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Comment by timothycrosley | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I think the biggest problem with VR is that it's downright dangerous. I tried a professionally setup and monitored demo of HTC vive inside of a Microsoft store, and walked into the wall. They needed somebody with you to help make sure you didn't get tangled in the wires - during a 15 minute demo! And people still did, repeatedly. Until there aren't cords and something like the Omni treadmill comes around to handle movement without physically moving - I just think it's not practical or safe as a technology for games other then flight and driving simulators.

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If you walked into a wall, they must not have had the chaperone settings setup properly, either miscalibrated or not appearing brightly enough.

I have a 2.5m x 2.5m space, with walls an inch or so past the edge of the space on two sides. There's only been a small handful of hits, and those were mostly at the beginning. My experience, both for myself and watching my friends try things out, is that the wire is annoying, but it's not dangerous. I think part of the problem here could be that it's best to play without shoes on - it's easier to tell when you are standing on the cord, which is when you can get the most tangled up. Obviously people are not taking their shoes off for store demos.

Wireless is definitely going to be a massive improvement, but I think saying it is dangerous is a bit of a stretch.

I could def see being shoeless helping things out. However, by definition most of these VR systems are wired into a computer on or near desk. I could easily see someone tangle and then trip over the wire and then hit their head on the desk.

In fact, just google "VR Injuries" and you'll see way more examples then say happened with the nintendo wii, pre strap, a change they made because they concluded without it the wii was too dangerous and lawsuit prone. The original wii has nothing on current state VR. If it became any where near as widespread as the wii did with it's current implementation, there would certainly be a few more entries to the Darwin awards...

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