphics problem is no longer an issue.

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